The Husband
Also by DEAN KOONTZ

Forever Odd Velocity Life Expectancy The Taking
Odd Thomas The Face By the Light of the Moon
One Door Away From Heaven From the Corner of His Eye
False Memory Seize the Night Fear Nothing
Mr. Murder Dragon Tears Hideaway Cold Fire
' The Bad Place Midnight Lightning Watchers
Strangers Twilight Eyes Darkfall Phantoms Whispers The Mask The Vision The Face of Fear
Night Chills Shattered The Voice of the Night
' The Servants of Twilight The House of Thunder
The Key to Midnight The Eyes of Darkness Shadowfires Winter Moon The Door to December
Dark Rivers of the Heart Icebound
Strange Highways Intensity Sole Survivor
Ticktock The Funhouse Demon Seed

DEANKOONTZ'S FRANKENSTEIN
Book One: Prodigal Son with Kevin J. Anderson
Book Two: City of Night with Ed Gorman
DEAN KOONTZ

The
Husband


BCA1
This edition published 2006
byBCA
by arrangement with HarperCollinsPuWwiberf
CN 146693
Copyright © Dean Koontz 2006

The Author asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library

Set in Hoefler New Roman

Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Mackays of Chatham pic, Chatham, Kent

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers.
This novel is dedicated to Andy and Anne Wickstrom,

and to Wesley J. Smith and Debra J. Saunders:

two good husbands and their good wives,

also good friends, who always brighten

the corner where they are.
Courage is grace under pressure. --Ernest Hemingway

That Love is all there is,
Is all we know of Love.... --Emily Dickinson
The

Husband
Part One

What Would You
Do for Love?


man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most
people live in denial of Death's patient courtship until,
late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him
sitting bedside.
Eventually, Mitchell Rafferty would be able to cite the minute
that he began to recognize the inevitability of his death: Monday,
May 14,11:43 a.m. the morning--three weeks short of his twenty
eighth birthday.
Until then, he had rarely thought of dying. A born optimist,
charmed by nature's beauty and amused by humanity, he had no
cause or inclination to wonder when and how his mortality
would be proven.
When the call came, he was on his knees.
Thirty flats of red and purple impatiens remained to be
planted. The flowers produced no fragrance, but the fertile smell of the soil pleased him.
His clients, these particular homeowners, liked saturate
colors: red, purple, deep yellow, hot pink. They would not accept
white blooms or pastels.
Mitch understood them. Raised poor, they had built a
successful business by working hard and taking risks. To them,
life was intense, and saturated colors reflected the truth of
nature's vehemence.
This apparently ordinary but in fact momentous morning, the
California sun was a buttery ball. The sky had a basted sheen.
Pleasantly warm, not searing, the day nevertheless left a
greasy sweat on Ignatius Barnes. His brow glistened. His chin
dripped.
At work in the same bed of flowers, ten feet from Mitch, Iggy
looked boiled. From May until July, his skin responded to the
sun not with melanin but with a fierce blush. For one-sixth of
the year, before he finally tanned, he appeared to be perpetually
embarrassed.
Iggy did not possess an understanding of symmetry and
harmony in landscape design, and he couldn't be trusted to trim
roses properly. He was a hard worker, however, and good if not
intellectually bracing company.
"You hear what happened to Ralph Gandhi?" Iggy asked.
"Who's Ralph Gandhi?"
"Mickey's brother."
"Mickey Gandhi? I don't know him, either."
"Sure you do," Iggy said. "Mickey, he hangs out sometimes at
Rolling Thunder."
Rolling Thunder was a surfers' bar.
"I haven't been there in years," Mitch said.
"Years? Are you serious?"
"Entirely."
"I thought you still dropped in sometimes."
"So I've really been missed, huh?"
"I'll admit, nobody's named a bar stool after you. What--did
you find someplace better than Rolling Thunder?"
"Remember coming to my wedding three years ago?" Mitch
asked.
"Sure. You had great seafood tacos, but the band was woofy."
"They weren't woofy."
"Man, they had tambourines."
"We were on a budget. At least they didn't have an accordion."

"Because playing an accordion exceeded their skill level."
Mitch troweled a cavity in the loose soil. "They didn't have finger bells, either."
Wiping his brow with one forearm, Iggy complained: "I must
have Eskimo genes. I break a sweat at fifty degrees."
Mitch said, "I don't do bars anymore. I do marriage."
"Yeah, but can't you do marriage and Rolling Thunder?"
"I'd just rather be home than anywhere else."
"Oh, boss, that's sad," said Iggy.

"It's not sad. It's the best."
"If you put a lion in a zoo three years, six years, he never
forgets what freedom was like."
Planting purple impatiens, Mitch said, "How would you
know? You ever asked a lion?"
"I don't have to ask one. lam a lion."
"You're a hopeless boardhead."
"And proud of it. I'm glad you found Holly. She's a great lady.
But I've got my freedom."
"Good for you, Iggy. And what do you do with it?"
"Do with what?"
"Your freedom. What do you do with your freedom?"
"Anything I want."
"Like, for example?"
"Anything. Like, if I want sausage pizza for dinner, I don't
have to ask anyone what she wants."
"Radical."
"If I want to go to Rolling Thunder for a few beers, there's
nobody to bitch at me."
"Holly doesn't bitch."
"I can get beer-slammed every night if I want, and nobody's
gonna be calling to ask when am I coming home."
Mitch began to whistle "Born Free."
"Some wahine comes on to me," Iggy said, "I'm free to rock
and roll."
"They're coming on to you all the time--are they?--those sexy
wahines?"
"Women are bold these days, boss. They see what they want,
they just take it."
Mitch said, "Iggy, the last time you got laid, John Kerry
thought he was going to be president."
"That's not so long ago."
"So what happened to Ralph?"
"Ralph who?"
"Mickey Gandhi's brother."
"Oh, yeah. An iguana bit off his nose."
"Nasty."
"Some fully macking ten-footers were breaking, so Ralph and
some guys went night-riding at the Wedge."
The Wedge was a famous surfing spot at the end of the Balboa
Peninsula, in Newport Beach.
Iggy said, "They packed coolers full of submarine sandwiches
and beer, and one of them brought Ming."
"Ming?"
"That's the iguana."
"So it was a pet?"
"Ming, he'd always been sweet before."
"I'd expect iguanas to be moody."
"No, they're affectionate. What happened was some wanker,
not even a surfer, just a wannabe tag-along, slipped Ming a
quarter-dose of meth in a piece of salami."
"Reptiles on speed," Mitch said, "is a bad idea."
"Meth Ming was a whole different animal from clean-and
sober Ming," Iggy confirmed.
Putting down his trowel, sitting back on the heels of his work
shoes, Mitch said, "So now Ralph Gandhi is noseless?"

"Ming didn't eat the nose. He just bit it off and spit it out."
"Maybe he didn't like Indian food."
"They had a big cooler full of ice water and beer. They put the
nose in the cooler and rushed it to the hospital."
"Did they take Ralph, too?"
"They had to take Ralph. It was his nose."
"Well," Mitch said, "we are talking about boardheads."
8
DEAN KOONTZ


"They said it was kinda blue when they fished it out of the ice
water, but a plastic surgeon sewed it back on, and now it's not
blue anymore."
"What happened to Ming?"
"He crashed. He was totally amped-out for a day. Now he's
his old self."
"That's good. It's probably hard to find a clinic that'll do
iguana rehab."
Mitch got to his feet and retrieved three dozen empty plastic
plant pots. He carried them to his extended-bed pickup.
The truck stood at the curb, in the shade of an Indian laurel.
Although the neighborhood had been built-out only five years
earlier, the big tree had already lifted the sidewalk. Eventually
the insistent roots would block lawn drains and invade the sewer
system.
The developer's decision to save one hundred dollars by
not installing a root barrier would produce tens of thousands
in repair work for plumbers, landscapers, and concrete contractors.
When
Mitch planted an Indian laurel, he always used a root
barrier. He didn't need to make future work for himself. Green
growing Nature would keep him busy.
The street lay silent, without traffic. Not the barest breath of
a breeze stirred the trees.
From a block away, on the farther side of the street, a man
and a dog approached. The dog, a retriever, spent less time walking
than it did sniffing messages left by others of its kind.
The stillness pooled so deep that Mitch almost believed he
could hear the panting of the distant canine.
Golden: the sun and the dog, the air and the promise of the
day, the beautiful houses behind deep lawns.
Mitch Rafferty could not afford a home in this neighborhood.
He was satisfied just to be able to work here.
You could love great art but have no desire to live in a
museum.
He noticed a damaged sprinkler head where lawn met sidewalk.
He got his tools from the truck and knelt on the grass,
taking a break from the impatiens.
His cell phone rang. He undipped it from his belt, flipped it
open. The time was displayed--11:43--but no caller's number
showed on the screen. He took the call anyway.
"Big Green," he said, which was the name he'd given his
two-man business nine years ago, though he no longer remembered
why.
"Mitch, I love you," Holly said.
"Hey, sweetie."
"Whatever happens, I love you."
She cried out in pain. A clatter and crash suggested a struggle.
Alarmed, Mitch rose to his feet. "Holly?"
Some guy said something, some guy who now had the phone. Mitch didn't hear the words because he was focused on the
background noise.
Holly squealed. He'd never heard such a sound from her, such
fear.
"Sonofabitch," she said, and was silenced by a sharp crack, as
though she'd been slapped.
The stranger on the phone said, "%u hear me, Rafferty?"
"Holly? Where's Holly?"
10 DEAN KOONTZ
THE HUSBAND 11
Now the guy was talking away from the phone, not to Mitch:
"You've made a mistake."
"Don't be stupid. Stay on the floor."
"You hear what I said? Two million."
Another man spoke in the background, his words unclear.
"Man, you aren't listening. I'm a gardener."
The one with the phone said, "She gets up, punch her. You
"We know."
want to lose some teeth, honey?"
"I have like eleven thousand bucks in the bank."
She was with two men. One of them had hit her. Hit her.
"We know."
Mitch couldn't get his mind around the situation. Reality
Brimming with fear and confusion, Mitch had no room for
suddenly seemed as slippery as the narrative of a nightmare.
anger. Compelled to clarify, perhaps more for himself than for
A meth-crazed iguana was more real than this.
the caller, he said, "I just run a little two-man operation."
Near the house, Iggy planted impatiens. Sweating, red from
"You've got until midnight Wednesday. Sixty hours. We'll be
the sun, as solid as ever.
in touch about the details."
"That's better, honey. That's a good girl."

Mitch was sweating. "This is nuts. Where would I get two
Mitch couldn't draw breath. A great weight pressed on his
million bucks?"
lungs. He tried to speak but couldn't find his voice, didn't know
"You'll find a way."
what to say. Here in bright sun, he felt casketed, buried alive.
The stranger's voice was hard, implacable. In a movie, Death
"We have your wife," said the guy on the phone.
might sound like this.
Mitch heard himself ask, "Why?"
"It isn't possible," Mitch said.
"Why do you think, asshole?"
"You want to hear her scream again?"
Mitch didn't know why. He didn't want to know. He didn't
"No. Don't."
want to reason through to an answer because every possible
"Do you love her?"
answer would be a horror.
"Yes."
"I'm planting flowers."
"Really love her?"
"What's wrong with you, Rafferty?"
"She's everything to me."
"That's what I do. Plant flowers. Repair sprinklers."
How peculiar, that he should be sweating yet feel so cold.
'Are you buzzed or something?"
"If she's everything to you," said the stranger, "then you'll find
"I'm just a gardener."
away."
"So we have your wife. You get her back for two million cash."
"There isn't a way."
Mitch knew it wasn't a joke. If it were a joke, Holly would
"If you go to the cops, we'll cut her fingers off one by one,
have to be in on it, but her sense of humor was not cruel.
and cauterize them as we go. We'll cut her tongue out. And her
DEAN KOONTZ


eyes. Then we'll leave her alone to die as fast or slow as she
wants."
The stranger spoke without menace, in a matter-of-fact tone,
as if he were not making a threat but were instead merely
explaining the details of his business model.
Mitchell Rafferty had no experience of such men. He might
as well have been talking to a visitor from the far end of the
galaxy.
He could not speak because suddenly it seemed that he might
so easily, unwittingly say the wrong thing and ensure Holly's
death sooner rather than later.
The kidnapper said, "Just so you'll know we're serious ..."
After a silence, Mitch asked, "What?"
"See that guy across the street?"

Mitch turned and saw a single pedestrian, the man walking
the slow dog. They had progressed half a block.
The sunny day had a porcelain glaze. Rifle fire shattered the
stillness, and the dogwalker went down, shot in the head.
"Midnight Wednesday," said the man on the phone. "We're
damn serious."
The dog stood as if on point: one forepaw raised, tail
extended but motionless, nose lifted to seek a scent.
In truth, the golden retriever had not spotted the shooter. It
halted in midstep, startled by its master's collapse, frozen by
confusion.
Directly across the street from the dog, Mitch likewise stood
paralyzed. The kidnapper terminated the call, but Mitch still
held the cell phone to his ear.
Superstition promised that as long as the street remained still,
as long as neither he nor the dog moved, the violence might be
undone and time rewound, the bullet recalled to the barrel.
Reason trumped magical thinking. He crossed the street, first
haltingly, then at a run.
If the fallen man was wounded, something might be done to
save him.
As Mitch approached, the dog favored him with a single wag
of its tail.
A glance at the victim dispelled any hope that first aid might
sustain him until paramedics arrived. A significant portion of
his skull was gone.
Having no familiarity with real violence, only with the editedanalyzed-excused-and-defanged
variety provided by TV news,
and with the cartoon violence in movies, Mitch was rendered
impotent by this horror. More than fear, shock immobilized
him.
More than shock, a sudden awareness of previously unsensed
dimensions transfixed him. He was akin to a rat in a sealed
maze, for the first time looking up from the familiar passageways
and seeing a world beyond the glass lid, forms and figures,
mysterious movement.
Lying on the sidewalk near its master, the golden retriever
trembled, whimpered.
Mitch sensed that he was in the company of someone other
than the dog, and felt watched, but more than watched. Studied.
Attended. Pursued.
His heart was a thundering herd, hooves on stone.
He surveyed the day but saw no gunman. The rifle could have
been fired from any house, from any rooftop or window, or from
behind a parked car.
Anyway, the presence he sensed was not that of the shooter.
He did not feel watched from a distance, but from an intimate
vantage point. He felt as if someone loomed over him.
Hardly more than half a minute had passed since the dog
walker had been killed.
The crack of the rifle had not brought anyone out of any of
the beautiful houses. In this neighborhood, a gunshot would be
perceived as a slammed door, dismissed even as it echoed.
THE HUSBAND 15

Across the street, at the client's house, Iggy Barnes had risen
from his knees to his feet. He didn't appear to be alarmed,
merely puzzled, as if he, too, had heard a door and didn't understand
the meaning of the fallen man, the grieving dog.
Midnight Wednesday. Sixty hours. Time on fire, minutes
burning. Mitch couldn't afford to let hours turn to ashes while
he was tied up with a police investigation.
On the sidewalk, a column of marching ants changed course,
crawling toward the feast within the cratered skull.
In a mostly clear sky, a rare cloud drifted across the sun. The
day paled. Shadows faded.
Chilled, Mitch turned from the corpse, stepped off the curb,
halted.
He and Iggy couldn't just load the unplanted impatiens into
the truck and drive away. They might not be able to do so before
someone came along and saw the dead man. Their indifference
to the victim and their flight would suggest guilt even to the
most unworldly passerby, and certainly to the police.
The cell phone, folded shut, remained in Mitch's hand. He
looked upon it with dread.
If you go to the cops, we'll cut her fingers off one by one...
The kidnappers would expect him to summon the authorities
or to wait for someone else to do so. Forbidden, however, was
any mention of Holly or of kidnapping, or of the fact that the
dogwalker had been murdered as an example to Mitch.
Indeed, his unknown adversaries might have put him in this
predicament specifically to test his ability to keep his mouth
shut at the moment when he was in the most severe state of
shock and most likely to lose his self-control.
He opened the phone. The screen brightened with an image
of colorful fish in dark water.
After keying in 9 and 1, Mitch hesitated, but then entered the
final digit.
Iggy dropped his trowel, moved toward the street.
Only when the police operator answered on the second ring
did Mitch realize that from the moment he'd seen the dead
man's shattered head, his breathing had been desperate, ragged,
raw. For a moment, words wouldn't come, and then they blew out of him in a rough voice he barely recognized.
"A man's been shot. I'm dead. I mean, he's dead. He's been shot, and
he's dead."
3




