Koontz, Dean- (2003) - Odd Thomas

by Odd Thomas(Lit)

  "She won't. She'll stay there. She won't want to jeopardize her job. She won't want to appear fearful, because that makes her look weak, and these days women don't want to seem weak any more than men do. Later she might ask someone to walk with her to her car, but that's all."

  Stormy stared at the blonde behind the bar while I surveyed the room for any bodachs that might precede the executioner. Nobody here but us humans.

  "She's so pretty, so full of life," Stormy said, meaning the bartender. "So much personality, such an infectious laugh."

  "She seems more alive to you because you know she might be fated to die young."

  "It just seems wrong to walk out and leave her there," Stormy said, "without warning her, without giving her a chance."

  "The best way to give her a chance, to give all the potential victims a chance, is to stop Robertson before he does anything."

  "What's the likelihood you'll stop him?"

  "Better than if he'd never come into the Grille this morning and I'd never gotten a look at him with his bodach entourage."

  "But you can't be sure you'll stop him."

  "Nothing's for sure in this world."

  Searching my eyes, she thought about what I'd said, and then re­minded me: "Except us."

  "Except us." I pushed my chair away from the table. "Let's go."

  Still staring at the blonde, Stormy said, "This is so hard."

  "I know."

  "So unfair."

  "What death isn't?"

  She rose from her chair. "You won't let her die, will you, Oddie?"

  "I'll do what I can."

  We went outside, hoping to be gone before the promised police of­ficer arrived and became curious about my involvement.

  No cops on the Pico Mundo force understand my relationship with Chief Porter. They sense that something's different about me, but they don't realize what I see, what I know. The chief covers well for me.

  Some think that I hang around Wyatt Porter because I'm a cop wannabe. They assume that I yearn for the glamour of the police life, but that I don't have quite the smarts or the guts to do the job.

  Most of them believe that I regard the chief as a father figure be­cause my real father is such a hopeless piece of work. This view con­tains some truth.

  They are convinced that the chief took pity on me when at the age of sixteen I could no longer live with either my father or my mother, and found myself turned out into the world. Because Wyatt and Karla were never able to have children, people think that the chief has a fa­therly affection for me and regards me as a surrogate son. I am deeply comforted by the fact that this seems to be true.

  Being cops, however, the members of the Pico Mundo PD sense in­stinctively that they lack some crucial knowledge to be able to fully understand our relationship. Likewise, although I appear uncompli­cated and even simple, they regard me as a puzzle with more than one missing piece.

  When Stormy and I stepped out of Green Moon Lanes at ten o'clock, an hour after nightfall, the temperature in Pico Mundo re­mained over a hundred degrees. By midnight the air might cool below triple digits.

  If Bob Robertson was intent on making Hell on Earth, we had the weather for it.

  Walking toward Terri Stambaugh's Mustang, still thinking about the death-marked blond bartender, Stormy said, "Sometimes I don't know how you can live with all the things you see."

  "Attitude," I told her.

  "Attitude? How's that work?"

  "Better some days than others."

  She would have pressed me for a further explanation, but the patrol car arrived, pinning us in its headlights before we reached the Mustang. Certain that I would have been recognized, I waited hand-in-hand with Stormy for the cruiser to stop beside us.

  The responding officer, Simon Varner, had been on the force only three or four months, which was longer than Bern Eckles, who had regarded me with suspicion at the chief's barbecue, but not long enough for the sharp edge to have been worn off his curiosity about me.

  Officer Varner had a face as sweet as that of any host of a children's TV program, with heavy-lidded eyes like those of the late actor Robert Mitchum. He leaned toward the open window, his burly arm resting on the door, looking like the model for a sleepy bear in some Disney cartoon.

  "Odd, pleasure seeing you. Miss Llewellyn. What should I be look­ing for here?"

