by Dean Koontz
In such circumstances, not reliably but occasionally, Radley Dubose experiences a welling up of down-home neighborliness and backwoods charm, which most of the time exists in him only to the extent that water exists in a stone. He is then capable of spending an hour to help a lost three-legged dog cross a busy street, take it to the address on its collar, and chat with the grateful owner.
With the phone to one ear, muttering solemn one- and two-word responses to whatever the caller is telling him, Dubose fortunately is not in a she-reminds-me-of-my-granny mood. He increases speed as they approach the disabled pickup, although as they flash past the old woman, he toots the horn twice as if to say that he’s rooting for her not to end up as a vulture’s dinner.
When the big man terminates the call and returns the smartphone to his crotch, his eyes remain unreadable behind the lenses of his sunglasses, but otherwise his expression is somber. “Here it is party time, and someone pissed in the punch bowl.”
Jergen supposes that must be a Princeton expression. “Give me a translation.”
“We got a really bad crocodile incident over at the Corrigan place.”
“Crocodiles are tropical, not desert reptiles,” Jergen says.
“It’s not that kind of crocodile. It’s the kind Bertold Shenneck worried about.”
Shenneck was the scientist who’d developed the nanomachine brain implants. With the assistance of several financial backers of his research, he also evolved the strategy and tactics for imposing the Arcadian utopia on a troubled, disordered world.
Dubose says, “You’ll see soon enough, when we get to Rooney Corrigan’s place.”
“Who’s he?” Jergen asks.
“Third-generation Borrego Valley. Knows a lot of people around here, who’s who, what’s what. He’s ideal for the search party.”
“Sandsucker high society.”
“He, his wife, two sons—all were brain-screwed last night.”
“The approved term is adjusted. They were adjusted last night, and they’re now adjusted people.”
Dubose makes a dismissive sound between a sigh and a snort. “I say potato, you say po-tah-to.”
2
CORNELL WOKE EARLY. ON THE iPod, Mr. Paul Simon was softly singing an ultra infectious song: “Some people say a lie’s a lie’s a lie, but I say why, why deny the obvious child, why deny the obvious child….”
When Cornell had awakened hours earlier, he’d been scared and needed music. The iPod was programmed with different playlists of Mr. Paul Simon’s songs that he found suitable for the dead of night.
The boy was still snoozing on the other big sofa. Both dogs were curled up there with him, and right now they didn’t look like they had ever bitten anyone or ever would.
Cornell went into the bathroom, where he stopped just inside the door, abruptly in the grip of dread, though he didn’t know why. Oh, yes. The toothbrush. But the toothbrush wasn’t here now, and the boy hadn’t meant to terrorize him. It wouldn’t happen again.
Cornell brushed his teeth without fear, showered, dressed for the day, and returned to the sofas. The boy still slept, but the dogs were alert.
Mr. Paul Simon was singing: “Losing love is like a window in your heart, everybody sees you’re blown apart….”
The German shepherds got off the sofa without disturbing the boy. They were very considerate dogs.
Cornell fed them kibble and took them out to toilet.
While he stood waiting, he heard an airplane. It was louder than usual for air traffic in this remote valley. He searched the sky. When he found the plane, it was passing over at less than two thousand feet, heading south.
The dogs peed first but then they wandered around, sniffing the ground, sniffing the weeds, and took their time deciding whether and where to poop.
Just as the dogs finished their business, the sound of the airplane, which had faded, grew louder once more.
Duke and Queenie scampered over toward the little blue house, not running away, just playing with each other.
Cornell watched the sky, and this time the plane appeared on a northward course. He was pretty sure this was the same aircraft and that it was a twin-engine model, not a light single-engine Piper or the like that came and went from the Anza Air Park.
After all these years of living with himself, Cornell Jasperson still didn’t know why he was the way he was. He probably never would understand himself, because each time he seemed on an even keel, his day shaped by routines and rituals that kept him nicely balanced and content, something that never disturbed him before suddenly caused him great anxiety. Like a toothbrush. Or this airplane.