Police had cordoned off both ends of the block. Squad cars,
CSI vans, and a morgue wagon were scattered along the
street with the insouciance of those to whom parking regulations
do not apply.
Under the unblinking gaze of the sun, windshields blazed and
brightwork gleamed. No cloud remained to be a pirate's patch,
and the light was merciless.
The cops wore sunglasses. Behind the dark lenses, perhaps
they glanced suspiciously at Mitchell Rafferty, or perhaps they
were indifferent to him.
In front of his client's house, Mitch sat on the lawn, his back
against the bole of a phoenix palm.
From time to time, he heard rats scrabbling in the top of the
tree. They liked to make a high nest in a phoenix palm, between
the crown and the skirt.
The feathery shadows of the fronds provided him with no
sense of diminished visibility. He felt as if he were on a stage.
Twice in two hours, he had been questioned. Two plainclothes
detectives had interviewed him the first time, only one on the
second occasion.
He thought he had acquitted himself well. Yet they had not
told him that he could go.
Thus far, Iggy had been interviewed only once. He had no
wife in jeopardy, nothing to hide. Besides, Iggy had less talent
for deception than did the average six-year-old, which would be
evident to experienced interrogators.
Maybe the cops' greater interest in Mitch was a bad sign. Or
maybe it meant nothing.
More than an hour ago, Iggy had returned to the flower bed.
He had nearly completed the installation of the impatiens.
Mitch would have preferred to stay busy with the planting.
This inactivity made him keenly aware of the passage of time:
Two of his sixty hours were gone.
The detectives had firmly suggested that Iggy and Mitch
should remain separated because, in all innocence, if they talked
together about the crime, they might unintentionally conform
their memories, resulting in the loss of an important detail in
one or the other's testimony.
That might be either the truth or malarkey. The reason for
keeping them apart might be more sinister, to isolate Mitch and
ensure that he remained off balance. Neither of the detectives
had worn sunglasses, but Mitch had not been able to read their
eyes.
Sitting under the palm tree, he had made three phone calls, the
first to his home number. An answering machine had picked up.
After the usual beep, he said, "Holly, are you there?"
19


Her abductors would not risk holding her in her own home.
Nevertheless, Mitch said, "If you're there, please pick up."
He was in denial because the situation made no sense.
Kidnappers don't target the wives of men who have to worry
about the price of gasoline and groceries.
Man, you aren't listening. I'm a gardener.
We know.
I have like eleven thousand bucks in the bank.
We know.
They must be insane. Delusional. Their scheme was based on
some mad fantasy that no rational person could understand.
Or they had a plan that they had not yet revealed to him.
Maybe they wanted him to rob a bank for them.
He remembered a news story, a couple years back, about
an innocent man who robbed a bank while wearing a collar
of explosives. The criminals who necklaced him had tried
to use him like a remote-control robot. When police cornered
the poor bastard, his controllers detonated the bomb from a
distance, decapitating him so he could never testify against
them.
One problem. No bank had two million dollars in cash on
hand, in tellers' drawers, and probably not even in the vault.
After getting no answer when he phoned home, he had tried
Holly's cell phone but hadn't been able to reach her at that
number.
He also had called the Realtor's office where she worked as a
secretary while she studied for her real-estate license.
Another secretary, Nancy Farasand, had said, "She called in
sick, Mitch. Didn't you know?"
"When I left home this morning, she was a little queasy," he
lied, "but she thought it would pass."
"It didn't pass. She said it's like a summer flu. She was so
disappointed."
"I better call her at home," he said, but of course he had
already tried reaching her there.
He had spoken to Nancy more than ninety minutes ago,
between conversations with detectives.
Passing minutes unwind a watch spring; but they had wound
Mitch tight. He felt as though something inside his head was
going to pop.
A fat bumblebee returned to him from time to time, hovering,
buzzing close, perhaps attracted by his yellow T-shirt.
Across the street, toward the end of the block, two women
and a man were standing on a front lawn, watching the police:
neighbors gathered for the drama. They had been there since
the sirens had drawn them outside.
Not long ago, one of them had gone into a house and had
returned with a tray on which stood glasses of what might have
been iced tea. The glasses sparkled in the sunlight.

Earlier, the detectives had walked up the street to question
that trio. They had interviewed them only once.
Now the three stood sipping tea, chatting, as if unconcerned
that a sniper had cut down someone who had been walking in
their community. They appeared to be enjoying this interlude,
as though it presented a welcome break from their usual
routine, even if it came at the cost of a life.
To Mitch, the neighbors seemed to spend more time staring
toward him than at any of the police or CSI technicians. He
wondered what, if anything, the detectives had asked them
about him.
None of the three used the services of Big Green. From time
to time, they would have seen him in the neighborhood, however,
because he took care of four properties on this street.
He disliked these tea drinkers. He had never met them, did
not know their names, but he viewed them with an almost
bitter aversion.
Mitch disliked them not because they seemed perversely to
be enjoying themselves, and not because of what they might
have said about him to the police. He disliked the three--could
have worked up a loathing for them--because their lives were
still in order, because they did not live under the threat of imminent
violence against someone they loved.
Although irrational, his animosity had a certain value. It distracted
him from his fear for Holly, as did his continuous fretful
analysis of the detectives' actions.
If he dared to give himself entirely to worry about his wife, he
would go to pieces. This was no exaggeration. He was surprised
at how fragile he felt, as he never had felt previously.
Each time her face rose in his mind, he had to banish it
because his eyes grew hot, his vision blurred. His heart fell into
an ominous heavy rhythm.
An emotional display, so out of proportion even to the shock
of seeing a man shot, would require an explanation. He dared
not reveal the truth, and he didn't trust himself to invent an
i
explanation that would convince the cops.
One of the homicide detectives--Mortonson-- wore dress
shoes, black slacks, and a pale-blue shirt. He was tall, solid, and
all business.
The other--Lieutenant Taggart--wore white sneakers, chinos,
and a red-and-tan Hawaiian shirt. He was less physically intimidating
than Mortonson, less formal in his style.
Mitch's wariness of Taggart exceeded his concern about the
more imposing Mortonson. The lieutenant's precisely trimmed
hair, his glass-smooth shave, his perfect veneered teeth, his spotless
white sneakers suggested that he adopted casual dress and a
relaxed demeanor to mislead and to put at ease the suspects
unfortunate enough to come under his scrutiny.
The detectives first interviewed Mitch in tandem. Later,
Taggart had returned alone, supposedly to have Mitch "refine"
something he had said earlier. In fact, the lieutenant repeated
every question he and Mortonson had asked before, perhaps
anticipating contradictions between Mitch's answers and those
that he had given previously.
Ostensibly, Mitch was a witness. To a cop, however, when
no killer had been identified, every witness also counted as a
suspect.
He had no reason to kill a stranger walking a dog. Even if they
were crazy enough to think he might have done so, they would
have to believe that Iggy was his accomplice; clearly Iggy did
not interest them.
More likely, though they knew he'd had no role in the shooting,
their instinct told them that he was concealing something.
23


Now here came Taggart yet again, his sneakers so white that
they appeared to be radiant.
As the lieutenant approached, Mitch rose to his feet, wary
and sick with worry, but trying to appear merely weary and
impatient.
4



Detective Taggart sported an island tan to match his
Hawaiian shirt. By contrast with his bronze face, his
teeth were as white as an arctic landscape.
"I'm sorry for all this inconvenience, Mr. Rafferty. But I have
just a couple more questions, and then you're free to go."
Mitch could have replied with a shrug, a nod. But he thought
that silence might seem peculiar, that a man with nothing to
hide would be forthcoming.
Following an unfortunate hesitation long enough to suggest
calculation, he said, "I'm not complaining, Lieutenant. It could
just as easily have been me who was shot. I'm thankful to be
alive."
The detective strove for a casual demeanor, but he had eyes
like those of a predatory bird, hawk-sharp and eagle-bold. "Why
do you say that?"
"Well, if it was a random shooting..."
"We don't know that it was," said Taggart. "In fact, the
evidence points to cold calculation. One shot, perfectly placed."
"Can't a crazy with a gun be a skilled shooter?"
'Absolutely. But crazies usually want to rack up as big a score
as possible. A psychopath with a rifle would have popped you,
too. This guy knew exactly who he wanted to shoot."
Irrationally, Mitch felt some responsibility for the death. This
murder had been committed to ensure that he would take the
kidnapper seriously and would not seek police assistance.
Perhaps the detective had caught the scent of this unearned
but persistent guilt.
Glancing toward the cadaver across the street, around which
the CSI team still worked, Mitch said, "Who's the victim?"
"We don't know yet. No ID on him. No wallet. Don't you
think that's peculiar?"
"Going out just to walk the dog, you don't need a wallet."
"It's a habit with the average guy," Taggart said. "Even if he's
washing the car in the driveway, he has his wallet."
"How will you identify him?"
"There's no license on the dog's collar. But that's almost a
show-quality golden, so she might have a microchip ID implant.
As soon as we get a scanner, we'll check."

Having been moved to this side of the street, tied to a mailbox
post, the golden retriever rested in shade, graciously receiving
the attention of a steady procession of admirers.
Taggart smiled. "Goldens are the best. Had one as a kid. Loved that dog."
His attention returned to Mitch. His smile remained in place,
but the quality of it changed. "Those questions I mentioned.
Were you in the military, Mr. Rafferty?"
"Military? No. I was a mower jockey for another company,
26 DEAN K00NT2

took some horticulture classes, and set up my own business a
year out of high school."
"I figured you might be ex-military, the way gunfire didn't
faze you."
"Oh, it fazed me," Mitch assured him.
Taggart's direct gaze was intended to intimidate.
As if Mitch's eyes were clear lenses through which his
thoughts were revealed like microbes under a microscope, he
felt compelled to avoid the detective's stare, but sensed that he
dared not.
"%u hear a rifle," Taggart said, "see a man shot, yet you hurry
across the street, into the line of fire."
"I didn't know he was dead. Might've been something I could
do for him."
"That's commendable. Most people would scramble for
cover."
"Hey, I'm no hero. My instincts just shoved aside my common
sense."
"Maybe that's what a hero is--someone who instinctively does
the right thing."
Mitch dared to look away from Taggart, hoping that his
evasion, in this context, would be interpreted as humility. "I
was stupid, Lieutenant, not brave. I didn't stop to think I might
be in danger."
"What--you thought he'd been shot accidentally?"
"No. Maybe. I don't know. I didn't think anything. I didn't think, I just reacted."
"But you really didn't feel like you were in danger?"
"No."
27


"You didn't realize it even when you saw his head wound?"
"Maybe a little. Mostly I was sickened."
The questions came too fast. Mitch felt off balance. He might
unwittingly reveal that he knew why the dogwalker had been
killed.
With a buzz of busy wings, the bumblebee returned. It had
no interest inTaggart, but hovered near Mitch's face, as if bearing
witness to his testimony.
""You saw the head wound," Taggart continued, "but you still
didn't scramble for cover."
"No."
"Why not?"
"I guess I figured if somebody hadn't shot me by then, they
weren't going to shoot me."
"So you still didn't feel in danger."
"No."
Flipping open his small spiral-bound notebook, Taggart said,
""You told the 911 operator that you were dead."
Surprised, Mitch met the detective's eyes again. "That / was
dead?"
Taggart quoted from the notebook: "'A man's been shot. I'm
dead. I mean, he's dead. He's been shot, and he's dead.'"
"Is that what I said?"
"I've heard the recording. You were breathless. You sounded
flat-out terrified."
Mitch had forgotten that 911 calls were recorded. "I guess I
was more scared than I remember."
"Evidently, you did recognize a danger to yourself, but still you
didn't take cover."
Whether or not Taggart could read anything of Mitch's
thoughts, the pages of the detective's own mind were closed, his
eyes a warm but enigmatic blue.
"'I'm dead,'"the detective quoted again.
"A slip of the tongue. In the confusion, the panic."
Taggart looked at the dog again, and again he smiled. In
a voice softer than it had been previously, he said, "Is there
anything more I should have asked you? Anything you would
like to say?"
In memory, Mitch heard Holly's cry of pain.
Kidnappers always threaten to kill their hostage if the cops
are brought in. To win, you don't have to play the game by their
rules.
The police would contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The FBI had extensive experience in kidnapping cases.
Because Mitch had no way to raise two million, the police
would at first doubt his story. When the kidnapper called again,
however, they would be convinced.
What if the second call didn't come? What if, knowing that
Mitch had gone to the police, the kidnapper fulfilled his threat,
mutilated Holly, killed her, and never called again?
Then they might think that Mitch had concocted the kidnapping
to cover the fact that Holly was already dead, that he himself
had killed her. The husband is always the primary suspect.
If he lost her, nothing else would matter. Nothing ever. No
power could heal the wound that she would leave in his life.
But to be suspected of harming her--that would be hot shrapnel
in the wound, ever burning, forever lacerating.
Closing the notebook and returning it to a hip pocket, shift
ing his attention from the dog to Mitch, Taggart asked again,
'Anything, Mr. Rafferty?"
At some point during the questioning, the bumblebee had
flown away. Only now, Mitch realized that the buzzing had
stopped.
If he kept the secret of Holly's abduction, he would stand
alone against her kidnappers.
He was no good alone. He had been raised with three sisters
and a brother, all born within a seven-year period. They
had been one another's confidants, confessors, counsels, and
defenders.
A year after high school, he moved out of his parents' hou
into a shared apartment. Later, he had gotten his own plae
where he felt isolated. He had worked sixty hours a week, an
longer, just to avoid being alone in his rooms.
He had felt complete once more, fulfilled, connected, only
when Holly had come into his world. / was a cold word; we hai
a warmer sound. Us rang sweeter on the ear than me.
Lieutenant Taggart's eyes seemed less forbidding than the
had been heretofore.
Mitch said, "Well..."
The detective licked his lips.
The air was warm, humidity low. Mitch's lips felt dry, too.
Nevertheless, the quick pink passage of Taggart's tongu
seemed reptilian, and suggested that he was mentally savorin
the taste of pending prey.
Only paranoia allowed the twisted thought that a homicide
detective might be allied with Holly's abductors. This private
moment between witness and investigator in fact might be the
ultimate test of Mitch's willingness to follow the kidnapper's
instructions.
All the flags of fear, both rational and irrational, were raised
high in his mind. This parade of rampant dreads and dark suspicions
did not facilitate clear thinking.
He was half convinced that if he told Taggart the truth, the
detective would grimace and say We'll have to kill her now, Mr. Rafferty. We can't trust you anymore. But we'll let you choose what we
cut off first--her fingers or her ears.
As earlier, when he'd been standing over the dead man, Mitch
felt watched, not just by Taggart and the tea-drinking neighbors,
but by some presence unseen. Watched, analyzed.
"No, Lieutenant," he said. "There's nothing more."

The detective retrieved a pair of sunglasses from his shirt
pocket and put them on.
In the mirrored lenses, Mitch almost didn't recognize the twin
reflections of his face. The distorting curve made him look old.
"I gave you my card," Taggart reminded him.
"Yes, sir. I have it."
"Call me if you remember anything that seems important."
The smooth, characterless sheen of the sunglasses was like
the gaze of an insect: emotionless, eager, voracious.
Taggart said, "You seem nervous, Mr. Rafferty."
Raising his hands to reveal how they trembled, Mitch said,
"Not nervous, Lieutenant. Shaken. Badly shaken."
Taggart licked his lips once more.
Mitch said, "I've never seen a man murdered before."
"You don't get used to it," the detective said.
Lowering his hands, Mitch said, "I guess not."
"It's worse when it's a woman."
Mitch did not know what to make of that statement. Perhaps
it was a simple truth of a homicide detective's experience--or a
threat.
'A woman or a child," Taggart said.
"I wouldn't want your job."
"No. You wouldn't." Turning away, the detective said, "I'll be
seeing you, Mr. Rafferty."
"Seeing me?"
Glancing back, Taggart said, "Ifou and I --we'll both be witnesses
in a courtroom someday."
"Seems like a tough case to solve."
"'Blood crieth unto me from the ground,' Mr. Rafferty," said
the detective, apparently quoting someone. '"Blood crieth unto
me from the ground.'"
Mitch watched Taggart walk away.
Then he looked at the grass under his feet.
The progress of the sun had put the palm-frond shadows
behind him. He stood in light, but was not warmed by it.
5



