by Dean Koontz
“Something like it.”
“You’re beginning to scare me,” she said.
“Beginning? You are a tough broad. Listen, Connie, just before he trashed my condo, Ticktock said something like… ‘You think you can shoot anyone you like, and that’s the end of it, but not with me, shooting me isn’t the end of it.’” Harry tapped the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster. “So who’d I shoot today? Ordegard. And this Ticktock is telling me that’s not the end of it. So I want to find out if there’s anything odd about Ordegard’s corpse.”
She was amazed but not disbelieving. She was getting in the swing of it. “You want to know if there were signs of possession.”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly what are the signs of possession?”
“Anything odd.”
“Like the corpse’s skull is empty, no brain, just ashes in there? Or maybe the number 666 burnt into the back of his neck?”
“I wish it would be something that obvious, but I doubt it.”
Connie laughed. A nervous laugh. Shaky. Brief.
She got up from the chair. “Okay, let’s go to the morgue.”
Harry hoped that a talk with the coroner or a quick reading of the autopsy report would tell him what he needed to know, and that it would not be necessary to view the corpse. He didn’t want to have to look at that moon face again.
14
The large institutional kitchen at Pacific View Care Home in Laguna Beach was all white tile and stainless steel, as clean as a hospital.
Any rats or roaches creep in here, Janet Marco thought, they better be able to live on scouring powder, ammonia water, and wax.
Though antiseptic, the kitchen did not smell like a hospital.
Lingering aromas of ham, roast turkey, herb stuffing, and scalloped potatoes were overlaid by the yeasty, cinnamon fragrance of the sweetrolls that they were baking for breakfast in the morning. It was a warm place, too, and the warmth was welcome after the chill that the recent storm had brought to the March air.
Janet and Danny were having dinner at one end of a long table in the southeast corner of the kitchen. They were in no one’s way but enjoyed a vantage point from which they could watch the busy staff.
Janet was fascinated by the operation of the big kitchen, which ticked along like clockwork. The workers were industrious and seemed happy in their busyness. She envied them. She wished she could get a job at Pacific View, in the kitchen or any other department. But she didn’t know what skills were required. And she doubted that even the owner, good man that he was, would hire anyone who lived in a car, washed in public lavatories, and had no permanent address.
Though she liked watching the kitchen staff, the sight of them sometimes frustrated the devil out of her.
But she couldn’t blame Mr. Ishigura, the owner and operator of Pacific View, because he was a godsend on nights like this. Both thrifty and kind, he was dismayed by waste and by the thought of anyone going hungry in such a prosperous country. Invariably, after almost a hundred patients and the staff had eaten dinner, enough food remained to provide for ten or twelve people, because recipes could not be refined to produce precisely the number of portions needed. Mr. Ishigura provided these meals free to certain of the homeless.
The food was good, too, really good. Pacific View was not an ordinary nursing home. It was classy. The patients were rich, or had relatives who were rich.
Mr. Ishigura did not advertise his generosity, and his door was not open to everyone. When he saw street people who seemed, to him, to have fallen to their fate not entirely by their own doing, he approached them about the free lunches and dinners at Pacific View. Because he was selective, it was possible to eat there without having to share the table with some of the moody and dangerous alcoholics and addicts who made many of the church and mission kitchens so unappealing.
Janet didn’t take advantage of Mr. Ishigura’s hospitality nearly as often as it was available. Of the seven lunches and seven dinners she might have eaten at Pacific View each week, she limited herself to no more than two of each. Otherwise, she was able to provide for herself and Danny, and she took pride in every meal that was bought with her own earnings.
That Tuesday night, she and Danny shared the facilities with three elderly men, one aged woman whose face was as wrinkled as a crumpled paper bag but who wore a gaily colored scarf and bright red beret, and an unfortunately ugly young man with a deformed face. They were all ragged but not filthy, unbarbered but clean-smelling enough.
She didn’t speak to any of them, although she would have enjoyed conversation. It had been so long since she had spoken at any length to anyone but Danny that she was not confident of making chit-chat with another adult.
Besides, she was leery of encountering someone with a keen curiosity. She did not want to have to answer questions about herself, her past. She was, after all, a murderer. And if Vince’s body had been found in the Arizona desert, she might also be wanted by the police.
She didn’t even speak to Danny, who needed no encouragement either to eat or to mind his manners. Though he was only five, the boy was well-behaved and knew how to conduct himself at the table.
Janet was fiercely proud of him. From time to time, as they ate, she smoothed his hair or touched the back of his neck or patted his shoulder, so he would know that she was proud.
God, she loved him. So little, so innocent, so patiently enduring of one hardship after another. Nothing must happen to him. He must have his chance to grow up, become something in this world.
