Strangers

by Dean Koontz

  the back seat. Brendan glanced at the shop, but he could not see inside, for the big front windows were painted with festive holiday images: Santa, reindeer, wreaths, angels. A light snow had just begun to fall, and the weather forecast called for eight inches by midnight, which meant tomorrow would be a white Christmas.

  As Winton got out of the car, Brendan leaned forward and said to Paul Armes, “Yeah, well, nobody’s knocking Going My Way, but what about It’s a Wonderful Life? Now there was a terrific picture!”

  “Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed,” Paul said.

  “What a cast.” They had been talking about great Christmas films, and now Brendan was sure he had hit upon the best of the best. “Lionel Barrymore played the skinflint. Gloria Grahame was in that, too.”

  “Thomas Mitchell,” Paul Armes said as, outside, Winton reached the door of the sandwich shop. “Ward Bond. God, what a cast!” Winton had gone into the sandwich shop. “But you’re forgetting another great one. Miracle on 34th Street.”

  “That was terrific, sure, but I still think Capra’s better—”

  It seemed that the gunshots and the startling cascade of shattering glass came at the same instant, with not a fraction of a second between. Even with the car doors shut, the heater fan making noise, and the police-band radio crackling and chirruping, the shots were loud enough to halt Brendan in midsentence. As the explosions blew away the Christmas peace of the Uptown street, the sandwich shop’s painted window tableau dissolved, erupted in a glittering spray. New shots overlaid the echo of old reports, and the blasts were accompanied by a brittle and atonal music of glass smashing on the roof, hood, and trunk of the cruiser.

  “Oh, shit!” Paul Armes tore the dash-mounted riot gun free of its clasps, throwing open his door even as the glass was still raining. “Stay down,” he shouted back at Brendan, and then he was out, crouching, moving around the car, and using it as a shield.

  Stunned, Brendan looked through the window at his side, back toward the sandwich-shop entrance. Abruptly, that door was flung wide open, and two young men appeared, one black, one white. The black man wore a knit cap and a long navy peacoat—and carried a semiautomatic sawed-off shotgun. The white man, in a plaid hunting jacket, was armed with a revolver. They came out fast, half-crouched, and the black man swung the shotgun toward the patrol car. Brendan was looking directly into the muzzle. There was a flash, and he was sure he had been shot, but the rear passenger-side window in front of his face remained intact. Instead, the front window exploded inward, fragments of glass and lead pellets showering across the seat, rattling off the dashboard. The near-miss shocked Brendan out of his daze, and he rolled off his seat, to the floor, his heart hammering almost as loud as the gunfire.

  Winton Tolk had had the bad luck to walk unsuspecting into the middle of an armed robbery. He was probably dead.

  As Brendan pressed himself to the floor of the squad car, he heard Paul Armes shouting outside: “Drop it!”

  Two shots cracked. Not a shotgun. Revolver fire. But who pulled the trigger? Paul Armes or the guy in the plaid hunting jacket?

  Another shot. Someone screamed.

  But who had been hit? Armes or one of the robbers?

  Brendan wanted to look, but he did not dare show himself.

  Thanks to an arrangement Father Wycazik had made with the local precinct captain, Brendan had been riding as an observer with Winton and Paul for five days. In an ordinary suit, tie, and topcoat, he was supposed to be a lay consultant employed by the Church to study the need for Catholic charity outreach programs, a cover story which everyone seemed to accept. Winton’s and Paul’s beat was uptown, an area bordered by Foster Avenue on the North, Lake Shore Drive high-rises on the east, Irving Park Road on the south, and North Ashland Avenue on the west. It was Chicago’s poorest and most crime-ridden neighborhood, home to blacks and Indians, but mostly to Appalachians and Hispanics. After five days with Winton and Paul, Brendan developed a strong liking for both men and a deep sympathy for all the honest souls who lived and worked in those decaying buildings and filthy streets—and who were prey to the packs of human jackals among them. He had learned to expect anything riding with these guys, but the sandwich-shop shootout was the worst incident yet.

  Another shotgun blast slammed into the car, rocking it.

