The Face

by Dean Koontz

  Eventually the big man said, “Well, for sure I’m not sitting here beside a ghost.”

  “When you choose an institution for me,” Ethan said, “I’d prefer one with a good arts-and-crafts program.”

  “Other than having your blood tested for drugs, you cooked up any theories about this?”

  “You mean, besides I’m in the Twilight Zone? Or I really did die from that gut shot, and this is Hell?”

  Hazard took the point. “Aren’t a whole lot of theories come to mind, are there?”

  “Not the kind you can explore with what the suits at the police academy call ‘conventional investigative techniques.’”

  “You don’t seem nuts to me,” Hazard said.

  “I don’t seem nuts to me, either. But then the nut is always the last to know.”

  “Besides, you were right about the pistol in the potato chips. So it was at least like…a psychic experience.”

  “Clairvoyance, yeah. Except that doesn’t explain the blood under my nails.”

  Hazard had absorbed this bizarre revelation with quiet trust and remarkable equanimity.

  Nevertheless, Ethan had no intention of telling him about being run down by the PT Cruiser and the truck. Or about dying in the ambulance.

  If you reported having seen a ghost, you were a regular guy who’d had an uncanny experience. If you reported seeing another ghost at another place and time, you were at best an eccentric whose every statement would thereafter be taken with enough salt to crust the rims of a million margarita glasses.

  “The shooter who killed Reynerd,” Hazard said, “was a gangbanger called himself Hector X. Real name was Calvin Roosevelt. He’s a high cuzz in the Crips, so you figure his accomplice must’ve been driving a set of wheels they boosted right before the hit.”

  “Standard,” Ethan agreed.

  “But there’s no stolen-car report on the Benz they used. I got the number on the tags, and you won’t believe who it belongs to.”

  Hazard looked up from his folded hands. He met Ethan’s eyes.

  Although Ethan didn’t know what was coming, he knew it couldn’t be good. “Who?”

  “Your boyhood pal. The notorious Dunny Whistler.”

  Ethan didn’t look away. He didn’t dare. “You know what happened to him a few months ago.”

  “Some guys drowned him in a toilet, but he didn’t quite die.”

  “Few days after that, his lawyer contacted me, told me Dunny’s will named me executor, and his living will gives me the right to make medical decisions for him.”

  “You never mentioned this.”

  “Didn’t see any reason. You know what he was. You understand why I didn’t want him in my life. But I accepted the situation out of…I don’t know…because of what he meant to me when we were kids.”

  Hazard nodded. He withdrew a roll of hard caramels from a coat pocket, peeled back the wrapping, and offered to share.

  Ethan shook his head. “Dunny died this morning at Our Lady of Angels.”

  Hazard pried a caramel from the roll, popped it in his mouth.

  “They can’t find his body,” Ethan said, for suddenly he sensed that Hazard already knew all this.

  Carefully folding the loose end of the wrapper over the exposed candy, Hazard said nothing.

  “They swear he was dead,” Ethan continued, “but considering how things work at the hospital morgue, he couldn’t have gotten out of there any way but on his own two feet.”

  Hazard returned the roll to his coat pocket. He sucked on the caramel, moving it around his mouth.

  “I’m sure he’s alive,” Ethan said.

  Finally Hazard looked at him again. “All this happened before we had lunch.”

  “Yeah. Listen, man, I didn’t mention it because I didn’t see how Dunny could be connected to Reynerd. I still don’t see how. Do you?”

  “You were one self-possessed dude at lunch, considering all this was churning through your head.”

  “I thought I was going crazy, but I didn’t see how you’d be more likely to help me if I virtually told you I was losing my mind.”

  “So what happened after lunch?”

  Ethan recounted his visit to Dunny’s apartment, leaving nothing out except the strange elusive shape in the steam-clouded mirror.

  “Why’d he keep a photo of Hannah on his desk?” Hazard asked.

  “He’d never gotten over her. Still hasn’t. I guess that’s why he ripped it out of the frame today and took it with him.”

