by Dean Koontz
“Big stopping power,” Aubrey said approvingly.
“Big,” Michael agreed.
“Semi-auto so we can fire a second round singlehanded,” Carson continued. “Maybe an Urban Sniper. What’s the barrel length on that?”
“Eighteen inches,” Aubrey said.
“We’d want it cut down to fourteen. But we need these fast, so there’s no time to wait for customizing.”
“How fast?”
“Today. Soon. As soon as now. Urban Sniper, SGT, Remington — we’ll have to take any credible shotgun that’s already been modified to meet those specifications.”
“You’ll want a three-way sling for each,” Aubrey said, “so you can shoulder-carry and hip-fire.”
“So who do we go to?” Carson asked, still holding a rose in each hand as if she were protesting to end all war.
Unconsciously working the rose snips — click-click, click-click, click-click — Aubrey studied her and Michael for half a minute, then said, “That’s a lot of firepower to go after one guy. Who is he — the Antichrist?”
“He’s well protected,” she said. “We’re going to have to wade through some people to nail him. But they’re all dirtbags, too.”
Not convinced, Aubrey Picou said, “Cops go bad all the time. Given the lack of support they get and all the flack they take, who can blame them? But not you two. You two don’t go bad.”
“You remember what happened to my dad?” Carson asked.
Aubrey said, “That was all bogus. Your dad didn’t turn. He was a good cop to the end.”
“I know. But thanks for saying it, Aubrey.”
When he cocked his head in the sun hat, he looked like Truman Capote in ladies-going-to-lunch drag. “You telling me you know who really waxed him and your mom?”
“Yeah,” she lied.
“Just who pulled the trigger or who ordered it to be pulled?”
“We’re at the top of the food chain with this guy,” she said.
Looking at Michael, Aubrey said, “So when you punch his ticket, it’s going to be big news.”
Staying mostly mute and playing half dumb had worked well for Michael. He shrugged.
Aubrey wasn’t satisfied with a shrug. “You’ll probably be killed doing this.”
“Nobody lives forever,” Michael said.
“Lulana says we all do. Anyway, this is O’Connor’s vengeance. Why should you die for it?”
“We’re partners,” Michael said.
“That’s not it. Partners don’t commit suicide for each other.”
“I think we can pull it off,” Michael said, “and walk away.”
A sly smile robbed the old man’s pinchable face of its previous innocence. “That’s not it, either.”
Grimacing, Carson said, “Aubrey, don’t make him say it.”
“I just need to hear something that makes his commitment believable.”
“This isn’t going to snap back on you,” she promised.
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m almost convinced. I know your motive, darlin’. His, I want to hear.”
“Don’t say it,” Carson warned Michael.
“Well, he already knows,” Michael said.
“That’s the point. He already knows. He doesn’t need to hear you say it. He’s just being a pissant.”
“Now, darlin’, don’t hurt old Aubrey’s feelings. Michael, why in blazes would you want to do this?”
“Because —”
“Don’t,” said Carson.
“— I love her.”
Carson said, “Shit.”
Aubrey Picou laughed with delight. “I am a fool for romance. You give me your cell-phone number, and the man with the goods will call you inside two hours, to tell you how and where.”
“Aubrey Picou, I should make you eat these roses,” Carson said, shaking the French Perfume and the Black Velvet in his face.
“Seeing as how they’ve been flavored by your sweet hands, I suspect I’d like the taste.”
She threw the roses on the ground. “For that, you owe me one. I want to borrow the money to pay for the guns.”
Aubrey laughed. “Why would I do that?”
“Because we once saved your life. And I don’t have several thousand stuffed in a sock.”
“Darlin’, I’m not a man with a reputation for generosity.”
“That’s part of what Lulana’s been trying to tell you.”
He frowned. “This makes me more of a party to it.”
“Not if the loan is on a handshake. No paperwork.”
“I don’t mean legally. I mean morally.”
Michael thought his hearing had failed. The word couldn’t have been morally.
“Just making the connection for the deal isn’t so bad,” Aubrey said, “ ‘cause I’m not taking a commission, I make nothing from it. But if I finance it, even interest-free…”
This clearly surprised Carson. “Interest-free?”
“Seems like I’ve got some responsibility that way.” Under his big floppy hat, he now looked more worried than absurd. “This Jesus guy is scary.”
“Scary?”
“I mean, if he’s half as real as Lulana says —”
“Half as real?”
“— then you have to think consequences.”
“Aubrey,” Carson said, “no offense, but considering the way you’ve lived your life, I don’t think scary old Jesus is going to make a big issue out of you loaning me money for this.”
“Maybe not. But I’ve been trying to change the kind of person I am.”
“You have?”
Aubrey took off his hat, wiped his sweaty forehead with a handkerchief, and at once put the hat on again. “They all know who I used to be, but Lulana, Evangeline, and Moses — they treat me with respect.”
“And it’s not because they’re afraid you might have them kneecapped.”
“Exactly right. It’s amazing. They’ve all been so nice to me for no reason, and after a while I sort of wanted to be nice to them.”
