“You understand you can come back here anytime?”
She understood too well that people didn’t always know why they did what they did, that even when they knew their true motives, they often lied to themselves about them. Nevertheless, she had to ask, “Why are you doing this? You have so much to lose, why risk it?”
“For my old sergeant.”
“Is that really all it is?”
“No. Not all.”
“Well, then?”
“When you’ve played the good man who shows up at the right time in enough movies, there comes a point where you either have to try to synchronize your real life with the make-believe—or else admit that you’re one of the biggest phonies who ever lived.”
At last he flashed her the famous killer smile. This time she saw in it the faintest edge of sadness, which she realized was why his smile made millions swoon but also why it broke a million hearts.
37
* * *
SHE PARKED in a supermarket lot in Santa Monica, where she used a disposable phone to call her father’s unlisted line. She was sent to voice mail, as she expected to be. She had not spoken to him in a long time; and now she left a message that she was sure he would be quick to share with authorities.
“Sorry if all this bad publicity affects ticket sales for your current concert tour. But that’s the least of your worries. We both know the truth of what happened long ago, and we both know that in what little time I have left, there’s nothing I need to do more than bring the hard consequences of that night straight home to you.”
Sometimes the only way to reassure your real quarry of his safety was with a bit of misdirection like this.
She dropped the phone through the bars of a storm-drain grating.
38
* * *
ON THE ROAD AGAIN, using another disposable phone, she called ahead to Gavin and Jess Washington, to let them know that she was coming, but also to warn them that she had no time to visit. Her life was now a thousand-mile toboggan ride, a downhill course so treacherous and steep that Olympic luge stars would beg off the race. She did not want to disappoint Travis with a one-hour visit, which would only sharpen his longing for a permanent reunion.
Well after darkfall, Jane parked at the head of their long driveway, shielded from the sight of the house by the colonnades of California live oaks. At 9:40, Gavin walked out to the car to tell her that the boy was sound asleep. Together they returned to the house, where Jess waited in one of the rocking chairs on the porch, the dogs at her feet.
Jane went alone into the house.
As before, he slept by lamplight. Such innocence in a time of such corruption. So small, so vulnerable in a hard world ruled by the aggressive use of force.
When she had carried him from conception to term, she had never imagined that by the time he was five, the world into which she had delivered him would grow so dark. Children were the world as it was meant to be, and they were a light within the world. But for every light, there seemed to be someone bent on extinguishing it.
They said that if someone harmed a child, it would be better for him if instead he were hanged about his neck with a millstone and drowned in the depths of the sea. In spite of how she had been hardened by the task that had been put before her, Jane still had the capacity for tenderness, a storehouse of love to pay out when given a chance, an imperative need to mother this child and, for that matter, all children in his name. To be separated from him was a deep-heart sorrow. In spite of all the death, any day that ended with the chance to see this boy was a good day. She hoped that it was not the last good day. But whatever might be coming, she would meet the threat, for it had fallen to her, through no choice of her own, to fashion the millstones and hang them around the necks of the damned.
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DEAN KOONTZ
THE WHISPERING ROOM
1
* * *
CORA GUNDERSUN WALKED through seething fire without being burned, nor did her white dress burst into flames. She was not afraid, but instead exhilarated, and the many admiring people witnessing this spectacle gaped in amazement, their expressions of astonishment flickering with reflections of the flames. They called out to her not in alarm, but in wonder, with a note of veneration in their voices, so that Cora felt equally thrilled and humbled that she had been made invulnerable.
Dixie, a long-haired dappled-gold dachshund, woke Cora by licking her hand. The dog had no respect for dreams, not even for this one that her mistress had enjoyed three nights in a row and about which she had told Dixie in vivid detail. Dawn had come, time for breakfast and morning toilet, which were more important to Dixie than any dream.
Cora was forty years old, birdlike and spry. As the short dog toddled down the set of portable steps that allowed her to climb in and out of bed, Cora sprang up to meet the day. She slipped into fur-lined ankle-high boots that served as her wintertime slippers, and in her pajamas she followed the waddling dachshund through the house.
Just before she stepped into the kitchen, she was struck by the notion that a strange man would be sitting at the dinette table and that something terrible would happen.
Of course no man awaited her. She’d never been a fearful woman. She chastised herself for being spooked by nothing, nothing at all.
As she put out fresh water and kibble for her companion, the dog’s feathery golden tail swept the floor in anticipation.
By the time Cora had prepared the coffeemaker and switched it on, Dixie had finished eating. Now standing at the back door, the dog barked politely, just once.
Cora snared a coat from a wall peg and shrugged into it. “Let’s see if you can empty yourself as quick as you filled up. It’s colder than the cellar of Hades out there, sweet thing, so don’t dawdle.”
As she left the warmth of the house for the porch, her breath smoked from her as if a covey of ghosts, long in possession of her body, were being exorcised. She stood at the head of the steps to watch over precious Dixie Belle, just in case there might be a nasty-tempered raccoon lingering from its night of foraging.
More than a foot of late-winter snow had fallen the previous morning. In the absence of wind, the pine trees still wore ermine stoles on every bough. Cora had shoveled a clearing in the backyard so that Dixie wouldn’t have to plow through deep powder.
Dachshunds had keen noses. Ignoring her mistress’s plea not to dawdle, Dixie Belle wandered back and forth in the clearing, nose to the ground, curious about what animals had visited in the night.
Wednesday. A school day.
Although Cora had been off work for two weeks, she still felt as if she should hurry to prepare for school. Two years earlier, she had been named Minnesota’s Teacher of the Year. She dearly loved—and missed—the children in her sixth-grade class.
Sudden-onset migraines, five and six hours long, sometimes accompanied by foul odors that only she could detect, had disabled her. The headaches seemed to be slowly responding to medications—Zolmitriptan and a muscle relaxant called Soma. Cora had never been a sickly person, and staying home bored her.
Dixie Belle finally peed and left two small logs, which Cora would pick up with a plastic bag later, after they froze solid.
When she followed the dachshund into the house, a strange man was sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee that he had boldly poured for himself. He wore a knitted cap. He had unzipped his fleece-lined jacket. His face was long, his features sharp, his cold blue stare direct.
Before Cora could cry out or turn to flee, the intruder said, “Play Manchurian with me.”
“Yes, all right,” she said, because he no longer seemed to be a threat. She knew him, after all. He was a nice man. He had visited her at least twice in the past week. He was a very nice man.