The Husband

by Dean R. Koontz

  "The countess."

  "Yes. The countess."

  The pressurized darkness seems to brew itself into an ever blacker reduction.

  She feels his warm breath upon her brow, upon her eyes. It has no scent. And then it is gone.

  Maybe she didn't feel his breath, after all, only a draft.

  She wishes to believe it was a draft, and she thinks of clean things like her husband and the baby, and the bright sun.

  He says, "Do you believe in signs, Holly Rafferty?"

  "Yes."

  "Omens. Portents. Harbingers, oracle owls, storm petrels, black cats and broken mirrors, mysterious lights in the sky. Have you ever seen a sign, Holly Rafferty?"

  "I don't think so."

  "Do you hope to see a sign?"

  She knows what he wants her to say, and she is quick to say it. "Yes. I hope to see one."

  Upon her left cheek, she feels warm breath, and then upon her lips.

  If this is him — and in her heart she knows there is no if — he remains undifferentiated from the gloom although only inches separate them.

  The darkness of the room calls forth a darkness in her mind. She imagines him kneeling naked before her, his pale body decorated by arcane symbols painted with the blood of those he killed.

  Struggling to keep her quickening fear from her voice, she says, "You've seen many signs, haven't you?"

  The breath, the breath, the breath upon her lips, but not the kiss, and then not the breath, either, as he withdraws and says, "I've seen scores. I have the eye for them."

  "Please tell me about one."

  He is silent. His silence is a sharp and looming weight, a sword above her head.

  Perhaps he has begun to wonder if she is talking to forestall the kiss.

  If at all possible, she must avoid offending him. As important as it is to leave this place without being violated, it is likewise important to leave this place without disabusing him of the strange dark romantic fantasy that appears to have him in its grip.

  He seems to believe that she will eventually decide that she must go to Guadalupita, New Mexico, with him and that in Guadalupita she will "be amazed." As long as he continues in this belief, which she has so subtly tried to reinforce without raising suspicion, she might be able to find some advantage over him when it matters most, in the moment of her greatest crisis.

  When his silence begins to seem ominously long, he says, "This was just as summer became autumn that year, and everyone said the birds had left early for the south, and wolves were seen where they had not been in a decade."

  Wary in the dark, Holly sits very erect, with her arms crossed over her breasts.

  "The sky had a hollow look. You felt like you could shatter it with a stone. Have you ever been to Eagle Nest, New Mexico?"

  "No."

  "I was driving south from Eagle Nest, on a two-lane blacktop, at least twenty miles east of Taos. These two girls were across the highway, hitchhiking north."

  Along the roof, the wind finds a new niche or protrusion from which to strike another voice for itself, and now it imitates the ululant cry of hunting coyotes.

  "They were college age but not college girls. They were serious seekers, you could see, and confident in their good hiking boots and backpacks, with their walking sticks, and all their experience."

  He pauses, perhaps for drama, perhaps savoring the memory.

  "I saw the sign and knew at once that it was a sign. Hovering above their heads, a blackbird, its wings spread wide, not flapping, the bird riding so effortlessly on a thermal, but moving precisely no faster or slower than the girls were walking."

  She regrets having elicited this story. She closes her eyes against the images that she fears he might describe.

  "Only six feet above their heads and a foot or two behind them, the bird hovered, but the girls were unaware of it. They were unaware of it, and I knew what that meant."

  Holly fears the darkness around her too much to close her eyes to it. She opens them even though she can see nothing.

  "Do you know what the sign of the bird meant, Holly Rafferty?"

  "Death," she says.

  "Yes, exactly right. You are arising into full spirit. I saw the bird and believed that death was settling on the girls, that they were not long for this world."

  "And... were they?"

  "Winter came early that year. Many snows followed one another, and the cold was very hard. The spring thaw extended into summer, and when the snow melted, their bodies were found in late June, dumped in a field near Arroyo Hondo, all the way around Wheeler Peak from where I'd seen them on the road. I recognized their pictures in the paper."

