by Dean Koontz
Outside, he throws the unwrapped candy bar in a trash can.
“It really tasted that bad?” asks Dubose as they head to the Range Rover.
“No, it was good,” Jergen says. “But I have to watch my waistline.”
32
Time in flight, the longest clock hand having swept away almost half of the current circle of sixty, the witching hour aloft on its broom and fast approaching…
In the kitchen, a built-in secretary provided a place to plan menus. A wheeled office chair was tucked into the knee space.
Jane rolled the chair to the unconscious woman, wrestled her into it, and secured her wrists to the chair arms with two heavy-duty hard-plastic zip-ties taken from the tote bag.
The chair’s five legs radiated from a center post. She zip-tied each of Petra’s ankles to the post.
There could be no automatic assumption of sisterhood in this world of deceit and violence, and only those who had the most shallow understanding of human nature could assume otherwise. Yet Jane took no pride or pleasure in what she had done to Petra Quist, even if the girl-woman had tried to do worse to her. Any predator sharp of tooth and claw did not require great courage when chasing down a lamb, merely persistence and a little luck.
Petra wasn’t exactly a lamb, though neither was she the dangerous wolf that she pretended to be. Her carefully crafted tough-bitch image served as her armor, but her only weapons were attitude, a fearsome disregard for consequences, and what seemed to be an unquenchable, empowering anger.
When Jane was done with her, Ms. Quist might have no armor anymore, nor any weapons. If from this night forward she had to face a world of rapacity and depredation without her usual defenses, she might not last long; in which case, though Petra had to an extent spun the thread of her own fate, Jane would have some responsibility for turning her loose disabled.
In the end, there was no rational choice other than to accept whatever guilt might accrue to her by doing whatever must be done to Petra Quist in an effort to save Travis, as well as the innocents on the Hamlet list. Jane had no illusions that anyone got through this world unstained by the experience, especially not her.
The mansion featured two elevators, one in the front hall, the other in the spacious butler’s pantry between the kitchen and the formal dining room. She rolled Petra into the latter, and they rode down to the subterranean level.
On poker nights, the man of the house—what passed for a man—usually arrived home between twelve-thirty and one in the morning. An hour would be enough for Jane to deal with this girl-woman and be ready to handle Simon Yegg.
But what if Petra had returned early because she knew that he would not be out as late as usual? Instead of an hour or more, Simon might come home in half an hour. Perhaps in mere minutes.
When Jane wheeled her captive out of the elevator, the virtual servant, Anabel, brought up the lights. The marquee blazed with hundreds of small bulbs, and the name of the home theater—Cinema Parisian—flowed above the marquee in blue neon cursive.
She maneuvered the office chair through the double doors with no problem, though it didn’t move as well in the carpeted reception area as it had on the limestone floors. She pushed it past the box office, through an archway, and parked the unconscious woman by the candy counter in the lobby.
Each of the wheels featured a flip-down chock that prevented it from moving. She engaged them all, so that Petra would not be able to roll anywhere if she regained consciousness.
At the lobby door, Jane said, “Anabel, lights out.”
Absolute darkness collapsed upon her, but she manually switched on only the theater-lobby lights before leaving Petra there alone.
She took the stairs rather than the elevator to the main floor, turning on lights as she needed them.
She revisited the kitchen only to get her leather tote bag. No need to mop up the shattered glass, the lake of vodka. Simon would not enter the house via the garage and would not ascend from there to the kitchen either by the stairs or the elevator; therefore, he would have no chance to be alarmed by this mess.
According to Sara Holdsteck, Simon’s most recent wife, he always reserved one of his limousine company’s cars and chauffeurs on poker night, because he enjoyed a few glasses of Macallan Scotch with the game. The car would return him to the front door, as the other limo had delivered Petra, and if all went well, Jane would be there waiting for him.
