by Dean Koontz
First card. Ace of hearts.
Discard two.
Second card. Ace of hearts.
He continued until four aces of hearts and four aces of diamonds were on the table in front of him. These eight draws he had prepared, and this effect was his intention.
Mechanics have reliably steady hands, yet Jacob’s hands shook as he discarded two cards and slowly turned over the ninth draw.
This ought to be a four of clubs, not a jack of spades.
And a four of clubs it was.
He turned over the two most recent discards. Neither was a jack of spades, and both were what he expected them to be.
He looked at the two cards following the four of clubs in the stack. Neither of these was a jack of spades, either, and both were what he anticipated.
On Friday evening, he had arranged for the drawing of the aces, but he had not stacked the subsequent twelve cards to provide for the selection of four identical knaves at three-card intervals. He’d sat in stunned disbelief as he’d watched Maria turn them over.
The odds against drawing a jack of spades four times in a row out of four combined and randomly shuffled decks were forbidding. Jacob didn’t have the knowledge necessary to calculate those odds, but he knew they were astronomical.
Of course, there was no possibility whatsoever of drawing four identical jacks from combined decks that had been exquisitely manipulated and meticulously arranged by a master mechanic—unless the effect of the jacks was intended, which in this case it was not. The odds couldn’t be calculated because it could never happen. No element of chance was involved here. The cards in that stack should have been as predictably ordered—to Jacob—as were the numbered pages in a book.
Friday night, mystified and troubled, he hadn’t slept much, and each time that he dozed off, he had dreamed of being alone in a bosky woods, stalked by a sinister presence, unseen but undeniable. This predator crept in silence through the underbrush, indistinguishable from the lowering trees among which it glided, as fluid and as cold as moonlight, but darker than the night, gaining on him relentlessly. Each time that he sensed it springing toward him for the kill, Jacob woke, once with Barty’s name on his lips, calling out to the boy as though in warning, and once with two words: “…the knave….”
Saturday morning, he walked to a drugstore in town and purchased eight decks of cards. With four, he passed the day re-creating, again and again, what he’d done at the dining-room table the previous evening. The four knaves never appeared.
By the time he went to bed Saturday night, the cards that had been new only that morning were showing signs of wear.
In the dark woods of the dream, still the presence: faceless and silent, radiating a merciless intent.
Sunday morning, when Agnes returned from church, Edom and Jacob joined her for lunch. During the afternoon, Jacob helped her bake seven pies for Monday delivery.
Throughout the day, he tried not to think about the four knaves. But he was an obsessive, of course, so in spite of all his trying, he did not succeed.
Sunday evening, here he was, cracking open four new decks, as if fresh cards might enable the magic to repeat.
Ace, ace, ace, ace of hearts.
“December 1, 1958, in Chicago, Illinois, a parochial-school fire killed ninety-five.”
Ace, ace, ace, ace of diamonds.
Four of clubs.
If magic explained the jacks on Friday evening, maybe it was the dark variety of magic. Maybe he shouldn’t be endeavoring to summon, once more, whatever spirit was responsible for the four knaves.
“July 14, 1960, in Guatemala City, Guatemala, a fire in a mental hospital—two hundred twenty-five dead.”
Curiously, reciting these facts usually calmed him, as though speaking of disaster would ward it off. Since Friday, however, he had found no comfort in his usual routines.
Reluctantly, Jacob finally returned the cards to the packs and admitted to himself that superstition had seized him and would not let go. Somewhere in the world was a knave, a human monster—even worse, according to Maria, a man as fearsome as the devil himself—and for reasons unknown, this beast wanted to harm little Barty, an innocent baby. By some grace that Jacob could not understand, they had been warned, through the cards, that the knave was coming. They had been warned.
Chapter 37
PUDDLED ON THE pan-flat face, the port-wine birthmark. In the center of the stain, the closed eye, concealed by a purple lid, as smooth and round as a grape.
The sight of Vanadium on the kitchen floor gave Junior Cain the greatest fright of his life. He jumped inside his skin, and his heart knocked, knocked, and he half expected to hear his bones rattle one against another, like those of a dangling skeleton in a funhouse.
Although Thomas Vanadium was unconscious, perhaps even dead, and though both nailhead-gray eyes were closed, Junior knew those eyes were watching him, watching through the lids.