  “So he drives out of the garage in his Mercedes—”

  “I assumed it was him. I couldn’t get a look at the driver.”

  “And then what?”

  “I had to think about it. Then I visited Hannah’s grave.”

  “Why?”

  “Gut feeling. Thought I might find something there.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “Roses.” He told Hazard about the two dozen Broadways and his subsequent visit to Forever Roses. “The florist described Dunny as good as I could’ve. That’s when I was sure he was alive.”

  “What’d he mean when he told her that you thought he was dead—and you were right?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Hazard crunched the half-finished caramel.

  “You can break a tooth that way,” Ethan warned.

  “Like that’s my biggest problem.”

  “Just friendly advice.”

  “Whistler wakes up in a morgue, realizes he’s been mistaken for dead, so then he puts his clothes on, goes home without saying boo to anyone, takes a shower. That make sense to you?”

  “No. But I thought he might be brain-damaged.”

  “He drives to a florist, buys some roses, visits a grave, hires a hit man…. For a guy who comes out of a coma with brain damage, he seems to get around pretty well.”

  “I’ve given up the brain-damage theory.”

  “Good for you. So what happened after you left the florist?”

  Operating on the two-ghost theory of credibility, Ethan didn’t tell him about the PT Cruiser, but said, “I went to a bar.”

  “You’re not a guy who looks for answers in a glass of gin.”

  “This was Scotch. Didn’t find any answers there either. Might try vodka next.”

  “So that’s everything? You’ve come clean with me now?”

  With all the conviction that he could muster, Ethan said, “What—this whole mess isn’t X-Files enough already? You want there should be some aliens in it, vampires, werewolves?”

  “What’re you—dodging the question?”

  “I’m not dodging anything,” Ethan said, regretting that he was going to be forced to lie boldly rather than by indirection. “Yeah, that was everything, through the flower shop. I was drinking Scotch when I got your call.”

  “Truth?”

  “Yeah. I was drinking Scotch, I got your call.”

  “Remember, you’re in a church here.”

  “The whole world’s a church if you’re a believer.”

  “Are you a believer?”

  “I used to be.”

  “Not since Hannah died, huh?”

  Ethan shrugged. “Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. It’s a day-to-day thing.”

  After giving him a look that could have peeled an onion layer by layer to the pearl at the core, Hazard said, “Okay. I believe you.”

  Feeling low enough to slide under a snake, Ethan said, “Thanks.”

  Hazard turned in the pew to survey the nave, to be sure that a lost soul had not entered in need of a God fix. “You’ve come clean, so I’ll tell you something, but you’ve got to forget you heard it.”

  “Already I don’t even remember being here.”

  “Not much of interest in Reynerd’s apartment. Spare furnishings, everything black-and-white.”

  “He seemed to live like a monk, but a monk with style.”

  “And drugs. He had a big stash of coke packaged for resale and a notebook of names and numbers
that’s probably a customer list.”

  “Famous names?”

  “Not really. Some actors. Nobody big. The thing you need to know about is the screenplay he was writing.”

  “In this town,” Ethan said, “guys writing screenplays outnumber those cheating on their wives.”

  “He had twenty-six pages in a pile beside his computer.”

  “That’s not even enough for a first act.”

  “You know about screenplays, huh? You writing one?”

  “No. I’ve still got some self-respect.”

  Hazard said, “Reynerd was writing about this young actor goes to a special acting class, makes what he calls ‘a deep intellectual connection’ with his professor. They both hate this character named Cameron Mansfield, who happens to be the biggest movie star in the world, so they decide to kill him.”

  Under a weight of weariness, Ethan had slouched in the corner of the pew. Now he sat up straight. “What’s their motivation?”

  “That’s not clear. Reynerd has lots of handwritten notes in the margin, trying to figure that out. Anyway, sort of to prove to each other that they’ve got the guts to do this, each agrees to give the other guy the name of someone to kill before they do the movie star together. The actor wants the professor to kill his mother.”

  “Why’s this sound so Hitchcock?” Ethan wondered.