In the foyer, she used the keypad to set the security system’s perimeter alarm and turned off the chandelier and stepped to one of the tall, narrow windows that flanked the front door.
The street and lawn and phoenix palms enrobed in shadows, the curve of driveway trimmed by low lamps and hemmed with scallops of light like a radiant silken garment, the portico subtly though dramatically illuminated, everything as hushed and still as in a painting, an air of expectation over all…
Carrying the tote, Jane doused the main-floor lights behind her as she returned to the theater lobby in the basement.
Petra Quist had come awake. In her restraints, she was as fetching as any object of desire in any bondage freak’s best dream—though not a fraction as sweet as any of the offerings in the nearby candy-counter display case.
As though her situation did not concern her, she wore attitude like a porcupine’s quills. “You’re good as dead, you piece of shit.”
“Yeah, well,” Jane said, “we’re all as good as dead. Some of us just go sooner than others.”
She moved a small padded bench away from a wall and positioned it in front of Petra and sat on it.
“Bad as I’m hurting,” Petra said, “Simon’s gonna hurt you ten times worse.”
“Did I hurt you? Really? Where did I?”
“Go screw yourself.”
“That’s not advice I’d give you until there’s been some time for the bruising to diminish.”
Petra spit at her but missed. Viscous saliva quivered on the bench upholstery. “You think you’re really something, you know, but you’re not.”
“I’m something. You’re something. We’re all something. Though we can’t always be sure what.”
They stared at each other in silence for maybe half a minute.
Then Jane said, “How much do you hate Simon?”
“You’re so full of crap. I don’t hate him.”
“Of course you do.”
“He’s good to me. He gives me everything.”
“So how much do you hate him?”
“Why would I hate him?”
Jane said, “Why wouldn’t you?”
33
Although it had been wreathed in brightness on the QuickMart video, the church now stands dark from foundation to bell tower to spire. Not a single vehicle remains in the parking lot.
Some lights glow in the rectory next door, however, and a hooded porch lamp hangs over a plaque that welcomes visitors.
MISSION OF LIGHT CHURCH
“I am come that they might have life,
and that they might have it more abundantly.”
RECTORY
REV. GORDON M. GORDON
As Carter Jergen rings the doorbell, Radley Dubose says, “There better not be any damn sanctuary going on here. These Shukla brats have jerked us around long enough. Anyway, they can’t get sanctuary in this place. There’s nothing Hindu about this joint.”
“They aren’t Hindu,” Jergen reminds him.
“Their parents were.”
“Your parents were something, too.”
“My mother was an Adventist for a while.”
“And look at you.”
“Yeah, but Hindu’s different. It sticks.”
“It doesn’t stick.”
“It sticks,” Dubose insisted.
“Let’s just be cool with this guy,” Jergen says. “Min
isters, they’re trained to make nice. This can be smooth and quick.”
Dubose stands in silence, like the stone representation of some Norse god of storms that might abruptly come alive and emblazon the night with thunderbolts.
“Smooth and quick,” Jergen repeats. “Everybody making nice.”
A man in his fifties answers the door. He wears suit pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and a loosened necktie. His full head of graying hair is well styled, and he sports a deep tan that, at this time of year, must have come from a machine. His smile is the kind that has closed a thousand deals.
The guy looks less like a man of the cloth than like a real-estate salesman, but Jergen nevertheless asks, “Reverend Gordon?”
“At your service. What may I do for you?”
Jergen and Dubose go into their spiel—a matter of national security, fugitives suspected of terrorist connections, time is of the essence—and present their credentials.
The reverend’s smile phases to a solemn expression. He ushers them into the quiet house and along a hallway and into a parlor, his bearing as somber as it might be when someone arrives with news of a parishioner’s untimely death.
Gordon M. Gordon perches on the edge of a brown tufted-leather armchair, while Jergen and Dubose sit forward on a sofa, as if all of them might at any moment drop to their knees.