Maybe he went a little crazy then. He wouldn’t deny a brief, transient madness.
He didn’t realize he was swinging the candlestick at Vanadium’s face until he saw the blow land. And then he couldn’t stop himself from swinging it yet once more.
The next thing he knew, he was at the kitchen sink, turning off the water, which he couldn’t remember having turned on. He appeared to have washed the bloody candlestick—it was clean—but he had no recollection of this bit of housekeeping.
Blink, and he was in the dining room without knowing how he had gotten there.
The candlestick was dry. Holding this pewter bludgeon with a paper towel, Junior replaced it on the table as he had found it. He picked up the candle from the floor and married it to the stick.
Blink, the living room. Turning off Sinatra halfway through “It Gets Lonely Early.”
The music had been his ally, masking his panicky breathing from Vanadium, lending an aura of normalcy to the house. Now he wanted silence, so he would immediately hear another car in the driveway if one arrived.
The dining room again, but this time he remembered how he had gotten here: by way of the living room.
He opened the solid doors on the bottom of the breakfront, did not find what he was looking for, checked in the sideboard next, and there it was, a small liquor supply. Scotch, gin, vodka. He selected a full bottle of vodka.
At first, he couldn’t gather the nerve to return to the kitchen. He was crazily certain that in his absence, the dead detective would have risen and would be waiting for him.
The urge to flee the house was almost irresistible.
Rhythmic breathing. Slow and deep. Slow and deep. Per Zedd, the route to tranquility is through the lungs.
He didn’t allow himself to ponder why Vanadium had come here or what relationship might have existed between the cop and Victoria. All that was for later consideration, after he had dealt with this unholy mess.
Eventually he approached the door between the dining room and the kitchen. He paused there, listening.
Silence beyond, in the kitchen that had become an abattoir.
Of course, when turning a quarter across his knuckles, the cop had made no noise. And he had glided across the hospital room, in the dark, with feline stealth.
In his mind’s eye, Junior saw the coin in transit of the blunt fingers, moving more swiftly than previously because its passage was lubricated by blood.
Shuddering with dread, he placed one hand against the door and slowly pushed it open.
The maniac detective was still on the floor where he had died. The red rose and the gift box occupied his hands.
Overlaying the birthmark were brighter stains. The plain face, less homely now, was less flat, too, pocked and torn into a new and horrendous geography.
In the name of Zedd, slow deep breaths. Focus not on the past, not on the present, but only on the future. What has happened is of no importance. All that matters is what will happen next.
The worst was behind him.
So keep moving. Don’t get hung
up on the disgusting aftermath. Keep whistling along like a runaway train. Clean up, clean out, roll on.
Fragments of the broken wineglass crunched under his shoes as he crossed the small kitchen to the dinette. He opened the bottle of vodka and put it on the table in front of the dead woman.
His previous plan to create a tableau—butter on the floor, open oven door—to portray Victoria’s death as an accident was no longer adequate. A new strategy was required.
Vanadium’s wounds were too grievous to pass for accidental injuries. Even if there were some way to disguise them through clever staging, no one would believe that Victoria had died in a freak fall and that Vanadium, rushing to her side, had slipped and tumbled and sustained mortal head injuries, as well. Such a strong whiff of slapstick would put even the Spruce Hills police on to the scent of murder.
Okay, so orbit this moon of a problem and find its bright side….
After taking a minute to steel himself, Junior squatted next to the dead detective.
He did not look at the battered face. Dare to meet those shuttered eyes, and they might spring open, full of blood, and fix him with a crucifying stare.
Many police agencies required an officer to carry a firearm even when off duty. If the Oregon State Police had no such rule, Vanadium most likely carried one anyway, because in his crazy-as-a-snake mind, he was never a private citizen, always a cop, always the relentless crusader.
A quick tug on each pants cuff revealed no ankle holster, which was how many cops would choose to carry an off-duty piece.
Averting his eyes from Vanadium’s face, Junior moved farther up the stocky body. He folded back the tweed sports jacket to reveal a shoulder holster.
Junior didn’t know much about guns. He didn’t approve of them; he had never owned one.
This was a revolver. No safeties to figure out.
He fiddled with the cylinder until it swung open. Five chambers, a gleaming cartridge in each.