The dashboard clock was digital, as was Mitch's wristwatch,
but he could hear time ticking nonetheless, as rapid as the click-click-click of the pointer snapping against the marker pegs
on a spinning wheel of fortune.
He wanted to race directly home from the crime scene. Logic
argued that Holly would have been snatched at the house. They
would not have grabbed her on the way to work, not on a public
street.
They might unintentionally have left something behind that
would suggest their identity. More likely, they would have left a
message for him, further instructions.
As usual, Mitch had begun the day by picking up Iggy at his
apartment in Santa Ana. Now he had to return him.
Driving north from the fabled and wealthy Orange County
coastal neighborhoods where they worked, toward their humbler
communities, Mitch switched from the crowded freeway to
surface streets, but encountered traffic there, as well.
Iggy wanted to talk about the murder and the police. Mitch
had to pretend to be as naively excited by the novelty of
the experience as Iggy was, when in fact his mind remained
occupied with thoughts of Holly and with worry about what
might come next.
Fortunately, as usual, Iggy's conversation soon began to loop
and turn and tangle like a ball of yarn unraveled by a kitten.
Appearing to be engaged in this rambling discourse required
less of Mitch than when the subject had been the dead dog
walker.
"My cousin Louis had a friend named Booger," Iggy said. "The
same thing happened to him, shot while walking a dog, except it
wasn't a rifle and it wasn't a dog."
"Booger?" Mitch wondered.
"Booker," Iggy corrected. "B-o-o-k-e-r. He had a cat he called
Hairball. He was walking Hairball, and he got shot."
"People walk cats?"
"The way it was--Hairball is cozy in a travel cage, and Booker
is carrying him to a vet's office."
Mitch repeatedly checked the rearview and side mirrors. A
black Cadillac SUV had departed the freeway in their wake.
Block after block, it remained behind them.
"So Booker wasn't actually walking the cat," Mitch said.
"He was walking with the cat, and this like twelve-year-old
brat, this faucet-nosed little dismo, shot Booker with a paint
ball gun."
"So he wasn't killed."
"He wasn't quashed, no, and it was a cat instead of a dog, but
Booker was totally blue."
"Blue?"
"Blue hair, blue face. He was fully pissed."
The Cadillac SUV reliably remained two or three vehicles
behind them. Perhaps the driver hoped Mitch wouldn't notice
him.
"So Booker's all blue. What happened to the kid?" Mitch
asked.
"Booker was gonna break the little dismo's hand off, but the
kid shot him in the crotch and ran. Hey, Mitch, did you know
there's a town in Pennsylvania named Blue Balls?"
"I didn't know."
"It's in Amish country. There's another town nearby called
Intercourse."
"How about that."
"Maybe those Amish aren't as square as Cheez-Its, after all."
Mitch accelerated to cross an intersection before the traffic
light phased to red. Behind him, the black SUV changed lanes,
sped up, and made it through on the yellow
"Did you ever eat an Amish shoofly pie?" Iggy asked.
"No. Never did."
"It's full-on rich, sweeter than six Gidget movies. Like eating
molasses. Treacherous, dude."
The Cadillac dropped back, returned to Mitch's lane. Three
vehicles separated them once more.
Iggy said, "Earl Potter lost a leg eating shoofly pie."
"Earl Potter?"
"Tim Potter's dad. He was diabetic, but he didn't know it, and
he totally destroyed like a bucket of sweets every day. Did you
ever eat a Quakertown pie?"
"What about Earl's leg?" Mitch asked.
35







"Unreal, bro. One day his foot's numb, he can't walk right.
Turns out he's got almost no circulation down there 'cause of
radical diabetes. They sawed his left leg off above the knee."
"While he was eating shoofly pie."
"No. He realized he had to give up sweets."
"Good for him."
"So the day before surgery, he had his last dessert, and he
chose a whole shoofly pie with like a cow's worth of whipped
cream. Did you ever see that stylin' Amish movie with Harrison
Ford and the girl with the great knockers?"
Byway of Hairball, Blue Balls, Intercourse, shoofly pie, and
Harrison Ford, they arrived at Iggy's apartment building.
Mitch stopped at the curb, and the black SUV went past
without slowing. The side windows were tinted, so he couldn't
see the driver or any passengers.
Opening his door, before getting out of the truck, Iggy said,
""ibu okay, boss?"
"I'm okay."
"You look stomped."
"I saw a guy shot to death," Mitch reminded him.
"Yeah. Wasn't that radical? I guess I know who's gonna rule
the bar at Rolling Thunder tonight. Maybe you should stop in."
"Don't save a stool for me."
The Cadillac SUV dwindled westward. The afternoon sun
wrapped the suspicious vehicle in glister and glare. It shimmered
and seemed to vanish into the solar maw
Iggy got out of the truck, looked back in at Mitch, and pulled
a sad face. "Ball and chain."
"Wind beneath my wings."
"Whoa. That's goob talk."
"Go waste yourself."
"I do intend to get mildly polluted," Iggy assured him. "Dr. Ig
prescribes at least a six-pack oicerveza for you. Tell Mrs. Mitch
I think she's an uber wahine."
Iggy slammed the door and walked away, big and loyal and
sweet and clueless.
With hands that were suddenly shaky on the wheel, Mitch
piloted the truck into the street once more.
Coming north, he had been impatient to be rid of Iggy and to
get home. Now his stomach turned when he considered what
might wait for him there.
What he most feared was finding blood.
6



Mitch drove with the truck windows open, wanting the
sounds of the streets, proof of life.
The Cadillac SUV did not reappear. No other vehicle took up
the pursuit. Evidently, he had imagined the tail.
His sense of being under surveillance passed. From time to
time, his eyes were drawn to the rearview mirror, but no longer
with the expectation of seeing anything suspicious.
He felt alone, and worse than alone. Isolated. He almost
wished that the black SUV would reappear.
Their house was in an older neighborhood of Orange, one of
the oldest cities in the county. When he turned onto their street,
except for the vintage of the cars and trucks, a curtain in time
might have parted, welcoming him to 1945.
The bungalow--pale-yellow clapboard, white trim, a cedar
shingle roof--stood behind a picket fence on which roses
twined. Some larger and some nicer houses occupied the block,
but none boasted better landscaping.
He parked in the driveway beside the house, under a massive
old California pepper tree, and stepped out into a breathless
afternoon.
Sidewalks and yards were deserted. In this neighborhood,
most families relied on two incomes; everyone was at work. At
3:04, no latchkey kids were yet home from school.
No maids, no window washers, no gardening services busy
with leaf blowers. These homeowners swept their own carpets,
mowed their own yards.
The pepper tree braided the sunshine in its cascading tresses,
and littered the shadowed pavement with elliptical slivers of
light.
Mitch opened a side gate in the picket fence. He crossed the
lawn to the front steps.
The porch was deep and cool. White wicker chairs with green
cushions stood beside small wicker tables with glass tops.
On Sunday afternoons, he and Holly often sat here, talking,
reading the newspaper, watching hummingbirds flit from one
crimson bloom to another on the trumpet vines that flourished
on the porch posts.
Sometimes they unfolded a card table between the wicker
chairs. She crushed him at Scrabble. He dominated the trivia
games.
They didn't spend much on entertainment. No skiing vacations,
no weekends in Baja. They seldom went out to a movie.
Being together on the front porch offered as much pleasure as
being together in Paris.
They were saving money for things that mattered. To allow
her to risk a career change from secretary to real-estate agent.
To enable him to do some advertising, buy a second truck, and
expand the business.
Kids, too. They were going to have kids. Two or three. On
certain holidays, when they were most sentimental, even four
did not seem like too many.
They didn't want the world, and didn't want to change it. They
wanted their little corner of the world, and the chance to fill it
with family and laughter.
He tried the front door. Unlocked. He pushed it inward and
hesitated on the threshold.
He glanced back at the street, half expecting to see the black
SUV. It wasn't there.
After he stepped inside, he stood for a moment, letting his
eyes adjust. The living room was illuminated only by what tree
filtered sunlight pierced the windows.
Everything appeared to be in order. He could not detect any
signs of struggle.
Mitch closed the door behind him. For a moment he needed
to lean against it.
If Holly had been at home, there would have been music. She
liked big-band stuff. Miller, Goodman, Ellington, Shaw. She said
the music of the '40s was suitable to the house. It suited her,
too. Classic.
An archway connected the living room to the small dining
room. Nothing in this second room was out of place.
On the table lay a large dead moth. It was a night-flyer, gray
with black details along its scalloped wings.
The moth must have gotten in the previous evening. They
had spent some time on the porch, and the door had been open.
Maybe it was alive, sleeping. If he cupped it in his hands and
took it outside, it might fly into a corner of the porch ceiling
and wait there for moonrise.
He hesitated, reluctant to touch the moth, for fear that no
flutter was left in it. At his touch, it might dissolve into a greasy
kind of dust, which moths sometimes did.
Mitch left the night-flyer untouched because he wanted to
believe that it was alive.
The connecting door between the dining room and the
kitchen stood ajar. Light glowed beyond.
The smell of burnt toast lingered on the air. It grew stronger
when he pushed through the door into the kitchen.
Here he found signs of a struggle. One of the dinette chairs
had been overturned. Broken dishes littered the floor.
Two slices of blackened bread stood in the toaster. Someone
had pulled the plug. The butter had been left out on the counter,
and had softened as the day grew warmer.
The intruders must have come in from the front of the house,
surprising her as she was making toast.
The cabinets were painted glossy white. Blood spattered a
door and two drawer fronts.
For a moment, Mitch closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw the
moth flutter and fly up from the table. Something fluttered in
his chest, too, and he wanted to believe that it was hope.
On the white refrigerator, a woman's bloody hand print cried
havoc as loud as any voice could have shouted. Another full hand
print and a smeared partial darkened two upper cabinets.
Blood spotted the terra-cotta tiles on the floor. It seemed to
be a lot of blood. It seemed to be an ocean.
The scene so terrified Mitch that he wanted to shut his eyes
again. But he had the crazy idea that if he closed his eyes twice
to this grim reality, he would go blind forever.
The phone rang.
i


7



He did not have to tread in blood to reach the telephone.
He picked up the handset on the third ring, and heard
his haunted voice say, "Yeah?"
"It's me, baby. They're listening."
"Holly. What've they done to you?"
"I'm all right," she said, and she sounded strong, but she did
not sound all right.
"I'm in the kitchen," he said.
"I know."
"The blood-"
"I know. Don't think about that now. Mitch, they said we have
one minute to talk, just one minute."
He grasped her implication: One minute, and maybe never again.
His legs would not support him. Turning a chair away from
the dinette table, collapsing into it, he said, "I'm so damn sorry."

"It's not your fault. Don't beat yourself up."
"Who are these freaks, are they deranged, what?"
"They're vicious creeps, but they're not crazy. They seem ...
professional. I don't know. But I want you to make me a
promise--"
"I'm dyin' here."

"Listen, baby. I want your promise. If anything happens
tome--"
"Nothing's going to happen to you."
"If anything happens to me," she insisted, "promise you'll keep
it together."
"I don't want to think about that."

"bu keep it together, damn it. You keep it together and have
a life."
"You're my life."
"You keep it together, mower jockey, or I'm going to be way
pissed."
"I'll do what they want. I'll get you back."
"If you don't keep it together, I'll haunt your ass, Rafferty. It'll
be like that Poltergeist movie cubed."
"God, I love you," he said.
"I know. I love you. I want to hold you."
"I love you so much."
She didn't reply.
"Holly?"
The silence electrified him, brought him up from the chair.
"Holly? You hear me?"
"I hear you, mower jockey," said the kidnapper to whom he
had spoken previously.
"bu sonofabitch."
"I understand your anger--"

"You piece of garbage."
"--but I don't have much patience for it."
"If you hurt her--"
"I already have hurt her. And if you don't pull this off, I'll
butcher the bitch like a side of beef."
An acute awareness of his helplessness brought Mitch crashing
down from anger to humility.
"Please. Don't hurt her again. Don't."
"Chill, Rafferty. "You just chill while I explain a few things."
"Okay. All right. I need things explained. I'm lost here."
Again his legs felt weak. Instead of sitting in the chair, he
brushed a broken dish aside with one foot and knelt on the floor.
For some reason, he felt more comfortable on his knees than in
the chair.
"About the blood," the kidnapper said. "I slapped her down
when she tried to fight back, but I didn't cut her."
"All the blood ..."
"That's what I'm telling you. We put a tourniquet on her arm
until a vein popped up, stuck a needle in it, and drew four vials
just like your doctor does when you get a physical."
Mitch leaned his forehead against the oven door. He closed
his eyes and tried to concentrate.
"We smeared blood on her hands and made those prints.
Spattered some on the counters, cabinets. Dripped it on
the floor. It's stage setting, Rafferty. So it looks like she was
murdered there."
Mitch was the turtle, just leaving the start line, and this
guy on the phone was the rabbit, already halfway through the
marathon. Mitch couldn't get up to speed. "Staged? Why?"
"If you lose your nerve and go to the cops, they'll never buy
the kidnapping story. They'll see that kitchen and think you
croaked her."
"I didn't tell them anything."
"I know."
"What you did to the dogwalker-- I knew you had nothing to
lose. I knew I couldn't mess with you."
"This is just a little extra insurance," the kidnapper said. "We
like insurance. There's a butcher knife missing from the rack
there in your kitchen."
Mitch didn't bother to confirm the claim.
"We wrapped it with one of your T-shirts and a pair of your
blue jeans. The clothes are stained with Holly's blood."
They were professional, all right, just like she had said.
"That package is hidden on your property," the kidnapper
continued. ""Vbu couldn't easily find it, but police dogs will."
"I get the picture."
"I knew you would. Ttbu aren't stupid. That's why we've bought
ourselves so much insurance."
"What now? Make sense of this whole thing for me."
"Not yet. Right now you're very emotional, Mitch. That's not
good. When you're not in control of your emotions, you're likely
to make a mistake."
"I'm solid," Mitch assured him, although his heart still
stormed and his blood thundered in his ears.
"You don't have any room for a mistake, Mitch. Not one. So I
want you to chill, like I said. When you've got your head straight,
then we'll discuss the situation. I'll call you at six o'clock."
Though remaining on his knees, Mitch opened his eyes, checked his watch. "That's over two and a half hours."
"You're still in your work clothes. You're dirty. Take a nice hot
shower. You'll feel better."
"You've gotta be kidding me."
"Anyway, you'll need to be more presentable. Shower, change,
and then leave the house, go somewhere, anywhere. Just be sure
your cell phone is fully charged."
"I'd rather wait here."
"That's no good, Mitch. The house is filled with memories of
Holly, everywhere you look. Your nerves will be rubbed raw. I
need you to be less emotional."
"Yeah. All right."
"One more thing. I want you to listen to this...."
Mitch thought they were going to twist a scream of pain from
Holly again, to emphasize how powerless he was to protect her.
He said, "Don't."
Instead of Holly, he heard two taped voices, clear against a
faint background hiss. The first voice was his own:
"I've never seen a man murdered before."
"You don't get used to it."
"Iguess not."
"It's worse when it's a woman... a woman or a child."
The second voice belonged to Detective Taggart.
The kidnapper said, "If you had spilled your guts to him,
Mitch, Holly would be dead now."
In the dark smoky glass of the oven door, he saw the reflection
of a face that seemed to be looking out at him from a
window in Hell.
"Taggart's one of you."
"Maybe he is. Maybe not. You should just assume that everybody
is one of us, Mitch. That'll be safer for you, and a lot safer
for Holly. Everybody is one of us."
They had built a box around him. Now they were putting on
the lid.
"Mitch, I don't want to leave you on such a dark note. I want
to put you at ease about something. I want you to know that we
won't touch her."
"You-to her."
"I'll hit her again if she doesn't do what she's told. But we
won't touch her. We aren't rapists, Mitch."
"Why would I believe you?"
"Obviously, I'm handling you, Mitch. Manipulating, finessing.
And obviously there is a lot of stuff I won't tell you--"
"You're killers, but not rapists?"
"The point is that everything I have told you has been true.
You think back over our relationship, and you'll see I've been
truthful and I've kept my word."
Mitch wanted to kill him. Never before had he felt an urge to
do serious violence to another human being, but he wanted to destroy this man.
He was clutching the phone so fiercely that his hand ached.
He was not able to relax his grip.„
"I've had a lot of experience working through surrogates,
Mitch. Ifou're an instrument to me, a valuable tool, a sensitive
machine."
"Machine."
"Hang with me a minute, okay? It makes no sense to abuse a
valuable and sensitive machine. I wouldn't buy a Ferrari and then
never change the oil, never lubricate it."
'At least I'm a Ferrari."
"When I'm your handler, Mitch, you won't be pressed beyond
your limits. I would expect very high performance from a
Ferrari, but I wouldn't expect to be able to drive it through a
brick wall."
"I feel like I've already been through a brick wall."
""Vbu're tougher than you think. But in the interest of getting
the best performance out of you, I want you to know we'll treat
Holly with respect. If you do everything we want, then she'll
come back to you alive ... and untouched."
Holly was not weak. She would not easily be mentally broken
by physical abuse. But rape was more than a violation of the
body. Rape rended the mind, the heart, the spirit.
Her captor might have raised the issue with the sincere intent
of putting some of Mitch's fears to rest. But the sonofabitch had
also raised it as a warning.
Mitch said, "I still don't think you've answered the question.
Why should I believe you?"
"Because you have to."
That was an inescapable truth.
"You have to, Mitch. Otherwise, you might as well consider
her dead right now."
The kidnapper terminated the call.
For a while, Mitch's sense of powerlessness kept him on his
knees.
Eventually a recording, a woman with the vaguely patronizing
tone of a nursery-school teacher not fully comfortable with children,
requested that he hang up the phone. He put the handset
on the floor instead, and a continuous beeping urged him to
comply with the operator's suggestion.
Remaining on his knees, he rested his forehead against the
oven door once more, and closed his eyes.
His mind was in tumult. Images of Holly, tornadoes of
memories, tormented him, fragmented and spinning, good
memories, sweet, but they tormented because they might be
all that he would ever have of her. Fear and anger. Regret and
sorrow. He had never known loss. His life had not prepared
him for loss.
He strove to clear his mind because he sensed that there was
something he could do for Holly right here, now, if only he could
quiet his fear and be calm, and think. He didn't have to wait for
orders from her kidnappers. He could do something important
for her now. He could take action on her behalf. He could do
something for Holly.
Humbled against the hard terra-cotta tiles, his knees began
to ache. This physical discomfort gradually cleared his mind.
Thoughts no longer blew through him like shatters of debris,
but drifted as fallen leaves drift on a placid river.
He could do something meaningful for Holly, and the awareness
of the thing that he could do was right below the surface,
floating just beneath his questing reflection. The hard floor
was unforgiving, and he began to feel as if he were kneeling
DEAN KOONTZ


on broken glass. He could do something for Holly. The answer
eluded him. Something. His knees ached. He tried to ignore the
pain, but then he got to his feet. The pending insight receded.
He returned the telephone handset to its cradle. He would have
to wait for the next call. He had never before felt so useless.
Although still hours away, the approaching night pulled
i, every shadow toward the east, away from the westbound
sun. Queen-palm shadows yearned across the deep yard.

