by Dean Koontz
Marty and Paige intended to be at the doors, with Charlotte and Emily,
when the manager unlocked for business at eight o'clock Tuesday morning.
He disliked returning to Mission Viejo, but he felt they would be able
to effect their transactions with the least difficulty at the particular
branch where they maintained their accounts. It was only eight or nine
blocks from their house. Many of the tellers would recognize him and
Paige.
The bank was in a free-standing brick building in the northwest corner
of a shopping-center parking lot, nicely landscaped and shaded by pine
trees, flanked on two sides by streets and on the other two sides by
acres of blacktop. At the far end of the parking lot, to the south and
east, was an L-shaped series of connected buildings that housed thirty
to forty businesses, including a supermarket.
Marty parked on the south side. The short walk from the BMW to the bank
door, with the kids between him and Paige, was unnerving because they
had to leave their guns in the car. He felt vulnerable.
He could imagine no way in which they might secretly bring a shotgun
inside with them, even a compact pistol-grip model like the Mossberg.
He didn't want to risk carrying the Beretta under his ski jacket because
he wasn't sure whether some bank-security systems included the ability
to detect a hidden handgun on anyone who walked through the door. If a
bank employee mistook him for a holdup man and the police were summoned
by a silent alarm, the cops would never give him the benefit of the
doubt--not considering the reputation he had with them after last night.
While Marty went directly to one of the teller's windows, Paige took
Charlotte and Emily to an arrangement of two short sofas and two
armchairs at one end of the long room, where patrons waited when they
had appointments with loan officers. The bank was not a cavernous
marble-lined monument to money with massive Doric columns and vaulted
ceiling, but a comparatively small place with an acoustic-tile ceiling
and all-weather green carpet. Though Paige and the kids were only sixty
feet from him, clearly visible any time he chose to glance their way, he
didn't like being separated from them by even that much distance.
The teller was a young woman--Lorraine Arakadian, according to the
nameplate at her window--whose round tortoise-shell glasses gave her an
owlish look. When Marty told her that he wanted to make a withdrawal of
seventy thousand dollars from their savings account--which had a balance
of more than seventy-four--she misunderstood, thinking he meant to
transfer that amount to checking.
When she put the applicable form in front of him to effect the
transaction, he corrected her misapprehension and asked for the entire
amount in hundred-dollar bills if possible.
She said, "Oh. I see. Well . . . that's a larger transaction than I
can make on my own authority, sir. I'll have to get permission from the
head teller or assistant manager."
"Of course," he said unconcernedly, as if he made large cash withdrawals
every week. "I understand."
She went to the far end of the long teller's cage to speak to an older
woman who was examining documents in one drawer of a large bank of
files. Marty recognized hen-Elaine Higgens, assistant manager. Mrs.
Higgens and Lorraine Arakadian glanced at Marty, then put their heads
together to confer again.
While he waited for them, Marty monitored both the south and east
entrances to the lobby, trying to look nonchalant even though he
expected The Other to walk through one door or another at any moment,
this time armed with an Uzi.
A writer's imagination. Maybe it wasn't a curse, after all. At least
not entirely. Maybe sometimes it was a survival tool. One thing for
sure, even the most fanciful writer's imagination had trouble keeping up
with reality these days.
He needs more time than he expected to find plates to swap for those on
the stolen Toyota Camry. He slept too late and took far too long to
make himself presentable. Now the world is coming awake, and he hasn't
the advantage of the dead-of-night privacy that would make the switch
easy. Large garden-apartment complexes, with shadowy carports and a
plenitude of vehicles, offer the ideal shopping for what he requires,
but as he tries one after another of these, he discovers too many
residents out and about, on their way to work.
Eventually his diligent search is rewarded in the parking lot behind a
church. A morning service is in progress. He can hear organ music.
Parishioners have left fourteen cars from which he can select, not a
large turnout for the Lord but adequate for his own purposes.
He leaves the engine of the Camry running while he looks for a car in
which the owner has left the keys. In the third one, a green Pontiac, a
full set dangles from the ignition.
He unlocks the trunk of the Pontiac, hoping it will contain at least an
emergency tool kit with a screwdriver. Because he hot-wired the Camry,
he doesn't have keys to its trunk. Again, he is in luck, a complete
road-emergency kit with flares, first-aid items, and a tool packet that
includes four screwdrivers of different types.