Snapping the cylinder into place, he rose to his feet. Already he had a new plan, and the cop’s revolver was the most important tool that he required to implement it.
Junior was pleasantly surprised by his flexibility and by his audacity. He was, indeed, a new man, a daring adventurer, and by the day he grew more formidable.
The purpose of life was self-fulfillment, per Zedd, and Junior was so rapidly realizing his extraordinary potential that surely he would have pleased his guru.
Sliding Victoria’s chair away from the table, he turned her to face him. He adjusted her body so that her head was tipped back and her arms were hanging slack at her sides.
Beautiful she was, both of face and form, even with her mouth gaping wide and her eyes rolled back in her skull. How bright her future might have been if she had not chosen to deceive. A tease was, in essence, a deceiver—promising what she never intended to deliver.
Such behavior as hers was unlikely to lead to self-discovery, self-improvement, and fulfillment. We make our own misery in this life. For better or worse, we create our own futures.
“I’m sorry about this,” Junior said.
Then he closed his eyes, held the revolver in both hands, and at point-blank range, he shot the dead woman twice.
The recoil was worse than he expected. The revolver bucked in his hands.
Off the hard surfaces of cabinets, refrigerator, and ovens, the twin reports crashed and rattled. The windowpanes briefly thrummed.
Junior wasn’t concerned that the shots would attract unwanted attention. These large rural properties and a plenitude of muffling trees made it unlikely that the nearest neighbor would hear anything.
With the second shot, the dead woman tumbled out of her chair, and the chair clattered onto its side.
Junior opened his eyes and saw that only the second of the two rounds had found its intended mark. The first had cracked through the center of a cabinet door, surely shattering dishes within.
Victoria lay faceup on the floor. The nurse was no longer as lovely as she had been, and perhaps because of early rigor mortis, her grace, which had initially been evident even in death, had now deserted her.
“I really am sorry about this,” Junior said, regretting the necessity to deny her the right to look good at her own funeral, “but it’s got to appear to be a crime of passion.”
Standing over the body, he squeezed off the last three shots. Finished, he detested guns more than ever.
The air stank of gunfire and pot roast.
With a paper towel, Junior wiped the revolver. He dropped it on the floor beside the riddled nurse.
He didn’t bother to press Vanadium’s hand around the weapon. There wasn’t going to be a wealth of evidence for the Scientific Investigation Division to sift through, anyway, when the fire was finally put out: just enough charred clues to allow them an easy conclusion.
Two murders and an act of arson. Junior was being a bold boy this evening.
Not a bad boy. He didn’t believe in good and bad, in right and wrong.
There were effective actions and ineffective actions, socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior, wise and stupid decisions that could be made. But if you wanted to achieve maximum self-realization, you had to understand that any choice you made in life was entirely value neutral. Morality was a primitive concept, useful in earlier stages of societal evolution, perhaps, but without relevance in the modern age.
Some acts were distasteful, too, such as searching the lunatic lawman for his car keys and his badge.
Continuing to avert his eyes from the battered face and the two-tone eyelids, Junior found the keys in an exterior pocket of the sports jacket. The credentials were tucked in an interior pocket: a single-fold leather holder containing the shiny badge and a photo ID.
He dropped the holder on top of the clubbed-smothered-shot nurse.
Now out of the kitchen, along the hall, and up the stairs, two at a time, into Victoria’s bedroom. Not with the intention of snaring a perverse souvenir. Merely to find a blanket.
In the kitchen again, Junior spread the blanket on the floor, to one side of the blood. He rolled Vanadium onto the blanket, and drew the ends of it together, fashioning a sled with which to drag the detective out of the house.
The cop weighed too much to be carried any distance, the blanket proved effective, the decision to drag him was wise, and the whole process was value neutral.
An unfortunately bumpy ride for the deceased: along the hallway, through the foyer, across the entry threshold, down the porch steps, across a lawn dappled with pine shadows and yellow moonlight, to the graveled driveway. No complaints.
Junior couldn’t see the lights of the nearest other houses. Either those structures were screened by trees or the neighbors weren’t home.
Vanadium’s vehicle, obviously not an official police sedan, was a blue 1961 Studebaker Lark Regal. A dumpy and inelegant car, it looked as though it had been designed specifically to complement the stocky detective’s physique.