Previously, the sounds made by airplanes—or by trucks, cars, motorcycles, machinery—had not once concerned him. But for some reason, this plane…this plane now threw off a sound that he felt as well as heard, that crawled on his skin like thousands of ants, spiraled up his nostrils, squirmed in his ears, prickled across his eyes on tens of thousands of invisible-ant legs.
For years, Cornell had worn dreadlocks. Just ten days earlier, he’d learned that Mr. Bob Marley, the reggae star, had been dead for decades. So then he began waking up at night and thinking about Mr. Bob Marley in a coffin. He felt as if he was wearing a dead man’s hair. Although he never liked reggae, Cornell became so disturbed that he shaved his head as smooth as a misshapen egg.
The dreadlocks incident was a minor disturbance compared to his reaction to the airplane. The noise again slowly faded, this time as the craft flew north, but its effect on Cornell didn’t diminish with its volume. Invisible ants were crawling over him and all through his insides, even through the chambers of his heart. The sound was touching him, touching him in the invasive, demanding way that people touched him, and he knew the airplane was going to drain his mind and soul from him, so that he would not be anybody anymore, just a thing without memories and purpose.
He shouted at the dogs, calling them to him. He turned from them and hunched his dinosaur shoulder blades and ducked his head and ran in his shambling fashion toward the barn that was a secret library, surprised at how far he had moved away from it.
The electronic key in a pocket of his jeans signaled the lock to disengage. He stumbled into the vestibule.
The dogs exploded into it behind him, excited by his anxiety, or maybe thinking he wanted to play, panting and whining with what sounded like delight, tongues lolling, claws clicking on the floor, spanking each other with their tails, dancing around in the small space, thumping against the walls. The door fell shut behind them.
From this side, the inner door of the vestibule would open only to Cornell’s touch. In his fright, he reached for the lever-style handle and thought of the boy inside and stayed his hand and stood trembling, confused, torn between an urgent need for the refuge of the library and a desire not to alarm the child.
A crawly feeling head to foot, blood flukes swimming through his veins and arteries and nibbling at his heart from within its auricles and ventricles, spiders swarming across the walls of his stomach, centipedes squirming into his bones to lay eggs in his marrow: Pestilence in great variety infested him, consuming his soul and mind in millions of microscopic bites….
The airplane had passed to the north, and although a little of the engine noise might still be scratching at the morning beyond the outer door, none penetrated to the vestibule. However, the absence of the offending sound didn’t at once relieve his reaction to it. Sometimes, after such an episode, he was distraught for hours, needed to lie down in the quiet dark to imagine that he floated in a cooling pool of water.
But he couldn’t turn off the light in the vestibule and stand here for hours until the heebie-jeebies passed. The boy might wake and wonder where he had gone. Cornell was responsible for the boy until his mother came for him, until his mother came, until his mother came. Besides, even if the foyer was entirely da
rk, the dogs would not be perfectly quiet. And while he was standing instead of lying down, he couldn’t easily pretend that he was floating in a soothing pool of water.
“Cornell,” said Cornell aloud, impatient with himself, “you can do this thing here. You can calm yourself and be responsible about the little boy. You’re responsible about designing good apps that make millions of people happy, and you’re responsible with managing your scary amount of money, keeping it safe and making it grow, so you can be responsible about the boy.”
Of course he never saw the millions who used his apps, and he communicated with his bankers and investment advisers only by phone and email. There was no chance that they would have an opportunity to touch him. But the boy might do that, even though he knew that he shouldn’t, might touch Cornell by accident.
The dogs whined, wondering why they were delayed here.
Cornell thought, The boy is going to be at risk because of me, the boy is going to die because of me.
Horrified, he said, “No, no, no. The boy won’t die. The boy will live and grow old, live and grow old, live and grow very old.”