She could enjoy dinner only as long as she kept thoughts of the policeman to a minimum. The policeman who could change shape. Who had almost become a werewolf like out of a movie. Who had become Vince, while thunder rolled and lightning flashed, and who had halted Woofer in midair.
After the encounter in that alleyway earlier in the day, Janet had driven north in the pouring rain, out of Laguna Beach, heading for Los Angeles, desperate to put a lot of miles between them and the mysterious creature who wanted to kill them. It had said that it could find them no matter where they ran, and she had believed it. But just waiting to be killed was intolerable.
She got only as far as Corona Del Mar, the next town up the coast, before realizing that she must go back. In Los Angeles, she would have to learn what neighborhoods were best for scavenging, when the garbage pickups were scheduled so she could search the cans just ahead of the sanitation trucks, which communities had the most tolerant police, where cans and bottles could be redeemed, where to find another humanitarian like Mr. Ishigura, and so much more. Her cash on hand was low at the moment, and she could not afford to live on their meager savings long enough to learn the ropes in a new place. It was Laguna Beach or nowhere.
Maybe the worst thing about being dirt poor was not having any choices.
She’d driven back to Laguna Beach, mentally chastising herself for the gasoline she’d wasted.
They parked on a side street and stayed in the car all during the rainy afternoon. By the gray storm light, with Woofer dozing in the back seat, she read to Danny from a thick storybook rescued from a trash bin. He loved being read to. He sat enthralled, while pearl and silver water shadows played across his face in patterns that matched the streams of rain shimmering down the windshield.
Now the rain was gone, the day was ended, dinner was finished, and it was time to return to the old Dodge for the night. Janet was exhausted, and she knew Danny would drop quickly into sleep like a stone sinking in a pond. But she dreaded closing her eyes, for she was afraid that the policeman thing would find them while they slept.
When they gathered up their dirty dishes and carried them to the sink where they always left them, Janet and Danny were approached by a cook whose first name was Loretta and whose last name was unknown to Janet. Loretta was a heavy-set woman of about fifty, with skin as smooth as porcelain and a brow so free of lines that she must never have had a worry in her entire life. Her hands were strong, and red from kitch
en work. She was carrying a disposable pie tin full of meat scraps.
“That dog still hanging around?” Loretta asked. “The cute fella who’s been trailing after you the last few times?”
“Woofer,” Danny said.
“He’s taken a shine to my boy,” Janet said. “He’s out in the alley now, waiting for us.”
“Well, I’ve got a treat for the cutie,” Loretta said, indicating the meat scraps.
A pretty blond nurse, standing at a nearby butcher’s block and drinking a glass of milk, overheard their conversation. “Is he really cute?”
“Just a mutt,” Loretta said, “no fancy breed, but he oughta be in pictures, this one.”
“I’m a dog nut,” the nurse said. “I have three. I love dogs. Can I see him?”
“Sure, sure, come on,” Loretta said. Then she checked herself and smiled at Janet. “You mind if Angelina sees him?”
Angelina was evidently the nurse.
“Heavens no, why would I mind?” Janet said.
Loretta led the way to the alley door. The scraps in the pie tin were not fat and gristle, but choice bits of ham and turkey.
Outside the door in a cone of yellow light from a security lamp, Woofer sat in patient anticipation, his head cocked to the right, one ear pricked up and one ear floppy as usual, a quizzical look on his face. A cool breeze, the first stirring of the air since the storm had passed, ruffled his fur.
Angelina was instantly captivated. “He’s wonderful!”
“He’s mine,” Danny said so softly that it was doubtful anyone but Janet had heard him.
As if he understood the nurse’s praise, Woofer grinned, and his bushy tail vigorously swept the blacktop.
Maybe he did understand. Within a day of encountering Woofer, Janet had decided that he was a smart mutt.
Taking the pie tin full of scraps from the cook, Angelina moved in front of everyone and squatted down before the dog. “You are a cutie. Look at this, fella. Does this look good? Bet you’ll like this.”
Woofer glanced at Janet, as if seeking permission to feast on the scraps. He was just a collarless street dog now, but evidently he had been someone’s house pet at one time. He had the restraint that came from training and the capacity for reciprocal affection that in animals—perhaps in people as well—grew from being loved.
Janet nodded.
Only then did the pooch take his dinner, snatching hungrily at the chunks and slivers of meat.
Unexpectedly, Janet Marco perceived a kinship with the dog that unnerved her. Her parents had treated her with the cruelty that some sick people directed against animals; indeed, they would have dealt with any cat or dog more humanely than they’d dealt with her. Vince had been no kinder. And though there were no indications that the dog had been beaten or starved, he had surely been abandoned. Though he was without a collar, he clearly had not been raised wild; for he was too eager to please and too needful of affection. Abandonment was just another form of abuse, which meant that Janet and the dog had shared a host of hardships, fears, and experiences.