  I was certain that the chief had not used my name when he had dis­patched Officer Varner to the bowling center. When I was involved in a case, he made a point of keeping me as invisible as possible, never

  alluding to information acquired by preternatural means, the better not only to protect my secrets but also to ensure that no defense attorney could easily spring a murderer by claiming that the entire case against his client had been built upon the word of a flaky, self-proclaimed psychic.

  On the other hand, because of my intrusion at the barbecue that re­sulted in the effort by the chief and Bern Eckles to put together a quick profile of Robertson, Eckles knew that I had some connection to the situation. If Eckles knew, then word would get around; it might already be on the police-department grapevine.

  Still, it seemed best to play dumb. "What should you be looking for? Sir, I don't understand."

  "I see you, I figure you told the chief something that makes him send me out here."

  "We were just watching some friends bowl," I said. "I'm no good at it myself."

  Stormy said, "He owns the gutter."

  From the car seat beside him, Varner produced a computer-printed blow-up of Bob Robertson's driver's-license photograph. "You know this guy, right?"

  I said, "I've seen him twice today. I don't really know him."

  "You didn't tell the chief he might show up here?"

  "Not me. How would I know where he'd show up?"

  "Chief says if I see him coming but I can't see both his hands, don't figure he's just getting a breath mint from his pocket."

  "I wouldn't second-guess the chief."

  A Lincoln Navigator pulled in from the street and paused behind Varner's cruiser. He stuck his arm all the way out of the window and waved the SUV around him.

  I could see two men in the Navigator. Neither was Robertson.

  "How do you know this guy?" Varner asked.

  "Before noon, he came in the Grille for lunch."

  The lids lifted slightly from those sleepy-bear eyes. "That's all? You cooked his lunch? I thought... something went down between you and him."

  "Something. Not much." I compressed the day, leaving out what Varner didn't need to know: "He was weird at the Grille. The chief was there at the time, saw him being weird. So then this afternoon, I'm off work, out and about, minding my own business, and this Robertson flips me off, gets aggressive with me."

  Varner's heavy lids became hoods, narrowing his eyes to slits of sus­picion. Instinct told him that I was withholding information. He wasn't as slow as he looked. 'Aggressive how?"

  Stormy saved me from a rough lie with a smooth one: "The creep made a crude pass at me, and Odd told him to back off."

  Fungus Man didn't look like the kind of macho stud who thought every woman was panting for him.

  Stormy, however, is so strikingly good-looking that Varner, already in a suspicious mood, seemed inclined to believe that even a schlump like Bob Robertson would work up enough hormones to try his luck with her.

  He said, "Chief thinks this guy vandalized St. Bart's. You know about that, I guess."

  Deflecting this dogged Sherlock, Stormy said, "Officer Varner, cu­riosity is killing me. Do you mind my asking - what's your tattoo mean?"

  He wore a short-sleeve shirt, exposing his massive forearms. On his left arm, above his watch, were three block letters: POD.

  "Miss Llewellyn, I'm sorry to say that as a teenager I was one screwed-up puppy. Got myself involved in gangs. Turned my life around before it was too late. I thank the Lord Jesus for that. This tat­too was a gang thing."

  "What do the letters stand
for?" she asked.

  He seemed embarrassed. "It's a crude obscenity, miss. I'd rather not say."

  "You could have it removed," she said. "They've gotten a lot better at that in recent years."

  Varner said, "Thought about doing just that. But I keep it to remind me how far off the right path I once went and how easy it was to take that first wrong step."

  "That's so fascinating and so admirable," she said, leaning closer to the window as if to get a better look at this paragon of virtue. "Lots of people rewrite their past rather than face up to it. I'm glad to know we've got men like you looking out for us."

  She poured this verbal syrup so smoothly that it sounded sincere.

  While Officer Varner was basking in her flattery as happily as a waf­fle in whipped butter, she turned to me and said, "Odd, I've got to get home. I have an early morning."

  I wished Officer Varner good luck, and he made no attempt to con­tinue grilling me. He seemed to have forgotten his suspicions.

  In the car, I said to her, "I never realized you had such a talent for deceit."

