from her. Though Harry had not been with a woman in more than twenty
years, he never invaded Amella's bedroom again. On many mornings he
looked at an angle into the side window of her tidy first-floor kitchen
and watched her at breakfast, studying her perfect face as she had her
juice and muffin or toast and eggs. She was beautiful beyond his
abilities of description, and from what he knew of her life, she seemed
to be a nice person, as well. In a way he supposed he was in love with
her, as a boy could love a teacher who was forever beyond his reach, but
he never used unrequited love as an excuse to caress her unclothed body
with his gaze.
Likewise, if he caught one of his neighbors in another kind - 77 of
embarrassing situation, he looked away. He watched them fight with one
another, yes, and he watched them laugh together, eat, play cards, cheat
on their diets, wash dishes, and perform the countless other acts of
daily life, but not because he wanted to get any dirt on them or find
reason to feel superior to them. He got no cheap thrill from his
observations of them. What he wanted was to be a part of their lives,
to reach out to them-even if one-sidedly-and make of them an extended
family; he wanted to have reason to care about them and, through that
caring, to experience a fuller emotional life.
The elevator motor hummed again. Moose evidently had gone into the
kitchen, opened one of the four doors of the under-the-counter
refrigerator, and fetched a cold can of Coors. Now he was returning
with the brew.
Harry Talbot was a gregarious man, and on coming home from the war with
only one useful limb, he was advised to move into a group home for the
disabled, where he might have a social life in a caring atmosphere. The
counselors warned him that he would not be accepted if he tried to live
in the world of the whole and healthy; they said he would encounter
unconscious yet hurtful cruelty from most people he met, especially the
cruelty of thoughtless exclusion, and would finally fall into the grip
of a deep and terrible loneliness. But Harry was as stubbornly
independent as he was gregarious, and the prospect of living in a group
home, with only the companionship of disabled people and caretakers,
seemed worse than no companionship at all. Now he lived alone, but for
Moose, with few visitors other than his once-a-week housekeeper, Mrs.
Hunsbok (from whom he hid the telescope and binoculars in a bedroom
closet). Much of what the counselors warned him about was proved true
daily; however, they had not imagined Harry's ability to find solace and
a sufficient sense of family through surreptitious but benign
observation of his neighbors.
The elevator reached the third floor. The door slid open, and Moose
padded into the bedroom, straight to Harry's high stool.
The telescope was on a wheeled platform, and Harry pushed it aside. He
reached down and patted the dog's head. He took the cold can from the
Labrador's mouth. Moose had held it by the bottom for maximum
cleanliness. Harry put the can between his limp legs, plucked a
penlight off the table on the other side of his stool, and directed the
beam on the can to be sure it was Coors and not Diet Coke.
Those were the two beverages that the dog had been taught to fetch, and
for the most part the good pooch recognized the difference between the
words "beer" and "Coke," and was able to keep the command in mind all
the way to the kitchen. On rare occasions he forgot along the way and
returned with the wrong drink. Rarer still, he brought odd items that
had nothing to do with the command he'd been given a slipper; a
newspaper; twice, an unopened bag of dog biscuits; once, a hardboiled
egg, carried so gently that the shell was not cracked between his teeth;
strangest of all, a toilet-bowl brush from the housekeeper's supplies.
When he brought the wrong item, Moose always proved successful on second
try.
Long ago Harry had decided that the pooch often was not mistaken but
only having fun with him. His close association with Moose had
convinced him that dogs were gifted with a sense of humor.
This time, neither mistaken nor joking, Moose had brought what he'd been
asked to bring. Harry grew thirstier at the sight of the can of Coors.
Switching off the penlight, he said, "Good boy. Good, good, gooood
dog."
Moose whined happily. He sat at attention in the darkness at the foot
of the stool, waiting to be sent on another errand.
"Go, Moose. Lie down. That's a good dog."
Disappointed, the Lab moseyed into the corner and curled up on the
floor, while his roaster popped the tab on the beer and took a long
swallow.
Harry set the Coors aside and pulled the telescope in front of him. He
returned to his scrutiny of the night, the neighborhood, and his
extended family.
The Gosdales and Kaisers were still playing cards.
Nothing but eddying fog moved at Callan's Funeral Home.
One block south on Conquistador, at the moment illuminated by the
walkway lamps at the Stemback house, Ray Chang, the owner of the town's
only television and electronics store, was coming this way. He was
walking his dog, Jack, a golden retriever. They moved at a leisurely
pace, as Jack sniffed each tree ' - 79 along the sidewalk, searching for
just the right one on which to relieve himself.