  Brendan curled fetally on the floor and tried to pray, but no words came. God was still lost to him, and he cowered in terrible solitude.

  Outside, Paul Armes shouted, “Give it up!”

  The gunman said, “Fuck you!”

  When he’d reported to Father Wycazik after a week at St. Joseph‘s, Brendan had been sent to another hospital, where he’d been given work on the terminal ward, a dreadful place with no children at all. There, as at St. Joseph’s, Brendan quickly discovered the lesson that Stefan Wycazik expected him to learn. To most who were at the end of life, death was not to be feared but welcomed, a blessing for which they thanked God rather than cursed Him. And in dying, many who had never been believers became believers at last, and those who had fallen away from faith came back. There was frequently something noble and deeply moving in the suffering that accompanied a person’s exit from this world, as if each shared, for a while, the mystical burden of the cross.

  Yet, that lesson learned, Brendan remained unable to believe. Now, the fierce beating of his heart hammered the words of the prayer to dust before he could speak them, and his mouth was as dry as powder.

  Outside, there was shouting, but he could not make sense of the words any more, maybe because the people shouting were incoherent and maybe because he was partially deaf from the gunfire.

  He did not yet fully understand the lesson that Father Wycazik had hoped he would learn from this Uptown portion of his unconventional therapy. And now as he listened to the chaos outside, he knew that the lesson, regardless of its nature, would be insufficient to convince him that God was as real as bullets. Death was a bloody, stinking, foul reality, and in the face of it, the promise of a reward in the afterlife was not the least persuasive.

  The shotgun discharged again, followed by the roar of the riot gun, then by shouting and the slap-slap-slap of running feet. It sounded like a war out there. Another blast from the riot gun. More shattering glass. Another scream, more horrible than the one that had rent the air before it. Yet another shot. Silence. Silence perfect and profound.

  The driver’s door was jerked open.

  Brendan cried out in surprise and terror.

  “Stay down!” Paul Armes said from the front seat, keeping a low profile himself. “Two dead, but there might be other shitheads inside.”

  “Where’s Winton?” Brendan asked.

  Paul did not answer. Instead, he grabbed the radio microphone up front and called Central. “Officer down. Officer down!” Armes gave his position, the address of the sandwich shop, and requested backup.

  Lying on his side on the floor of the squad car, Brendan closed his eyes and saw, with heartbreaking clarity, the pictures that Winton Tolk carried in his wallet and that he proudly displayed when queried about his family—pictures of his wife, Raynella, and his three children.

  “Those rotten fucking bastards,” Paul Armes said, his voice shaking.

  Brendan heard soft clicking and scraping sounds that puzzled him until he realized Armes was reloading. He said, “Winton’s been shot?”

  “Bet on it,” Armes said.

  “He might need help.”

  “It’s on the way.”

  “But he may need help now,” Brendan said.

  “Can’t go in there. Might be another one. Two more. Who knows? We gotta wait for backup.”

  “Winton might need a tourniquet ... other first aid. He might be dead by the time help gets here.”

  “Don’t you think I know that?” Paul Armes said bitterly, furiously. He finished reloading and slid out of the car to take up a position from which he could watch the shop.

  The more Brendan thought about Winton Tolk sprawled on t
he floor in there, the angrier he became. If he had still believed in God, he might have quenched his anger in prayer. But now it fed on itself and grew into a hot rage. His heart pounded even harder than when the shotgun blasts were crashing into the car inches from him. The injustice of Winton’s fate—the unfairness, the wrongness—was like an acid eating at Brendan.

  He got out of the car and started across the sidewalk, through the falling snow, toward the entrance to the sandwich shop.

  “Brendan!” Paul Armes shouted from the far side of the police cruiser. “Stop! For God’s sake, don’t!”

  Brendan kept going, driven by his rage and by the thought that Winton Tolk might need immediate first aid to survive.

  A dead man in a plaid hunting jacket was lying on his back on the sidewalk. A round from Armes’s revolver had taken him in the chest, a second round in the throat. There was a stink of loosed bowels. In the snow beside the corpse lay a handgun, perhaps the very one with which Winton Tolk had been shot.