God is with him.
In a few minutes he exchanges the Camry's plates for those on the
Pontiac. He returns the tool kit to the trunk of the Pontiac and the
keys to the ignition.
As he's walking to the Camry, the church organ launches into a hymn with
which he is not familiar. That he doesn't know the name of the hymn is
not surprising, since he has only been to church three times that he can
recall. In two instances, he had gone to church to kill time until
movie theaters opened. On the third occasion he had been following a
woman he'd seen on the street and with whom he would have liked to share
sex and the special intimacy of death.
The music stirs him. He stands in the mild morning breeze, swaying
dreamily, eyes closed. He is moved by the hymn. Perhaps he has musical
talent. He should find out. Maybe playing an instrument of some kind
and composing songs would be easier than writing novels.
When the song ends, he gets in the Camry and leaves.
Marty exchanged pleasantries with Mrs. Higgens when she returned with
the teller. Evidently no one at the bank had seen the news about him,
as neither woman mentioned the assault. His crew-neck sweater and
button-down shirt concealed livid bruises around his neck. His voice
was mildly hoarse but not sufficiently so to cause comment.
Mrs. Higgens observed that the cash withdrawal he wished to make was
unusually large, phrasing her comment to induce him to explain why he
would risk carrying so much money around. He merely agreed it was,
indeed, unusually large and expressed the hope that he wasn't putting
them to much trouble. Unflagging affability was probably essential to
completing the transaction as swiftly as possible.
"I'm not sure we can pay it entirely in hundreds," Mrs. Higgens said.
She spoke softly, discreetly, thou
gh there were only two other customers
in the bank and neither of them nearby. "I'll have to check our supply
of bills in that denomination."
"Some twenties, fifties are okay," Marty assured her. "I'm just trying
to prevent it from getting too bulky."
Though both the assistant manager and the teller were smiling and
polite, Marty was aware of their curiosity and concern. They were in
the money business, after all, and they knew there weren't many
legitimate--and fewer sensible--reasons for anyone to carry seventy
thousand in cash.
Even if he had felt comfortable leaving Paige and the kids in the car,
Marty would not have done so. The first suspicion to cross a banker's
mind would be that the cash was needed to meet a ransom payment, and
prudence would require a call to the police. With the entire family
present, kidnapping could be ruled out.
Marty's teller began to consult with other tellers, tabulating the
number of hundreds contained in all their drawers, while Mrs. Higgens
disappeared through the open door of the vault at the back of the cage.
He glanced at Paige and the girls. East entrance. South. His watch.
Smiling, smiling all the while, smiling like an idiot.
We'll be out of here in fifteen minutes, he told himself. Maybe as few
as ten. Out of here and on our way and safe.
The dark wave hit him.
At a Denny's, he uses the men's room, then selects a booth by the
windows and orders an enormous breakfast.
His waitress is a cute brunette named Gayle. She makes jokes about his
appetite. She is coming on to him. He considers trying to make a date
with her. She has a lovely body, slender legs.
Having sex with Gayle would be adultery because he is married to Paige.
He wonders if it would still be adultery if, after having sex with
Gayle, he killed her.
He leaves her a good tip and decides to return within a week or two and
ask her for a date. She has a pert nose, sensuous lips.
In the Camry again, before he starts the engine, he closes his eyes,
clears his mind, and imagines he is magnetized, likewise the false
father, opposite poles toward each other. He seeks attraction.
This time he is pulled into the orbit of the other man quicker than he
was when he tried to make a connection in the middle of the night, and
the adducent power is immeasurably greater than before. Indeed, the
pull is so strong, so instantly, he grunts in surprise and locks his
hands around the steering wheel, as if he is in real danger of being
yanked out of the Toyota through the windshield and shooting like a
bullet straight to the heart of the false father.
His enemy is immediately aware of the contact. The man is frightened,
threatened.
East.
And south.
That will lead him back in the general direction of Mission Viejo,
though he doubts the imposter feels safe enough to have returned home
already.
A pressure wave, as from an enormous explosion, smashed into Marty and
nearly rocked him off his feet. With both hands he clutched the
countertop in front of the teller's window to keep his balance. He
leaned into the counter, bracing himself against it.
it.