The tranquillity and familiarity of those scenes pleased Harry, but the
mood was shattered abruptly when he shifted his attention through his
north window to the Simpson place. Ella and Denver Simpson lived in a
cream-colored, tile-roofed Spanish house on the other side of
Conquistador and two blocks north, just beyond the old Catholic cemetery
and one block this side of Ocean Avenue. Because nothing in the
graveyard-except part of one tree-obstructed Harry's view of the
Simpsons' property, he was able to get an angled but tight focus on all
the windows on two sides of the house. He drew in on the lighted
kitchen. Just as the image in the eyepiece resolved from a blur to a
sharp-lined picture, he saw Ella Simpson struggling with her husband,
who was pressing her against the refrigerator; she was twisting in his
grasp, clawing at his face, screaming.
A shiver sputtered the length of Harry's shrapnel-damaged spine.
He knew at once that what was happening at the Simpsons' house was
connected with other disturbing things he had seen lately. Denver was
Moonlight Cove's postmaster, and Ella operated a successful beauty
parlor. They were in their midthirties, one of the few local black
couples, and as far as Harry knew, they were happily married. Their
physical conflict was so out of character that it had to be related to
the recent inexplicable and ominous events that Harry had witnessed.
Ella wrenched free of Denver. She took only one twisting step away from
him before he swung a fist at her. The blow caught her on the side of
the neck. She went down. Hard.
In the corner of Harry's bedroom, Moose detected the new tension i
n his
master. The dog d his head and chuted once, twice.
Bent forward on his stool, riveted to the eyepiece, Harry saw two men
step forward from a part of the Simpson kitchen that was out of line
with the window. Though they were not in uniform, he recognized them as
Moonlight Cove police officers Paul Hawthorne and Reese Dorn. Their
presence confirmed Harry's intuitive sense that this incident was part
of the bizarre pattern of violence and conspiracy of which he had become
increasingly aware during the past several weeks. Not for the first
time, he wished to God he could figure out what was going on in his once
serene little town. Hawthorne and Dorn plucked Ella off the floor and
held her firmly between them. She appeared to be only half conscious,
dazed by the punch her husband had thrown.
Denver was speaking to Hawthorne, Dorn, or his wife. Impossible to tell
which. His face was contorted with rage of such intensity that Harry
was chilled by it.
A third man stepped into sight, moving straight to the windows to close
the Levolor blinds. A thicker vein of fog flowed eastward from the sea,
clouding the view, but Harry recognized this man too Dr. Ian
Fitzgerald, the oldest of Moonlight Cove's three physicians. He had
maintained a family practice in town for almost thirty years and had
long been known affectionately as Doc Fitz. He was Harry's own doctor,
an unfailingly warm and concerned man, but at the moment he looked
colder than an ice berg. As the slats of the Levolor blind came
together, Harry stared into Doc Fitzs face and saw a hardness of
features and a fierceness in the eyes that weren't characteristic of the
man; thanks to the telescope, Harry seemed to be only a foot from the
old physician, and what he saw was a familiar face but, simultaneously,
that of a total stranger.
Unable to peer into the kitchen any longer, he pulled back for a wider
view of the house. He was pressing too hard against the eyepiece; dull
pain radiated outward from the socket, across his face. He cursed the
curdling fog but tried to relax.
Moose whined inquisitively.
After a minute, a light came on in the room at the southeast corner of
the second floor of the Simpson house. Harry immediately zoomed in on a
window. The master bedroom. In spite of the occluding fog, e saw
Hawthorne and Dorn bring Ella in from the upstairs hall. They threw her
onto the quilted blue spread on the queen-size bed.
Denver and Doc Fitz entered the room behind them. The doctor put his
black leather bag on a nightstand. Denver drew the drapes at the front
window that looked out on Conquistador Avenue, then came to the
graveyard-side window on which Harry was focused. For a moment Denver
stared out into the night, and Harry had the eerie feeling that the man
saw him, though they were two blocks away, as if Denver had the vision
of Superman, a built-in biological telescope of his own. The same - 81
sensation had gripped Harry on other occasions, when he was "eye-to-eye"
with people this way, long before odd things had begun to happen in
Moonlight Cove, so he knew that Denver was not actually aware of him. He
was spooked nonetheless. Then the postmaster pulled those curtains
shut, as well, though not as tightly as he should have done, leaving a
two-inch gap between the panels.
