by Dean Koontz
“You be yourself. Do what you think is right.”
“I’ll get you home. I swear.”
The killer said, “We’re off speakerphone, Tim.”
“Don’t touch my mother.”
“I’ll do anything I want to your mother. We’re shacked up in a lonely place, nobody to hear her scream.”
Tim bit back everything that he could think to say, for none of it was productive.
The killer said, “So you’re going to be married.”
“Tell me what I have to do.”
“What’s Michelle’s last name, Tim?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I could torture it out of your mother.”
“Jefferson,” Tim said, giving Michelle Rooney’s maiden name. “Michelle Jefferson.”
“What’s Michelle going to think about you risking everything for the skank?”
“You leave Michelle out of this.”
“That’s up to you, Tim.”
Across the park came Pete Santo, smiling, waving. He had Zoey on a leash.
Tim sensed that he could not pretend to cave easily to the killer’s demand. He would not be believed, and his quick fold would generate suspicion. He needed to resist. He needed to offer an alternative. He needed to think.
“How could I trade? How could I do that?”
“You’ve got a weakness, Tim.”
“It would be like killing one of them myself.”
“You’re one of the good guys, Tim. That’s your weakness.”
“I’m not a good guy. I just get along.”
“Good guys finish last, Tim.”
“Maybe not if they stay in the game. Listen, let’s find another way here. I can’t do this.”
“You can do it.”
“No. Not this.”
“You’ve done harder things.”
“Not ever. Nothing like this. Good God. I can’t.”
“Then your mother’s dead.”
“I can’t do this! Give me a minute to think.”
“Your family belongs in a carnival freak show.”
“I can’t. Just let me think.”
“Under glass in a museum,” said the killer.
As Pete drew near, Linda moved forward to intercept him and to prevent him from saying anything that might carry on the phone.
“Tim, get real. I need to kill her, you know.”
“You could just walk away.”
“No, Tim. I’ve got an image to protect.”
“And I’ve soiled that image, haven’t I?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“How much do you hate me?”
“Oh, Tim, beyond measure.”
“Then kill me instead.”
Linda heard, and she turned back to Tim, eyes as bright and sharp as beveled emeralds.
“Kill me instead,” he repeated.
“Exactly how does that work?”
“You pick a place to meet. I’ll come unarmed.”
“I’ve already chosen a place for the swap.”
“As my mother walks away from you, toward a waiting car, I’ll walk toward you. It has to be timed so just as she’s driven away, I come within shooting range.”
“You’re setting up a shootout.”
“No.”
“You’ll be armed, all right.”
“No. I’ll come in a pair of briefs. Nothing else. Nowhere to hide a weapon. I have a friend I’ll want to drive the car. But he won’t be anywhere near you.”
“Aren’t you afraid of death, Tim?”
“Hell, yes. But it’s not at the top of my list.”
“You’re a crazy sonofabitch, Tim. You’re an original.”
“My mother gets to live. Linda gets a head start on you, she can run, and that’s as much as I can do for her. If I’m lucky, if Linda’s lucky, I’ve bought both their lives.”
“She won’t get far without you,” the killer said.
“Maybe she will. She’s tough. Do we have a deal?”
Out beyond the trees, a boy and his dad were flying a tubular kite. The kite was a raging dragon. The dragon undulated in the sky, its roar as silent as the silence on the phone line.
Finally the killer said, “I’ve read about you now, Tim.”
“Don’t believe everything you read.”
“I do believe it. That’s why I think you’re serious about this.”
“It’s what I can do. Please. It’s what I can do.”
“You must have read too many boys’ adventure books, Tim. Your head is screwed up. You’re a crazy sonofabitch.”
“Whatever. Do we have a deal? Kill me instead.”
“All right, that works for me.”
“Now what?” Tim asked.
“Do you know Fashion Island in Newport Beach?”
“The shopping plaza. Everyone knows it. That’s too public.”
“It’s not for the swap. It’s just a first step. You be at the big koi pond in Fashion Island in forty-five minutes.”
“Okay. I can make that.”
“I’ll have someone watching. He better see you at the koi pond in forty-five minutes. Then you wait there. I’ll call you about what comes next.”
“All right.”
“Better be there, Tim.”
“I will.”
“Be there or I’ll slit your mother’s throat.”
The killer terminated the call, and Tim pocketed his phone.
The tree whisperer raised his arms toward the dragon in the sky, as if the bright beast had come for him. And the thing that had been coming for Tim all these years had now also fully arrived.
