by Dean Koontz
Using the intercom feature on one of the kitchen phones, Ethan first tried Fric’s rooms on the third floor. He sought the boy next in the train room—“Are you there, Fric? This is Mr. Truman”—in the theater, and then in the library. He received no reply.
Although Fric had never been sulky and certainly never rude, he might for whatever reason be choosing not to respond to the intercom even though he heard it.
Ethan elected to walk the house top to bottom, primarily to find the boy, but also to assure himself that, in general, all was as it should be.
He began on the third floor. He didn’t visit every room, but at least opened doors to peer into most chambers, and repeatedly called the child’s name.
The door to Fric’s suite stood open. After twice announcing himself and receiving no answer, Ethan decided that, this evening, security concerns took precedence over household etiquette and family privacy. He walked Fric’s rooms but found neither the boy nor anything amiss.
Returning through the east wing to the north hall, heading toward the main stairs, Ethan stopped three times to turn, to listen, halted by a crawling on the back of his neck, by a feeling that all was not as right as it appeared to be.
Quiet. Stillness.
Holding his breath, he heard only his heart.
Tuning out that inner rhythm, he could hear nothing real, only absurdities that he imagined: stealthy movement in the antique mirror above a nearby sideboard; a faint voice like that on the telephone the previous night, but fainter than before, crying out to him not from a third-floor room but from the far side of a blind turn on the highway to eternity.
The mirror revealed no reflection but his own, no blurred form, no boyhood friend.
When he began to breathe again, the distant voice that existed only in his imagination ceased to be heard even there.
He descended the main stairs to the second floor, where he found Fric in the library.
Reading a book, the boy sat in an armchair that he had moved from its intended position. The back of it was tight against the Christmas tree.
When Ethan opened the door and entered, Fric gave a start, which he tried to conceal by pretending that he had merely been adjusting his position in the armchair. Stark fear had widened his eyes and clenched his jaws for an instant, until he realized that Ethan was only Ethan.
“Hello, Fric. You okay? I paged you here on the intercom a few minutes ago.”
“Didn’t hear it, ummm, no, not the intercom,” said the boy, lying so ineptly that had he been hooked up to a polygraph, the machine might have exploded.
“You moved the chair.”
“Chair? Ummm, no, I found it like this, here like, you know, just like this.”
Ethan perched on the edge of another armchair. “Is something wrong, Fric?”
“Wrong?” the boy asked, as though the meaning of that word eluded him.
“Is there something you’d like to tell me? Are you worried about something? Because you don’t seem like yourself.”
The kid looked away from Ethan, to the book. He closed the book and lowered it to his lap.
As a cop, Ethan had long ago learned patience.
Making eye contact again, Fric leaned forward in his chair. He seemed about to whisper conspiratorially but hesitated and straightened up. Whatever he’d been about to reveal, he let slide. He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m tense ’cause my dad’s coming home Thursday.”
“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”
“Sure. But it’s pretty tense, too.”
“Why tense?”
“Well, he’ll have some of his buddies with him, you know. He always does.”
“You don’t care for his friends?”
“They’re okay. They’re all golfers and sports fanatics. Dad likes to talk golf and football and stuff. It’s how he unwinds. His buddies and him, they’re like a club.”
A club in which you’re not and never will be a member, Ethan thought, surprised by a sympathy that tightened his throat.
He wanted to give the boy a hug, take him to a movie, out to a movie, not downstairs to the mini-Pantages here in Palazzo Rospo, but to some ordinary multiplex crawling with kids and their families, where the air was saturated with the fragrance of popcorn and with the greasiness of canola oil tricked up to smell half like butter, where you had to check the theater seat for gum and candy before sitting down, where during the funny parts of the movie, you could hear not just your own laugh but that of a crowd.
“And there’ll be a girl with him,” Fric continued. “There always is. He broke up with the last one before Florida. I don’t know who the new one is. Maybe she’ll be nice. Sometimes they are. But she’s new, and I’ll have to get to know her, which isn’t easy.”