He gripped the door handle, and the electronic lock disengaged with a soft thunk.
With the memory of airplane sounds crawling every inch of his skin and squirming through his bones, Cornell didn’t return to the library so much as arrive there in a crash landing. Violently shaking his head and flailing his arms to cast off the offending noise, staggering forward on wobbly legs, he dropped to his knees as the jubilant dogs raced past him to greet their young master.
The boy had awakened and gotten up. He stood maybe eight feet away, holding a glass of chocolate milk, regarding Cornell with what looked like fear but might have been concern, because he said, “Are you all right? Can I do something? Are you okay?”
Gasping for breath, Cornell said, “Dogs, the dogs, me and the dogs, we were playing, they peed and pooped and then wanted to play, and we were running around under the airplane, running and running, and they wore me out.”
This was a lie, but it wasn’t a terrible mortal lie, just a little fib so that the boy wouldn’t be afraid for Cornell or for himself.
“Do you want some chocolate milk?” the boy asked.
“Not right now.” Cornell stretched out on his back. “I’m just going to lie here and calm down, calm down, calm down.”
“I already got a muffin and took it to my chair. But I can get it and sit here with you.”
“No, no.” Cornell pretended to be breathing harder than he really needed to, because gasping helped hide the fact he shook with fear. “I just want to lie here on the cool floor, like it’s a fool of water. Pool. Pool of water. Float here on the floor and close my eyes and get my death. My breath. Get my breath.”
“Okay then,” the boy said, and he went to his chair.
The dogs came sniffing around, and Cornell feared they would touch him with their noses, but they didn’t, and then they went away to be with Travis.
The hateful, unwanted, terrifying thought came to Cornell again: The boy is going to die because of me.
3
HAVING TRAVELED NINETY-TWO MILES FROM Houston, Egon Gottfrey in his Rhino GX, followed by the competent-if-methamphetamine-popping Rupert Baldwin and the impossible Vince Penn in their bespoke Jeep Wrangler, arrives at the bus station in Beaumont, Texas, shortly before 7:00 A.M.
They haven’t been able to view the video of Ancel and Clare in advance of their arrival. According to the Unknown Playwright, who evidently thinks it makes for good drama to keep putting obstacles in their way, the NSA archives the traffic-cam and public-facility video from all major cities, but not yet from every city and town with a population lower than 150,000, though they’re working on it.
The population of Beaumont is approximately 120,000, so if the locals want to be part of the Great Orwellian future, they better get busy having babies.
Waiting for Gottfrey and his men is an FBI agent named Leon Fettwiler, who is as memorable as a dish of vanilla ice cream. To the best of Gottfrey’s knowledge, Fettwiler is not an Arcadian; but he was in the area and dispatched to view the bus-terminal video.
With Fettwiler is the bus-station manager, so nondescript that she makes Fettwiler look flamboyant. Gottfrey doesn’t even bother to listen to her name, for it’s obvious that this woman is a walk-on and will not reappear, less a real character than a thin concept.
The video can be viewed on a monitor in the nameless manager’s office. The terminal’s video recorder is old and oddly configured, so the disc that contains the images preserves them only for seven days, cannot be tapped to transfer its data to another device, and can be viewed only here. Enduring the manager’s convoluted explanation for this inconvenience is as boring as listening to someone read aloud from a health-insurance policy.
When the video finally runs—a four-second snippet from 5:05 P.M. the previous day—it’s the quality of a 1950s porno film shot with an 8 mm camera in a motel room, using only available lamplight. Gottfrey, Rupert, and Vince crowd together to watch a woman of Clare’s height and build step out of a bus. She wears a headscarf. Following her is a Stetson-wearing man of Ancel’s height and build.
“Who are they, anyway?” the station manager asks.
Viewing the brief video again, Gottfrey says, “Criminals.”
“What have they done?”
“Committed crimes.”
“We’re not at liberty to say,” Fettwiler tells the station manager, as if Gottfrey hasn’t made that clear.