When Junior opened the trunk, he discovered that fishing gear and two wooden carriers full of carpenter’s tools left no room for a dead detective. He would be able to make the body fit only if he dismembered it first.
He was too sensitive a soul to be able to take either a handsaw or a power saw to a corpse.
Only madmen were capable of such butchery. Hopeless lunatics like Ed Gein, out there in Wisconsin, arrested just seven years ago, when Junior had been sixteen. Ed, the inspiration for Psycho, had constructed mobiles out of human noses and lips. He used human skin to make lampshades and to upholster furniture. His soup bowls had once been human skulls. He ate the hearts and selected other organs of his victims, wore a belt fashioned from nipples, and occasionally danced under the moon while masked by the scalp and face of a woman he had murdered.
Shivering, Junior slammed the trunk lid and warily surveyed the lonely landscape. Black pines spread bristled arms through the charry night, and the moon cast down a jaundiced light that seemed to obscur
e more than it illuminated.
Junior was free of superstition. He believed in neither gods nor demons, nor in anything between.
Nevertheless, with Gein in mind, how easy it was to imagine that a monstrous evil lurked nearby. Watching. Scheming. Driven by an unspeakable hunger. In a century torn by two world wars, marked by the bootheels of men like Hitler and Stalin, the monsters were no longer supernatural, but human, and their humanity made them scarier than vampires and hellborn fiends.
Junior was motivated not by twisted needs, but by rational self-interest. Consequently, he opted to load the detective’s body into the cramped backseat of the Studebaker with all limbs intact and head attached.
He returned to the house and extinguished the three blown-glass oil lamps on the living-room coffee table. Out, as well, the silk-shade lamp.
In the kitchen, he fussily avoided the blood and stepped around Victoria to switch off both ovens. He killed the gas flame under the large pot of boiling water on the cooktop.
After clicking off the kitchen lights, the hall light, and the light in the foyer, he pulled shut the front door, leaving the house dark and silent behind him.
He still had work to do here. Properly disposing of Thomas Vanadium, however, was the most urgent piece of business.
A sudden cold breeze blew down out of the moon, bearing a faint alien scent, and the black boughs of the trees billowed and rustled like witches’ skirts.
He got behind the wheel of the Studebaker, started the engine, did a hard 180-degree turn, using more lawn than driveway, and cried out in terror when Vanadium moved noisily in the backseat.
Junior jammed on the brakes, slammed the gearshift into park, threw open the door, and plunged from the car. He spun around to face the menace, loose gravel shifting treacherously underfoot.
Chapter 38
BASEBALL CAP IN HAND, he stood on Agnes’s front porch this Sunday evening, a big man with the demeanor of a shy boy.
“Mrs. Lampion?”
“That’s me.”
His leonine head and bold features, framed by golden hair, should have conveyed strength, but the impression he might have made was compromised by a fringe of bangs that curled across his forehead, a style unfortunately reminiscent of effete emperors of ancient Rome.
“I’ve come here to…” His voice trailed away.
Considering his formidable size, his clothes ought to have served an image of virile masculinity: boots, jeans, red flannel shirt. His ducked head, slumped posture, and shuffling feet were reminders, however, that many young boys, too, dressed this way.
“Is something wrong?” Agnes encouraged.
He met her eyes, but at once shifted his gaze to the porch floor again. “I’ve come to say…how sorry I am, how miserably sorry.”
During the ten days since Joey’s passing, a great many people had conveyed their condolences to Agnes, but until this man, she’d known all of them.
“I’d give anything if it hadn’t happened,” he said earnestly. And now a tortured note wrung wet emotion from his voice: “I only wish it had been me who died.”
His sentiment was so excessive that Agnes was speechless.
“I wasn’t drinking,” he said. “That’s proven. But I admit being reckless, driving too fast in the rain. They cited me for that, for running the light.”
Suddenly she understood. “You’re him.”
He nodded, and his face flushed with guilt.
“Nicholas Deed.” On her tongue, the name was as bitter as a dissolving aspirin.
“Nick,” he suggested, as though any reason existed for her to be on a first-name basis with the man who killed her husband. “I wasn’t drinking.”
“You’ve been drinking now,” she softly accused.