“How insidious,” Michael said.
“It is,” Aubrey agreed. “It really is. You let people like that into your life — especially if they also make good pie — and the next thing you know, you’re giving money to charities.”
“You haven’t really,” Carson said.
“Sixty thousand this year already,” Aubrey said sheepishly.
“No way.”
“The orphanage desperately needed repairs, so somebody had to step up and fill their soup pot.”
“Aubrey Picou helping an orphanage,” Michael said.
“I’d be obliged if you don’t tell anyone about it. I’ve got a reputation to protect. The old crowd would think I’ve gone soft or senile.”
“Your secret’s safe with us,” Carson promised.
Aubrey’s expression brightened. “Hey, what about this — I’ll just give you the money, no loan at all. You use it for whatever you need, and one day when you’re more flush, you don’t give it back to me, you give it to some charily you like.”
“You think that’ll fool Jesus?” Michael asked.
“It should,” Aubrey said, pleased with himself. “Anyway, it would be like if I gave a bunch of money to a school for the deaf and the school principal skimmed a little off the top and used the skim to pay for a three-way with two hookers.”
“Do you follow this?” Michael asked Carson.
“It’s too metaphysical for me.”
“The point is,” Aubrey said, “the skim and the hookers wouldn’t be my fault just because I gave money to a school for the deaf.”
“Instead of paying back what you lend me, you want me to give it to a school for the deaf?” Carson asked.
“That would be nice. Just remember, what you do with it in the meantime, you have to answer for.”
“You’ve become a real theologian,” Michael said.
Chapter 18
After the body of William, the butler, and all of his severed fingers had been rem
oved from the mansion by two men from the Hands of Mercy, the head housekeeper, Christine, and the third-floor maid, Jolie, cleaned up the blood in the hallway.
Erika knew that as the mistress of the house, she should not get down on her knees and help. Victor would not approve.
Because class distinctions prevented her from assisting, she did not know what to do; therefore, she stood by and watched.
The blood on the mahogany floor wiped up easily, of course, but Erika was surprised to see it come off the painted wall and out of the antique Persian runner without leaving any visible residue.
“What’s that spot remover you’re using?” she asked, indicating the unlabeled plastic squeeze bottles with which both Christine and Jolie were armed.
“Mr. Helios invented it,” Jolie said.
“He must have made a fortune from it.”
“It’s never been marketed to the public,” Christine said.
“He developed it for us,” Jolie revealed.
Erika marveled that Victor would have time to concoct new household products, considering everything else on his mind.
“Other spot removers,” Christine explained, “even if they took out all the stain visible to the eye, would leave blood proteins in the carpet fibers that any CSI unit could identify. This expunges everything.”
“My husband’s very clever, isn’t he?” Erika said, not without some pride.
“Extremely so,” said Christine.
“Extremely,” Jolie agreed.
“I very much want to please him,” Erika said.
“That would be a good idea,” Jolie said.
“I think I displeased him this morning.”
Christine and Jolie glanced meaningfully at each other, but neither replied to Erika.
She said, “He beat me while we were having sex.” Having dealt with all the bloodstains, Christine directed Jolie to proceed with her morning tasks in the master suite. When she and Erika were alone in the hallway, she said, “Mrs. Helios, excuse me for being so straightforward, but you must not speak about your private life with Mr. Helios in front of anyone on the household staff.”
Erika frowned. “Shouldn’t I?”
“No. Never.”
“Why not?”
“Mrs. Helios, surely the subject of social deportment was part of your manners-and-etiquette download.”
“Well, I guess it was. I mean, if you think it should have been.”
“It definitely should have been. You shouldn’t discuss your sex life with anyone but Mr. Helios.”
“The thing is, he beat me during sex, even bit me once, and he called me the worst names. I was so ashamed.”
“Mrs. Helios —”
“He’s a good man, a great man, so I must have done something terribly wrong to have made him hurt me, but I don’t know what upset him.”
“You’re doing it again,” Christine said impatiently, “talking about your private life with Mr. Helios.”
“You’re right, I am. But if you could help me understand what I did to displease my husband, that would be good for both me and Victor.”
Christine’s stare was sharp and unwavering. “You do know that you are the fifth Erika, don’t you?”
“Yes. And I’m determined to be the last.”
“Then perhaps you’d better not talk about sex even with him.”
“Even with Victor? But how will I find out why he was displeased with me?”
Christine stropped her sharp stare into an even more piercing gaze. “Maybe he wasn’t displeased.”
“Then why did he punch me and pull my hair and pinch my —”
“You’re doing it again.”
Frustrated, Erika said, “But I’ve got to talk with somebody about it.”
“Then talk to the mirror, Mrs. Helios. That’s the only safe conversation you can have on the subject.”
“How could that be productive? A mirror is an inanimate object. Unless it’s magical, like in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
“When you’re looking at yourself in the mirror, Mrs. Helios, ask yourself what you know about sexual sadism.”
Erika considered the term. “I don’t think it’s in my programmed knowledge.”