  “Cronin!” Paul Armes yelled. “Get your ass back here, you idiot!”

  Moving past the broken windows, Brendan could see into the shop, which was surprisingly dark. The lights had been shot out or a switch thrown, and the gray daylight penetrated only a couple of feet inside. He could not see anyone, but that did not mean it was safe to enter.

  “Cronin!” Paul Armes shouted.

  Brendan went to the entrance, where he found the black man in the peacoat. This one had been hit by a shotgun blast that also demolished the glass door; he was crumpled in a thousand bright fragments.

  Stepping over the body, Brendan entered the sandwich shop. He did not have his Roman collar, which might have been something of a shield if he had been wearing it. On the other hand, degenerates like these would probably kill a priest as reflexively and as happily as they blew away police officers. In his suit and tie and topcoat, he was as ordinary and vulnerable as any man, but he did not care. He was that furious. Furious that God did not exist or, existing, did not care.

  At the back of the small shop was a service counter. Behind the counter was a grill, other equipment. On this side were five very small tables and ten chairs, most of which had been toppled. On the floor were a couple of napkin dispensers, ketchup and mustard bottles, scattered one- and five-dollar bills, a lot of blood, and Winton Tolk.

  Not bothering to study the overturned tables to see if a gunman was sheltering behind them, Brendan went to the officer, knelt beside him. Winton had been hit twice in the chest. Not with the shotgun. Probably the other thug’s revolver. The wounds were sickening, far too traumatic to respond dramatically to a mere tourniquet or first-aid procedures. His breast was mantled with blood, and blood trickled from his mouth. The pool of blood in which he lay was so deep that he appeared to be floating on it. He was still, eyes closed, either unconscious or dead.

  “Winton?” Brendan said.

  The cop did not respond. His eyelids did not even flutter.

  Filled with a rage akin to that which had caused him to heave the holy chalice against the wall during Mass, Brendan Cronin gently put both hands on Winton Tolk’s neck, one on each side, feeling for the throbbing carotid arteries. He detected no life, and in his mind he saw the photographs of Raynella and the Tolk children again, and now he was seething with resentment at the indifference of the universe. “He can’t die,” Brendan said angrily. “He can’t.” Suddenly he thought he felt a thready pulse, so faint it was virtually nonexistent. He moved his hands, seeking confirmation that Tolk lived. He found it: a less feeble beat than that first phantom drumming, though no less irregular.

  “Is he dead?”

  Brendan looked up and saw a man coming around the side of the service counter, a Hispanic in a white apron, the owner or an employee. A woman, also in a white apron, had risen from behind the counter.

  Outside, distant sirens were growing nearer.

  Under Brendan’s hands, the throbbing in Winton Tolk’s neck seemed to be getting stronger and more regular, which was surely not the case. Winton had lost too much blood to stage even a limited spontaneous recovery. Until the paramedics arrived with life-support machines, his vital signs would deteriorate unavoidably, and even expert medical care might not stabilize his condition.

  The sirens were no more than two blocks away.

  Puffs of snow blew in through the shattered windows.

  The sandwich-shop employees edged closer.

  Numb with shock; in a haze of anger at fate’s capricious brutality, Brendan trailed his hands from Winton’s neck to the wounds in his chest. When he saw the blood oozing up between his fingers, his rage gave way to overwhelming helplessness and uselessness, and he began to cry.

  Winton Tolk choked. Coughed. Opened his eyes. Breath rattled thinly and wetly in his throat, and a soft groan escaped him.

  Amazed, Brendan felt for a pulse in the man’s throat again. It was weak but definitely not as weak as before, and hardly irregular at all.

  Raising his voice over the shrieking sirens, which were now so near that the air trembled, Brendan said, “Winton? Winton, do you hear me?”

  The cop did not seem to recognize Brendan—or even to know where he was. He coughed again and choked more violently than before.