  Holly says a silent prayer for the families of the unknown girls.

  "Who knows what happened to them?" he continues. "They were found naked, so we can imagine some of what they endured. But though it seems to us a horrible death, and tragic because of their youth, there is always a possibility of enlightenment even in the worst of situations. If we're seekers, we learn from everything, and grow. Perhaps any death involves moments of illuminating beauty and the potential for transcendence."

  He switches on his flashlight and is sitting immediately before her, cross-legged on the floor.

  Had the light surprised her earlier in their conversation, she might have flinched. Now she is not as easily surprised, nor is she likely to flinch from any light, so welcome is it.

  He wears the ski mask in which are visible only his chewed-sore lips and his beryl-blue eyes. He is neither naked nor painted with the blood of those he killed.

  "It's time to go," he says. "You will be ransomed for a million four hundred thousand, and when I have the money, then the time will have come for decision."

  The dollar figure stuns her. It might be a lie.

  Holly has lost all track of time, but she is confused and amazed by what his words imply. "Is it already... midnight Wednesday?"

  Within his knitted mask, he smiles. "Only a few minutes before one o'clock Tuesday afternoon," he says. "Your persuasive husband has encouraged his brother to come through with the money quicker than ever seemed possible. This whole thing has moved so smoothly that it's obviously coasting on the wheels of destiny."

  Rising to his feet, he gestures for her to rise, as well, and she obeys.

  Behind her back, he binds her wrists together with a blue silk scarf, as before.

  Stepping in front of her again, he tenderly smoothes her hair back from her forehead, for some of it has fallen over her face. As he performs this grooming, with hands as cold as they are pale, he stares continuously into her eyes in a spirit of romantic challenge.

  She dares not look away from him, and she closes her eyes only when he presses to them thick gauze pads that have been moistened to make them stick. He binds the pads in place with a longer length of silk, which he loops three times around her head and ties firmly at the back of her skull.

  His hands brush her right ankle, and he unlocks the manacle, freeing her from the chain and the ringbolt.

  He plays the flashlight over her blindfold, and she sees dim light penetrate the gauze and silk. Evidently satisfied by the job he's done, he lowers the light.

  "When we've reached the ransom drop," he promises, "the scarves will come off. They're only to incapacitate you during transport."

  Because he is not the one who hit her and pulled her hair to make her scream, she can sound credible when she says, "You've never been cruel to me."

  He studies her in silence. She assumes that he studies her, for she feels naked, undressed by his stare.

  The wind, the dark again, the hideous expectation all make her heart jump like a rabbit battering itself against the wire walls of a trap cage.

  Holly feels his breath brush lightly across her lips, and she endures it.

  After he exhales four times upon her, he whispers, "At night in Guadalupita, the sky is so vast that the moon seems shrunken, small, and the stars you can see, horizon to horizon, number mo
re than all the human deaths in history. Now we must go."

  He takes Holly by one arm, and she does not shrink from his repulsive touch, but moves with him across the room and through an open doorway.

  Here are the steps again, up which they led her the previous day. He patiently guides her descent, but she cannot hold a railing and therefore places each foot tentatively.

  From attic to second floor, to first floor, and then into the garage, he encourages her: "A landing now. Very good. Duck your head. And now to the left. Be careful here. And now a threshold."

  In the garage, she hears him open the door of a vehicle.

  "This is the van that brought you here," he says, and helps her through the rear entrance, into the cargo space. The carpeted floor smells as foul as she remembered it. "Lie on your side."

  He exits, closes the door behind him. The signature metallic sound of a key in a lock eliminates any consideration that she might be able to let herself out somewhere en route.

  The driver's door opens, and he gets in behind the wheel. "This is a two-seat van. The seats are open to the cargo area, which is why you hear me so clearly. You do hear me clearly?"