“Then the very best thing you can do is educate yourself… and endure. Now, if that’s everything, I have a number of tasks to attend to.”
Chapter 19
The soft rattle of the computer keyboard under Vicky Chou’s nimble fingers, as she composed a letter, was the only sound in the summer afternoon. Each time that she paused in her typing, the subsequent silence seemed nearly as deep as deafness.
The merest breath of sultry air stirred the sheer curtains at the open window but did not produce the faintest whisper. Outside, the day lacked bird songs. If traffic passed in the street, it did so with the muted grace of a ghost ship sailing without wind across a glassy sea.
Vicky Chou worked at home as a medical transcriptionist. Home was Carson O’Connor’s house, where she received free room and board in return for serving as a caregiver to Carson’s brother, Arnie.
Some of her friends thought this was an odd arrangement and that Vicky had negotiated a bad deal. In truth, she felt overcompensated, because Carson had saved Vicky’s sister, Liane, from serving life in prison for a crime she had never committed.
At forty-five, Vicky had been a widow for five years; and as she’d never had children of her own, a fringe benefit of living here was the feeling of being part of a family. Arnie was like a son to her.
Although autistic, the boy rarely presented her with a problem. He was self-absorbed, quiet, and endearing in his way. She prepared his meals, but otherwise he cared for himself.
He seldom left his room, and he never left the house except when Carson wished to take him with her. Even then he usually went only with reluctance.
Vicky didn’t have to worry about him wandering away. When he wandered, it was to internal lands that held more interest for him than did the real world.
Nevertheless, the silence began to seem eerie to her, and an uneasiness crept over her, growing with each pause in her typing.
At last she rose from her desk chair and went to check on Arnie.
Vicky’s second-floor room was a pleasant size, but Arnie’s quarters — across the hall — were twice as large as hers. A wall had been taken down between two bedrooms to provide him with the space that he required and with a small bath of his own.
His bed and nightstand were jammed in a corner. At the foot of his bed stood a TV with DVD player, on a wheeled stand.
The castle occupied a significant part of the room. Four low tables formed an eight-by-twelve-foot platform on which Arnie had erected a Lego-block wonder that was brilliantly conceived and executed in obsessive detail.
From barbican to curtain wall, to casements, to ramparts, to the keep, to the highest turrets, down to the bailey, through the inner ward, to the barracks and the stables and the blacksmith’s shop, the ninety-six-square-foot marvel seemed to be Arnie’s defense against a frightening world.
The boy sat now in the wheeled office chair that he occupied when working on the castle or when just staring dreamily at it. To any eye but Arnie’s, this Lego structure was complete, but he was not satisfied; he worked on it every day, adding to its majesty and improving its defenses.
Although twelve, Arnie looked younger. He was slender and as pale as a Nordic child at the end of a long dark winter.
He did not look up at Vicky. Eye contact dismayed him, and he seldom liked to be touched.
Yet he had a gentleness about him, a wistfulness, that moved her. And he knew more of the world, and of people, than she had first believed.
One bad day, when Vicky had been missing Arthur, her dead husband, almost more than she could bear, though she had not openly expressed her misery, Arnie had reacted to her state of mind and had spoken without glancing at her. “You’re only as lonely as you want to be,” he’d said, “and he would never want you to be.
”
Although she tried to engage the boy in conversation, he said no more.
That day, she had perceived a more mysterious aspect to autism in general and to Arnie’s case in particular than she’d previously recognized. His isolation was beyond Vicky’s power to heal, yet he had reached out to counsel her in her loneliness.
She’d had affection for the boy before that moment. Thereafter, it grew into love.
Now, watching him at work on the castle, she said, “I always think it’s perfect as it is… yet you find ways to make it better.”
He did not acknowledge her, but she felt sure that he heard.
Leaving him to his work, Vicky returned to the hallway and stood at the head of the stairs, listening to the persistent silence below.
Arnie was where he should be, and safe. Yet the quiet did not feel peaceful, instead felt pregnant, as though some threat were gestating and at the brink of a noisy birth.
Carson had said that she and Michael were on a case that “might come home to us,” and had warned Vicky to be security-conscious. As a consequence, she had locked the front and back doors and had left no first-floor windows open.
Although she knew that she had not overlooked a lock or latch, the silence below called to her, cautioned her.
She descended the stairs and toured the living room, Carson’s bedroom and bath, the kitchen, checking that all doors and windows were still secure. She found everything as she remembered having left it.
Half-drawn blinds and sheer curtains left the lower floor shadowy. Each time Vicky turned on a lamp to facilitate her inspection, she turned it off behind her when she moved on.
Carson’s room was the only part of the downstairs that featured air conditioning. Bolted in place, the window mounted unit could not be removed without a racket that would betray an intruder long before he could effect entrance. At the moment, the air conditioner waited to be switched on; like similar units in Vicky’s and Arnie’s rooms, it was used only to facilitate sleep.
With the windows closed, these lower rooms were warm, stuffy. In the kitchen, she opened the top door on the refrigerator, not because she wanted anything in the freezer, but because the icy out-draft, billowing against her face, felt refreshing.