To Mitch, standing on the back porch, this place, which had
previously been an island of peace, now seemed as fraught with
tension as the webwork of cables supporting a suspension
bridge.

At the end of the yard, beyond a board fence, lay an alleyway.
On the farther side of the alley were other yards and other
houses. Perhaps a sentinel at one of those second-floor windows
observed him now with high-powered binoculars.

On the phone, he had told Holly that he was in the kitchen,
and she had said / know. She could have known only because her
captors had known.

The black Cadillac SUV had not proved to be in any dark
power's employ, imbued with menace only by his imagination.
No other vehicle had followed him.

.
They had expected him to go home, so instead of tailing him,
they had staked out his house. They were watching now.
One of the houses on the farther side of the alley might offer
a good vantage point if the observer was equipped with
high-tech optical gear that provided an intimate view from
a distance.
His suspicion settled instead on the detached garage at the
rear of this property. That structure could be accessed either
from the alley or from the front street via the driveway that ran
alongside the house.
The garage, which provided parking for Mitch's truck and
Holly's Honda, featured windows on the ground floor and in the
storage loft. Some were dark, and some were gilded with
reflected sunlight.
No window revealed a ghostly face or a telltale movement.
If someone was watching from the garage, he would not be
careless. He would be glimpsed only if he wished to be seen for
the purpose of intimidation.
From the roses, from the ranunculus, from the corabells, from the impatiens, slanting sunlight struck luminous color like flaring
shards in stained-glass windows.
The butcher knife, wrapped in bloody clothes, had probably
been buried in a flower bed.
By finding that bundle, retrieving it, and cleaning up the blood
in the kitchen, he would regain some control. He'd be able to
react with greater flexibility to whatever challenges were thrust
upon him in the hours ahead.
If he was being watched, however, the kidnappers would not
view his actions with equanimity. They had staged his wife's
murder to box him in, and they wouldn't want the box to be
deconstructed.
To punish him, they would hurt Holly.
The man on the phone had promised that she would not
be touched, meaning raped. But he had no compunctions about
hitting her.
Given reason, he would hit her again. Punch her. Torture her.
Regarding those issues, he had made no promises.
To dress the set of the staged homicide, they had drawn her
blood painlessly, with a hypodermic syringe. They had not,
however, sworn to spare her forever from a knife.
As instruction in the reality of his helplessness, they might
cut her. Any laceration she endured would sever the very
tendons of his will to resist.
They dared not kill her. To continue controlling Mitch, they
had to let him speak to her from time to time.
But they could cut to disfigure, then instruct her to describe
the disfigurement to him on the phone.
Mitch was surprised by his ability to anticipate such hideous
developments. Until a few hours ago, he'd had no personal experience
of unalloyed evil.
The vividness of his imagination in this area suggested that
on a subconscious level, or on a level deeper than the subconscious,
he had known that real evil walked the world, abominations
that could not be faded to gray by psychological or
social analysis. Holly's abduction had raised this willfully
repressed awareness out of a hallowed darkness, into view.
The shadows of the queen palms, stretched toward the
backyard fence, seemed taut to the snapping point, and the
sun-brightened flowers looked as brittle as glass. Yet the tension
in the scene increased.
Neither the elongated shadows nor the flowers would snap.
Whatever strained toward the breaking point, it would break within Mitch. And though anxiety soured his stomach and
clenched his teeth, he sensed that this coming change would not
be a bad thing.
At the garage, the dark windows and the sun-fired windows
mocked him. The porch furniture and the patio furniture,
arranged with the expectation of the enjoyment of lazy summer
evenings, mocked him.
The lush and sculpted landscaping, on which he had spent so
many hours, mocked him as well. All the beauty born from his
work seemed now to be superficial, and its superficiality made it
ugly.
He returned to the house and closed the back door. He did
not bother locking it.
The worst that could have invaded his home had already been
here and had gone. What violations followed would be only
embellishments on the original horror.
He crossed the kitchen and entered a short hall that served
two rooms, the first of which was a den. It contained a sofa, two
chairs, and a large-screen television.
These days, they rarely watched any programs. So-called
reality TV dominated the airwaves, and legal dramas and police
dramas, but all of it bored because none of it resembled reality
as he had known it; and now he knew it even better.
At the end of the hallway was the master bedroom. He withdrew
clean underwear and socks from a bureau drawer.
55



For now, as impossible as every mundane task seemed in thest
circumstances, he could do nothing other than what he had beer
told to do.
The day had been warm; but a night in the middle of May was
likely to be cool. At the closet, he slipped a fresh pair of jeans
and a flannel shirt from hangers. He put them on the bed.
He found himself standing at Holly's small vanity, where she
daily sat on a tufted stool to brush her hair, apply her makeup,
put on her lipstick.
Unconsciously, he had picked up her hand mirror. He looked
into it, as if hoping, by some grace that would foretell the future,
to see her fine and smiling face. His own countenance did not
bear contemplation.
He shaved, showered, and dressed for the ordeal ahead.
He had no idea what they expected of him, how he coulc
possibly raise two million dollars to ransom his wife, but h
made no attempt to imagine any possible scenarios. A man on
a high ledge is well advised not to spend much time studyin;
the long drop.
As he sat on the edge of the bed, just as he finished tying hi
shoes, the doorbell rang.
The kidnapper had said he would call at six, not come calling.
Besides, the bedside clock read 4:15.
Leaving the door unanswered was not an option. He needed
to be responsive regardless of how Holly's captors chose to contact
him.
If the visitor had nothing to do with her abduction, Mitcji
was nevertheless obliged to answer the door in order to maintain
an air of normalcy.
His truck in the driveway proved that he was home. A neighbor,
getting no response to the bell, might circle to the back of
the house to knock at the kitchen door.
The six-pane window in that door would provide a clear view
of the kitchen floor strewn with broken dishes, the bloody hand
prints on the cabinets and the refrigerator.
He should have drawn shut the blinds.
He left the bedroom, followed the hall, and crossed the living
room before the visitor had time to ring the bell twice.

The front door had no windows. He opened it and found
Detective Taggart on the porch.


9



The praying-mantis stare of mirrored lenses skewered
Mitch and pinned his voice in his throat.

"I love these old neighborhoods," Taggart said, surveying the
front porch. "This was how southern California looked in its
great years, before they cut down all the orange groves and built
a wasteland of stucco tract houses."
Mitch found a voice that sounded almost like his own, though
thinner: "You live around here, Lieutenant?"
"No. I live in one of the wastelands. It's more convenient. But
I happened to be in your neighborhood."
Taggart was not a man who just happened to be anywhere. If he
ever went sleepwalking, even then he would have a purpose, a
plan, and a destination.
"Something's come up, Mr. Rafferty. And since I was nearby, it
seemed as easy to stop in as to call. Can you spare a few minutes?"
If Taggart was not one of the kidnappers, if his conversation
with Mitch had been taped without his knowledge, allowing
him across the threshold would be reckless. In this small house,
the living room, a picture of tranquillity, and the kitchen,
smeared with incriminating evidence, were only a few steps
apart.
"Sure," Mitch said. "But my wife came home with a migraine. She's lying down."
If the detective was one of them, if he knew that Holly was
being held elsewhere, he did not betray his knowledge by any
change in his expression.
"Why don't we sit here on the porch," Mitch said.
""Vbu've got it fixed up real nice."
Mitch pulled the door shut behind him, and they settled into
the white wicker chairs.
Taggart had brought a nine-by-twelve white envelope. He put it on his lap, unopened.
"We had a porch like this when I was a kid," he said. "We used
to watch traffic go by, just watch traffic."
He removed his sunglasses and tucked them in his shirt
pocket. His gaze was as direct as a power drill.
"Does Mrs. Rafferty use ergotamine?"
"Use what?"
"Ergotamine. For the migraines."
Mitch had no idea whether ergotamine was an actual medication
or a word the detective had invented on the spot. "No. She
toughs it out with aspirin."
"How often does she get one?"
"Two or three times a year," Mitch lied. Holly had never had a
migraine. She rarely suffered headaches of any kind.
A gray-and-black moth was settled on the porch post to the
59


right of the front steps, a night-flyer sleeping in the shade until
sunset.
"I have ocular migraines," Taggart said. "They're entirely
visual. I get the glimmering light and the temporary blind spot
for like twenty minutes, but there's no pain."
"If you've got to have a migraine, that sounds like the kind to
have."
"A doctor probably wouldn't prescribe ergotamine until she
was having a migraine a month."
"It's just twice a year. Three times," Mitch said.
He wished that he had resorted to a different lie. Taggart having
personal knowledge of migraines was rotten luck.
This small talk unnerved Mitch. To his own ear, he sounded
wary, tense.
Of course, Taggart had no doubt long ago grown accustomed
to people being wary and tense with him, even innocent people,
even his mother.
Mitch had been avoiding the detective's stare. With an effort,
he made eye contact again.
"We did find an AVID on the dog," Taggart said.
'A what?"
"An American Veterinary Identification Device. That microchip
ID I mentioned earlier."
"Oh. Right."
Before Mitch realized that his sense of guilt had sabotaged
him again, his gaze had drifted away from Taggart to follow a
passing car in the street.
"They inject it into the muscle between the dog's shoulders,"
60
DEAN KOONTZ


said Taggart. "It's very tiny. The animal doesn't feel it. We
scanned the retriever, got her AVID number. She's from a house
one block east, two blocks north of the shooting. Owner's name
is Okadan."
"Bobby Okadan? I do his gardening."
"Yes, I know"
"The guy who was killed--that wasn't Mr. Okadan."
"No."
"Who was he? A family member, a friend?"
Avoiding the question, Taggart said, "I'm surprised you didn't
recognize the dog."
"One golden looks like another."
"Not really. They're distinct individuals."
"Mishiki," Mitch remembered.
"That's the dog's name," Taggart confirmed.
"We do that property on Tuesdays, and the housekeeper
makes sure Mishiki stays inside while we're there, out of our way. Mostly I've seen the dog through a patio door."
"Evidently, Mishiki was stolen from the Okadans' backyard
this morning, probably around eleven-thirty. The leash and
collar on her don't belong to the Okadans."
""You mean ... the dog was stolen by the guy who was shot?"
"So it appears."
This revelation reversed Mitch's problem with eye contact.
Now he couldn't look away from the detective.
Taggart hadn't come here just to share a puzzling bit of case
news. Apparently this development triggered, in the detective's
mind, a question about something Mitch had said earlier--or
had failed to say.
From inside the house came the muffled ringing of the telephone.
The
kidnappers weren't supposed to call until six o'clock.
But if they called earlier and couldn't reach him, they might be
angry.
As Mitch started to rise from his chair, Taggart said, "I'd
rather you didn't answer that. It's probably Mr. Barnes."

"iggy?"
"He and I spoke half an hour ago. I asked him not to call here
until I had a chance to speak with you. He's probably been
wrestling with his conscience ever since, and finally his conscience
won. Or lost, depending on your point of view."
Remaining in his chair, Mitch said, "What's this about?"
Ignoring the question, returning to his subject, Taggart said,
"How often do you think dogs are stolen, Mr. Rafferty?"
"I never thought about them being stolen at all."
"It happens. They aren't taken as frequently as cars." His
smile was not infectious. "You can't break a dog down for parts
like you can a Porsche. But they do get snatched now and
then."
"If you say so."
"Purebred dogs can be worth thousands. As often as not, the
thief doesn't intend to sell the animal. He just wants a fancy dog
for himself, without paying for it."
Though Taggart paused, Mitch didn't say anything. He wanted
to speed up the conversation. He was anxious to know the point.
All this dog talk had a bite in it somewhere.
"Certain breeds are stolen more than others because they're
known to be friendly, unlikely to resist the thief. Golden
62 DEAN KOONTZ

retrievers are one of the most sociable, least aggressive of all the
popular breeds."
The detective lowered his head, lowered his eyes, sat pensively
for a moment, as if considering what he wished to say
next.
Mitch didn't believe that Taggart needed to gather his
thoughts. This man's thoughts were as precisely ordered as the clothes in an obsessive-compulsive's closet.
"Dogs are mostly stolen out of parked cars," Taggart continued.
"People leave the dog alone, the doors unlocked. When
they come back, Fido's gone, and someone's renamed him
Duke."
Realizing that he was gripping the arms of the wicker chair
as if strapped in the hot seat and waiting for the executioner
to throw the big switch, Mitch made an effort to appear relaxed.
"Or the owner ties the dog to a parking meter outside a shop.
The thief slips the knot and walks off with a new best friend."

Another pause. Mitch endured it.
With his head still bowed, Lieutenant Taggart said, "It's rare,
Mr. Rafferty, for a dog to be stolen out of its owner's backyard
on a bright spring morning. Anything rare, anything unusual
makes me curious. Any outright weirdness really gets under my
skin."
Mitch raised one hand to the back of his neck and massaged
the muscles because that seemed like something a relaxed man,
a relaxed and unconcerned man, might do.
"It's strange for a thief to enter a neighborhood like that on
foot and walk away with a stolen pet. It's strange that he carries
no ID. It's more than strange, it's remarkable, that he gets shot
to death three blocks later. And it's weird, Mr. Rafferty, that you,
the primary witness, knew him."
"But I didn't know him."
'At one time," Taggart insisted, "you knew him quite well."
10



White ceiling, white railings, white floorboards, white
wicker chairs, punctuated by the gray-and-black moth:
Everything about the porch was familiar, open and airy, yet it
seemed dark now to Mitch, and strange.
His gaze still downcast, Taggart said, "One of the jakes on the
scene eventually got a closer look at the victim and recognized
him."
"Jakes?"
"One of the uniformed officers. Said he arrested the guy on a
drug-possession charge after stopping him for a traffic violation
about two years ago. The guy never served any time, but his
prints were in our system, so we were able to make a quick
match. Mr. Barnes says you and he went to high school with
the vie."
Mitch wished that the cop would meet his eyes. As intuitive
and perceptive as he was, Taggart would recognize genuine
surprise when he saw it.
"His name was Jason Osteen."
"I didn't just go to school with him," Mitch said. "Jason and I
were roommates for a year."
At last reestablishing eye contact, Taggart said, "I know."
"Iggy would have told you."
"Yes."
Eager to be forthcoming, Mitch said, "After high school, I
lived with my folks for a year, while I took some classes--"
"Horticulture."
"That's right. Then I got a job with a landscaping company,
and I moved out. Wanted an apartment of my own. Couldn't
fully afford one, so Jason and I split rent for a year."
The detective bowed his head again, in that contemplative
pose, as if part of his strategy was to force eye contact when it
made Mitch uncomfortable and to deny eye contact when Mitch
wanted it.
"That wasn't Jason dead on the sidewalk," Mitch said.
Opening the white envelope that had been on his lap, Taggart
said, "In addition to the identification by an officer and the print
match, I have Mr. Barnes's positive ID based on this."
He withdrew an eight-by-ten color photo from the envelope
and handed it to Mitch.
A police photographer had repositioned the cadaver to get
better than a three-quarter image of the face. The head was
turned to the left only far enough to conceal the worst of the
wound.
The features had been subtly deformed by the temple
entrance, transit, and post-temple exit of the high-velocity shot.
The left eye was shut, the right open wide in a startled cyclopean
stare.
"It could be Jason," Mitch said.
"It is."
"At the scene, I only saw one side of his face. The right profile,
the worst side, with the exit wound."
'And you probably didn't look too close."
"No. I didn't. Once I saw he had to be dead, I didn't want to
look too close."
'And there was blood on the face," Taggart said. "We swabbed
it off before this photo was taken."
"The blood, the brains, that's why I didn't look too close."
Mitch couldn't take his eyes from the photo. He sensed that
it was prophetic. One day there would be a photograph like this
of his face. They would show it to his parents: Is this your son, Mr. and Mrs. Rafferty?
"This is Jason. I haven't seen him in eight years, maybe nine."
"%u roomed with him when you were--what?--eighteen?"
"Eighteen, nineteen. Just for a year."
'About ten years ago."
"Not quite ten."
Jason had always affected a cool demeanor, so mellow he
seemed to have surfwaxed his brain, but at the same time he
seemed to know the secrets of the universe. Other boardheads
called him Breezer, and admired him, even envied him. Nothing
had rattled Jason or surprised him.
He appeared to be surprised now. One eye wide, mouth open.
He appeared to be shocked.
"You went to school together, you roomed together. Why
didn't you stay in touch?"
While Mitch had been riveted by the photo, Taggart had
67


been watching him intently. The detective's stare had the sharp
promise of a nail gun.
"We had ... different ideas about things," Mitch said.
"It wasn't a marriage. You were just roommates. You didn't
have to want the same things."
"We wanted some of the same things, but we had different
ideas about how to get them."
"Jason wanted to get everything the easy way," Taggart
guessed.
"I thought he was headed for big trouble, and I didn't want
any part of it."
"You're a straight shooter, you walk the line," Taggart said.
"I'm no better than anyone else, worse than some, but I don't
steal."
"We haven't learned much about him yet, but we know he
rented a house in Huntington Harbor for seven thousand a
month."
"A month}"
"Nice house, on the water. And so far it looks like he didn't
have a job."
"Jason thought work was strictly for inlanders, smog monsters."
Mitch saw that an explanation was required. "Surfer lingo
for those who don't live for the beach."
"Was there a time when you lived for the beach, Mitch?"
"Toward the end of high school, for a while after. But it wasn't
enough."
"What was it lacking?"
"The satisfaction of work. Stability. Family."
"You've got all that now. Life is perfect, huh?"
"It's good. Very good. So good it makes me nervous sometimes."
"But
not perfect? What's it lacking now, Mitch?"
Mitch didn't know. He'd thought about that from time to
time, but he had no answer. So he said, "Nothing. We'd like to
have kids. Maybe that's all."
"I have two daughters," the detective said. "One's nine and
one's twelve. Kids change your life."
"I'm looking forward to it."
Mitch realized that he was responding to Taggart less guardedly
than he had previously. He reminded himself that he was
no match for this guy.
"Aside from the drug-possession charge," Taggart said, "Jason
stayed clean all these years."
"He always was lucky."
Indicating the photo, Taggart said, "Not always."
Mitch didn't want to look at it anymore. He returned the
photo to the detective.
"Your hands are shaking," Taggart said.