Trembling now, damp with cold perspiration, Harry worked with a series
of eyepieces, adjusting the power on the scope and trying to sharpen the
focus, until he had pulled in so close to the window that the lens was
filled by the narrow slot between the drapes. He seemed to be not
merely at the window but beyond it, standing in that master bedroom,
behind the drapes.
The denser scarves of fog slipped eastward, and a thinner veil floated
in from the sea, further improving Harry's view. Hawthorne and Dorn
were holding Ella Simpson on the bed. She was thrashing, but they had
her by the legs and arms, and she was no match for them.
Denver held his wife's face by the chin and stuffed a wadded
handkerchief or piece of white clothing into her mouth, gagging her.
Harry had a brief glimpse of the woman's face as she struggled with her
assailants. Her eyes were wide with terror.
"Oh, shit."
Moose got up and came to him.
In the Simpsons' house, Ella's valiant struggle had caused her skirt to
ride up. Her pale yellow panties were exposed. Buttons had popped open
on her green blouse. In spite of that, the scene conveyed no feeling
that rape was imminent, not even a hint of sexual tension. Whatever they
were doing to her was perhaps even more menacing and cruel-and certainly
stranger-than rape.
Doc Fitz stepped to the foot of the bed, blocking Harry's view of Ella
and her oppressors. The physician held a bottle of amber fluid, from
which he was filling a hypodermic syringe.
The were giving Ella an injection.
But of what?
And why?
After talking with her mother in San Diego, Tessa Lockland sat on her
motel bed and watched a nature documentary on PBS. Aloud, she critiqued
the camera work, the composition of shots, lighting, editing techniques,
scripted narration, and other aspects of the production, until she
abruptly realized she sounded foolish talking to herself. Then she
mocked herself by imitating various television movie critics, commenting
on the documentary in each of their styles, which turned out to be dull
because most TV critics were pompous in one way or another, with the
exception of Roger Ebert. Nevertheless, although having fun, Tessa was
talking to herself, which was too eccentric even for a nonconformist who
had reached the age of thirty-three without ever having to take a
nine-to-five job. Visiting the scene of her sister's "suicide" had made
her edgy. She was seeking comic relief from that grim pilgrimage. But
at certain times, in certain places, even the irrepressible Lockland
buoyancy was inappropriate.
She clicked off the television and retrieved the empty plastic ice
bucket from the bureau. Leaving the door to her room ajar, taking only
some coins, she headed toward the south end of the second floor to the
ice-maker and soda-vending machine.
Tessa had always prided herself on avoiding the nine-to-five grind.
Absurdly proud, actually, considering that she often put in twelve and
fourteen hours a day instead of eight, and was a tougher boss than any
she could have worked for in a routine job. Her income was nothing to
preen about, either. She had enjoyed a few flush years, when she could
not have stopped making money if she'd tried, but they were far
outnumbered by the years in which she had earned little more than a
subsistence living. Averaging her income for the twelve years since she
had - 83 finished film school, she'd recently calculated that her annual
earnings were around twenty-one thousand, though that figure would be
drastically readjusted downward if she did not have another boom year
soon.
Though she was not rich, th
ough free-lance documentary filmmaking
offered no security to speak of, she felt like a success, and not just
because her work generally had been well received by the critics and not
only because she was blessed with the Lockland disposition toward
optimism. She felt successful because she had always been resistant to
authority and had found, in her work, a way to be the master of her own
destiny.
At the end of the long corridor, she pushed through a heavy fire door
and stepped onto a landing, where the ice-maker and soda cooler stood to
the left of the head of the stairs. Well stocked with cola, root beer,
Orange Crush, and 7-Up, the tall vending machine was humming softly, but
the ice-maker was broken and empty. She would have to fill up her
bucket at the machine on the ground floor. She descended the stairs,
her footsteps echoing off the concrete-block walls. The sound was so
hollow and cold that she might have been in a vast pyramid or some other
ancient structure, alone but for the companionship of unseen spirits.
At the foot of the stairs, she found no soda or ice machines, but a sign
on the wall indicated that the ground-floor refreshment center was at
the north end of the motel. By the time she got her ice and Coke, she
would have walked off enough calories to deserve a regular, sugar-packed
cola instead of a diet drink.
As she reached for the handle of the fire door that led to the
ground-floor corridor, she thought she heard the upper door open at the
head of the stairs. If so, it was the first indication she'd had, since
checking in, that she was not the only guest in the motel. The place
had an abandoned air.
She went through the fire door and found that the lower corridor was
Dean Koontz - (1989) Page 11