Fifty-Six
An engagement ring and a wedding band graced Mary’s left hand, which remained cuffed to the dining chair.
“The diamonds aren’t that impressive, dear.”
“Walter didn’t have much when I married him.”
Her right hand displayed a ring with a large clear purple stone surrounded by smaller stones of the same kind.
“What gem is this?” he asked.
“Opalite,” she said. “It’s rare.”
“Never heard of it. So Tim’s fiancée made this?”
“Yes. She makes jewelry. She’s very talented.”
“What’s Michelle’s last name?”
“Tim didn’t want to tell you.”
“But he did. I’m just confirming.”
She hesitated.
“I could take that ring,” Krait said, “and the finger with it.”
“Jefferson,” said Mary.
“When is the wedding?”
“August.”
“I thought women want to be June brides.”
“Most do. That’s why every place you could have a reception is booked in June. So it had to be August.”
“You like Michelle very much, do you?”
“I love Michelle. Please don’t bring her into this.”
“I won’t, dear. There’s no need for Michelle. Perhaps I’ve made a deal with your Tim. I’m still thinking about it. Would you like to know what it is?”
“No,” she said. Then: “Yes. All right.”
Krait’s cell phone vibrated. “Give me a moment, Mary.”
Sitting at the table, he discovered that he had received a text message from his support group. ARE YOU AT CARRIER RESIDENCE? CONFIRM. WHY IS CARRIER FAMILY INVOLVED THIS MISSION? EXPLANATION REQUESTED.
Such an intrusion into his operations so astonished Krait that he read the message again from the top. This was unprecedented.
The don’t-ask rule by which he abided was supposed to apply also to the support group. If he had any lingering doubts, this proved that the Paquette woman was indeed a target of the Gentlemen’s Club.
Worse than their attempt to question his strategy and tactics: They were monitoring him. They knew where he was. They were looking over his shoulder. Intolerable.
Evidently, the blue sedan had been delivered with a satellite-readable transponde
r attached. When he had stopped in front of the Carrier house to use the directional microphone, the support group had identified the address, and then had taken note of him parking two blocks away.
Krait could think of only one explanation for this outrageous development. The Gentlemen’s Club must have recently assigned some ambitious young snot to the support group, and he had taken it upon himself to exert an authority his bosses had not given him.
With a self-possession that he himself could not help but admire, Krait granted the snot a reply: MISSION NEARLY ACCOMPLISHED. WILL REPORT WITHIN HOURS.
Then, to remind them that they were dealing with an intellectual superior who did not need to consult with a gaggle of bureaucrats, he added four lines from Wallace Stevens: THEY SAID, “YOU HAVE A BLUE GUITAR/ YOU DO NOT PLAY THINGS AS THEY ARE.”/ THE MAN REPLIED, “THINGS AS THEY ARE/ ARE CHANGED UPON THE BLUE GUITAR.”
After sending the message and putting the cell phone away, he realized that Mary was staring at him. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing you should worry your pretty head about.”
“The deal,” she reminded him. “You made a deal with Tim.”
Getting up from his chair, he said, “He’ll come to a meeting stripped down to prove he’s unarmed. When he arrives, you walk away from me to a waiting car.”
She stared, perplexed. “I don’t understand.”
“As you reach the car, he’s walking toward me, into shooting range. And as you’re being driven to safety, I kill him.”
Dread contested with despair for possession of her face.
Krait said, “He buys your life with his, and he buys the skank a chance to run. Does that sound like your son?”
“Yes.” A flood rose in her eyes.
“What kind of mother are you, Mary, raising a son to die for you? What twisted values did you teach? You give new meaning to the term domineering mother.”
Fifty-Seven
They talked on the move, Zoey leading at the end of her leash, returning to the south end of the park, where both Tim and Pete had left their cars.
“Michelle gave Mom and Dad a chandelier. Copper birds flying in a circle. A circle is a ring. She said, ‘I’m looking at the ring right now, honey, it gives me hope.’ She’s still at home.”
“Maybe not for long,” Pete said.
They cut across the grass to avoid the skaters and strollers on the pathways.
“I can be there in twenty minutes,” Tim said. “Twenty-five.”
“But if she’s not there,” Linda worried.
“She’s there.”
“Maybe. But if she’s gone by the time you get there, we can’t make it all the way to Fashion Island for his next call.”