The sensation was entirely subjective. The air seemed compressed to the
point of liquefaction, but nothing disintegrated, cracked, or fell over.
He appeared to be the only person affected.
After the initial shock of the wave, Marty felt as if he'd been buried
under an avalanche. Weighed down by immeasurable meg tons of snow.
Breathless. Paralyzed. Cold.
He suspected that his face had turned pale, waxy. He knew for certain
that he would be unable to speak if spoken to. Were anyone to return to
the teller's window while the seizure gripped him, the fear beneath his
casual pose would be revealed. He would be exposed as a man in
desperate trouble, and they would be reluctant to hand so much cash to
someone who was so clearly either ill or deranged.
He grew dramatically colder when he experienced a mental caress from the
same malignant, ghostly presence that he'd sensed yesterday in the
garage as he'd been trying to leave for the doctor's office. The icy
"hand" of the spirit pressed against the raw surface of his brain, as if
reading his location by fingering data that was Brailled into the
convoluted tissues of his cerebral cortex. He now understood that the
spirit was actually the look-alike, whose uncanny powers were not
limited to spontaneous recovery from mortal chest wounds.
He breaks the magnetic connection.
He drives out of the restaurant parking lot.
He turns on the radio. Michael Bolton is singing about love.
The song is touching. He is deeply moved by it, almost to tears.
Now that he finally is somebody, now that a wife waits for him and two
young children need his guidance, he knows the meaning and value of
love. He wonders how he could have lived this long without He heads
south. And east.
Destiny calls.
Abruptly, the spectral hand lifted from Marty.
The crushing pressure was released, and the world snapped back to
normal--if there was such a thing as normality any more.
He was relieved that the attack had lasted only five or ten seconds.
None of the bank employees had been aware anything was wrong with him.
However, the need to obtain the cash and get out of there was urgent.
He looked at Paige and the kids in the open lounge at the far end of the
room. He shifted his gaze worriedly to the east entrance, the south
entrance, east again.
The Other knew where they were. In minutes, at most, their mysterious
and implacable enemy would be upon them.
The scrambled eggs on Oslett's abandoned plate acquired a faint grayish
cast as they cooled and congealed. The salty aroma of bacon, previously
so appealing, induced in him a vague nausea.
Stunned by the consideration that Alfie might have developed into a
creature with sexual urges and with the ability to satisfy them, Oslett
was nonetheless determined not to appear concerned, at least not in
front of Peter Waxhill. "Well, all of this still amounts to nothing but
conjecture."
"Yes," said Waxhill, "but we're checking the past to see if the theory
holds water."
"What past?"
"Police records in every city where Alfie has been on assignment in the
past fourteen months. Rapes and rape-murders during the hours he wasn't
actually working."
Oslett's mouth was dry. His heart was thudding.
He didn't care what happened to the Stillwater family. Hell, they were
only Klingons.
He didn't care, either, if the Network collapsed and all of its grand
ambitions went unfulfilled. Eventually an organization similar to it
would be formed, and the dream would be renewed.
But if their bad boy proved impossible to recapture or stop, the
potential was here for a stain to spread deep into the Oslett family,
jeopardizing its wealth and seriously diminishing its political power
for decades
to come. Above all, Drew Oslett demanded respect. The
ultimate guarantor of respect had always been family, bloodline.
The prospect of the Oslett name becoming an object of ridicule and
scorn, target of public outrage, brunt of every TV comedian's puerile
jokes, and the subject of embarrassing stories in papers as diverse as
the New York Times and the National Enquirer was soul-shaking.
"Didn't you ever wonder," Waxhill asked, "what your boy did with his
free time, between assignments?"
"We monitored him closely, of course, for the first six weeks.
He went to movies, restaurants, parks, watched television, did all the
things that people do to kill time--just as we wanted him to act outside
a controlled environment. Nothing strange. Nothing at all out of the
ordinary. Certainly nothing to do with women."
"He would have been on his best behavior, naturally, if he was aware
that he was being watched."
"He wasn't aware. Couldn't be. He nor normal men. No way.
They're the best." Oslett realized he was protesting too much.
Nevertheless, he couldn't keep from adding, "No way."
"Maybe he was aware of them the same way he became aware of this Martin
Stillwater. Some low-key psychic perception."