"I guess they are. Jason was a friend once. We had a lot of
laughs. All that comes back to me now."
"So you haven't seen or spoken to him in ten years."
"Almost ten."
Returning the photo to the envelope, Taggart said, "But you
do recognize him now."
"Without the blood, seeing more of the face."
"When you saw him walking the dog, before he was killed, you didn't think-- Hey, don't I know that guy?"
"He was across the street. I only glanced at him, then the
shot."
'And you were on the phone, distracted. Mr. Barnes says you
were on the phone when the shot was fired."
"That's right. I wasn't focused on the guy with the dog. I just
glanced at him."
"Mr. Barnes strikes me as being incapable of guile. If he lied, I
expect his nose might light up."
Mitch wasn't sure if he was meant to infer, by contrast to Iggy,
that he himself was enigmatic and unreliable. He smiled and
said, "Iggy's a good man."
Looking down at the envelope as he fixed the flap shut with
the clasp, Taggart said, "Who were you on the phone with?"
"Holly. My wife."
"Calling to let you know she had a migraine?"
"Yeah. To let me know she was going home early with a
migraine."
Glancing at the house behind them, Taggart said, "I hope she's
feeling better."
"Sometimes they can last all day."
"So the guy who's shot turns out to be your old roommate.
You see why it's weird to me?"
"It is weird," Mitch agreed. "It freaks me out a little."
"You hadn't seen him in nine years. Hadn't spoken on the
phone or anything."
"He was hanging with new friends, a different crowd. I didn't
care for any of them, and I didn't run into him anymore at any
of the old places."
"Sometimes coincidences are just coincidences." Taggart rose
from his chair and moved toward the porch steps.
Relieved, blotting his palms on his jeans, Mitch got up from
his chair, too.
Pausing beside the steps, head lowered, Taggart said, "There's
not yet been a thorough search of Jason's house. We've only
begun. But we found one odd thing already."
As Earth rolled away from the slowly sinking sun, afternoon
light penetrated a gap in the branches of the pepper tree. A
dappled orange glare found Mitch and made him squint.
Beyond the sudden light, in shadow, Taggart said, "In his
kitchen there was a catchall drawer where he kept loose change,
receipts, an assortment of pens, spare keys. . . . We found only
one business card in the drawer. It was yours."
"Mine?"
"'Big Green,'" Taggart quoted. "'Landscape design, installation,
and maintenance. Mitchell Rafferty.'"
This was what had brought the detective north from the
coast. He had gone to Iggy, guileless Iggy, from whom he'd
learned that indeed a connection existed between Mitch and
Jason.
"You didn't give him the card?" Taggart asked.
"No, not that I remember. What color was the card stock?"
"White."
"I've only used white for the past four years. Before that, the
stock was pale green."
'And you haven't seen him in like nine years."
"Maybe nine years."
"So although you lost track of Jason, it seems like Jason kept
track of you. Any idea why?"
"No. None."
After a silence, Taggart said, "'iou've got trouble here."
"There must be a thousand ways he could've gotten my business
card, Lieutenant. It doesn't mean he was keeping track
of me."
Eyes still downcast, the detective pointed to the porch railing.
"I'm talking about this."
On the white handrail, in the warm stillness, a pair of winged
insects squirmed together, as if trysting.
"Termites," Taggart said.
"They might just be winged ants."
"Isn't this the time of year when termites swarm? You better
have the place inspected. A house can appear to be fine, solid
and safe, even while it's being hollowed out right under your
feet."
At last the detective looked up and met Mitch's eyes.
"They're winged ants," Mitch said.
"Is there anything else you want to tell me, Mitch?"
"Not that I can think of."
"Take a moment. Be sure."
Had Taggart been allied with the kidnappers, he would have
played this differently. He wouldn't have been so persistent or
so thorough. There would have been a sense that it was a game
to him, a charade.
If you had spilled your guts to him, Mitch, Holly would be dead now.
Their previous conversation could have been recorded from a
distance. These days, high-tech directional microphones, what
they called shotgun microphones, could pick up voices clearly
from hundreds of feet away. He'd seen it in a movie. Little of
what he saw in movies was based on any truth, but he thought
shotgun microphones were. Taggart might have been as oblivious
of the taping as Mitch had been.
Of course, what had been done once could be done twice. A
van that Mitch had never seen before stood at the curb across
the street. A surveillance specialist might be stationed in the
back of it.
Taggart surveyed the street, evidently seeking the object of
Mitch's interest.
The houses were suspect, too. Mitch didn't know all of the
neighbors. One of the houses was empty and listed for sale.
"I'm not your enemy, Mitch."
"I never thought you were," he lied.
"Everyone thinks I am."
"I'd like to think I don't have any enemies."
"Everyone has enemies. Even a saint has enemies."
"Why would a saint have enemies?"
"The wicked hate the good just because they are good."
"The word wicked sounds so ..."
"Quaint," Taggart suggested.
"I guess in your work, everything looks black-and-white."
"Under all the shades of gray, everything is black-and-white,
Mitch."
"I wasn't raised to think that way."
"Oh, even though I see proof every day, I have some trouble
staying focused on the truth. Shades of gray, less contrast, less
certainty--that's so much more comfortable."
Taggart took his sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put
them on. From the same pocket, he withdrew one of his business
cards.
""Vbu already gave me a card," Mitch said. "It's in my wallet."
"That one just has the homicide-division number. I've written
my cell phone on the back of this one. I seldom give it out. You can reach me twenty-four/seven."
Accepting the card, Mitch said, "I've told you everything I
know, Lieutenant. Jason being caught up in this just. . . mystifies
me."
Taggart stared at him from behind twin mirrors that portrayed
his face in shades of gray.
Mitch read the cell number. He put the card in his shirt
pocket.
Apparently quoting again, the detective said, "'Memory
is a net. One finds it full of fish when he takes it from the
brook, but a dozen miles of water have run through it without
sticking.'"
Taggart descended the porch steps. He followed the front
walkway toward the street.
Mitch knew that everything he had told Taggart was caught
in the detective's net, every word and every inflection, every
emphasis and hesitation, every facial expression and twitch of
body language, not just what the words said but also what they
implied. In that haul of fish, which the cop would read with the
vision of a true Gypsy poring over tea leaves, he would find an
omen or an indicant that would bring him back with warnings
and new questions.
Taggart stepped through the front gate and closed it behind
him.
The sun lost its view through the gap in the boughs of the
pepper tree, and Mitch was left in shade, but he did not feel a
chill because the light had not warmed him in the first place.
11



In the den, the big TV was a blind eye. Even if Mitch used
the remote to fill the screen with bright idiot visions, this
eye could not see him; yet he felt watched by a presence that
regarded him with cold amusement.
The answering machine stood on a corner desk. The only
message was from Iggy:
"Sorry, bro. I should've called as soon as he left here. But
Taggart... he's like fully macking triple overhead corduroy to
the horizon. He scares you off the board and makes you want to
sit quiet on the beach and just watch the monsters break."
Mitch sat at the desk and opened the drawer in which Holly
kept their checkbook and bank statements.
In his conversation with the kidnapper, he had overestimated
their checking-account balance, which was $10,346.54.
The most recent monthly statement showed an additional
savings-account balance of $27,311.40.
They had bills due. Those were in a different drawer of the
same desk. He didn't look at them. He was counting only assets.
Their monthly mortgage payment was automatically deducted
from their checking account. The bank statement listed
the remaining loan balance as $286,770.
Recently, Holly had estimated that the house was worth
$425,000. That was a crazy amount for a small bungalow in
an old neighborhood, but it was accurate. Though old, the
neighborhood was desirable, and the greater part of the value
lay in the large lot.
Added to their cash on hand, the equity in the house made
a total of approximately $175,000. That was far short of two
million; and the kidnapper had not sounded like a guy whose
intention was to negotiate in good faith.
Anyway, the equity in the house couldn't be converted to
cash unless they took a new loan or sold the place. Because the
house was jointly owned, he needed Holly's signature in either
scenario.
They wouldn't have had the house if Holly hadn't inherited
it from her grandmother, Dorothy, who had raised her. The
mortgage had been smaller upon Dorothy's death, but to pay
inheritance taxes and save the house, they'd had to work out a
bigger loan.
So the amount available for ransom was approximately thirty
seven thousand dollars.
Until now, Mitch had not thought of himself as a failure. His
self-image had been that of a young man responsibly building
a life.
He was twenty-seven. No one could be a failure at twenty
seven.
"Vet this fact was indisputable: Although Holly was the center
of his life, and priceless, when forced to put a price on her, he
could pay only thirty-seven thousand.
A bitterness overcame him for which he had no target except
himself. This was not good. Bitterness could turn to self-pity,
and if he surrendered to self-pity, he would make a failure of
himself. And Holly would die.
Even if the house had been without a mortgage, even if they
had half a million in cash and were wildly successful for people
their age, he would not have had the funds to ransom her.
That truth brought him to the realization that money would
not be what saved Holly. He would be what saved her if she could
be saved: his perseverance, his wits, his courage, his love.
As he returned the bank statement to the drawer, he saw an
envelope bearing his name in Holly's handwriting. It contained
a birthday card that she had bought weeks before the day.
On the front of the card was the photograph of an ancient
man festooned with wrinkles and wattles. The caption declared Whenyou're old, I'll still need you, dear.
Mitch opened the card and read .By then, the only thing I'll have
left to enjoy is gardening, and you'll make excellent compost.
He laughed. He could imagine Holly's laugh in the store when
she had opened the card and read that punch line.
Then his laugh became something different from a laugh. In
the past five terrible hours, he had more than once come close
to tears but had repressed them. The card ruined him.
Below the printed text, she had written Happy birthday! Love,
Holly. Her writing was graceful but not flamboyant, neat.
In his mind's eye, he saw her hand as she held the pen. Her
hands looked delicate, but they were surprisingly strong.
Eventually he recovered his composure by remembering the
strength of her fine hands.
He went to the kitchen and found Holly's car keys on the
pegboard by the back door. She drove a four-year-old Honda.
After retrieving his cell phone from the charger beside the
toaster oven, he went outside and moved his truck to the garage
at the back of the property.
The white Honda stood in the second bay, sparkling because
Holly had washed it Sunday afternoon. He parked beside the car.
He got out of the truck and shut the driver's door, and stood
between the vehicles, sweeping the room with his gaze. If
anyone had been here, they would have heard and seen the
truck approaching, would have had ample warning and would
have fled.
The garage smelled vaguely of motor oil and grease, and
strongly of the grass clippings that were bundled in burlap tarps
and mounded in the bed of the pickup.
He stared at the low ceiling, which was the floor of the loft
that overhung two-thirds of the garage. Windows in the higher
space faced the house, providing an excellent vantage point.
Someone had known when Mitch had come home earlier, had
known precisely when he had entered the kitchen. The phone
had rung, with Holly on the line, moments after he had found
the broken dishes and the blood.
Although an observer might have been in the garage, might
still be here, Holly would not be with him. He might know where
she was being held, but he might not know
If the observer, whose existence remained theoretical, knew
where Holly could be found, it would nevertheless be reckless
for Mitch to go after him. These people clearly had much experience
of violence, and they were ruthless. A gardener would not
be a match for any of them.
A board creaked overhead. In a building of this vintage, the
creak might have been an ordinary settling noise, old joints
paying obeisance to gravity.
Mitch walked around to the driver's door of the Honda,
opened it. He hesitated, but got in behind the steering wheel,
leaving the door open.
For the purpose of distraction, he started the engine. The
garage door stood open, eliminating any danger of carbon
monoxide poisoning.
He got out of the car and slammed the door. Anyone listening
would assume he had pulled it shut from inside.
Why he was not at once backing out of the garage might
puzzle the listener. One assumption might be that he was making
a phone call.
On a side wall were racked the many gardening tools that he
used when working on his own property. The various clippers
and pruning shears all seemed too unwieldy.
He quickly selected a well-made garden trowel formed from a
single piece of machined steel. The handle featured a rubber grip.
The blade was wide and scooped and not as sharp as the blade
of a knife. It was sharp enough.
DEAN KOONTZ






Brief consideration convinced him that, although he might
be able to stab a man, he should select a weapon more likely to
disable than to kill.
On the wall opposite from the gardening implements, other
racks held other tools. He chose a combination lug wrench and
pry bar.
Mitch was aware that a kind of madness, bred of
desperation, had come over him. He could bear no
more inaction.
With the long-handled lug wrench clutched in his right hand,
he moved to the back of the garage where steep open stairs in
the north corner led in a single straight flight to the loft.
By continuing to react instead of acting, by waiting docilely
for the six-o'clock call--one hour and seven minutes away--he
would be performing as the machine that the kidnappers wished
him to be. But even Ferraris sometimes ended in junkyards.
Why Jason Osteen had stolen the dog and why he, of all
people, had been shot dead as an example to Mitch were mysteries to which no solutions were at hand.
Intuition told him, however, that the kidnappers had known
Jason would be linked with him and that this link would make
the police suspicious of him. They were weaving a web of
circumstantial evidence that, were they to kill Holly, would
force Mitch to trial for her murder and would elicit the death
penalty from any jury.
Perhaps they were doing this only to make it impossible for
him to turn to the authorities for help. Thus isolated, he would
be more easily controlled.
Or, once he acquired the two million dollars by whatever
scheme they presented to him, perhaps they had no intention of
releasing his wife in return for the ransom. If they could use him
to knock over a bank or some other institution by proxy, if they
killed Holly after they got the money, and if they were clever
enough to leave no traces of themselves, Mitch--and perhaps
another fall guy that he had not yet met--might take the rap for
every crime.
Alone, grieving, despised, imprisoned, he would never know
who his enemies had been. He would be left to wonder why they
had chosen him rather than another gardener or a mechanic, or
a mason.
Although the desperation that drove him up the loft stairs
had stripped away inhibiting fear, it had not robbed him of his
reason. He didn't race to the top, but climbed warily, the steel
bar held by the pry end, the socket end ready as a club.
The wooden treads must have creaked or even groaned underfoot,
but the chug of the Honda's idling engine, echoing off the
walls, masked the sounds of his ascent.
Walled on three sides, the loft lay open at the back. A railing
extended left from the top of the stairs and across the width of
the garage.
In the three walls of the loft, windows admitted afternoon
light into that higher space. Visible beyond the balusters--and
looming above them--were stacks of cardboard boxes and other
items for which the bungalow provided no storage.
The stored goods were arranged in rows, as low as four feet in
some places, as high as seven in others. The aisles between were
shadowy, and every end offered a blind turn.
At the top of the stairs, Mitch stood at the head of the first
aisle. A pair of windows in the north wall directly admitted
adequate light to assure him that no one crouched in any shallow
niche among the boxes.
The second aisle proved darker than the first, although the
intersecting passage at the end was brightened by unseen
windows in the west wall, which faced the house. The light at
the end would have silhouetted anyone standing boldly in the
intervening space.
Because the boxes were not all the same size and were not in
every instance stacked neatly, and because gaps existed here and
there in the rows, nooks along each aisle offered places large
enough for a man to hide.
Mitch had quietly ascended the stairs. The Honda below
probably had not been running long enough to raise significant
suspicion. Therefore, any sentinel stationed in the loft would be
alert and listening, but most likely would not yet have realized
the immediate need to be elusive.
The third aisle was brighter for having a window directly at
the end of it. He checked out the fourth aisle, then the fifth and
final, which lay along the south wall in the light of two dusty
windows. He found no one.
The intersecting passage that paralleled the west wall, into
which all the east-west aisles terminated, was the only length of
the loft that he had not seen in its entirety. Every row of boxes
hid a portion of that space.
Raising the lug wrench higher, he eased along the southernmost
aisle, toward the front of the loft. He found that the entire
length of the last passage was as deserted as the portions he had
seen from the farther end of the building.
On the floor, however, against the end of a row of boxes, stood
some equipment that should not be here.
More than half the stuff in the loft had belonged to Dorothy,
Holly's grandmother. She had collected ornaments and other
decorative items for every major holiday.
At Christmas, she'd unpacked fifty or sixty ceramic snowmen
of various kinds and sizes. She'd had more than a hundred
ceramic Santa Clauses. Ceramic reindeer, Christmas trees,
wreaths, ceramic bells and sleighs, groups of ceramic carolers,
miniature ceramic houses that could be arranged to form a
village.
The bungalow couldn't accommodate Dorothy's full collection
for any holiday. She'd unpacked and set out as much as would fit.
Holly hadn't wanted to sell any of the ceramics. She continued
the tradition. Someday, she said, they would have a bigger
house, and the full glory of each collection could be revealed.
Sleeping in hundreds of cardboard boxes were Valentine's Day
lovers, Easter bunnies and lambs and religious figures, July
Fourth patriots, Halloween ghosts and black cats, Thanksgiving Pilgrims, and the legions of Christmas.
The gear on the floor in the final aisle was neither ceramic
nor ornamental, nor festive. The electronic equipment included
a receiver and a recorder, but he couldn't identify the other three
items.

