by Dean Koontz
“And that we should be alive,” he said.
“In those days so long ago … was he then as he became?”
“The pride was there, a tendency to corruption,” Deucalion said. “Pride can become arrogance. Arrogance is the father of cruelty. But in the beginning, there was also an idealism, a hope that he could change the human condition.”
“Utopian ideas. They always lead to destruction … blood, death, and horror. And you—two centuries alone. How have you … endured?”
“Rage and revenge at first. Murder and brutality. But gradually I realized I’d been given one gift greater than all others, the gift of possibility. I could become what I chose, better than my origins. Rage can be a kind of pride. I turned away from it before I became an eternal monster, in his image.”
Carson saw unshed tears in Erika’s eyes. She doubted that Victor would be pleased that one of his New Orleans–bred New Race possessed enough empathy to recognize and to be moved by another’s anguish. In Victor’s view, empathy was evidence of weakness, an emotion suitable only for the timid and the foolish.
Erika led them into the house, to the kitchen, where the aroma of brewing coffee enriched the air. On the table was a large tray of cookies.
Coffee and cookies with the Frankenstein monster and the bride of Frankenstein.
Carson wasn’t surprised to see Michael smiling, and the self-control revealed by his silence impressed her.
With coffee served and the four of them at the table, the crisis of the moment was not their first concern. How Erika had gotten here was of more immediate interest.
After her call to them in San Francisco, she knew for certain that Victor had been killed on the night that she had fled from him. She assumed he must be dead, for only his death would have released her from the absolute obedience to him that was part of her program. But now for the first time she knew.
That rainy night two years previously, as Victor’s empire began to disintegrate, she entered a secret vault in his Garden District mansion and, operating on his telephoned instructions, packed one suitcase with bricks of hundred-dollar bills, euros, bearer bonds, and gray velvet bags full of precious gems, mostly diamonds: on-the-run money in case he needed it. As ordered by her husband, her maker, she had brought that fortune to a secret facility of his, northeast of Lake Pontchartrain.
Before she could get out of the car and deliver the suitcase, a singular and strange display of lightning turned night to noon. Great barrages of thunderbolts struck the pavement all around her vehicle, so many in number and so completely encircling her that from every window she could see nothing of the surrounding landscape, only a screen of light—a shield—so bright that she closed her eyes and bowed her head, expecting death.
“Thanks to our phone call earlier,” Erika said to those around her kitchen table, “I now know the lightning occurred at the moment Victor died. The signal his dying body transmitted to his creations, the signal that killed them, couldn’t reach me behind that shield of lightning.”
“He harnessed the lightning of a terrible storm to bring me to life,” Deucalion said, “but it was lightning of unprecedented power, and it brought me more than life. It brought me the gifts I would eventually need to destroy him. And lightning spared you because we need to work together to find and stop him in his new, mysterious incarnation.”
“What brought you here to Montana,” Michael wondered, “instead of anywhere else?”
“I don’t know. I had the fortune in the suitcase, enough to start a new life anywhere. I just drove and drove, guided by whim, until I found a place that seemed right.”
Deucalion shook his head. “No. You were guided by more than a whim.”
They were silenced by this suggestion of a destiny. Of a hard obligation. Of a responsibility that was grave, if not even sacred.
“If we were brought here by some kind of Providence,” Erika suggested, “then surely we can’t lose this war.”
“I wouldn’t count on that,” Deucalion warned. “We have the free will to do the right thing or the wrong. One curse that our kind and humankind share—even when our minds are clear, our hearts can too easily deceive us.”
“Besides,” Carson said, “there at the end in New Orleans, we had more allies than we do this time. Here in Rainbow Falls, there are only four of us.”
“There is a fifth,” Erika said. “Both he and I thought you needed time to hear my story before meeting him. His looks can be … distracting.”
Hinges creaked, drawing their attention to a pantry door that had stood one inch ajar.