  “It’s sort of like his old film, Strangers on a Train. The idea is by swapping killings, each guy can have a perfect alibi for the murder he might otherwise be convicted of.”

  “Let me guess. Reynerd’s mother was actually murdered.”

  “Four months ago,” Hazard confirmed. “On a night when her son had an alibi more airtight than a space-shuttle window.”

  The church seemed to turn at a lazy six or eight revolutions per minute, as if the Scotch might be having a delayed effect on Ethan, but he knew this vertigo was caused less by the Scotch than by these latest weird revelations. “What kind of idiot does these things, then writes them up in a screenplay?”

  “An arrogant idiot actor. Don’t tell me you think he’s unique.”

  “And who did the professor want Reynerd to kill?”

  “A colleague at the university. But Reynerd hadn’t written that part yet. He’d just completed the scene featuring the murder of his mother. In real life, her name was Mina, and she was shot once in the right foot and then beaten to death with a marble-and-bronze lamp. In the script, her name’s Rena, and she’s stabbed repeatedly, beheaded, dismembered, and incinerated in a furnace.”

  Ethan winced. “Sounds like his mom’s days were numbered whether or not Reynerd ever met the professor.”

  They were silent. The well-insulated church roof lay so far overhead that the storm’s voice was barely audible, less like the drumming of rain than like the whispery wings of some hovering flock.

  “So,” Hazard eventually said, “even with Reynerd dead, maybe Chan the Man had better be looking over his shoulder. The professor—or whatever he might be in real life—is still out there somewhere.”

  “Who’s working Mina Reynerd’s murder?” Ethan wondered. “Anyone I know?”

  “Sam Kesselman.”

  Sam had been a detective with Robbery/Homicide when Ethan still carried a badge.

  “What’s he make of the screenplay?”

  Hazard shrugged. “He hasn’t heard about it yet. They probably won’t drop a Xerox on him till tomorrow.”

  “He’s a good man. He’ll be all over it.”

  “Maybe not fast enough for you,” Hazard predicted.

  At the front of the church, teased by a draft, votive-candle flames squirmed in ruby glasses. Chameleons of light and shadow wriggled across a sanctuary wall.

  “What’re you going to do?” Hazard asked.

  “Reynerd’s shooting will be in the morning newspaper. They’re sure to mention his mother’s murder. That’ll give me an excuse to go to Kesselman, fill him in on those packages Reynerd has been sending to Manheim. He’ll have read the partial screenplay—”

  “About which you don’t know jack,” Hazard reminded him.

  “—and he’ll realize there’s an ongoing threat to Manheim until the professor is identified. That’ll accelerate the investigation, and I might even get police protection for my boss in the meantime.”

  “In a perfect world,” Hazard said sourly.

  “Sometimes the system works.”

  “Only when you don’t expect it to.”

  “Yeah. But I don’t have the resources to investigate Reynerd’s friends and associates fast enough to matter, and I don’t have the authority to dig through his personal records and effects. I’ve got to rely on the system whether I want to or not.”

  “What about our lunch today?” Hazard asked.

  “It never happened.”

  “Someone might’ve seen us. And there’s a credit-card trail.”

  “Okay, we had lunch. But I never mentioned Reynerd to you.”

  “Who’s going to believe that?”

  Ethan couldn’t think of anyone sufficiently gullible.

  “You and I have lunch,” Hazard said, “I cook up a reason to visit Reynerd the same day, and it just so happens he gets killed while I’m there. Then it just so happens the shooter’s getaway car belongs to Dunny Whistler, your old buddy.”

  “My head hurts,” Ethan said.

  “And I haven’t even kicked it yet. Man, they’ll expect us to know what’s going on here, and when we claim we don’t—”

  “Which we don’t.”

  “—they’re going to be sure we’re lying. I was them, I’d think we were lying.”

  “Me too,” Ethan admitted.