On the table beside the armchair stands a glass containing what appears to be whisky and ice. On a footstool, a hardcover book lies open, facedown, not a theology text, not a volume of inspirational essays, but a John Grisham thriller.
Reverend Gordon sees Jergen notice the drink and the novel. “For some time now, I’ve been afflicted with insomnia. Well, since Marjorie passed away two years ago. That’s my wife, as fine a woman as ever lived. Married thirty years. A glass of spirits and a good tale are the only things that relax me enough that I can sleep.”
“Well, sir,” Jergen says, “neither Scotch in moderation nor any amount of Grisham is a vice. I’m sorry to hear about your wife. Thirty years is a long blessing, though.”
“It is,” the reverend agrees. “It’s a long blessing.”
“I was going to ask if Mrs. Gordon might be off to bed, because what we’ve come to discuss isn’t for everyone to hear.”
“Not to worry, Mr. Jergen. The children are gone. I’m alone except for Mr. Grisham and a sip of Scotland’s finest.”
A tad too brusquely, Dubose says, “There was a well-attended event at the church earlier this evening. What was that about?”
“The first Easter-season play. A silly one, pure fun, for the children. Nearer the Sunday, we’ll have a serious Passion play.”
Jergen holds out his smartphone, on which he has summoned a photo of the Shukla twins. “By any chance, sir, did you see these two at the performance?”
Leaning further forward on the armchair, Gordon squints at the phone. He smiles and nods. “Yes, a handsome couple. Quite striking. I didn’t see them until more than halfway through the evening, as they were getting up to visit the restrooms. I didn’t know them, but I assumed they were guests of one parishioner or another.”
In a moment of well-rehearsed cop theater, Carter Jergen gives his partner a dour and meaningful look, and Dubose returns it. When they are sure the reverend sees The Look and is intrigued, a little alarmed, they turn to their host, frowning. Jergen says, “Reverend, it’s important to think about your answer and be sure it’s accurate. Did you see these two leave the church after the performance?”
“No. I realized later that I never learned who they were with or if they might be interested in joining the Mission of Light.”
“So they could still be in there?”
The minister may understand the meaning of life, but Jergen’s simple question apparently mystifies him. “In the church? Why would they be in the church?”
“Seeking sanctuary,” says Dubose.
“Hiding out,” Jergen clarifies.
As if he briefly forgot what they’d said on his doorstep that gained them entry, Gordon opens his eyes wide and furrows his brow. “Oh my. Fugitives with suspected terrorist ties?”
Dubose says, “Do you lock the church at night?”
“Yes. The church, the attached chancellery and event building. It’s necessary these days. There was a time, in my youth, when the front doors of churches were open twenty-four hours a day. But these days, open doors invite vandalism, even desecration.”
“We need to search the place.” Dubose sounds impatient, but he’s mostly acting as if he agrees with Jergen that this will go smooth and quick if only they just give Gordon the chance to be as nice as his bible tells him to be. “We need the keys.”
“Just us?” Gordon asks. “Shouldn’t we involve the police?”
“Local police don’t have national security clearance,” Jergen says. “Neither do you. Agent Dubose and I will conduct the search.”
“What—the two of you alone? Isn’t that dangerous?”
As he and Dubose get up from the sofa, Jergen says, “It’s what we do. Don’t worry about us. May we have the keys, Reverend Gordon?”
The minister glances at the whisky, forgoes a taste, gets to his feet, fishes a set of three keys from a pocket, but hesitates to relinquish them. “What if they’ve got guns?”
Jergen holds out one hand for the keys. “We don’t believe they’re armed.”
“Yes, but what if they are? Couldn’t a SWAT team seal off the building and wait them out? Wouldn’t that be safer?”
“Preacher, listen, just give us the keys,” Dubose says in a tone of voice that always makes him look even bigger than he is.
“If someone were shot,” says Gordon M. Gordon, “that would have terrible ramifications for the Mission of Light. Bad publicity, lawsuits, liabilities.”