“Fashion Island is bullshit. Misdirection. Just to keep me busy and off balance. It’s too public for any phase of this. He doesn’t have anyone watching the koi pond.”
“That math works the same for me,” Pete agreed.
“What if you’re both wrong?”
“He won’t kill her just because I’m late to Fashion Island. She’s the best leverage he’s got.”
“That’s a cold equation,” Linda said.
Tim recognized the mood he was in. Fear and anger were part of it, but they did not define it.
His fear rose to the level of controlled terror, and the anger might better be called wrath, and the former forged in him a steely resolution, while the latter sharpened a desire to deal retribution, which was in truth a need for vengeance more than justice, but also justice. Emotion of this intensity ought to have clouded his thoughts and hobbled him physically, but as the terror and the wrath became purer and more intense, his thoughts grew clearer and he became acutely aware of his body and its capabilities.
This was in his blood, this clarity in crisis and this dogged purpose in a pinch, and he could take no credit for it and no blame.
They arrived at the Mountaineer before the Honda, and Pete said, “We’ll take my car.”
“I’m going alone,” Tim said.
Opening the tailgate of the SUV, Linda said, “Screw that.”
“She’s my mother.”
“Don’t give me any territorial crap, big head. I don’t have a mother. I think I’ll like yours. So I’m staking a claim.”
As Zoey leaped into the back of the SUV, Tim said, “Get real. You can’t go with me.”
Confronting him, she said, “I’m not going into the house, for God’s sake, I wouldn’t know what to do in the house, like I think you will know, but I’m not gonna sit in the freakin’ park, wondering what’s happened to you, watching that spaced-out acidhead talk to the palm trees.”
“Since both of us know what to do in that house,” Pete said, “we’re going in together.”
“Mom and Dad’s house, a guy with a machine pistol, it’s gonna be tight quarters,” Tim protested.
“Isn’t it always tight quarters, Doorman?”
Slamming the tailgate, Linda said, “We’re wasting time.” She opened a door, climbed into the backseat.
Offering the key, Pete said, “You want to drive?”
“You know the way.”
In the shotgun seat, Tim pulled the door shut as the Mountaineer began to roll.
He asked Linda for her pistol. She took it from her purse and passed it forward to him.
“Is that a lady gun?” Pete asked dubiously.
“It’s a strong little piece,” Tim assured him.
From the backseat, Linda said, “It has a really low bore axis. So there’s almost no muzzle jump. It’s loaded with 147-grain JHPs. It’ll do the job.”
Tim didn’t need to ask if Pete was carrying. On duty or off, he would be armed. “I don’t want it to come to guns,” he said. “Not in those close quarters, my mother in the room.”
“If we can get in there, he doesn’t know we’re in there, we can come in behind him with a clear shot,” Pete said.
“That’s the only way. But let’s hope we can take him alive. We have to know who hired him.”
Linda said, “You think it’s gone too far now, we should go to the police, a SWAT team or something?”
“No,” Tim and Pete said simultaneously, and then Pete said, “A for-hire killer doesn’t structure jail time in his career plan.”
“Especially not this guy,” Tim said. “He’s way bold. He’s all or nothing, he’ll go out shooting.”
“SWAT protocols, you start with a hostage negotiator,” Pete said. “In that situation, Mary’s an instant liability to a guy like this. He knows they’ll never give him free passage with her. She’s dead the moment he hears a bullhorn. He wants to be able to move fast.”
“Speaking of fast,” Tim said, “step on it some.”
Fifty-Eight
Lovely, the tears that flowed freely. Lovely, too, the sobs that she refused to voice, which expressed instead as thick choking noises and brief spastic shudders.
After slipping the Glock into his shoulder rig, Krait moved the cloth satchel, the rubber-tube tourniquet, the hypodermic syringes, and the bowl of sliced apples to the kitchen island. He left nothing on the table within the reach of Mary’s free right arm.
He stood beside her chair, gazing down at her as she wiped at her damp cheeks.
“Tears beautify a woman,” he said.
She seemed to be angry with herself for weeping. Her damp hand tightened into a fist, which she pressed to her temple, as if she could quell her distress by an act of will.
“I like the taste of tears in a woman’s kiss.”
Her mouth was loose with anguish.
“I’d like to kiss you, Mary.”
She turned her face away from him.
“You might be surprised to find you enjoy it.”
With a sudden fury, she looked up at him. “You might enjoy having your lip