The Whispering Room

by Dean Koontz

  He spoke to Clare about his grief, but not about its depth or about his fear that it would never diminish. She was suffering, too, and if they were emotionally at sea here where no sea had been for millions of years, his role must be to remain stoic and serve as the vessel that carried her from this sad time to a happier shore.

  Ancel’s best hope—and Clare’s—of arriving at a better place was the family that his son left behind. The imperiled woman Nick had loved with such intensity. The grandchild whom Ancel and Clare hardly knew. If the hope of the next world was God, the hope of this one was rightly people; so when people who were part of your heart went lost in the world, the days were hard. The message awaiting him from Jane had brought new color into the sky.

  From county road to state route, he minded what little traffic passed him in the oncoming lane and kept an eye on any vehicle behind him, alert for anyone who didn’t seem born to this territory.

  Because the truck had a GPS, the self-appointed masters of the universe who could use the full arsenal of modern technology didn’t need to tail him as in those old detective novels and movies. But if they thought there was any chance that Jane might visit here for any reason, they would have people nearby who could swarm to snare her.

  Ancel and Clare assumed anything said on any phone, landline or cell, would be heard in real time or reviewed later. Any important issue they needed to address was now discussed out-of-doors.

  The Longrins lived nineteen miles from Hawk Ranch, which in this part of Texas was just around the corner. Her mother died of cancer when Alexis was fourteen, and her dad drank himself into an early grave. Alexis and Chase inherited a broken-down farm. They sold the stock and a piece of the land. With a little cash and a lot of sweat, they turned the remaining property into a thriving horse operation: that breed called the National Show Horse, which combined the Arabian and the American saddlebred; show-quality Tennessee walking horses; and standardbreds for harness racing.

  When Ancel arrived, Chase was in his office opposite the tack room in Stable 3. His blond hair shone nearly white, his face burnt bronze by the sun. He got up from his desk, and they shook hands, and he closed the door.

  Ancel took off his Stetson but didn’t sit, eager to hear why Jane had called.

  “She’s on the road with eight children,” Chase said.

  Ancel half thought he hadn’t heard right. “Children?”

  “She sprung them from someplace they were being held. It’s part of this thing she’s tangled in. She’ll tell you when she sees you.”

  Both alarmed and gladdened, Ancel said, “She’s coming here?”

  “Not here, but close. She’s hoping Leland and Nadine Sacket will take the kids, off the record for the time being.”

  County-born, Leland and Nadine had married at nineteen and gone off to conquer Dallas. It would be foolish to say one was more an entrepreneur than the other. By thirty, they were millionaires. Year by year, they compounded their wealth until, at forty-six, they grew tired of Dallas and bored with making money. They returned to their home ground and bought a half-assed dude ranch. Inspired by what Milton Hershey, the chocolate king, had done in Pennsylvania, they remade the dude ranch into a first-rate school and orphanage.

  “I imagine Nadine and Leland will take them in quick enough,” Chase said. “They never turn one away.”

  “Just so they know, dealing with Jane makes them accessories after the fact, if it’s ever found out.”

  “When everything that’s said about Jane is proved to be damn lies, we’ll be accessories to justice. Anyway, it didn’t stop me.”

  “Well, you and Nick had quite some history.”

  “Aren’t Nadine and Leland Nick’s godparents?”

  “They are.”

  “Didn’t they lose their boy to meningitis when he was three?”

  “You know they did. And you know his name was Travis.”

  Chase smiled. “Something tells me it’s a done deal.”

  “When’s Jane figure to get there?”

  “Barring trouble, around two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. You want to leave your car in town, meet me somewhere, I’ll drive you?”

  “If I learned anything from my daughter-in-law,” Ancel said, “that wouldn’t be cutting the rope anywhere.”

  “What rope?”

  “The Feds have a rope around me and Clare. We can’t see it, but they can. Me coming here loops the rope to you, till they decide you don’t connect with Jane. However we get to Sacket Ranch, we first need to snip the rope so they can only follow it to the cut end.”

  “You have some idea how?”

  “If I tell you, then the rope’s not cut.”

  Chase’s eyes widened. “You have to think through everything as if revenuers are living in your pockets?”

  “Worse than them, son. The most the tax man wants is to strip you of everything you’ve ever worked for.”

  “I guess I need to get my paranoid on.”

  “These days, it’s best you be that way.”

  8

  * * *

  The public spaces and grounds of the Iron Furnace Lake Resort feature numerous discreetly placed cameras to provide protection without suggesting to the guests that their privacy is compromised. All video streams are sent to a windowless bunker in the basement of the main building, where any of the technicians can summon views from any of the cameras, displaying them on large monitors that quarter the screen to present multiple, simultaneous video feeds.

  As Booth Hendrickson stands fingering the card with the phone number for A Private Affair, Stacia O’Dell works efficiently with two of the security technicians to retrieve video recorded during the tour on which she took Martin Moses the previous day. He doesn’t want to call the Atlanta number until he has seen the event planner. With one saliva-wetted finger, he has already discovered that the ten digits of elegant calligraphy are not printed but are drawn by hand in ink: They smear. He is convinced that he will recognize Martin Moses, though he has never met anyone with that name.