Into the kitchen stepped a trollish thing in children’s clothes, Rumpelstiltskin cubed, a cacodemon, a hobgoblin, a thing for which no word existed, a thing wearing a floppy hat decorated with tiny bells. Its eerie yellow eyes were bright with some terrible hunger, and its hideous face twisted into a mask of hatred so raw that Carson and Michael—and even Deucalion—skidded their chairs back from the table and shot to their feet in alarm.
“Sweetie,” Erika said, “I warned you not to grin. A slight smile is disturbing enough for people who don’t know you.”
chapter 41
Frost and Dagget had walked to the park by different routes. Having decided to work more directly as a team, they left together.
Dagget was staying at one of the town’s four motels—Falls Inn—on Falls Road just north of Beartooth Avenue. The inn stood near the river with a view of the natural wonder after which Rainbow Falls had been named.
Over a distance of five hundred feet, the river stepped down six times, providing cascade points across its entire width. The highest falls measured only twelve feet; the lowest, seven. The cumulative effect stirred pride in the hearts of the members of the Chamber of Commerce. The spectacle was a must-see if you were already in town, but it didn’t warrant a weekend stay and a memory stick full of photographs.
In his motel room, Dagget could hear the falls 24/7 even with the windows closed. He said it was a soothing sound, as effective as a lullaby.
“Still sleeping well?” Frost asked as they drew near the Bearpaw Lane entrance to the park.
“Like a baby, even though the sound makes me get up for the john six times a night. I know the route from the bed to the pot so well I don’t really need to wake up even halfway to answer the urge.”
21st-Century Green Incorporated, dedicated to viable alternative sources of clean energy, had rented a small furnished house for three months, which was where Frost bedded down. The company didn’t exist, except on paper, and Frost wasn’t its property scout, as he claimed to be, but the landlord had been paid in full in advance, which was as real as anything got in contemporary America.
Green was the perfect camouflage these days. If you worked for a company with green in its name, you were assumed to be responsible, compassionate, farsighted, of high moral character, one of the good guys—which was ironic, because Frost was one of the good guys even though he worried not at all about his carbon footprint.
“If I were a serial killer,” Frost said, “I’d travel the country pretending to be an environmental activist, wearing clothes made from soybean fabric. Women wouldn’t just throw themselves at me, they’d also give me the hatchet to chop them up with.”
“I don’t need soybean clothes,” Dagget said. “I have the natural pheromones that women can’t resist.”
“Yeah? You have them in a spray can or a roll-on stick?”
The house rented by 21st-Century Green was on Bearpaw, across the street from the park.
Frost said, “Come on over. We’ll check the computer, see where Chief Jarmillo is, then maybe do some surveillance on him.”
The two-bedroom bungalow was furnished as if austerity had been proclaimed the new glamour, but at least it was clean.
As they passed through the living room and dining room to the kitchen, where Frost’s laptop and scanner were set up, Dagget said, “This makes Shaker furniture look decadent. Does the place come with a bed of
nails?”
“No, but there’s a complimentary selection of woven bramble scourges if you’d like to whip yourself.”
“Maybe later. While you’re checking on Jarmillo, I’ll call Moomaw, see if the whistle-blower has turned up anything more about this. I don’t mind flying backward and upside down, but I don’t like flying blind, too.”
Maurice Moomaw was their superior in the Bureau. No one dared make fun of his name, even though Maurice was his middle name and his full name was Saint Maurice Moomaw. His father had been a black activist who changed his surname from Johnson, and his mother had been a devout Catholic who insisted on naming him after one of the few black saints. Maurice Moomaw had skin, hair, and eyes all pretty much the same shade of mahogany, and he stood as big as a tree. He had a law degree from Yale, and though he would never say a cross word to a subordinate in front of anyone else, in private he could cut you in half with words faster than a chain saw could do the job.