  "Yes."

  He closes his door. "I can turn in my seat and see you. On our trip here, there were men to sit with you, to make sure that you behaved. I'm alone now. So... somewhere along the way, if we stop at a red light and you think a scream will be heard, I'll have to deal with you more harshly than I would like."

  "I won't scream."

  "Good. But please let me explain. On the passenger's seat beside me is a pistol fitted with a silencer. The instant that you begin to scream, I'll pick up the pistol, turn around in my seat, and shoot you dead. Whether you're dead or alive, I'll collect the ransom. You see the way it is?"

  "Yes."

  "That sounded cold, didn't it?" he asks.

  "I understand... your position."

  "Be honest now. It did sound cold."

  "Yes."

  "Consider this. I could have gagged you, but I didn't. I could have shoved a rubber ball in your pretty mouth and sealed your lips with duct tape. Couldn't I have done that easily?"

  "Yes."

  "Why didn't I?"

  "Because you know you can trust me," she says.

  "I hope that I can trust you. And because I'm a man of hope, who lives his life with hope in every hour, I did not gag you, Holly. A gag of the type I described is effective but extremely unpleasant. I didn't want an unpleasantness like that between us in case... in hope of Gaudalupita."

  Her mind works to deceive more smoothly than she would have thought possible one day ago.

  In a voice not at all seductive but solemn with respect, she recites for him details that suggest he has indeed cast a spell over her: "Guadalupita, Rodarte, Rio Lucio, Penasco, where your life was changed, and Chamisal, where it was also changed, Vallecito, Las Trampas, and Espanola, where your life will be changed again."

  He is silent for a moment. Then: "I'm sorry for the discomfort, Holly. It will be over soon, and then transcendence... if you want it."

  Chapter 58

  The architecture of the gun shop had been inspired by dry-goods stores in countless Western movies. A flat railed roof, vertical-clapboard walls, a covered boardwalk the length of the long building, and a hitching post raised the expectation that at any moment John Wayne would walk out of the front door, dressed as he had been in The Searchers.

  Feeling less like John Wayne than like any supporting character who gets shot in the second act, Mitch sat in the Honda, in the gun-shop parking lot, examining the pistol that he had brought back from Rancho Santa Fe.

  Several things were engraved in the steel, if it was steel. Some were numbers and letters that meant nothing to him. Others provided useful information for a guy who knew squat about handguns.

  Near the muzzle, in script, were the words Super Tuned. Farther back on the slide the word CHAMPION looked as if it had been laser-incised in block letters, and CAL .45 was directly under it.

  Mitch preferred not to deliver the ransom with only seven rounds in the magazine. Now he knew that he needed to purchase .45-caliber ammunition.

  Seven rounds were probably more than enough. Gunfights most likely dragged on only in movies. In real life, somebody fired the first shot, somebody responded, and within a total of four rounds, one of the somebodies was wounded or dead.

  Buying more ammunition was not about fulfilling a genuine need, but a psychological one. He didn't care. Additional ammo would make him feel better prepared.

  On the other side of the slide, he found the word SPRINGFIELD. He took this to be the maker.

  The word CHAMPION most likely referred to the model of the gun. He had a Springfield Champion .45 pistol. That sounded more likely than a Champion Springfield .45 pistol.

  He wanted to avoid drawing attention to himself when he went into the shop. He hoped to sound like he knew what he was talking about.

  After ejecting the magazine from the pistol, he extracted a cartridge from the magazine. The casing identified it as .45 ACP, but he didn't know what the letters meant.

  He returned the cartridge to the magazine and put the magazine in a pocket of his jeans. He slid the pistol under the driver's seat.

  From the glove box, he retrieved John Knox's wallet. Using the dead man's money pricked his conscience, but he had no choice. His own wallet had been taken from him in Julian Campbell's library. He took the entire $585 and returned the wallet to the glove box.