  “Here we go,” says Stacia O’Dell.

  Hendrickson joins her at a monitor as the technician at the workstation selects one of four views on the display and enlarges it to the full screen.

  Martin Moses is Luther Tillman.

  9

  * * *

  The guy paying for takeout at the cashier’s station in the restaurant in Rockford, Illinois, was one surprise too many.

  Long experience had taught Rebecca Tillman to be flexible, not in matters of principle but in regard to the inevitable surprises, big and small, that this world of mysteries produced. Miracles and miseries were equally rare, but the ordinary unforeseen developments more often than not threw sand rather than oil in the gears of your carefully constructed life plan.

  One day earlier, she wouldn’t have imagined any circumstances in which she would be behind the wheel of Robbie Stassen’s ’61 Buick station wagon, accompanied by her daughter Jolie, driving nine hours before stopping for the night in Rockford, Illinois, she the wife of a black sheriff now in a town where one of the founders back in the nineteenth century had been a slave named Lewis Lemon.

  The three-story motor inn provided quality accommodations, the clean and spacious rooms opening off an interior corridor instead of directly on to the parking lot. Rather than use a credit card, she had paid cash, as Luther advised, although it had been necessary to provide a driver’s license as identification.

  A windowed corridor on the ground floor connected the inn with the reception area, off which the front desk, bar, and restaurant were located. In the restaurant, as the hostess picked up two menus and prepared to escort the Tillmans to a booth, Jolie gripped her mother’s arm hard enough to hurt. Startled, Rebecca looked at her daughter. With her eyes and a nod, Jolie indicated a man in his early twenties who stood not six feet away, fingering money out of his wallet to pay the cashier for two bags of takeout.

  As they followed the hostess to their table, Rebecc
a said, “What was that about? I’m gonna have a bruise.”

  “I’ve seen him before,” Jolie said.

  “What—he’s a celebrity or something?”

  “I saw him this morning in the bank, before we left town.”

  Rebecca glanced back as the man picked up the takeout and exited the restaurant. “He’s no one I know.”

  At their booth, as Rebecca and Jolie sat across from each other, the hostess said, “Your waitress will be with you shortly.”

  When they were alone, Jolie said, “He kept looking at me this morning in the bank.”

  “Honey, boys are always staring at you. But even as lovely as you are, he won’t have driven nine hours just to get another look.”

  Always more mature than others her age, now seventeen, Jolie no longer had any tolerance for being treated like a child. She cocked her head and narrowed her eyes and furrowed her brow. “Mother, don’t patronize me.”

  “I’m sorry, dear. I didn’t mean to.”

  “You’ve been all mysterious with me about this weird trip in that ridiculous car, and I’ve stifled myself and not asked, though I’ve been dying to know if this has something to do with Cora and the Veblen Hotel and all of that horrific shit.”

  “Don’t use that word, dear.”

  “Sorry. All that horrific crap. Anyway, if I do say so myself, I’ve been an entertaining travel companion under the circumstances.”

  “You’ve been a delight every mile of the way.”

  Jolie looked dubious. “There could be an element of sarcasm in that, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “The thing is, I saw him in the bank. He was filling out a deposit slip or pretending to fill one out.”

  They had stopped in the bank to withdraw four thousand dollars from savings, because Luther didn’t want them using credit cards during this “little exercise,” as he called it.

  “Maybe he saw you with all that money,” Jolie suggested.

  In the interest of discretion, Rebecca had not made the withdrawal at a cashier’s window. The assistant manager accommodated her at his desk, where no other customers could have heard the transaction. “Jolie, the money was given to me in a plain envelope. Nobody could have seen it.” During a fuel stop, she had distributed the cash among her handbag, three jacket pockets, and a fanny pack. “Besides, you said he was staring at you, and you weren’t with me when I got the money. You spent the whole time at that brochure rack, looking through retirement-plan options. I hope you’re not expecting to retire right out of high school.”

  “Maybe I’ll create a hugely successful app and be as rich as Croesus by twenty-one and thereafter live in sybaritic splendor.”

  Reviewing the menu, Rebecca said, “I’ve heard people say that all my life, but I still have no idea who Croesus was.”

  “King of Lydia from five-sixty to five-forty-six B.C. He was stinking rich.”

  “There was a country named Lydia?”

  “A kingdom in West Asia Minor.”

  “They didn’t teach that in school when I was a girl.”

  “They don’t teach it now, Mother. Or anything useful. Certainly no ancient history or real history. Anything worth knowing, I’ve had to learn on my own, pretty much since fourth grade.”

  The waitress arrived to take their drink order and to recommend the halibut.

  After ordering, Jolie said, “Anyway, that guy didn’t have to see what was in your envelope to know what was in it.”

  Rebecca sighed. “Couldn’t it just be that the man in the bank and the man getting takeout resemble each other a little?”

  “Please, Mother, don’t sigh me a sigh. Am I a howling hysteric given to flamboyant flights of fantasy?”

  “Nice alliteration. No, you’re not. But—”

  “The guy in the bank looked exactly like this guy, and it’s no coincidence that each had the same tattoo around his left wrist.”

