The Whispering Room

by Dean Koontz

  After closing the back door, she went around to the tailgate and opened it. She shoved the plastic-wrapped cash into the tote and, moving efficiently but without appearing to hurry, she took it to the patrol car and placed it on the front seat. The key was in the ignition, engine running, police radio alive with a dispatcher’s voice that didn’t sound alarmed. In a second trip, Jane transferred her two suitcases, putting them in the back of the black-and-white.

  Most of the passing drivers were not sufficiently interested to cut their speed and look her over. Those few who slowed for a moment speeded up again, probably reminding themselves that in the current social climate, those who came to the defense of the police were likely to be defamed or worse. Welcome to the uncivil society.

  One of those who felt guilty about not stopping might phone the highway patrol, however, or perhaps use a CB radio to start a line of chatter about what he had seen. She wasn’t allowing herself to hear a clock ticking, but one was ticking nonetheless.

  At the trooper’s side again, she took his pulse and listened to his breathing and decided that she could leave him as he was. The highly volatile chloroform had mostly evaporated from his face. Even with the hat still trapping some fumes, he would wake in ten minutes or so.

  She disliked taking his star-in-a-wheel badge, but she took it anyway.

  She would not disarm him and leave him helpless. She left his Sig Sauer P320 in the holster. But she took the Ford key from one of her jacket pockets and pitched it across the guardrail, into the descending darkness, denying him the use of her car.

  She walked back to the Dodge Charger—black flanks, white hood and roof and trunk lid, Texas Highway Patrol seal on the front doors—and settled in behind the steering wheel. She quickly looked over the controls, including the Panasonic Toughbook computer terminal and digital citation printer.

  When a long gap in traffic opened behind her, she pulled onto the highway and headed west. She switched on both the roof-mounted lightbar and the siren. Acceleration was excellent. The speedometer registered 100 in mere seconds.

  1

  * * *

  Jane at 110 miles per hour and accelerating…

  Out there in the timeless dark, in the land of countless peoples extending so far back in time that they had no names but instead identified their tribes with icons, out there in the baked plains and in the shallow washes where grew thin grass as brittle as dead men’s hair, on the volcanic slopes where little thrived but waxy candelilla, where now there were no faintest lights and the stars found nothing to reflect them, even that primal emptiness lay under the watch of cameras in orbit, the robotic eyes of satellites, and if there was any hope of freedom in the future, it resided in the ironic fact that the highly perfected technology of this age was operated by fallible human beings who might never quite control it for maximum oppression and would find themselves exposed by white-hat hackers who could mine the opposition’s data for veins of criminality and scandal.

  Through that immense darkness, Jane raced in a blazon of red-white-blue, fleeting cascades of color washing across the vehicles that she passed, though the night-mantled land beyond the highway remained resistant to the dazzle of the lightbar.

  She didn’t know if the Texas Highway Patrol required periodic contact between each patrol officer and a dispatcher, to ensure that its troopers were safe and on the beat. Neither did she know if they actively tracked every black-and-white by GPS and assigned someone periodically to review a computer graphic of the current whereabouts of the units within a particular county or jurisdiction.

  What she didn’t know would get her captured or killed.

  If she pushed the Dodge Charger to 120 and put out of her mind the consequence of a blown tire, she would still never make the Texas border north of El Paso before the THP was on her tail and blocking the way ahead. Even at this speed, she’d need more than four hours to get there, and although she could shave an hour or more off that by switching to U.S. Highway 285 at Stockton and trying to cross into New Mexico south of Malaga, there was the matter of fuel. If she stopped to gas up, she might as well surrender.

  After twenty minutes, when she’d put about forty miles between herself and the Ford to which the trooper was cuffed, she killed the siren and doused the lightbar and eased off the accelerator, letting her speed fall to sixty-five. She kept to the right-hand lane.

  She knew what she needed to do next, but she couldn’t risk doing it alongside the interstate, in full view of traffic. She wouldn’t take a chance that someone might see where she had gone when she abandoned the patrol car.