They were plugged into a board of expansion receptacles,
which was itself plugged into a nearby wall outlet. Indicator
lights and LED readouts revealed the equipment to be engaged.

They had been maintaining surveillance of the house. Its
rooms and phones were probably bugged.

Confident in his stealth, having seen no one in the loft, Mitch
assumed, upon sight of the equipment, that it was not at the
moment being monitored, that it must be set to automatic operation.
Perhaps they could even access it and download it from a
distance.

Simultaneously with that thought, the array of indicator lights
changed patterns, and at least one of the LED displays began to
keep a running count.

He heard a hissing distinct from the idling Honda in the
garage below, and then the voice of Detective Taggart.

"I love these old neighborhoods. This was how southern California
looked in its great years..."

Not just the rooms of the house but the front porch, too, had
been bugged.

He knew that he had been outmaneuvered only an instant
before he felt the muzzle of the handgun against the back of
his neck.
13



Although he flinched, Mitch did not attempt to turn toward
. the gunman or to swing the lug wrench. He would not be
able to move fast enough to succeed.
During the past five hours, he had become acutely aware of
his limitations, which counted as an achievement, considering
that he had been raised to believe he had no limitations.
He might be the architect of his life, but he could no longer
believe that he was the master of his fate.
"... before they cut down all the orange groves and built a wasteland
of stucco tract houses."
Behind him, the gunman said, "Drop the lug wrench. Don't
stoop to put it down. Just drop it."
The voice was not that of the man on the phone. This
one sounded younger than the other, not as cold, but with a
disturbing deadpan delivery that flattened every word and gave
them all the same weight.
Mitch dropped the club.
"... more convenient. But I happened to be in your neighborhood."

IL
THE HUSBAND 87

Apparently using a remote control, the gunman switched off
the recorder.
He said to Mitch, "You must want her cut to pieces and left
to die, the way he promised."
"No."
"Maybe we made a mistake, choosing you. Maybe you'd be
happy to be rid of her."
"Don't say that."
Every word matter-of-fact, all with the same emotional value,
which was no value at all: "A large life-insurance policy. Another
woman. You could have reasons."
"There's nothing like that."
"Perhaps you'd do a better job for us if, as compensation, we
promised to kill her for you."
"No. I love her. I do."
"You pull another stunt like this one, she's dead."
"I understand."
"Let's go back the way you came."
Mitch turned, and the gunman also turned, staying behind
him.
As he began to retrace his steps along the final aisle, past the
first of the southern windows, Mitch heard the lug wrench
scrape against the boards as the gunman scooped it off the
floor.
He could have pivoted, kicked, and hoped to catch the man
as he rose from a quick stoop. He feared the maneuver would be
anticipated.
Thus far, he had thought of these nameless men as professional
criminals. They probably were that, but they were
88 DEAN KOONTZ

something else, too. He did not know what else they might be,
but something worse.
Criminals, kidnappers, murderers. He could not imagine what
might be worse than what he already knew them to be.
Following him along the aisle, the gunman said, "Get in the
Honda. Go for a ride."
"All right."
"Wait for the call at six o'clock."

'All right. I will."
As they neared the end of the aisle, at the back of the loft,
where they needed to turn left and cross the width of the garage
to the steps in the northeast corner, something like luck intervened
by way of a cord, a knot in the cord, a loop in the knot.
At the moment it happened, Mitch didn't perceive the cause,
only the effect. A tower of cardboard boxes collapsed. Some
tumbled into the aisle, and one or two fell on the gunman.
According to stenciled legends on the cartons, they contained
Halloween ceramics. Packed with more bubble wrap and shredded
tissue paper than with decorative objects, the boxes were
not heavy, but an avalanche of them almost knocked the gunman
off his feet and sent him stumbling.
Mitch dodged one box and raised an arm to deflect another.
The falling first stack destabilized a second.
Mitch almost reached toward the gunman to steady him.
But then he realized that any offer of support might be misinterpreted
as an attack. To avoid being misunderstood--and
shot--he stepped out of his enemy's way.
The old dry wood of the railing at the back of the loft could
safely accommodate anyone who leaned casually on it, but it
proved too weak to endure the impact of the stumbling
gunman. Balusters cracked, nails shrieked loose of their holes,
and two butted lengths of the handrail separated at the joint.
The gunman cursed at the storm of boxes. He cried out in
alarm as the railing sagged away from him.
He fell to the floor of the garage. The distance was not great,
approximately eight feet, yet he landed with a terrible sound,
and in a clatter of broken railing, and the gun went off.
From the toppling of the first box to the concluding punctuation
of the gunshot, only a few seconds had passed.
Mitch stood in stunned disbelief longer than the event itself had
taken to unfold.
Silence shocked him from paralysis. The silence below.
He hurried to the stairs, and under his feet the boards released
a great thunder, as though they had stored it up from the storms
that long ago had lashed the trees from which they had been
milled.
As Mitch crossed the garage on the ground level, past the
front of the truck, past the idling Honda, elation contested with
despair for control of him. He did not know what he would find
and therefore did not know what to feel.
The gunman lay facedown, head and shoulders under an overturned
wheelbarrow. He must have slammed into one edge of
the wheelbarrow, flipping it over and on top of himself.
An eight-foot fall should not have left him in such a profound
stillness.
Breathing hard but not from physical exertion, Mitch righted
the wheelbarrow, shoved it aside. Each breath brought him the
scent of motor oil, of fresh grass clippings, and as he crouched
beside the gunman, he detected the bitter pungency of gunfire, too, and then the sweetness of blood.
He turned the body over and saw the face clearly for the first
time. The stranger was in his middle twenties, but he had the
clear complexion of a preadolescent boy, jade-green eyes, thick
lashes. He did not look like a man who could talk deadpan about
mutilating and murdering a woman.
He had landed with his throat across the rolled metal edge of
the wheelbarrow tray. The impact appeared to have crushed his
larynx and collapsed his trachea.
His right forearm had broken, and his right hand, trapped
under him, had reflexively fired the pistol. The index finger
remained hooked through the trigger guard.
The bullet had penetrated just below the sternum, angled up
and to the left. Minimal bleeding suggested a heart wound,
instant death.
If the shot hadn't killed him instantly, the collapsed airway
would have killed him quickly.
This was too much luck to be just luck.
Whatever it was--luck or something better, luck or something
worse--Mitch didn't at first know whether it was a
helpful or an unwelcome development.
The number of his enemies had been reduced by one. A
DEAN KOONTZ


tattered glee, frayed by the rough edge of vengeance, fluttered
in him and might have teased out a torn and threadbare laugh if
he had not also been at once aware that this death complicated
his situation.
When this man did not report back to his associates, they
would call him. When they could not raise him on the phone,
they might come looking for him. If they found him dead, they
would assume that Mitch had killed him, and soon thereafter
Holly's fingers would be taken off one by one, each stump flame
cauterized without benefit of an anesthetic.
Mitch hurried to the Honda and switched off the engine. He used the remote control to shut the garage door.
As shadows closed in, he switched on the lights.
The single shot might not have been heard. If it had been
heard, he felt sure that it had not been recognized for what
it was.
At this hour, neighbors would not be home from work. Some
kids might have returned from school, but they would be listening
to CDs or would be deep in an Xbox world, and the muffled
shot would be perceived as another bit of music or game percussion.
Mitch
returned to the body and stood looking down at it.
For a moment, he was not able to proceed. He knew what
needed to be done, but he could not act.
He had lived for almost twenty-eight years without witnessing
a death. Now he'd seen two men shot in the same day. Thoughts of his own death pecked at him, and when he tried
to repress them, they could not be caged. The susurration in his
ears was only the sound of his rushing blood, driven by the oars
of a sculling heart, but his imagination provided dark wings
beating at the periphery of his mind's eye.
Although he was squeamish about searching the corpse,
necessity brought him to his knees beside it.
From a hand so warm that it seemed death might be a
pretense, he removed the pistol. He put it in the nearby wheelbarrow.
If
the right leg of the dead man's khakis had not been pulled
up in the fall, Mitch wouldn't have seen the second weapon. The
gunman carried the snub-nosed revolver in an ankle holster. After putting the revolver with the pistol, Mitch considered
the holster. He undid the Velcro closures, put the holster with
the guns.
He dug through the pockets of the sports coat, turned out
the pockets of the pants.
He discovered a set of keys--one for a car, three others -- which he considered but then returned to the pocket where he'd
found them. After a brief hesitation, he retrieved them and
added them to the wheelbarrow.
He found nothing more of interest other than a wallet and
a cell phone. The former would contain identification, and
the latter might be programmed to speed-dial, among other
numbers, each of the dead man's collaborators.
If the phone rang, Mitch didn't dare answer it. Even if he
spoke in monosyllables and the man at the other end briefly
mistook his voice for that of the dead man, he would give himself
away by one slip or another.
He switched off the phone. They would be suspicious when
they got voice mail, but they would not act precipitously on mere
suspicion.
Restraining his curiosity, Mitch set the wallet and phone aside
in the wheelbarrow. Other, more urgent tasks awaited him.
15




From the back of the truck, Mitch fetched a canvas tarp
that was used for bundling rosebush clippings. The thorns
could not easily penetrate it, as they did burlap.

In case one of the other kidnappers came looking for the dead
man, Mitch couldn't leave the body here.

The thought of driving around with the corpse in the trunk
of his car turned his stomach sour. He would have to buy some
antacids.

The tarp had softened with use and was as fissured as the glaze
on an antique vase. Although not waterproof, it remained fairly
water-resistant.

Because the gunman's heart had stopped instantly, little blood
had escaped the wound. Mitch wasn't worried about bloodstains.

He didn't know how long he would have to keep the body in
the trunk. A few hours, a day, two days? Sooner or later, fluids
other than blood would leak from it.

He spread the tarp on the floor and rolled the cadaver
onto it. A wave of revulsion washed through him, inspired by
the way the dead man's arms flopped, by the way the head
lolled.
Considering Holly's peril, which required him not to recoil
from even the most disturbing tasks, he closed his eyes and took
several slow, deep breaths. He choked down his revulsion.
The lolling head suggested that the gunman's neck was broken.
In that case, he was three ways dead: broken neck, crushed
trachea, bullet-torn heart.
This could not be luck. Such layered grisliness could not be a
stroke of good fortune. To view it as such would be repellant.
Extraordinary, yes. An extraordinary incident. And strange.
But not auspicious.
Besides, he could not yet say that this accident had been to
his advantage. It might easily prove to be his undoing.
After rolling the body in the tarp, he did not take time to
weave twine through the eyelets and tie the package shut. Worry
was a clock ticking, an hourglass draining, and he feared an interruption
of one kind or another before this cleanup could be
completed.
He dragged the tarp-wrapped corpse to the back of the
Honda. As he opened the trunk of the car, a thrill of dread went
through him, the absurd thought that he would find another
dead man already occupying the space, but of course the trunk
was empty.
His imagination had never been a fever swamp, and it had
not heretofore been morbid. He wondered if this expectation
of a second corpse might be not a flash of fantasy but in fact a
presentiment that other dead men lay in his immediate future.

Loading the body into the trunk proved to be an arduous job.
The gunman weighed less than Mitch, but he was after all a dead
weight.
If Mitch had not been strong and if his business had not been
one that kept him in good physical condition, the corpse might
have defeated him. Sweat glazed him by the time he slammed
shut the trunk lid and locked it.
A careful inspection revealed no blood on the wheelbarrow.
None on the floor, either.
He gathered the broken balusters and the fallen section of
the handrail, and he took them out of the garage and concealed
them in a half-depleted stack of cordwood that had supplied the
living-room fireplace during the previous winter.
Inside once more, he climbed the stairs to the loft and
returned to the fateful spot at the end of the southernmost aisle.
The cause of the accident soon revealed itself.
Many of the stacked boxes were sealed with tape, but others
were tied shut with cord. The neck of the lug wrench was still
caught in the loop of a knot.
Carrying the wrench down at his side, somewhat away from
his body, the gunman must have snared the dangling loop of
cord. He had pulled Halloween down on himself
Mitch stacked most of the fallen boxes as they had been. He
created a new row of short stacks in front of the breach in the
railing to conceal the damage.
If the gunman's pals came searching for him, the splintered
balusters and the missing section of handrail would suggest to
them that a struggle had occurred.
The ragged gap in the railing would still be visible to them
from the southeast corner of the lower level. The stairs were at
the northeast corner, however, and the gunman's friends might
never be in a position to see the damage.
Although Mitch would have liked to vent some anger by
smashing the electronic eavesdropping equipment arrayed in
the aisle along the west wall, he left it untouched.
When he picked up the long lug wrench, it felt heavier than
he remembered.
In the silence, in the stillness, he sensed deception. Felt
watched. Felt mocked.
Nearby, web-hung spiders must be patiently dreaming of ripe
twitching morsels. A fat spring fly or two must be droning
toward silken snares.
More than flies, worse than spiders, something loomed. Mitch
turned, but seemed to be alone.
An important truth hid from him, hid not in shadows, hid
not behind the boxed holidays, but hid from him in plain sight.
He saw but was blind. He heard but was deaf.
This extraordinary perception grew more intense, swelled
until it became oppressive, until it had such a physical dimension
that his lungs would not expand. Then it rapidly subsided,
was gone.
He took the lug wrench downstairs and hung it on the tool
rack where it belonged.
From the wheelbarrow, he retrieved the phone, the wallet, the
keys, the two guns, and the ankle holster. He put everything on
the front passenger's seat of the Honda.
He drove out of the garage, parked beside the house, and went
quickly inside to get a jacket. He was wearing a flannel shirt, and
though the night ahead would not be cool enough to require a
jacket, he needed one.
When he came out of the house, he expected to find Taggart
waiting by the Honda for him. The detective didn't show.
In the car once more, he placed the lightweight sports jacket
on the passenger's seat, concealing the items that he had taken
from the corpse.
The dashboard clock agreed with his wristwatch-- 5:11.
He drove out to the street and turned right, with a thrice
dead man in the trunk of the car and worse horrors loose in his
mind.
16