They were in dangerous territory for conversation between a family member and one of the staff. In commiseration, Ethan could say nothing that revealed his true judgment of Channing Manheim as a father, or that suggested the movie star’s priorities were not in proper order.
“Fric, whoever your dad’s new girl is, getting to know her will be easy because she’ll like you. Everyone likes you, Fric,” he added, knowing that to this sweet and profoundly unassuming boy, these words would be a revelation and most likely disbelieved.
Fric sat with his mouth open, as though Ethan had just declared himself to be a monkey passing for human. A blush rose to his cheeks, and he looked down at the book in his lap, disconcerted.
Movement drew Ethan’s eye from the boy to the tree behind him. The dangling ornaments stirred: angels turning, angels nodding, angels dancing.
The air in the library was as still as the books on the shelves. If there had been a low-intensity earthquake sufficient to affect the ornaments, it had been too subtle to catch Ethan’s attention.
The movement of the angels subsided, as though they had been set in motion by a short-lived draft created by some passing presence.
A strange expectation overcame Ethan, a sense that a door of understanding might be about to open in his heart. He realized that he was holding his breath and that the fine hairs on the backs of his hands had risen as if to a baton of static electricity.
“Mr. Hachette,” said Fric.
The angels settled and the pregnant moment passed without the manifestation of…anything.
“Excuse me?” Ethan asked.
“Mr. Hachette doesn’t like me,” Fric said, by way of refuting the suggestion that he might be more highly regarded than he thought.
Ethan smiled. “Well, I’m not sure that Mr. Hachette likes anyone terribly much. But he’s a fine chef, isn’t he?”
“So is Hannibal Lecter.”
Although amusement at the expense of a fellow member of the senior staff was unquestionably bad form, Ethan laughed. “You may think differently, but I’m confident that if Mr. Hachette tells you it’s veal he’s put on the plate, it will be veal and nothing worse.” He rose from the edge of the armchair. “Well, I had two reasons to come looking for you. I wanted to warn you not to open any exterior doors for the rest of the evening. As soon as I’m sure the last of the staff has left, I’m going to set the house-perimeter alarm.”
Again Fric sat up straighter in his chair. Had he been a dog, he would have pricked his ears, so alert was he to the implications of this change in routine.
When Fric’s father was in residence, the house-perimeter alarm would be set when the owner chose to set it. In Manheim’s absence, Ethan usually activated the system when he retired for the night, between ten o’clock and midnight.
“Why so early?” Fric asked.
“I want to monitor it on the computer this evening. I think there’s a problem with fluctuations in the voltage flow at some of the window and door contacts. Not anything that’ll set off false alarms yet, but it needs repair.”
Although Ethan was a more confident liar than Fric, the dubious expression on the boy’s face most likely matched that with which he regarded Mr. Hachette’s veal.
Hurrying on, Ethan said, “But I also came looking for you to see if we shouldn’t have dinner together, being as it’s just the two of us bachelors rattling ’round the place this evening.”
Standards and Practices contained no proscriptive against senior staff dining with the boy in the absence of his parents. Most of the time, Fric did, in fact, have dinner alone, either because he enjoyed privacy at mealtimes or, more likely, because he thought he would be intruding if he asked to join others. From time to time, Mrs. McBee induced the boy to have dinner with her and Mr. McBee, but this would be a first for Ethan and Fric.
“Really?” asked Fric. “You won’t be too busy monitoring the flow of voltage?”
Ethan recognized the sly jibe in that question, wanted to laugh, but pretended to believe that Fric had swallowed his lie about why he must turn the alarm on early. “No, Mr. Hachette prepared everything. All I have to do is warm it in the oven according to his notes. When would you like to eat?”
“Early’s better,” Fric said. “Six-thirty?”
“Six-thirty it is. And where should I set a table?”
Fric shrugged. “Where do you want?”