As Frost booted up the laptop and checked on Jarmillo, Dagget spoke with Moomaw by satellite phone, using the word sir a lot. When he terminated the call and came to the table, he said, “Moomaw says word is the Moneyman is coming here tomorrow.”
Frost was surprised.
“Well, not to this monk’s cell of yours,” Dagget said, “but he’s coming somewhere in the Rainbow Falls area, they don’t know where. He’s coming in by chopper from Billings.”
“Why?”
“They don’t know why. Probably to see what his money’s buying.”
“This is big. Moomaw thinks it’s big, doesn’t he?”
“Moomaw now thinks it’s huge.”
“This is dirty business of some kind. Why would the Moneyman risk being tied to it?”
“Dirty business is his favorite kind. Maybe you’ll get a chance to ask him why.”
“Wouldn’t that be something?” Frost said.
“Except it’s pretty much certain, if you ask the question, you’ll get a bullet for an answer.”
chapter 42
Standing at a window in Room 218, Bryce watched a hospital janitor hosing off the area of parking-lot pavement where Travis had seen a man beaten and perhaps murdered. The boy said the man below was the same one who had swung the club.
In the armchair, crossed legs drawn up onto the seat, he said, “It happened. I didn’t imagine it.”
“I know you didn’t,” Bryce assured him.
Each half of the bronze casement window featured a handle with which it could be cranked open for ventilation. The center post was strong enough to support the weight of a climber. The distance from the windowsill to the blacktop appeared to be about fifteen feet.
Entirely plausible.
Bryce stepped away from the window, went down on one knee beside the armchair, and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “There’s hardly any staff on this floor because they’re downstairs, and I think it’s because they’re helping to guard every entrance to the basement and every exterior door on the ground floor.”
“Why did they kill that man?”
“He must’ve seen something they didn’t want him to see.”
“What? What did he see?”
“Listen, Travis, we’ve got to hang tough. Don’t give them any reason to think you’re suspicious.”
“But it’s just like I told you, isn’t it? They aren’t who they used to be. They’re not real anymore.”
“They’re real, son, they’re plenty real. But they’re different now.”
“What’re they doing to people down in the basement?”
“Whatever it is, we don’t want them doing it to us.”
Bryce’s own voice sounded alien to him, not because the pitch and timbre of it had changed, which they had not, but because of the things he heard himself saying. He remained a writer of Westerns, but his life had changed genres.
“There’s something we can do,” Bryce said, “but it’s going to take nerve, and we’ve got to be cautious.”
He outlined his plan, and the boy listened without interruption.
When Bryce finished, Travis said only, “Will it work?”
“It has to, doesn’t it?” Bryce said.
chapter 43
In the main basement hallway of the hospital, Chief Jarmillo and Dr. Henry Lightner stood on opposite sides of the gurney on which rested the body of Brian Murdock.
“The whole face is stoved in,” Jarmillo said.
“Cody had to stop him.”
“Of course.”
“You or I would have done the same.”
“Perhaps not so aggressively.”
“Or perhaps more so,” Lightner said.
Jarmillo looked up from the body and met the physician’s eyes. “Obsessing of any kind must be reported.”
“He wasn’t obsessing.”
“How many blows with the nightstick?”
“We don’t have time for an autopsy. With everything we have to accomplish by tonight, that wouldn’t be an efficient use of time.”
“But how many blows do you think? Just a guess.”
“Not many.”
“Really?”
“Not many,” Lightner repeated. “Not many. He did what he had to do.”
“And efficiently. The problem is where he did it. In the open.”
“No one saw,” Lightner said.
“We can’t be sure of that.”
“If someone saw, they would have told a nurse, an orderly, they would have wanted us to call the police.”
“Not if they’re suspicious of … all of us.”
“Why suspicious? Even dogs can’t smell a difference between us and them.”
“We might not mimic as well as we think we do. Maybe the more perceptive of their kind can sense something wrong.”