  "Oh, that's too serious a word for it. I just manipulated him a little."

  "After we're married, I'm going to be on the lookout for that," I warned her as I started the car.

  "What do you mean?"

  "In case you ever try to manipulate me a little."

  "Good heavens, odd one, I manipulate you every day. And fold and spindle you, as well."

  I couldn't tell if she was serious. "You do?"

  "Gently, of course. Gently and with great affection. And you always like it."

  "I do?"

  "You have numerous little tricks to get me to do it."

  I put the car in gear but kept my foot on the brake. "You're saying I invite manipulation?"

  "Some days I think you thrive on it."

  "I can't tell if you're serious."

  "I know. You're adorable."

  "Puppies are adorable. I'm not a puppy"

  "You and puppies. Totally adorable."

  "You are serious."

  "Am I?"

  I studied her. "No. No, you're not."

  "Aren't I?"

  I sighed. "I can see the dead, but I can't see through you."

  When we drove out of the parking lot, Officer Varner was parked near the front entrance to Green Moon Lanes.

  Instead of running a quiet surveillance of the place with the hope of nabbing Robertson before violence could be committed, he was making himself highly visible, as a deterrent. This interpretation of his assignment was most likely not one the chief would have ap­proved.

  As we passed him, Officer Varner waved at us. He appeared to be eating a doughnut.

  Granny Sugars always railed against negative thinking because she superstitiously believed that when we worry about being afflicted by one evil or another, we are in fact inviting in the very devil that we fear and are assuring the occurrence of the event we dread. Nevertheless, I could not help but think how easily Bob Robertson might approach the cruiser from behind and shoot Simon Varner in the head while he noshed on his Krispy Kremes.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  VIOLA PEABODY, THE WAITRESS WHO HAD SERVED LUNCH to me and Terri at the Grille just eight eventful hours ago, lived only two blocks from Camp's End, but because of her tireless gardening and painting and carpentry, her home seemed to be a world away from those dreary streets.

  Although small and simple, the house resembled a fairy-tale cottage in one of those romantic paintings by Thomas Kinkade. Under the gib­bous moon, its walls glowed as softly as backlit alabaster, and a carriage lamp revealed the crimson petals of the flowers on the trumpet vine festooning the trellis that flanked and overhung the front door.

  Without any apparent surprise that we arrived unannounced at this hour, Viola greeted Stormy and me graciously, with a smile and with an offer of coffee or iced tea, which we declined.

  We sat in the small living room where Viola herself had stripped and refinished the wood floor. She had woven the rag rug. She had sewn the chintz curtains and the slipcovers that made old upholstered furniture look new.

  Perched on the edge of an armchair, Viola was as slim as a girl. The

  travails and burdens of her life had left no mark on her. She did not look old enough or harried enough to be the single mother of the five-and six-year-old daughters who were asleep in a back room.

  Her husband, Rafael, who'd left her and who'd contributed not one penny to his children's welfare, was a fool of such dimensions that he should have been required to dress like a jester, complete with silly hat and curled-toe shoes.

  The house lacked air conditioning. The windows were open, and an electric fan sat on the floor, the oscillating blades imparting an illu­sion of coolness to the air.

  Leaning forward with her hands braced on her knees, Viola traded her smile for a look of solemn expectation, for she knew why I must have come. "It's my dream, isn't it?" she said softly.

  I spoke quietly, too, in respect of the sleeping children. "Tell me again."

  "I saw myself, a hole in my forehead, my face... broken."

  "You think you were shot."

  "Shot dead," she confirmed, folding her hands together between her knees, as if in prayer. "My right eye bloodshot and swollen all ugly, half out of the socket."

  "Anxiety dreams," Stormy said, meaning to reassure. "They don't have anything to do with the future."

  "We've been over this territory," Viola told her. "Odd...he was of that same opinion this afternoon." She looked at me. "You must have changed your mind, or you wouldn't be here."

  "Where were you in the dream?"

  "No place. You know, a dream place...all fuzzy, fluid."