  Shortly before she had halved her speed, she’d seen a sign for a rest stop six miles ahead. It was her best hope, as long as it wasn’t too much in use. She switched off the car’s on-duty camera.

  Whether it might be another twist of bad luck or a turn for the better, less than a quarter mile from the rest stop, as she cruised behind a white Mercedes E350, the driver signaled a right turn and slowed for the exit. Maybe he needed to use the facilities or was just nervous about a cop hanging behind him. He appeared to be alone in the car, unless someone might be lying on the backseat. Jane left the interstate in his wake and switched on the lightbar, though not the siren.

  He did the right thing, not stopping in the single lane but following it to the parking area, where there were at the moment no other vehicles. The concrete-block structure housing the lavatories featured a lamp above each of two doors and four pathway lamps, but in these lonely environs, it looked less like a station offering relief than like somewhere you went to die by a violent hand. Meant to soften the look of the place, beds of agave rose like clusters of spiny talons, each topped with a wicked dark needle, and failed in their purpose.

  If there were any cameras associated with the rest stop—she didn’t think there were—the lighting was too poor to make them of much value.

  She parked behind and to one side of the Mercedes and switched off the headlights so that she wouldn’t be fully revealed by their backwash when she got out. She left on the throbbing lightbar for the confusion it provided and so the driver wouldn’t freak that the cruiser had gone dark.

  She got out and went to the Mercedes as the driver’s-door window purred down. She thrust the classic star-in-a-wheel badge toward the driver, just to keep him unsettled, and then pointed her Colt .45 at him. “Get out of the car.”

  He might have been in his late seventies. Receding white hair. Jug ears. Rubbery features that gravity pulled into a weary clown face. Although he wasn’t fat, in his youth he might have had a merry look, a bantamweight Santa.

  “You’re not the police,” he said.

  “Besides not being the police, I’m not very damn patient, either. Get out of the car.”

  She backed off to avoid the opening door and held the Colt in a two-hand grip, arms locked, because even as benign as he looked, he could be dangerous. The most unlikely people were capable of the most atrocious acts in a world where progress flushed away not just the leaden encumbrances of the past but also its valuable lessons.

  Out of the car, the guy stood about five-feet-seven, weighed maybe a hundred forty pounds. Black-and-white Converse sneakers. Breezy-cut pale-gray chinos. Hawaiian shirt with blue palm trees against a golden background. A colorful drink-bead bracelet around one wrist. He looked like a retired Brooklyn accountant trying to reinvent himself as a Jimmy Buffett Parrothead.

  “Are you going to kill me?” he asked, though he didn’t seem to be afraid.

  “That’s not the plan,” she said, concerned that a death threat might give him a heart attack. “But I’ll hurt you bad if you screw with me. I need a driver.”

  “I’m a good driver. I’ve been driving sixty-five years. I—”

  “You’re good enough. There’s some luggage in the patrol car. Get your ass in gear and move it to the Mercedes.”

  “Why can’t you move it?”

  “I need to keep the gun on you.”

  He shrugged. “I
guess you need to think you do.”

  “Hurry up, damn it.”

  He took one of the suitcases out of the backseat of the Dodge. “This is heavy, you know.” He required both hands to lift the case by its handle, and he crabbed sideways to his sedan as if hauling a half ton of lead. “Go know I’d have a passenger with luggage. The trunk is full of mine. You think the backseat?”

  “Just do it.”

  While he wrestled the second suitcase out of the patrol car, Jane kept one eye on him as she turned off the lightbar and killed the engine. She snared the tote on the front seat and put it in the Mercedes.

  Age seemed to have withered his arms to those of a nine-year-old boy. “Is this heavy or what? From this, a person could die.”

  She holstered her pistol. “Give me that.” She took the bag from him and swung it into the back of the Mercedes and slammed the door.

  “You must work out a lot,” he said.

  “You have a weapon in the car? Don’t lie to me. Everyone who lies to me regrets it.”

  “I’ve got a prostate pillow.”