Two blocks from his house, Mitch parked at the curb. He
left the engine running, kept the windows closed and the
doors locked.
He could not recall ever previously locking the doors while
he was in the car.
He glanced at the rearview mirror, suddenly certain that the
trunk lock had not engaged, that the lid had popped open, presenting
the swaddled cadaver for viewing. The trunk remained
closed.
In the dead man's wallet were credit cards and a California
driver's license in the name of John Knox. For the license photo,
the youthful gunman had flashed a smile as winsome as that of a
boy-band teen idol.
Knox had been carrying $585, including five one-hundred
dollar bills. Mitch counted the money without taking it out of
the currency compartment.
Nothing in the wallet revealed a single fact about the man's
profession, personal interests, or associations. No business card,
no library card, no health-insurance card. No photos of loved
ones. No reminder notes or Social Security card, or receipts.
According to the license, Knox lived in Laguna Beach.
Something useful might be learned by a search of his residence.
Mitch needed time to consider the risks of going to Knox's
place. Besides, there was someone else he needed to visit before
the scheduled six-o'clock call.
He put the wallet, the dead man's cell phone, and the set
of keys in the glove box. He tucked the revolver and the ankle
holster under the driver's seat.
The pistol remained on the adjacent seat, under his sports
coat.
Through a zigzaggery of low-traffic residential streets, ignoring
the speed limits and even a couple of stop signs, Mitch
arrived at his parents' place in east Orange at 5:35. He parked in
the driveway and locked the Honda.
The handsome house stood on a second tier of hills, with hills
above it. The two-lane street, sloping toward flatter land,
revealed no suspicious vehicle following in his wake.
A languid breeze had uncoiled from the east. With a thousand
times a thousand silvery-green tongues, the tall eucalyptus
trees whispered to one another.
He looked up to the single window of the learning room.
When he was eight years old, he had spent twenty consecutive
days there, with an interior shutter locked across that window.
Sensory deprivation focuses thought, clears the mind. That is
the theory behind the dark, silent, empty learning room.
Mitch's father, Daniel, answered the doorbell. At sixty-one,
he remained a strikingly good-looking man, still in possession of
all his hair, though it had turned white.
Perhaps because his features were so pleasingly bold--perfect
features if he had wished to be a stage actor--his teeth seemed
too small. They were his natural teeth, every one. He was a stickler
for dental hygiene. Laser-whitened, they dazzled, but they
looked small, like rows of white-corn kernels in a cob.
Blinking with surprise that was a degree too theatrical, he
said, "Mitch. Katherine never told me you called."
Katherine was Mitch's mother.
"I didn't," Mitch admitted. "I hoped it would be all right if I
just stopped by."
"More often than not, I'd be occupied with one damn obligation
or another, and you'd be out of luck. But tonight I'm free."
"Good."
"Though I did expect to do a few hours of reading."
"I can't stay long," Mitch assured him.
The children of Daniel and Katherine Rafferty, all now adults,
understood that, in respect for their parents' privacy, they were
to schedule their visits and avoid impromptu drop-ins.
Stepping back from the door, his father said, "Come in, then."
In the foyer, with its white-marble floor, Mitch looked left
and right at an infinity of Mitches, echo reflections in two large
facing mirrors with stainless-steel frames.
He asked, "Is Kathy here?"
"Girls' night out," his father said. "She and Donna Watson
and that Robinson woman are off to a show or something."

"I'd hoped to see her."
"They'll be late," his father said, closing the door. "They're
always late. They chatter at each other all evening, and when
they pull into the driveway, they're still chattering. Do you know
the Robinson woman?"
"No. This is the first I've heard of her."
"She's annoying," his father said. "I don't understand why
Katherine enjoys her company. She's a mathematician."
"I didn't know mathematicians annoyed you."
"This one does."
Mitch's parents were both doctors of behavioral psychology,
tenured professors at UCI. Those in their social circle were
mostly from what academic types recently had begun to call
the human sciences, largely to avoid the term soft sciences. Among that crowd, a mathematician might annoy like a stone
in a shoe.
"I just fixed a Scotch and soda," his father said. "Would you
like something?"
"No thank you, sir."
"Did you just sir me?"
"I'm sorry, Daniel."
"Mere biological relationship--"

"--should not confer social status," Mitch finished.
The five Rafferty children, on their thirteenth birthdays, had
been expected to stop calling their parents Mom and Dad, and
to begin using first names. Mitch's mother, Katherine, preferred
to be called Kathy, but his father would not abide Danny instead
of Daniel.
As a young man, Dr. Daniel Rafferty had held strong views
about proper child-rearing. Kathy had no firm opinions on the
subject, but she had been intrigued by Daniel's unconventional
theories and curious to see if they would prove successful.
For a moment, Mitch and Daniel stood in the foyer, and
Daniel seemed unsure how to proceed, but then he said, "Come
see what I just bought."
They crossed a large living room furnished with stainlesssteel-and-glass
tables, gray leather sofas, and black chairs. The
art works were black-and-white, some with a single line or block
of color: here a rectangle of blue, here a square of teal, here two
chevrons of mustard yellow.
Daniel Rafferty's shoes struck hard sounds from the Santos
mahogany floor. Mitch followed as quietly as a haunting spirit.
In the study, pointing to an object on the desk, Daniel said,
"This is the nicest piece of shit in my collection."
17



The study decor matched the living room, with lighted
display shelves that presented a collection of polished
stone spheres.
Alone on the desk, cupped in an ornamental bronze stand,
the newest sphere had a diameter greater than a baseball. Scarlet
veins speckled with yellow swirled through a rich coppery
brown.
To the uninformed it might have appeared to be a piece of
exotic granite, ground and polished to bring out its beauty. In
fact it was dinosaur dung, which time and pressure had petrified
into stone.
"Mineral analysis confirms that it came from a carnivore,"
said Mitch's father.
"Tyrannosaurus?"
"The size of the entire stool deposit suggests something
smaller than a T. rex."
"Gorgosaurus?"
"If it had been found in Canada, dating to the Upper
Cretaceous, then perhaps a gorgosaurus. But the deposit was
found in Colorado."
"Upper Jurassic?" Mitch asked.
"Yes. So it's probably a ceratosaurus dropping."
As his father picked up a glass of Scotch and soda from the
desk, Mitch went to the display shelves.
He said, "I gave Connie a call a few nights ago."
Connie was his oldest sister, thirty-one. She lived in Chicago.
"Is she still drudging away in that bakery?" his father asked.
"Yes, but she owns it now."
"Are you serious? Yes, of course. It's typical. If she puts one
foot in a tar pit, she'll never back up, just flail forward." "She says she's having a good time."
"That's what she would say, no matter what."
Connie had earned a master's degree in political science
before she had jumped off the plank into an ocean of entrepreneurship.
Some were mystified by this sea change in her, but
Mitch understood it.
The collection of polished dinosaur-dung spheres had grown
since he had last seen it. "How many do you have now, Daniel?"
"Seventy-three. I've got leads on four brilliant specimens."
Some spheres were only two inches in diameter. The largest
were as big as bowling balls.
The colors tended toward browns, golds, and coppers, for the
obvious reason; however, every hue, even blue, lustered under
the display lights. Most exhibited speckled patterns; actual veining
was rare.
"I talked to Megan the same evening," Mitch said.
Megan, twenty-nine, had the highest IQ in a family of high
IQs. Each of the Rafferty kids had been tested three times: the
week of their ninth, thirteenth, and seventeenth birthdays.
After her sophomore year, Megan had dropped out of college.
She lived in Atlanta and operated a thriving dog-grooming business,
both a shop and a mobile service.
"She called at Easter, asked how many eggs we dyed," Mitch's
father said. "I assume she thought that was funny. Katherine and
I were just relieved that she didn't announce she was pregnant."
Megan had married Carmine Maffuci, a mason with hands the
size of dinner plates. Daniel and Kathy felt that she had settled
for a husband beneath her station, intellectually. They expected
that she would realize her error and divorce him--if children
didn't arrive first to complicate the situation.
Mitch liked Carmine. The guy had a sweet nature, an infectious
laugh, and a tattoo of Tweety Bird on his right biceps.
"This one looks like porphyry," he said, pointing to a dung
specimen with a purple-red groundmass and flecks of something
that resembled feldspar.
He had also recently spoken to his youngest sister, Portia,
but he did not mention her because he didn't want to start an
argument.
Freshening his Scotch and soda at the corner wet bar, Daniel
said, 'Anson had us to dinner two nights ago."
Anson, Mitch's only brother, at thirty-three the oldest of the
siblings, was the most dutiful to Daniel and Kathy.
In fairness to Mitch and his sisters, Anson had long been
his parents' favorite, and he had never been rebuffed. It was
easier to be a dutiful child when your enthusiasms were not
analyzed for signs of psychological maladjustment and when
your invitations were not met with either gimlet-eyed suspicion
or impatience.
In fairness to Anson, he had earned his status by fulfilling
his parents' expectations. He had proved, as had none of the
others, that Daniel's child-rearing theories could bear fruit.
Top of his class in high school, star quarterback, he declined
football scholarships. Instead he accepted those offered only in
respect of the excellence of his mind.
The academic world was a chicken yard and Anson a fox. He
did not merely absorb learning but devoured it with the appetite
of an insatiable carnivore. He earned his bachelor's degree in
two years, a master's in one, and had a Ph.D. at the age of twenty
three.
Anson was neither resented by his siblings nor in any slightest
way alienated from them. On the contrary, if Mitch and his
sisters had taken a secret vote for their favorite in the family, all
four of their ballots would have been marked for their older
brother.
His good heart and natural grace had allowed Anson to please
his parents without becoming like them. This achievement
seemed no less impressive than if nineteenth-century scientists,
with nothing but steam power and primitive voltaic cells, had
sent astronauts to the moon.
"Anson just signed a major consulting contract with China,"
Daniel said.
Brontosaurus, diplodocus, brachiosaurus, iguanodon, moschops,
stegosaurus, triceratops, and other droppings were
labeled by engraving on the bronze stands that held the spheres.
"He'll be working with the minister of trade," said Daniel.
Mitch didn't know whether petrified stool could be analyzed
so precisely as to identify the particular dinosaur species or
genus. Perhaps his father had arrived at these labels by the application
of theories with little or no hard science supporting
them.
In certain areas of intellectual inquiry where absolute answers
could not be defended, Daniel embraced them anyway.
"And directly with the minister of education," Daniel said.
Anson's success had long been used to goad Mitch to consider
a career more ambitious than his current work, but the jabs
never broke the skin of his psyche. He admired Anson but didn't
envy him.
As Daniel prodded with another of Anson's achievements,
Mitch checked his wristwatch, certain that he would shortly
have to leave to take the kidnapper's call in privacy. But the time
was only 5:42.
He felt as if he had been in the house at least twenty minutes,
but the truth was seven.
"Do you have an engagement?" Daniel asked.
Mitch detected a hopeful note in his father's voice, but he
did not resent it. Long ago he had realized that an emotion as
bitter and powerful as resentment was inappropriate in this
relationship.
Author of thirteen ponderous books, Daniel believed himself
to be a giant of psychology, a man of such iron principles and
steely convictions that he was a rock in the river of contemporary
American intellectualism, around which lesser minds
washed to obscurity.
Mitch knew beyond doubt that his old man was not a rock.
Daniel was a fleeting shadow on that river, riding the surface,
neither agitating nor smoothing the currents.
If Mitch had nurtured resentment toward such an ephemeral
man, he would have made himself crazier than Captain Ahab in
perpetual pursuit of the white whale.
Throughout their childhood, Anson had counseled Mitch and
his sisters against anger, urging patience, teaching the value of
humor as defense against their father's unconscious inhumanity.
And now Daniel inspired in Mitch nothing but indifference and
impatience.
The day Mitch had left home to share an apartment with
Jason Osteen, Anson had told him that having put anger behind
himself, he would eventually come to pity their old man. He had
not believed it, and thus far he had advanced no further than
grudging forbearance.
""Ves," he said, "I have an engagement. I should be going."
Regarding his son with the keen interest that twenty years
ago would have intimidated Mitch, Daniel said, "What was this
all about?"
Whatever Holly's kidnappers intended for Mitch, his chances
of surviving it might not be high. The thought had crossed
his mind that this might be the last chance he had to see his
parents.
Unable to reveal his plight, he said, "I came to see Kathy.
Maybe I'll come back tomorrow."
"Came to see her about what?"
A child can love a mother who has no capacity to love him in
return, but in time, he realizes that he is pouring his affection
not on fertile ground but on rock, where nothing can be grown.
A child might then spend a life defined by settled anger or by
self-pity.
If the mother is not a monster, if she is instead emotionally
disconnected and self-absorbed, and if she is not an active
tormentor but a passive observer in the home, her child has a
third option. He can choose to grant her mercy without pardon,
and find compassion for her in recognition that her stunted
emotional development denies her the fullest enjoyment of life.
For all her academic achievements, Kathy was clueless about
the needs of children and the bonds of motherhood. She
believed in the cause-and-effect principle of human interaction,
the need to reward desired behavior, but the rewards were always
materialistic.
She believed in the perfectibility of humanity. She felt that
children should be raised according to a system from which one
did not deviate and with which one could ensure they would be
civilized.
She did not specialize in that area of psychology. Consequently,
she might not have become a mother if she hadn't
met a man with firm theories of child development and with a
system to apply them.
Because Mitch would not have life without his mother and
because her cluelessness did not encompass malice, she inspired
a tenderness that was not love or even affection. It was instead
a sad regard for her congenital incapacity for sentiment. This
tenderness had nearly ripened into the pity that he withheld
from his father.
"It's nothing important," Mitch said. "It'll keep."
"I can give her a message," Daniel said, following Mitch across
the living room.
"No message. I was nearby, so I just dropped in to say hello."
Because such a breach of family etiquette had never happened
previously, Daniel remained unconvinced. "Something's on your
mind."
Mitch wanted to say Maybe a week of sensory deprivation in the
learning room will squeeze it out of me.
Instead he smiled and said, "I'm fine. Everything's fine."
Although he had little insight into the human heart, Daniel
had a bloodhound's nose for threats of a financial nature. "If it's
money problems, you know our position on that."
"I didn't come for a loan," Mitch assured him.
"In every species of animal, the primary obligation of parents is to teach self-sufficiency to their offspring. The prey must learn
evasion, and the predator must learn to hunt."
Opening the door, Mitch said, "I'm a self-sufficient predator,
Daniel."
"Good. I'm glad to hear that."
He favored Mitch with a smile in which his small supernaturally
white teeth appeared to have been sharpened since last
he revealed them.
Even to deflect his father's suspicions, Mitch could not
summon a smile this time.
"Parasitism," Daniel said, "isn't natural to Homo sapiens or to
any species of mammal."
Beaver Cleaver would never have heard that line from his dad.
Stepping out of the house, Mitch said, "Tell Kathy I said hi."
"She'll be late. They're always late when the Robinson woman
joins the pack."
"Mathematicians," Mitch said scornfully.
"Especially this one."
Mitch pulled the door shut. Several steps from the house, he
stopped, turned, and studied the place perhaps for the last time.
He had not only lived here but had also been home-schooled
here from first grade through twelfth. More hours of his life had
been spent in this house than out of it.
As always, his gaze drifted to that certain second-story
window, boarded over on the inside. The learning room.
With no children at home any longer, what did they use that
high chamber for?
Because the front walk curved away from the house instead
of leading straight to the street, when Mitch lowered his attention
from the second floor, he faced not the door but the
sidelight. Through those French panes, he saw his father.
Daniel stood at one of the big steel-framed foyer mirrors,
apparently considering his appearance. He smoothed his white
hair with one hand. He wiped at the corners of his mouth.
Although he felt like a Peeping Tom, Mitch could not look
away.
As a child, he had believed there were secrets about his
parents that would free him if he were able to learn them. Daniel
and Kathy were a guarded pair, however, as discreet as silverfish.
In the foyer now, Daniel pinched his left cheek between
thumb and forefinger, and then his right, as if to tweak some
color into them.
Mitch suspected that his visit had already more than half
faded from his father's mind, now that the threat of a loan
request had been lifted.
In the foyer, Daniel turned sideways to the mirror, as though
taking pride in the depth of his chest, the slimness of his waist.
How easy to imagine that between the facing mirrors, his
father did not cast an infinity of echo reflections, as Mitch had
done, and that the single likeness of him possessed so little
substance that, to any eye but his own, it would appear as transparent
as the image of a spook.