  Brendan quickly lifted Tolk’s head a few inches and turned it to one side, to let the blood and mucus drain more freely from his mouth. Immediately the wounded man’s respiration improved, though it remained noisy, each inhalation hard-won. He was still in critical condition, in desperate need of medical attention, but he was alive.

  Alive.

  Incredible. All this blood, and he was still alive, hanging on.

  Outside, three sirens died one after the other. Brendan shouted for Paul Armes. Excited by the hope that Winton could be saved, but also panicked by the possibility that medical attention would arrive seconds too late, he glanced at the sandwich-shop employees and shouted, “Go! Get them in here. Let them know it’s safe. Paramedics, damn it!”

  The man in the apron hesitated, then moved toward the door.

  Winton Tolk expelled bloody mucus and finally drew an unobstructed breath. Brendan carefully lowered Winton’s head to the floor again. The cop continued to breathe shallowly, with difficulty, but steadily.

  Outside there were shouts and doors slamming and running feet coming toward the sandwich shop.

  Brendan’s hands were wet with Winton Tolk’s blood. Unthinking, he blotted them on his coat—and it was then that he realized the rings had reappeared on his hands for the first time in nearly two weeks. One on each palm. Twin bands of raised and inflamed tissue.

  Cops and paramedics burst through the front door, stepping over the dead man in the navy peacoat, and Brendan quickly moved out of their way. He backed up until he bumped against the service counter, where he leaned in sudden exhaustion, staring at his hands.

  For a few days following the first appearance of the rings, he had used the cortisone prescribed by Dr. Heeton at St. Joseph’s, but when the rings had not reappeared, he had soon stopped applying the lotion. He had almost forgotten about the marks. They had been a curiosity—baffling, but of little concern. Now, as he looked at the strange marks, he heard the voices of those around him, fuzzy and strange:

  “Jesus, the blood!”

  “Can’t be alive ... twice in the chest.”

  “Get the fuck out of my way!”

  “Plasma!”

  “Type his blood. No! Wait ... do it in the ambulance.”

  Brendan finally looked at the crowd around Winton Tolk. He watched the paramedics as they worked to keep the wounded man alive, get him on a stretcher, and move him out of the sandwich shop.

  He saw a cursing policeman dragging the dead man out of the doorway to make it easier for the paramedics to exit with Tolk.

  He saw Paul Armes moving along beside the stretcher.

  He saw that the blood in which Tolk had been lying was not merely a pool but a lake.

  He looked at his hands
again. The rings were gone.

  4. Las Vegas, Nevada

  The Texan in the yellow Day-Glo polyester pants would not have tried to get Jorja Monatella into bed if he had known she was in the mood to castrate someone.

  Although it was the afternoon of December 24, Jorja was not yet in the Christmas spirit. Usually even-tempered and easygoing, she was in an exceedingly sour state of mind as she strode back and forth through the casino, from the bar to the blackjack tables and back to the bar again, delivering drinks to the gamblers.

  For one thing, she hated her job. Being a cocktail waitress was bad enough in a regular bar or lounge, but in a hotel casino bigger than a football field, it was a killer. At the end of a shift, her feet ached, and often her ankles were swollen. The hours were irregular, too. How were you supposed to provide a stable home for a seven-year-old daughter when you did not have a job with normal hours?

  She also hated the costume: a little red nothing, cut high in the crotch and hips, very low at the bustline, smaller than a bathing suit. An elastic corset was built in to minimize the waistline and emphasize the breasts. If you were already small-waisted, with generous breasts—as Jorja was—the getup made you look almost freakishly erotic.

  And she hated the way the pit bosses and casino floormen were always hitting on her. Maybe they figured any girl who would strut her stuff in an outfit like that was an easy lay.

  She was sure that her name had something to do with their attitude as well: Jorja. It was cute. Too cute. Her mother must have been drunk when she got creative with the spelling of Georgia. It was all right when people heard it, because they had no way of knowing she spelled it cute, but she had to wear a name tag on her costume—JORJA—and at least a dozen people a day commented on it. It was a frivolous name, misspelled like that, so it gave them the idea she was a frivolous person. She had considered going to court to have the proper spelling made legal, but that would hurt her mother. However, if guys at work kept hitting on her, she might even have it changed to Mother Teresa, which ought to cool off some of the horny bastards.