  “A what?”

  “A foam pillow with a hole in the middle.”

  “How the hell is that a weapon?”

  “I could maybe get it around your neck and twist.”

  “Are you for real?”

  “I used to be.”

  Though she felt ludicrous doing it, she drew her Colt .45 again. “Get in the car, old man. Move, move, move.”

  He climbed in behind the wheel, boosted by the prostate pillow, and Jane settled in the passenger seat, holding the pistol in her right hand, pointing it at him.

  He started the car and turned on the headlamps. “Should I know where we’re going?”

  “Back onto I-10. West.”

  “That’s where I was already.” As he followed the service lane to the highway, he said, “Not that I should give you ideas, but why not take my car and just leave me back there?”

  “You’re my driver, but you’re also my cover. They might be looking for a woman alone. Now we’re two. Any cop stops us, I’m your daughter.”

  “What are you—twenty?”

  “What does it matter?”

  “I’m eighty-one. Better you be my granddaughter.”

  “All right, I’m your granddaughter.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Never mind what my name is.”

  “A policeman asks, I shouldn’t know my granddaughter’s name?”

  “Okay, you’re right, it’s Alice.”

  On the interstate, he puttered along at ten miles under the limit, and she told him to drive ten miles over. “Half the traffic will be passing you at ten over. Cops will target them. We can risk the extra speed.”

  He obeyed her, but he said, “You’re in an awful hurry.”

  “You can’t imagine.”

  “What happened to that policeman, you had his car?”

  “I didn’t kill him.”

  “I didn’t think kill, not such a pretty girl like you.”

  “What—you’re coming on to me?”

  “Don’t be so jumpy already. I haven’t come on to anyone in sixty years. How far west?”

  “Past El Paso into New Mexico.”

  “I’m going there anyway. And then on to Scottsdale.”

  “So maybe you can take me all the way to Nogales.”

  “Such a long run with nothing but gas stops. You’ll have to do some driving.”

  “What—while you hold the gun on me? Just keep your speed up.”

  After a brief silence, he said, “My name’s Bernard Riggowitz. You can call me Grandpa Bernie.”

  She sighed. “This is not going to end well.”

  “Negative thinking brings negative results,” he advised.

  As they passed Sonora, she saw that the fuel tank was more than three-quarters full. He must have filled up in Junction. They would easily make Fort Stockton, perhaps even Van Horn, before they would need to refuel, and then it would be a smooth glide into New Mexico. Unless there was a roadblock at the state line. Or before.

  She said, “What’re you doing at your age, driving territory this lonely at night?”

  “I like to sleep days, drive the dark. It’s soothing. Have to do it alone now, since I lost Miriam. Married sixty-one years, from when we were nineteen, never apart one day.”

  Jane said, “Shit.”

  “It’s true, whether a person believes it or not. Never apart one day until—a year ago.”

  “I’m sure it’s true,” she said. “But if I have to be holding some poor sonofabitch at gunpoint, why does it have to be an eighty-one-year-old grieving widower?”

  “Don’t worry about it, Alice. You should forgive me if this sounds schmaltzy, but you’ve brought some color into a year of gray.”

  “Yeah, but I could get you killed. I don’t want that.”

  “Negative thinking brings negative results,” he reminded her.

  2

  * * *

  The McDonald’s in Lake Forest was like no McDonald’s anywhere else. No golden arches. No tacky plastic. A marble fireplace. Nice furniture. Classical music on the sound system. It was as if they had gone to dinner in a strange world parallel to the one in which they lived, not that the one in which they lived hadn’t gotten strange enough lately.

  Throughout dinner, Twyla was Twyla, at least to the casual eye and ear. Mother didn’t seem to notice anything wrong with her older daughter, but Jolie was aware of subtle differences between this girl and the sister with whom she’d grown up. This Twyla wasn’t as witty, wasn’t as lighthearted, wasn’t as present.