“If one of them saw, he’ll soon be dead anyway.”
Jarmillo nodded. “You need Cody here.”
“I need everybody to get this done.”
“And no one at the scene thinks he was obsessing?”
“No one.”
Jarmillo considered the situation for a moment. None of the hospital patients had phone service. Cell phones and text-messaging devices had been collected using one excuse or another. No one in the building could leave without either being returned to his room or being dealt with as Cody had dealt with Murdock. They had hoped to begin delivering the patients to the Builders after visiting hours. But if someone had seen the killing, and if he had a visitor, they risked exposure if that visitor left the hospital.
“Midday visiting hours are over?” Jarmillo asked.
“Yes.”
“Evening hours are … ?”
“From five till eight.”
“It’s going to complicate things for us, but we’ll have to prevent the evening visitors from leaving. They’ll all have to be rendered to the Builders, as well.”
“We’ll need some help.”
“I’ll give you three more deputies.”
“Then we’ll be fine.”
Jarmillo turned his attention once more to Murdock’s face. “I think the Creator might call Cody obsessive.”
“And I think,” Lightner said, “you seem to be obsessing about obsession.”
The chief met Lightner’s eyes again. After a mutual silence, he said, “For the Community.”
“For the Community,” Dr. Lightner replied.
chapter 44
Jocko’s big moment. The first people he’d met in two years. He wanted to make a good impression. To be liked. To be accepted as a fellow American. To make Erika proud. To not be a screwup.
Scaring them was a bad start. Stop grinning. Just a small smile.
Maybe wiggle his ears. No! No, no, no! That old woman that time, that alleyway, Jocko wiggled his ears, she beat him with a trash can. And threw the cat at him. The cat was horrible. No ear wiggles.
Extending his right hand in greeting, he went to Deucalion. “I am Jocko. Jocko juggles. Jocko pirouettes. Jocko is a monster like
you but not as pretty. Jocko is immensely pleased to make your great acquaintance.”
Deucalion’s hand was so large that he only used his thumb and forefinger to shake Jocko’s hand. But it still counted as a shake.
So far so good.
He went next to Carson O’Connor. “I am Jocko. Jocko cartwheels. Jocko writes poetry. Jocko used to eat soap. But he doesn’t anymore. Bowel problems. But Jocko still likes the taste.”
Carson O’Connor grimaced when she shook Jocko’s hand. But she didn’t recoil. Didn’t spit at him. He didn’t think she’d throw a cat even if she had one. Very nice. A nice lady.
“Ms. Carson O’Connor, if you please. Jocko apologizes for his nasty hand. It is cold. Clammy. Sticky. But Jocko assures you, it is clean.”
“I’m sure it is,” she said. “Please just call me Carson.”
Never had Jocko thought it would go this well. Jocko was making an impression. Jocko was almost debonair.
To Carson, he said, “Jocko is supremely delighted to see you again.”
She looked confused. “Again?”
“Jocko met you briefly. New Orleans. A warehouse roof. In a thunderstorm. You had a shotgun. Another lifetime.”
Michael Maddison accepted Jocko’s outstretched hand.
“I am Jocko. Jocko does backflips. Jocko can eat a big cinnamon roll in one bite. Jocko collects funny hats with bells.”
He shook his head. All the little bells rang on his hat.
“Jocko is enchanted to see you again.”
“Forgive me,” Michael said, “but I don’t recall … ”
“Back then, things were going wrong with Victor’s people. So wrong. Strange things. Jocko was a strange thing that went wrong. Jocko grew inside Jonathan Harker.”
Harker had been one of Victor’s New Race. The replicant of a police detective. In the homicide department with Michael and Carson.
“Jocko was sort of a kind of a tumor. But with a brain. And hope. Hope for a better life. Freedom. Maybe go to Disney World one day. That’ll never happen. Still, one can dream. Anyway, Jocko burst from Harker’s chest.”