  Rebecca put down her menu. “A tattoo of what?”

  “A creepy snake eating its own tail.”

  “Why didn’t you mention the tattoo sooner?”

  “I wanted to see if I might be believed before I needed to produce the irrefutable piece of evidence. I don’t lie, Mom.”

  “I know you don’t, sweetheart. You never have.”

  Jolie said, “A guy doing surveillance from a car has to eat takeout. Two big bags mean he’s got a partner.”

  “Maybe you’ll end up a cop like your father.”

  “Not a chance. We’re living in the age of the new Jacobins and all their thuggish violence. Bad time to be in law enforcement.”

  “The Jacobins. That was during the French Revolution.”

  “Way to go, Mom. So now what do we do?”

  What, indeed? Rebecca thought. “Your father will be calling me at nine o’clock. He’ll know what to do. Meanwhile, we might as well have dinner.”

  “Super. I saw their cheeseburger coming in. It looked killer. And on the menu here, it says they’ll do fries extra-crispy if you ask. We who are about to die—stuff our faces!”

  “Don’t joke about death, Jolie.”

  Wide-eyed with feigned astonishment, Jolie said, “But, Mother, there’s nothing else that’s even half as important to joke about.”

  10

  * * *

  The ceiling at only eight feet, with its gray acoustic tiles, and the concrete walls and the concrete floor and the utter lack of windows summon in Booth Hendrickson thoughts of crypts and casketed remains and catacombs, in spite of the fluorescent lighting and the arrayed computers. As he waits for the current shift of the resort’s security technicians to complete the new task he has given them, he is profoundly nervous but determined not to appear unsettled.

  Stacia O’Dell, unaware that she is an adjusted person—as all of them are unaware—discovers that Hendrickson went without lunch to make this trip. From the restaurant, she orders his favorite tea and a selection of little sandwiches. These fortifications arrive in a timely manner, and Hendrickson surreptitiously takes a maximum-strength acid reducer before sitting down at the wheeled service table to drink and eat in a pretense of nonchalance.

  Having overseen the conversion of Iron Furnace, he is proud of how the plan was implemented back in the day. He’s distraught that Luther Tillman has come here, and he is mystified as to why. The sheriff is a hick, a rube, a hayseed who graduated from a third-tier college, who probably thinks the Ivy League is some women’s garden club, who would not be able to get a table in the best Washington restaurants if his life depended on it, a yokel, a boor whose entire wardrobe probably costs less than one of Hendrickson’s suits, not a likely candidate to be a contemporary Sherlock Holmes.

  Because she has been instructed to have no curiosity about anything Hendrickson does, Stacia O’Dell makes no inquiry regarding this event planner, Martin Moses, about whom he is so curious. But the security men ask questions as they work. He turns them aside with vague assertions that Moses is engaged in a nefarious scheme on behalf of a corporate rival of Terra Firma, which owns the resort.

  In this crisis, Hendrickson takes refuge in how smoothly the conversion of Iron Furnace has gone and in the conviction that it will not be undone by a rustic lump like Luther Tillman.

  Those citizens employed at the resort had been induced to submit to injections sixteen months earlier, when their employer offered free flu vaccinations and implied that anyone refusing wouldn’t be paid for work missed due to influenza. Because these inoculations were also provided free of charge to family members of employees and anyone else in town who wanted them, within two weeks 386 of the 604 residents were programmed with nanomachine command mechanisms. During the next two months, those who hadn’t been converted in the first wave were, at the most opportune moments, sedated without their knowledge by family members; while sleeping, they were brought into the fellowship of the adjusted. Only seven had a chance to resist, and only two had of necessity been k
illed.

  When everyone in Iron Furnace except children not yet sixteen were under Arcadian command, the town became a valued subsidiary of the resort, a single well-oiled enterprise. Multiple cameras were installed on every street of the town, so that nothing might escape the attention of those who owned its people and, by owning them, also owned their property. The video from all those sources can be monitored here in real time if there is any incident, and is stored for sixty days in case a reason subsequently arises to review it.

  Now Hendrickson tasks them with discovering where this Martin Moses might have gone in town the previous day, after being taken on a tour of the resort by Stacia O’Dell.

  Thirty-two minutes into the search, one of the technicians declares, “I’ve got him.”

  Booth Hendrickson puts down a cucumber sandwich and bolts from his chair to attend the monitor. The feed from a single camera fills the screen. The security man freezes the image, blocks the face, enlarges it. Luther Tillman.

  “That’s the bastard,” Hendrickson confirms.

  Back to full image. Recorded at thirty clicks per minute. In the herky-jerky fashion of people moving in video compiled from two-second bits, Tillman exits a gallery named Beaux-Arts and stands on the sidewalk, perhaps thinking that he appears to be a connoisseur when in fact he has small-town self-righteous ill-educated sheriff written all over him. He seems to be watching someone. He moves to the curb. He disappears past one of the massive evergreens.

  “Find him!” Hendrickson demands.

  In moments, the security tech has the feed from one of the cameras on the farther side of the street. An angled downshot of Tillman looking through the front window of some establishment.