  A few times during dinner, Jolie nearly blurted out, Mother, can’t you tell she’s gone blurry at the edges, she’s on drugs, she injects herself? We need to have an intervention right now.

  But she didn’t do it, and she didn’t know why she didn’t do it until they ordered dessert, when she realized that she owed Twyla a frank one-on-one before going to their mother. They’d been as close as muffins in a basket until Twyla went off to college, and even after that, when they saw each other, it was as if no time passed since their last get-together. Until now. Maybe Twyla could explain herself. Fat chance. There were no good reasons for addiction, only justifications. That’s what Daddy said. Still, she owed Twyla some consideration before blowing the whistle on her.

  It wasn’t a good night for family drama and the sleeplessness that would follow a confrontation. They needed to rise early in the morning. Mother and Daddy had talked on their disposable phones. He wanted them to drive to Indianapolis, which would take maybe three and a half hours if they got out ahead of the Chicago morning rush. Mother was supposed to call Daddy when they were in Indianapolis, as soon as they transitioned from I-65 to I-465. By then he would know where they should go for someone to meet them. Not Daddy. Someone Daddy trusted. It was all über-mysterious, but then what wasn’t these days? Maybe it was better to postpone confronting Twyla until the whole family could be together again.

  While Twyla waited for their dessert, Mother wondered if the restrooms were as different from other McDonald’s restrooms as everything else was different, and Jolie wondered, too, so they went to have a look. Jolie hoped there would be something in the women’s room to lighten her mood—such as an open sterling-silver box worth ten thousand dollars in which paper towels were stacked, bearing Ronald McDonald’s initials—but it wasn’t radically different from other McDonald’s restrooms, at least not in any way that elicited a laugh.

  After they ate dessert, Mother was paying the check when Jolie suddenly realized that the drugs she’d seen in her sister’s suitcase might not be drugs. Well, they were certainly drugs, but they might be prescription drugs and entirely legitimate. Twyla might have a serious health problem that required her to self-inject an exotic medication that had to be kept chilled in a dry-ice case. Jolie’s heart sank, it really did, like a stone in her breast, at the thought that Twyla might be terminal or, if not termin
al, stricken with some terrible ailment that would profoundly affect her life.

  Because they needed their sleep, there would be no confrontation tonight, but Jolie could perhaps probe subtly, ask a few innocuous questions, and see how Twyla reacted. If she didn’t do at least that much, if she didn’t get some sense of whether her sister’s condition was serious or not, she wouldn’t sleep anyway.

  3

  * * *

  The way Bernie Riggowitz told it, he and Miriam had never flown anywhere because he was afraid of flying, but they’d explored forty-nine states by car, some of them often, and he had never been to a state he didn’t want to see again, with the possible exception of North Dakota, even though Louis L’Amour had been born there. He and Miriam had been blessed with one child, Nasia, who was now fifty-two and living in Scottsdale with her husband, a nice boy named Segev. They wanted Bernie to come live with them, but though he loved them, he refused to entertain the idea. For one thing, they badly wanted him to stop driving from one coast to the other, all alone at his age. He would never do that, because Miriam wasn’t lying in a cold grave in New York; no, she was out there everywhere the two of them had ever gone, and being on the road was being with Miriam.

  Jane fell in love with Grandpa Bernie somewhere east of Fort Stockton, shortly before they stopped there to refuel at 9:45. She pumped the gas, and he paid with his credit card, and they went into the restaurant together to get takeout chili dogs, which they ate while on the road, with three layers of paper napkins on their laps to catch what he called the drib-drabs.

  The roadblock—or one of them—had been established forty-six miles west of Fort Stockton, just before Exit 212 to Saragosa. They had long ago finished the chili dogs, but they were eating redskin peanuts and drinking Diet Mountain Dew when Bernie put down his window for the THP trooper and asked if the problem was terrorists. He was glad to hear it wasn’t terrorists and produced his driver’s license and introduced his granddaughter Alice and told the officer that he looked remarkably like Bernie’s brother, Lev, but of course when Lev was maybe thirty-five, which was forty years ago.