  “So they’ll dream up a screwy scenario that sorta-kinda explains things, and we’ll wind up accused of offing Reynerd’s mother, wasting Reynerd, pinning it on Hector X, then popping him, too. Before it’s over, the bastard D.A. will be trying to pin us for the disappearance of the dinosaurs.”

  The church didn’t seem like a sanctuary anymore. Ethan wished he were in another bar, where he might have a chance of finding solace, but not a bar that Dunny, dead or alive, would be likely to visit.

  “I can’t go to Kesselman,” he decided.

  Hazard would never sigh with relief and concede the intensity of his concern. A mirror held under his nostrils might have revealed a sudden bloom of condensation, but otherwise his relaxation of tension was marked by only a slight settling of his mountainous shoulders.

  Ethan said, “I’m going to have to take extra measures to protect Manheim, and just hope Kesselman finds Mina’s killer quickly.”

  “If the preliminary OIS opinion doesn’t move me off the Reynerd case,” Hazard said, “I’ll turn this city inside out to find Dunny Whistler. I’ve got to believe he’s the key to all this.”

  “I think Dunny will find me first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know.” Ethan hesitated, sighed. “Dunny was there.”

  Hazard frowned. “There where?”

  “At the hotel bar. I only noticed him when he left. I went after him, lost him in the crowd outside.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “Drinking. Maybe watching me. Maybe he followed me there, intended to approach me, then decided against it. I don’t know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me first thing?”

  “I don’t know. It seemed…like one ghost too many.”

  “You think it all gets too rich, I won’t believe it? Have some faith, man. We go back, don’t we? We been shot at together.”

  They chose to leave the church separately.

  Hazard got up first and moved away. From the farther end of the pew, in the center aisle, he said, “Like old times, huh?”

  Ethan knew what he meant. “Covering each other’s ass again.”

  For such a big man, Hazard made little noise as he walked from the nave to the narthex, and out of the church.

  Having a reliable friend to w
atch your back is a comfort, but the consolation and support provided by even the best of friends is no match for what a loving wife can be to a husband, or a loving husband to a wife. In the architecture of the heart, the rooms of friendship are deeply placed and strongly built, but the warmest and most secure retreat in Ethan’s heart was the one that he had shared with Hannah, where these days she lived only as a precious ghost, a sweet haunting memory.

  He could have told her everything—about the phantom in the mirror, about his second death outside Forever Roses—and she would have believed him. Together they’d have sought some understanding.

  During the five years that she’d been gone, he had never missed her more than he missed her at this moment. Sitting alone in a silent church, keenly aware of the soft beating of the rain on the roof, of the lingering fragrance of incense, of the ruby light of the votive candles, but unable to detect the faintest whisper, whiff, or glimmer of God, Ethan longed not for evidence of his Maker, but for Hannah, for the music of her voice and the beautiful geometry of her smile.

  He felt homeless, without hearth or anchor. His apartment in the Manheim house awaited his return, offering many comforts, but it was merely a residence, not a place endeared to him. He had felt the tug of home only once in this long strange day: when he’d stood at Hannah’s grave, where she lay beside an empty plot to which he held the deed.

  CHAPTER 37

  FROM ALTERNATING BRONZE-BALL AND BRONZE-FLAME finials, from cast panels of arabesques, from darts and twists and frets and scallops and leaves, from griffins and heraldic emblems, black and silver rain dripped and drizzled off the Manheim gate.

  Ethan braked to a stop beside the security post: a five-foot-high, square, limestone-clad column in which were embedded a closed-circuit video camera, an intercom speaker, and a keypad. He put down his window and keyed in his six-digit personal code.

  Slowly, with the Expedition’s headlight beams rippling across its ornate surfaces, the massive gate began to roll aside.

  Each employee of the estate had a different code. The security staff maintained computerized records of every entrance.

  Remote-control units such as typical garage-door openers or coded transponders, assigned to each vehicle, would have been more convenient than a key-entry system, especially in foul weather; however, such devices would have been accessible to garage mechanics, valet-parking attendants, and anyone else in temporary custody of a vehicle. One dishonest person among them might easily compromise the security of the estate.