  And fending off the bosses was not the worst of it. Every week, some high-roller—a bigshot from Detroit or L.A. or Dallas, dropping a bundle at the tables—would take a shine to Jorja and ask the pit boss to fix him up with her. A few cocktail waitresses were available—not many, but a few. But when the pit bosses approached Jorja, her answer was always the same: “To hell with him. I’m a waitress, not a hooker.”

  Her routine, cold refusal did not stop them from pressuring her to relent, which they had done an hour ago. A wart-faced, bug-eyed oilman from Houston—in phosphorescent yellow pants, a blue shirt, and a red string tie—one of the hotel’s favored clients, had gotten the hots for her and had made inquiries. His breath stank of the burritos he had eaten for lunch.

  Now the bosses were angry with her for refusing a highly valued customer, for being “too stuffy.” Rainy Tarnell, the blackjack pit boss on the day shift, had the gall to put it just like that—“Honey, don’t be so stuffy!”—as if falling on her back and spreading her legs for a stranger from Houston was merely the equivalent of a fashion gaucherie like wearing white shoes either before Memorial Day or after Labor Day.

  Though she hated being a casino cocktail waitress, she could not afford to quit. No other job would pay her as well. She was a divorced mother raising a daughter without benefit of child-support payments, and in order to protect her credit rating, she was still paying off bills that Alan had run up in her name before walking out on her, so she was acutely aware of the value of a dollar. Her wages were low, but the tips were exceedingly good, especially on those occasions when one of her customers started winning big at cards or dice.

  On this day before Christmas, the casino was two-thirds empty, and tips were bad. Vegas was always slow Thanksgiving and Christmas, and the crowds did not return until December 26. The whizzing-rattling-ringing of slot machines was muted. Many of the blackjack dealers stood idle and bored in front of empty tables.

  No wonder I’m in a sour mood, Jorja thought. Sore feet, back pain, a horny creep who figures I ought to be as available as the drinks I serve, an argument with Rainy Tarnell, and no tips to show for it.

  When her shift ended at four o’clock, she hurried to the changing room downstairs, punched the time clock, slipped out of her costume and into street clothes, and was out the door into the employee parking lot with a speed that would have drawn praise from an Olympic runner.

  The unpredictable desert weather did nothing to instill the Christmas spirit in her. A Las Vegas winter day could be cold, with bone-numbing wind, or it could be warm enough for shorts and halters. This year, the holiday was warm.

  Her dusty, battered Chevette started on only the third try, which should have improved her mood. But listening to the starter grind and the engine cough, she was reminded of the shiny new Buick that Alan had taken with him fifteen months ago, when he had abandoned her and Marcie.

  Alan Rykoff. More than her job, more than any of the other things that irritated her, Alan was the cause of Jorja’s foul mood. She had shed his name when the marriage had been dissolved, reverting to her maiden name, Monatella, but she could not as easily shed the memories of the pain he had inflicted on her and Marcie.

  As she drove out of the parking lot into the street behind the hotel, Jorja tried to banish Alan from her thoughts, but he remained at center stage. The bastard. With his current bedmate, an airhead blond bearing the unlikely name “Pepper,” he had flown off to Acapulco for a week, not even bothering to leave a Christmas gift for Marcie. What did you tell a seven-year-old girl when she asked why her daddy didn’t buy her anything for Christmas—or even come to see her?

  Although Alan left Jorja saddled with bills, she had willingly forgone alimony because, by then, she loathed him so much that she had not wanted to be dependent on him. However, she had gone after child support and had been shocked when he countered by insisting Marcie was not his child and, therefore, not his responsibility. Damn him. Jorja had married him when she was nineteen and he was twenty-four, and she’d never been unfaithful. Alan knew she hadn’t cheated, but protecting his jazzy lifestyle—he needed every dollar for clothes, fast cars, and women—was more important to him than his wife’s reputation or his daughter’s happiness. To spare little Marcie humiliation and pain, Jorja had released Alan