  "Do you ever go bowling?"

  "That takes money. I have two colleges to save for. My girls are go­ing to be somebody."

  "Have you ever been inside Green Moon Lanes?"

  She shook her head. "No."

  "Did anything in the dream suggest the place might have been a bowling alley?"

  "No. Like I said, it wasn't any real place. Why do you say the bowl­ing alley? You have a dream, too?"

  "I did, yes.

  "People dead?" Viola asked.

  "Yes."

  "You ever have dreams come true?"

  "Sometimes," I admitted.

  "I knew you'd understand. That's why I asked you to read me."

  "Tell me more about your dream, Viola."

  She closed her eyes, striving to remember. "I'm running from something. There are these shadows, some flashes of light, but none of it is anything."

  My sixth sense is unique in its nature and its clarity. But I believe that many people have less dramatic and undiscovered supernatural perceptions that manifest from time to time throughout their lives: presentiments that come sometimes in the form of dreams, as well as other moments of uncanny awareness and insight.

  They fail to explore these experiences in part because they believe that acknowledging the supernatural would be irrational. They are also frightened, often unconsciously, by the prospect of opening their minds and hearts to the truth of a universe far more complex and meaningful than the material world that their education tells them is the sum of all things.

  I was not surprised, therefore, that Viola's nightmare, which earlier in the day had seemed likely to be of no consequence, had proved to be a matter of importance, after all. "Do your dreams have voices, sounds?" I asked her. "Some people's don't."

  "Mine do. In the dream, I can hear myself breathing. And this crowd."

  "Crowd?"

  "A roaring crowd, like the sound in a stadium."

  Baffled, I said, "Where would such a place be in Pico Mundo?"

  "I don't know. Maybe a Little League game."

  "Not such a big crowd at one of those," Stormy noted.

  "Wasn't necessarily thousands of voices. Could've been a couple hundred," Viola said. "Just a crowd, all roaring."

  I said, 'And then, how is it that yo
u see yourself shot?"

  "Don't see it happen. The shadows, the flashes of light, I'm run­ning, and I stumble, fall on my hands and knees..."

  Viola's eyes twitched behind their lids as though she were asleep and experiencing the nightmare for the first time.

  "...on my hands and knees," she repeated, "hands in something slippery. It's blood. Then shadows whirl away and light whirls in, and I'm looking down at my own dead face."

  She shuddered and opened her eyes.

  Tiny beads of sweat stippled her forehead and her upper lip.

  In spite of the electric fan, the room was warm. But she hadn't been sweating before she began to recall the dream.

  "Is there anything else, any other details?" I asked. "Even the small­est thing might help me. What were you... I mean your dead body... what was it lying on? A floor of some kind? Grass? Blacktop?"

  She thought for a moment, shook her head. "Can't say. The only other thing was the man, the dead man."

  I sat up straighter on the sofa. "You mean another... corpse?"

  "Next to me...next to my body. He was sort of tumbled on his side, one arm twisted behind his back."

  "Were there other victims?" Stormy asked.

  "Maybe. I didn't see any but him."

  "Did you recognize him?"

  "Didn't get a look at his face. It was turned away from me."

  I said, "Viola, if you could try hard to remember - "

  "Anyway, I wasn't interested in him. I was too scared to wonder who he was. I looked in my own dead face, and I tried to scream, but I couldn't, and I tried harder, and then I was sitting up in bed, the scream squeezing out of me but, you know, only just the wheeze of a scream."

  The memory agitated Viola. She started to get up from the chair. Maybe her legs were weak. She sat down again.

  As though she were reading my mind, Stormy asked, "What was he wearing?"

  "What - him in the dream? One foot bent back, the shoe half off. A loafer."

  We waited while Viola searched her memory. Dreams that are as rich as cream while they unfold are skim milk when we wake, and in time they wash out of our minds, leaving as little residue as water fil­tered through cheesecloth.

  "His pants were splattered with blood," Viola said. "Khakis, I think. Tan pants, anyway."