She decided to keep the dog regardless of the trouble and expense he might pose. There was a bond between them, worthy of respect: they were both living creatures capable of courage and commitment—and both in need.
While Woofer ate with canine enthusiasm, the young blond nurse petted him, scratched behind his ears, and cooed to him.
“Told you he was a cutie,” said the cook, Loretta, folding her arms across her immense bosom and beaming at Woofer. “Oughta be in movies, he should. A regular little charmer.”
“He’s mine,” Danny said worriedly, and again in such a low voice that only Janet could have heard him. He was standing at her side, holding fast to her, and she put a hand on his shoulder reassuringly.
Halfway through his meal, Woofer suddenly looked up from the pie tin and regarded Angelina curiously. His good ear pricked again. He sniffed at her starched white uniform, her slender hands, then pushed his head under her knees to get a good whiff of her white shoes. He sniffed her hands again, licked her fingers, chuffing and whining, prancing in place, increasingly excited.
The nurse and cook laughed, thinking that Woofer was reacting only to the good food and all of the attention, but Janet knew he was responding to something else. Mixed up with all the chuffing and whining were brief low growls as he caught some scent that he didn’t like. And his tail had stopped wagging.
Without warning and to Janet’s great mortification, the dog slipped out of Angelina’s cuddling hands, shot around her, streaked past Danny, between the cook’s legs, and straight through the open door into the kitchen.
“Woofer, no!” Janet cried.
The dog didn’t heed her, kept going, and everyone in the alleyway went after him.
The kitchen staff tried to capture Woofer, but he was too quick for them. He dodged and feinted, claws clicking on the tile floor. He scrambled under food preparation tables, rolled and leaped and abruptly changed directions again and again to elude grasping hands, exhibiting all the agility of an eel, panting and grinning and apparently having a good time.
However, it wasn’t entirely fun and doggy games. At the same time, he was urgently searching for something, following an elusive scent, sniffing at the floor and at the air. He appeared to be disinterested in the ovens filled with baking sweetrolls from which flowed a virtual flood of mouth-watering aromas, and he didn’t leap up toward any of the counters on which food was exposed. Something else interested him, whatever he had first detected on the young blond nurse named Angelina.
“Bad dog,” Janet kept repeating as she joined the chase, “bad dog, bad dog!”
Woofer cast a couple of hurt looks her way but didn’t settle down.
A nurse’s aide, unaware of what was happening in the kitchen, pushed through a pair of swinging doors with a cart of supplies, and the dog instantly took advantage of the opening. He shot past the aide, through the doors, into another part of the care home.
Bad dog. Not true. Good dog. Good.
The food place is full of so many tasty odors, he can’t track the other scent, the strange scent, quick as he wants to. But on the other side of the swinging doors is a long, long narrow place with other places opening off both sides. Here the hungry-making smells aren’t as heavy.
Lots of other smells, though, mostly people smells, mostly not wonderful. Sharp odors, salty odors, sick-making sweet odors, sour.
Pine. A bucket of pine in the long, long narrow place. He real quick sticks his nose in the bucket of pine, wondering how the whole tree got in there, but it isn’t a tree, only water, dirty-looking water that smells like a whole pine tree, a bunch of them, all in a bucket. Interesting.
Hurry on.
Pee. He can smell pee. People pee. Different kinds of people pee. Interesting. Ten, twenty, thirty different pee smells, none of them real strong but there, lots more people pee than he had ever smelled inside anyplace anytime. He can tell a lot from the smell of people’s pee, what they ate, what they drank, where they’ve been today,” whether they’ve rutted lately, whether they’re healthy or sick, angry or happy, good or bad. Most of these people haven’t rutted in a long time, and are sick one way or another, some of them bad sick. None of the pee is the kind of pee that’s fun to smell.
He smells shoe leather, floor wax, wood polish, starch, roses, daisies, tulips, carnations, lemons, ten-twenty-lots of kinds of sweat, chocolate good, poop bad, dust, damp earth from a plant pot, soap, hair spray, peppermint, pepper, salt, onions, the sneeze-making bitterness of termites in one wall, coffee, hot brass, rubber, paper, pencil shavings, butterscotch, more pine trees in a bucket, another dog. Interesting. Another dog. Somebody has a dog and brings its scent in on their shoes, interesting dog, female, and they track the scent around the long narrow place. Interesting. There are countless other odors—his world is odors more than anything—including that strange scent, strange and bad, bare-your-teeth bad, enemy, hateful thing, smelled before, policeman
smell, wolf smell, policeman-wolf-thing smell, there, got it again, this way, this way, follow.
People are chasing him because he doesn’t belong here. All sorts of places people think you don’t belong, though you never smell as bad as most people, even the clean ones, and though you aren’t as big or crashing around with so much noise and taking up so much space as people do.