Video from a different camera shows the same man and woman meeting an Uber driver in front of the terminal. Since they are leaving the station, the camera catches them mostly from the back.
“Is it them?” Gottfrey asks Rupert Baldwin.
Fingering his bolo tie, shifting his weight back and forth from one of his Hush Puppies to the other, Rupert squints at a third and fourth playing of the first video segment. “Damn if I know.”
Vince speaks up. “Me neither. They might be, they might not. It’s hard to say. The video isn’t good. The lighting isn’t—”
“Oh, it’s them, sure enough,” says Fettwiler, mercifully putting an end to Vince Penn’s analysis. “The Uber driver will confirm without hesitation.”
“Where is he?” Gottfrey asks.
“He wouldn’t come in here. Insists we meet him out in the parking lot.”
The Uber guy is waiting beside his car, a white GMC Terrain SLE. The Unknown Playwright has found the energy to paint this character with somewhat more detail than the station manager and Fettwiler. His name is Tucker Treadmont. He’s maybe thirty, stands about five feet six, weighs maybe 240 pounds. He is wearing pointy-toed boots, baggy jeans, and a pale blue polo shirt that shapes itself to his unfortunately large man breasts. His brown hair is slicked back, his round face appears so smooth as to be beardless, and his greenish gray eyes assess Gottfrey with the calculation of a card mechanic sizing up a mark.
Fettwiler produces 8 × 10 photos of Ancel and Clare from a manila envelope.
Tucker Treadmont says, “Yeah, that’s the dude and his squeeze. They booked the ride an hour earlier, and I got the call.”
“Where did you take them?” Gottfrey asks.
“What works best for me is I drive you there and show you.”
“We have vehicles of our own.”
“I could be workin’ now. I’m not some stinkin’ millionaire.”
“We haven’t booked you through Uber.”
“I also drive my own time. Uber don’t own my ass.”
This back-and-forth continues for a half minute before Gottfrey warns Treadmont that he’s obstructing justice, when what he wants to do instead is use his collapsible baton to reshape the guy’s head.
The charge of obstruction is of no concern to the driver, and after yet a few more exchan
ges, Gottfrey decides that it doesn’t matter if he breaks the rules and pays. The guy isn’t real, anyway, and neither is the money. Only Gottfrey is real, and this is just the Playwright trying to make him crazy. So get on with it.
“How much if you drive and we follow?”
Treadmont says, “One hundred twenty-one dollars, fifty cents.”
“You’re not serious.”
“The place I took them, it’s not just around the corner.”
Determined not to round it up with a tip, Gottfrey takes six twenties from his wallet, but he has no one-dollar bills. Rupert provides a dollar, and Vince has two quarters.
“We’re fine from here,” Gottfrey tells Fettwiler. “Thanks for all your help.”
“I was planning to stay with you on this next part.”
“Unnecessary. We’ve got it.”
Fettwiler is gone as if he never existed.
In his Rhino GX, with Rupert and Vince in the Jeep Wrangler behind him, Gottfrey follows the GMC Terrain out of the parking lot.
They haven’t gone a block when his smartphone rings. The call is from the leader of his cell, Judge Sheila Draper-Cruxton.
The conversation that Gottfrey had with her the previous night, during his cab ride to the Hyatt Regency in Houston, was so pleasant that he looks forward to speaking with her again. Until she starts to chew him out for the screwup at the Longrin place. Janis Dern clearly had psychological problems. Gottfrey should have recognized her instability. He never should have included her in the operation. In fact, considering that she represented a grave potential risk to the revolution, he should have taken her someplace quiet and put a bullet in her head long before this. Yada, yada, yada. The judge assures him that his failure in this matter will have consequences and warns him not to fail to capture Ancel and Clare Hawk, because if he doesn’t get his hands on them pronto, the consequences will be serious, indeed. “Were you shtupping the bitch?” she asks.