“If it’s my choice, it has to be the dayroom,” Ethan said. “The various other dining areas are strictly for family.”
“Then I’ll choose,” the boy said. He chewed on his lower lip a moment and then said, “I’ll get back to you on that.”
“All right. I’ll be in my quarters for a little while, then in the kitchen.”
“I think we have wine this evening, don’t you?” Fric asked. “A good Merlot.”
“Oh, really? Should I also just pack my bags, arrange for a taxi, write myself a letter of dismissal in your father’s name, and be ready to leave as soon as you’ve passed out drunk?”
“He doesn’t need to know,” Fric said. “And if he knew, he’d just figure it was typical Hollywood-kid stuff, better booze than cocaine. He’d make me talk to Dr. Rudy to see maybe does the problem come from when I was the son of an emperor back in ancient Rome, when maybe I was traumatized by watching the stupid lions eat stupid people in the stupid Colosseum.”
This cheeky rap would have seemed funnier to Ethan if he hadn’t believed that the Face might, in fact, have reacted to his son’s drinking in pretty much that fashion.
“Maybe your father would never find out. But you’re forgetting about She Who Cannot Be Deceived.”
Fric whispered, “McBee.”
Ethan nodded. “McBee.”
Fric said, “I’ll have Pepsi.”
“With or without ice?”
“Without.”
“Good lad.”
CHAPTER 70
ALTHOUGH FRIGHTENED, BITTER, AND STRUGGLING against despair, Rachel Dalton remained a lovely woman, with lustrous chestnut hair and blue eyes mysterious in their depths.
She was also, in Hazard’s experience, uncommonly considerate. Having agreed by phone to an interview, she had prepared coffee by the time he arrived. She served it in the living room with a plate of miniature muffins and butter cookies.
In the line of duty, homicide detectives were rarely offered refreshments, never with damask napkins. Especially not from the wives of missing men for whom the police had done embarrassingly little.
Maxwell Dalton, as it turned out, had vanished three months earlier. Rachel had reported him missing when he had been four hours late from an afternoon class at the university.
The police, of course, had not been interested in an adult who was missing only four hours, nor had they been intrigued when he’d not shown up in a day, two days, or three.
“Apparently,” Rachel told Hazard, “we’re living in a time when a shocking number of husbands—and wives—go off on drug binges or just suddenly decide to spend a week in Puerto Vallarta with some tart they met at Starbucks ten minutes ago, or walk out on their lives altogether without warning. When I tried to explain Maxwell, they couldn’t believe in him—a husband so reliable. They were sure he would turn up in time, with bloodshot eyes, a sheepish look, and a venereal disease.”
Eventually, when Maxwell Dalton had been gone long enough for even contemporary authorities to consider the length of his absence unusual, the police had allowed the official filing of a missing-persons report. This had led to little or no activity in search of the man, which had frustrated Rachel, for she had wrongly assumed that a missing-persons case triggered an investigation only a degree less vigorous than a homicide.
“Not when it’s an adult,” Hazard said, “and not when there are no indications of violence. If they had found his abandoned car…”
His car had not been found, however, nor his discarded wallet stripped of cash, nor any item that might have indicated foul play. He had vanished with no more trace than any ship that had sailed into but not out of the Bermuda Triangle.
Hazard said, “I’m sure you’ve been asked already, but did your husband have any enemies?”
“He’s a good man,” Rachel said, as he expected she would. Then she added what he had not expected, “And like all good people in a dark world, of course he has enemies.”
“Who?”
“A gang of thugs at that sewer they call a university. Oh, I shouldn’t be so harsh. Many good people work there. Unfortunately, the English Department is in the hands of scoundrels and lunatics.”
“You think someone in the department might…”
“Not likely,” Rachel admitted. “They’re all talk, those people, and meaningless talk at that.” She offered more coffee, and when he declined, she said, “What was the name of the man whose death you’re investigating?”