Bad dog, the woman says, and that hurts him because he likes the woman, the boy, is doing this for them, finding out about the bad policeman-wolf-thing with the strange smell.
Bad dog. Not true. Good dog. Good.
Woman in white, coming through a door, looking surprised, smelling surprised, trying to stop him. Quick snarl. She jumps back. So easy to scare, people. So easy to fool.
The long narrow place meets another long narrow place. More doors, more odors, ammonia and sulphur and more kinds of sick smells, more kinds of pee. People live here but also pee here. So strange. Interesting. Dogs don’t pee where they live.
Woman in the narrow place, carrying something, looks surprised, smells surprised, says, Oh, look, how cute.
Give her a wag of the tail. Why not? But keep going.
That scent. Strange. Hateful. Strong, getting stronger.
An open door, soft light, a space with a sick woman lying on a bed. He goes in, suddenly wary, looking left and right, because this place reeks of the strange odor, the bad thing, the floor, the walls, and especially a chair, where the bad thing sat. It was here for a long time, more than once, lots of times.
The woman says, Who’s there?
She stinks. Faint sour sweat. Sickness but more than that. Sadness. Deep, low, terrible unhappiness. And fear. More than anything else, the sharp, lightning-storm, iron smell of fear.
Who’s there? Who is it?
Running feet in the long narrow space outside, people coming.
Fear so heavy that the strange-bad odor is almost blotted out by the fear, fear, fear, fear.
Angelina? Is that you? Angelina?
The bad scent, thing scent, is all around the bed, up on the bed. The thing stood here and talked to the woman, not long ago, today, touching her, touching the white cloth draped over her, its vile residue there, up there in the bed, rich and ripe up there in the bed with the woman, and interesting, oh-so-very interesting.
He races back to the door, turns, runs at the bed, leaps, sails, one paw catching the railing but otherwise clearing all obstacles, up with the sick and fear-soaked woman, plop.
A woman screamed.
Janet had never been afraid that Woofer would bite anyone. He was a gentle and friendly dog, and seemed incapable of harming a soul except, perhaps, the thing that had confronted them in the alleyway earlier in the day.
But when she burst into the softly lighted hospital room behind Angelina, and saw the dog on the patient’s bed, for an instant Janet thought it was attacking the woman. She pulled Danny against her to shield him from the savage sight, before she realized Woofer was only straddling the patient and sniffing her, vigorously sniffing but nothing worse.
“No,” the invalid cried, “no, no,” as if not merely a dog but something out of the deeper pits of Hell had leapt upon her.
Janet was ashamed of the commotion, felt responsible, and was afraid of the consequence. She doubted that she and Danny would be welcome to take meals in the Pacific View kitchen any longer.
The woman in the bed was thin—beyond thin, wasted—and so pale, as softly radiant as a ghost in the lamplight. Her hair was white and lusterless. She seemed ancient, a shriveled crone, but some indefinable aspect of her made Janet think the poor soul might be much younger than she appeared.
Obviously weak, she was struggling to rise slightly from her pillows and ward off the dog with her right arm. When she became aware of the arrival of those pursuing Woofer, she turned her head toward the door. Her gaunt face might once have been beautiful but was now cadaverous and, in one respect at least, nightmarish.
Her eyes.
She had none.
Janet shuddered involuntarily—and was glad she had shielded Danny, after all.
“Get it off me!” the woman shrieked in terror out of proportion to any threat that Woofer posed. “Get it off me!”
At first, glimpsed in the gray and purple shadows, the invalid’s eyelids merely appeared to be closed. But as the lamplight fell more directly across her drawn face, the true horror of her condition became apparent. Her lids were sewn shut like those of a corpse. The surgical thread had no doubt long ago dissolved, but upper and lower lids had grown together. Nothing existed immediately beneath the flaps of skin to support them, so they sagged inward, leaving shallow concavities.
Janet felt sure the woman had not been born without eyes. Some terrible experience, not nature, had stolen her vision. How severe must the injuries have been, if physicians had concluded it wasn’t possible to install glass eyes even for cosmetic reasons? Dire intuition told Janet that this blind and shriveled patient had encountered someone worse than Vince, and more cold-blooded than Janet’s own reptilian parents.
As Angelina and a male orderly closed in on the bed, calling the blind woman “Jennifer” and assuring her everything was going to be all right, Woofer leaped to the floor again and foiled them with another unanticipated move. Instead of making directly for the door to the corridor, he streaked into the adjoining bathroom, which was shared with the room next door, and from there scrambled into the hall.
Holding Danny’s hand in hers, Janet led the chase this time, not solely because she felt responsible for what had happened and was afraid that their dining privileges at Pacific View were on the verge of being canceled forever, but because she was eager to leave the shadowed, stuffy room and its mealy-skinned, eyeless resident.