Reaching under his coat to draw a pistol from the belt holster in the small of his back, Dubose says, “The only liability at the moment is you,” and he shoots Gordon once in the head.
The reverend seems to fold down into a pile as if he is not a thing of flesh and blood, but an inflatable figure like those that some people add to their Halloween decorations—Face Wound Guy—to terrify the kiddies. He lies billowed and folded with an incurvate countenance, between the armchair and the footstool, taking up less space in death than seems consistent with his size when alive.
Carter Jergen indicates the gun. “Is that a Glock twenty-six?”
“Yeah. Loaded with full-jacket hollow-points.”
“Obviously. But there’s something different about the grip.”
“A Pearce grip extension. It really improves the draw speed.”
“It’s a drop gun?” Jergen asks, by which he’s inquiring if the pistol has no history and therefore can’t be traced.
“For sure. We give it to that little shit Sanjay Shukla, and when this is done, Preacher Gordon is just one more kill credited to our writer friend.” For the moment, Dubose returns the compact auto to the small of his back. “I tried to let the talky sonofabitch preacher make nice with us.”
“I know,” Jergen says. “You gave him every chance.”
“It was up to him.”
“It always is,” Jergen says as he picks up the keys that were dropped by the dead man.
Dubose says, “You touch anything?”
“Just the doorbell. And I already wiped it.”
Taking one last look at the dead man, Dubose declares, “After all this, the Shukla brats damn well better be hiding over there at the church.”
34
The theater lobby was about twenty feet square and drenched with ornamentation. The concave ceiling featured coffers brightened by trompe l’oeil paintings of dawn skies ablaze with cerulean blue, coral, and golden light. Each luminous figuration on the chandeliers was of creamy glass shaped like some larg
e-petaled mythical flower. Gilded bronze appliqués and alabaster inlays brightened columns of black marble surmounted by highly ornate capitals. The walls were paneled with ruby silk.
Surrounded by this excess of French décor, dressed for bad electronic dance music in a twenty-first-century hook-up bar, Ms. Petra Quist sat erect in the office chair, as if it were a weird minimalist time machine that had transported her to Paris in 1850.
“I don’t hate Simon,” she repeated.
Sitting face-to-face with her captive, Jane said, “I despise him, and I haven’t even met him yet.”
Looking as if she might spit again, but subverting the urge into a sneer of contempt, Petra said, “Maybe you’ve got an anger problem.”
“You’re right about that,” Jane agreed. “Some days I think I don’t have nearly enough of it.”
“You’re a seriously crazy bitch, you know?”
“I respect the opinion of an expert.”
“What?”
“Come on now, girl. Simon is a slimeball, and you know it.”
“If you really never met him, what’s your problem?”
Instead of answering, Jane said, “So Sugar Daddy gives you everything, huh? Money, jewelry, clothes, limousines to ride around in, all the usual compensation.”
“Compensation? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn’t matter what I mean, what I think. What matters is if you’re clear-eyed about your situation or deluded.”
Although only twenty-six Petra had been drinking for enough years and in enough quantity that she’d developed a tolerance for booze that allowed her to rock the clubs with her girl crew for six hours and, though hammered, nevertheless appear almost sober. But the conversation had quickly gotten too complex and too intense for her blood-alcohol level. “ ‘Situation’?”
Leaning forward, with genuine—if vinegary—sympathy, Jane said, “Are you so easily deceived, you think your relationship with him has a long, rosy future—or do you realize you’re a whore?”
Considering the dictionary of crude obscenities that this girl had hurled at Jane while raging after her with a broken bottle in the kitchen, her reaction to this comparatively genteel insult was proof that she did indeed harbor illusions about how Simon Yegg regarded her. Hatred knotted her lovely face. Unshed tears of hurt and anger shimmered in her eyes. She spat at her captor again and missed as before.