  He got out into the wind, locked the car, and went into the gun shop. The word shop seemed inadequate for such a large store. There were aisles and aisles of gun-related paraphernalia.

  At the long cashier's counter, he got help from a large man with a walrus mustache. His name tag identified him as ROLAND.

  "A Springfield Champion," Roland said. "That's a stainless-steel version of a Colt Commander, isn't it?"

  Mitch had no clue if it was or not, but he suspected that Roland knew his stuff. "That's right."

  "Beveled magazine well, throated barrel, a lowered and flared ejection port all come standard."

  "It's a sweet gun," Mitch said, hoping people actually talked that way. "I want three extra magazines. For target shooting."

  He added the last three words because it seemed that most people wouldn't have a use for spare magazines unless they were planning to knock over a bank or take potshots at people from a clock tower.

  Roland appeared not in the least suspicious. "Did you go for Springfield's whole Super Tuned package?"

  Remembering the words engraved near the muzzle, Mitch said, "Yes. The whole package."

  "Any further customization?"

  "No," Mitch guessed.

  "You didn't bring the gun? I'd feel better if I could see it."

  Incorrectly, Mitch had thought if he carried a pistol into the store, he'd look like a shoplifter or a stickup artist or something.

  "I've got this." He put the magazine on the counter.

  "I'd rather have the gun, but let's see if we can work with this."

  Five minutes later, Mitch had paid for three magazines and a box of one hundred .45 ACP cartridges.

  Throughout the transaction, he had expected alarm bells to go off. He felt suspected, watched, and known for what he was. Clearly, his nerves didn't have the tensile strength required of a fugitive from the law.

  As he was about to leave the shop, he looked through the glass door and saw a police cruiser in the parking lot, blocking his car. A cop stood at the driver's door, peering into the locked Honda.

  Chapter 59

  On second look, Mitch realized that the driver's door of the cruiser wasn't emblazoned with the seal of a city but with the name — First Enforcement — and ornate logo of a private-security firm. The uniformed man at the Honda must be a security guard, not a police officer.

  Nevertheless, the Honda would be of interest to him only if he knew an all-points bulletin had been put out for it. Evidently t
his guy did listen to a police scanner.

  The guard left his car athwart the Honda and approached the gun shop. He appeared purposeful.

  He had most likely stopped to do some personal business and had lucked onto the Honda. Now he was psyched up for a citizen's arrest and a taste of glory.

  A real cop would have called for backup before coming into the store. Mitch supposed he should be grateful for getting even that much of a break.

  The parking lot wrapped two sides of the freestanding building, and there were two entrances. Mitch backed away from this door and headed quickly for the other.

  He left by the side exit and hurried to the front of the store. The security guard had gone inside.

  Mitch was alone in the wind. Not for long. He sprinted to the Honda.

  The First Enforcement car trapped him. The back of the parking space featured a steel-pipe safety barrier atop a six-inch concrete curb because, from the lot, the land sloped steeply down six feet to a sidewalk.

  No good. No way out. He would have to abandon the Honda.

  He unlocked the driver's door and retrieved the Springfield Champion .45 from under the seat.

  As he closed the car door, somebody coming out of the gun shop drew his attention. Not the security guard.

  He popped the trunk and snatched the white plastic trash bag from the wheel well. He put the pistol and the gun-shop purchases with the money, twisted the neck of the bag, closed the trunk, and walked away.

  After passing behind five parked vehicles, he stepped between two SUVs. He peered in each, hoping one of the drivers had left the keys in the ignition, but he wasn't lucky.

  He walked briskly — did not run — diagonally across the blacktop, toward the side of the building from which he had recently exited.

  As he reached the corner, his peripheral vision caught movement at the front door of the gun shop. When he glanced along the covered boardwalk, he glimpsed the security guard coming out of the store.

  He did not think that the guard had seen him, and then he was out of sight, past the corner.