He had told her only enough to get through her door; and he did not intend to elaborate now. He hadn’t even mentioned that already he had chased down and shot Reynerd’s killer. “Rolf Reynerd. He was shot in West Hollywood yesterday.”
“Do you think his case might be related to my husband’s? I mean, by more than the fact that he took Max’s class in literature?”
“It’s possible,” he said. “But unlikely. I wouldn’t…”
Oddly enough, a sad smile rendered her more lovely. “I won’t, Detective,” she said, responding to what he had been hesitant to say. “I won’t get my hopes up. But damn if I’ll let them fade, either.”
As Hazard rose to leave, the doorbell rang. The caller proved to be an older black woman with white hair and the most elegant hands he had ever seen, slender and long-fingered and as supple as those of a young girl. The piano teacher, come to give a lesson to the Daltons’ ten-year-old daughter.
Drawn by the music of her teacher’s voice, Emily, the girl, came downstairs in time to be introduced to Hazard before he left. She had her mother’s loveliness but not yet as much steel in her spine as her mother did, for her lower lip trembled and her eyes clouded when she said, “You’re going to find my father, aren’t you?”
“We’re going to try hard,” Hazard assured her, speaking for the department, hoping that what he said would not prove to be a lie.
After he crossed the threshold and stepped onto the front porch, he turned to Rachel Dalton, in the doorway. “The next name on my list is a colleague of your husband’s, from the English Department. Maybe you know him. Vladimir Laputa.”
As sadness did not diminish Rachel’s loveliness, neither did anger. “Among all those hyenas, he’s the worst. Max despised…despises him. Six weeks ago, Mr. Laputa paid me a visit, to express his sympathy and concern that there’d been no news of Max. I swear…the weasel was feeling me out to see if I’d grown lonely in my bed.”
“Good Lord,” Hazard said.
“Ruthlessness, Detective Yancy, is no less a quality of the average university academic than of the average member of a street gang. It’s just expressed differently. The day of the genteel scholar in his ivory tower, interested only in art and truth, is long gone.”
“Recently I’ve begun to suspect as much,” he told her, though he would never reveal that, for want of a b
etter candidate, her husband had risen to the top of his list of suspects in the matter of the threat to Channing Manheim.
He found it difficult to believe that a woman like Rachel and a girl like Emily could love a man who was not exactly—and all—that he appeared to be.
Nevertheless, Maxwell Dalton’s disappearance might, in fact, mean that he had started a new life, a demented one that included making threats against celebrities either with the intent to do harm or in the naive hope that intimidation could serve extortion.
Even setting aside bells out of dreams and men into mirrors, Hazard Yancy had seen stranger things in his career than a once-honest professor, a man of reason, gone bad, made mad by envy, by greed.
The Daltons lived in a good neighborhood, but Laputa lived in a better one, less than fifteen minutes from their door.
The early winter twilight had crept in behind the storm while Hazard had been having coffee with Rachel Dalton. Dusk drained all light from the day as he drove to Professor Laputa’s place, until the low clouds were no longer gray and backlit, but sour yellow and underlit by the rising radiance of the city.
He parked across the street from the home of the reputed worst of all academic hyenas, switched off the headlights and windshield wipers, but left the engine running to keep the heater in action. Local kids wouldn’t be building snow forts; but with the coming of night, the air had grown wintry by southern-California standards.
He’d been unable to reach the professor by phone. Now, although the Laputa house was dark, he tried again.
As he let the number ring, Hazard noticed a pedestrian turn the corner at the end of the block, on the far side of the street, coming in the direction of the Laputa residence.
Something was wrong about the guy. He had neither an umbrella nor a raincoat. The downpour had diminished to a steady, businesslike drenching, but it was not weather in which anyone went for a stroll. And that was another thing: The guy didn’t hurry.
Attitude, however, was what really cranked up the Hazard Yancy suspicion machine. If the guy had been a sponge, he’d have been so saturated with attitude that he couldn’t have made room for one drop of rain.