18



At 5:50, only fifteen minutes after he had arrived at Daniel
. and Kathy's house, Mitch drove away. He turned the
corner and traveled a quick block and a half.
Perhaps two hours of daylight remained. He could easily have
detected a tail if one had pursued him.
He pulled the Honda into the empty parking lot at a church.
A forbidding brick facade, fractured eyes of multicolored glass
somber with no current inner light, rose to a steeple that gouged
the sky and cast a hard shadow across the blacktop.
His father's fear had been unfounded. Mitch had not intended
to ask for money.
His parents had done well financially. They could no doubt
contribute a hundred thousand to the cause without being in
the least pinched. Even if they would give him twice that sum,
and considering his own meager resources, he would still have
in hand only a little more than ten percent of the ransom.
Besides, he would not have asked because he knew they would
have declined, ostensibly on the basis of their theories of
parenting.
Furthermore, he had come to suspect that the kidnappers
were seeking more than money. He had no idea what they
desired in addition to cash, but snatching the wife of a gardener
who earned a five-figure income made no sense unless they
wanted something else that only he could provide.
He had been all but certain that they intended to commit
a major robbery by proxy, using him as if he were a remote
controlled robot. He could not rule out that scenario, but it no
longer convinced him.
From under the driver's seat, he retrieved the snub-nosed
revolver and the ankle holster.
He examined the weapon with caution. As far as he could tell,
it did not have a safety.
When he broke out the cylinder, he discovered that it held
five rounds. This surprised him, as he had expected six.
All he knew about guns was what he had learned from books
and movies.
In spite of Daniel's talk about inspiring children to be self
sufficient, he had not prepared Mitch for the likes of John Knox.
The prey must learn evasion, and the predator must learn to hunt.
His parents had raised him to be prey. With Holly in the hands
of murderers, however, Mitch had nowhere to run. He would
rather die than hide and leave her to their mercy.
The Velcro closure on the holster allowed him to strap it far
enough above his ankle to avoid exposing it if his pants hiked
when he sat down. He didn't favor peg-legged jeans, and this
pair accommodated the compact handgun.
He shrugged into the sports coat. Before he got out of the
car, he would tuck the pistol under his belt, in the small of his
back, where the coat would conceal it.
He examined that weapon. Again he failed to locate a safety.
With some fumbling, he ejected the magazine. It contained
eight cartridges. When he pulled the slide back, he saw a ninth
gleaming in the breach.
After reinserting the magazine and making sure that it clicked
securely into place, he put the pistol on the passenger's seat.
His cell phone rang. The car clock read 5:59.
The kidnapper said, "Did you enjoy your visit with Mom
and Dad?"
He had not been followed to his parents' house or away from
it, and yet they knew where he had been.
He said at once, "I didn't tell them anything."

"What were you after--milk and cookies?"
"If you're thinking I could get the money from them, you're
wrong. They're not that rich."
"We know, Mitch. We know."
"Let me talk to Holly."
"Not this time."
"Let me talk to her," he insisted.
"Relax. She's doing fine. I'll put her on the next call. Is that
the church you and your parents attended?"
His was the only car in the parking lot, and none were passing
at the moment. Across the street from the church, the only
vehicles were those in driveways, none at the curb.1
"Is that where you went to church?" the kidnapper asked
again.
"No."
Although he was closed in the car with the doors locked, he
felt as exposed as a mouse in an open field with the vibrato of
hawk wings suddenly above.
"Were you an altar boy, Mitch?"
"No."
"Can that be true?"
"You seem to know everything. You know it's true."
"For a man who was never an altar boy, Mitch, you are so like an altar boy."
When he didn't at first respond, thinking the statement a non
sequitur, and when the kidnapper waited in silence, Mitch at
last said, "I don't know what that means."

"Well, I don't mean you're pious, that's for sure. And I don't
mean you're reliably truthful. With Detective Taggart, you've
proved to be a cunning liar."
In their two previous conversations, the man on the phone
had been professional, chillingly so. This petty jeering seemed
out of sync with his past performance.
He had, however, called himself a handler. He had bluntly said
that Mitch was an instrument to be manipulated, finessed.
These taunts must have a purpose, though it eluded Mitch.
The kidnapper wanted to get inside his head and mess with him,
for some subtle purpose, to achieve a particular result.
"Mitch, no offense, because it's actually kind of sweet--but
you're as naive as an altar boy."
"If you say so."
"I do. I say so."
This might be an attempt to anger him, anger being an inhi
bition to clear thinking, or perhaps the purpose was to instill in
him such doubt about his competence that he would remain
cowed and obedient.
He had already acknowledged to himself the absolute degree
of his helplessness in this matter. They could not strop his humility
to a sharper edge than now existed.
""Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see."
This statement unnerved him more than anything else that
the kidnapper had said. Not an hour ago, in the loft of his garage,
that very thought, couched in similar words, had occurred
to him.
Having packed John Knox in the trunk of the car, he had
returned to the loft to puzzle out how the accident had
occurred. Having seen the neck of the lug wrench snared in the
loop of the knot, he had settled the mystery.
But just then he had felt deceived, watched, mocked. He had
been overcome by an instinctive sense that a greater truth
waited in that loft to be discovered, that it hid from him in plain
sight.
He had been shaken by the thought that he saw and yet was
blind, that he heard and yet was deaf
Now the mocking man on the telephone: Your eyes are wide open, Mitch, but you don't see.
Uncanny seemed not to be too strong a word. He felt that
the kidnappers could not only watch him and listen to him
anywhere, at any time, but also that they could pore through
his thoughts.
He reached for the pistol on the passenger's seat. No immediate
threat loomed, but he felt safer holding the gun.
"Are you with me, Mitch?"
"I'm listening."
"I'll call you again at seven-thirty--"
"More waiting? Why?" Impatience gnawed at him, and he
could not cage it, though he knew the danger of the infection
proceeding to a state of foaming recklessness. "Let's get on with this."
"Easy, Mitch. I was about to tell you what to do next when
you interrupted."
"Then, damn it, tell me."
"A good altar boy knows the ritual, the litanies. A good altar
boy responds, but he doesn't interrupt. If you interrupt again,
I'll make you wait until eight-thirty."
Mitch got a leash on his impatience. He took a deep breath,
let it slowly out, and said, "I understand."
"Good. So when I hang up, you'll drive to Newport Beach, to
your brother's house."
Surprised, he said, "To Anson's place?"
"%u'll wait with him for the seven-thirty call."
"Why does my brother have to be involved in this?"
"Ifou can't do alone what has to be done," said the kidnapper.
"But what has to be done? %u haven't told me."
"We will. Soon."
"If it takes two men, the other doesn't have to be him. I don't
want Anson dragged into this."
"Think about it, Mitch. Who better than your brother? He
loves you, right? He won't want your wife to be cut to pieces like
a pig in a slaughterhouse."
Throughout their beleaguered childhood, Anson had been
the reliable rope that kept Mitch tethered to a mooring. Always
it was Anson who raised the sails of hope when there seemed to
be no wind to fill them.
To his brother, he owed the peace of mind and the happiness
that eventually he had found when at last free of his parents,
the lightness of spirit that had made it possible for him to win
Holly as a wife.
"You've set me up," Mitch said. "If whatever you want me to
do goes wrong, you've set me up to make it look as if I killed
my wife."
"The noose is even tighter than you realize, Mitch."
They might be wondering about John Knox, but they didn't
know that he was dead in the trunk of the Honda. A dead
conspirator was some proof of the story Mitch could tell the
authorities.
Or was it? He had not considered all the ways that the police
might interpret Knox's death, perhaps most of them more
incriminating than exculpatory.
"My point," Mitch said, "is that you'll do the same to Anson.
You'll wrap him in chains of circumstantial evidence to keep
him cooperative. It's how you work."
"None of that will matter if the two of you do what we want,
and you get her back."
"But it isn't fair," Mitch protested, and realized that he must
in fact sound as ingenuous and credulous as an altar boy.
The kidnapper laughed. 'And by contrast, you feel we've dealt
fairly with you? Is that it?"
Clenched around the pistol, his hand had grown cold and
moist.
"Would you rather we spared your brother and partnered you
with Iggy Barnes?"
"Yes," Mitch said, and was at once embarrassed to have been
so quick to sacrifice an innocent friend to save a loved one.
'And that would be fair to Mr. Barnes?"
Mitch's father believed that shame had no social usefulness,
that it was a signature of the superstitious mind, and that a
person of reason, living a rational life, must be free of it. He
believed, as well, that the capacity for shame could be expunged
by education.
In Mitch's case, the old man had failed miserably, at least on
this score. Although the thug on the phone was the only witness
to this willingness to save a brother at the expense of a friend,
Mitch felt his face turn warm with shame.
"Mr. Barnes," the kidnapper said, "is not the sharpest knife in
the drawer. If for no other reason, your friend would not be an
acceptable substitute for your brother. Now go to Anson's house
and wait for our call."
Resigned to this development but sick with despair that
his brother must be imperiled, Mitch said, "What should I
tell him?"
"Absolutely nothing. I'm requiring you to tell him nothing. I
am the experienced handler, not you. When I call, I'll let him
hear Holly scream, and then explain the facts."
Alarmed, he said, "That's not necessary, making her scream.
You promised not to hurt her."
"I promised not to rape her, Mitch. Nothing you say to your
brother will be as convincing as her scream. I know better than
you how to do this."
His cold, sweaty grip on the pistol was problematic. When
his hand began to shake, he put the weapon on the passenger's
seat once more.
"What if Anson isn't home?"
"He's home. Get moving, Mitch. It's rush hour. You don't want
to be late getting to Newport Beach."
The kidnapper terminated the call.
When Mitch pressed the end button on his phone, the act
felt grimly predictive.
He shut his eyes for a moment, trying to gather his unraveled
nerves, but then opened them because he felt vulnerable with
them closed.
When he started the engine, a flock of crows flew up from
the pavement, from the shadow of the steeple to the steeple
itself
19



Famous for its yacht harbor, its mansions, and its wonderland
of upscale shopping, Newport Beach was not home
exclusively to the fabulously wealthy. Anson lived in the Corona
del Mar district, in the front half of a two-unit condo.
Shaded by a massive magnolia, approached by a used-brick
path, with New England architecture as interpreted by a swooning
romantic, the house did not impress, but it charmed.
The door chimes played a few bars of Beethoven's "Ode
to Joy."
Anson arrived before Mitch pressed the bell push a second
time.
Although as fit as an athlete, Anson was a different physical
type from Mitch: bearish, barrel-chested, bull-necked. That
he had been a star quarterback in high school testified to his
quickness and agility, for he looked more like a middle linebacker.
His
handsome, broad, open face seemed always to be anticipating
a reason to smile. At the sight of Mitch, he grinned.
"Fratello mio!" Anson exclaimed, embracing his brother and
drawing him into the house. "Entrino! Entrino!"
The air was redolent of garlic, onions, bacon.
"Cooking Italian?" Mitch asked.
"Bravissimo, fratelto piccolo! From a mere aroma and my bad Italian, you make a brilliant deduction. Let me hang up your
coat."
Mitch had not wanted to leave the pistol in the car. The gun
was tucked under his belt, in the small of his back.
"No," he said. "I'm fine. I'll keep it."
"Come to the kitchen. I was in a funk at the prospect of
another dinner alone."
"Ifou're immune to funk," Mitch said.
"There is no such thing as funk antibodies, little brother."
The house featured a masculine but stylish decor, emphasizing
nautical decorative items. Paintings of sailing ships portrayed
proud vessels tossed in storms and others making way under
radiant skies.
From childhood, Anson had believed that perfect freedom
could never be found on land, only at sea, under sail.
He'd been a fan of pirate yarns, stories of naval battles, and
tales of adventure on the bounty. He'd read many of them aloud
to Mitch, who had sat enthralled for hours.
Daniel and Kathy suffered motion sickness in a rowboat on a
pond. Their aversion to the sea had been the first thing to inspire
Anson's interest in the nautical life.
In the cozy, fragrant kitchen, he pointed to a pot steaming on the stove. "Zuppa massaia."
"What kind of soup is massaia?"
"Classic housewife's soup. Lacking a wife, I have to get in
touch with my feminine side when I want to make it."
Sometimes Mitch found it hard to believe that a pair as leaden
as their parents could have produced a son as buoyant as Anson.
The kitchen clock read 7:24. A traffic backup from an accident
had delayed him.
On the table stood a bottle of Chianti Classico and a half-full
glass. Anson opened a cabinet, plucked another glass from a
shelf.
Mitch almost declined the wine. But one round would not
dull his wits and might restore some elasticity to his brittle
nerves.
As Anson poured the Chianti, he did a fair imitation of their
father's voice. "Yes, I'm pleased to see you, Mitch, though I
didn't notice your name on the visiting-progeny schedule, and I
had planned to spend this evening tormenting guinea pigs in an
electrified maze."
Accepting the Chianti, Mitch said, "I just came from there."
"That explains your subdued manner and your gray complexion."
Anson raised his glass in a toast. "La dolce vita."
"To your new deal with China," Mitch said.
"Was I used as a needle again?"
"Always. But he can't push hard enough to puncture me anymore.
Sounds like a big opportunity."
"The China thing? He must've hyped what I told him. They
aren't dissolving the Communist Party and giving me the
emperor's throne."
Anson's consulting work was so arcane that Mitch had never
been able to understand it. He had earned a doctorate in linguis
tics, the science of language, but he also had a deep background
in computer languages and in digitalization theory, whatever
that might be.
"Every time I leave their place," Mitch said, "I feel the need
to dig in the dirt, work with my hands, something."
"They make you want to flee to something real."
"That's it exactly. This wine's good."
'After the soup, we're having lombo di maiale con castagne."
"I can't digest what I can't pronounce."
"Roast loin of pork with chestnuts," Anson said.
"Sounds good, but I don't want dinner."
"There's plenty. The recipe serves six. I don't know how to
cut it down, so I always make it for six."
Mitch glanced at the windows. Good--the blinds were shut.
From the counter near the kitchen phone, he picked up a pen
and a notepad. "Have you gotten any sailing in lately?"
Anson dreamed of one day owning a sailing yacht. It should
be large enough not to seem claustrophobic on a long coastal
run or perhaps even on a voyage to Hawaii, but small enough to be managed with one mate and an array of sail motors.
He used the word mate to mean his fellow sailor but also his
companion in bed. Regardless of his bearish appearance and
sometimes acerbic sense of humor, Anson was a romantic not
just about the sea but also about the opposite sex.

The attraction women felt for him could not be called merely
magnetic. He drew them as the gravity of the moon pulls the
tides.
Ifet he was no Don Juan. With great charm, he turned away
most of his pursuers. And each one that he hoped might be his
ideal woman always seemed to break his heart, though he would
not have put it that melodramatically.
The small boat--an eighteen-foot American Sail--that he
currently moored at a buoy in the harbor was by no measure
a yacht. But given his luck at love, he might one day own the
vessel of his dreams long before he found someone with whom
to sail it.
In answer to Mitch's question, he said, "I haven't had time to
do more than bob the harbor like a duck, tacking the channels."
Sitting at the kitchen table, printing in block letters on the
notepad, Mitch said, "I should have a hobby. You've got sailing,
and the old man has dinosaur crap."
He tore off the top sheet of the pad and pushed it across the
table so that Anson, still standing, could read it: your house is

PROBABLY BUGGED.
His brother's look of astonishment had a quality of wonder
that Mitch recognized as similar to the expression that had
overtaken him when he had read aloud the pirate yarns and the
tales of heroic naval battles that thrilled him as a boy. His initial
reaction seemed to be that some strange adventure had begun,
and he appeared not to grasp the implied danger.
To cover Anson's stunned silence, Mitch said, "He just bought
a new specimen. He says it's a ceratosaurus dropping. From
Colorado, the Upper Jurassic."
He presented another sheet of paper on which he had printed

THEY'RE SERIOUS. I SAW THEM KILL A MAN.

While Anson read, Mitch withdrew his cell phone from an
inside coat pocket and placed it on the table. "Given our family
history, it'll be so appropriate--inheriting a collection of
polished shit."
As Anson pulled out a chair and sat at the table, his boyish
expression of expectation clouded with worry. He assisted in
the pretense of an ordinary conversation: "How many does he
have now?"
"He told me. I don't remember. You could say the den's
become a sewer."
"Some of the spheres are pretty things."
"Very pretty," Mitch agreed as he printed they'll call

AT 7:30.
Mystified, Anson mouthed the questions Who? What?
Mitch shook his head. He indicated the wall clock--7:27.
They conducted a self-conscious and inane conversation until
the phone rang promptly on the half-hour. The ring came not
from Mitch's cell but from the kitchen phone.
Anson looked to him for guidance.
In the event, which seemed likely, that the timing of this call
was coincidental and that the expected contact would come
on the cell phone, Mitch indicated that his brother should
answer it.
Anson caught it on the third ring and brightened when he
heard the caller's voice. "Holly!"
Mitch closed his eyes, bent his head, covered his face with his
hands, and from Anson's reaction, knew when Holly screamed.
20




Mitch expected to be brought into the call, but the
kidnapper spoke only to Anson, and for longer than
three minutes.
The substance of the first part of the conversation was
obvious, and could be deduced from hearing his brother's half
of it. The last couple of minutes proved not easy to follow, in
part because Anson's responses grew shorter even as his tone of
voice became more grim.
When Anson hung up, Mitch said, "What do they want us
to do?"
Instead of answering, Anson came to the table and picked up
the bottle of Chianti. He topped off his glass.
Mitch was surprised to see that his own glass was empty.
He could recall having taken only a sip or two. He declined a
refill.
Pouring in spite of Mitch's protest, Anson said, "If your heart's
in the same gear as mine, you'll burn off two glasses of this stuff
even as you're swallowing it."
¦

THE HUSBAND

131



Mitch's hands were trembling, though not from the effect of
Chianti, and in fact the wine might steady them.
"And Mickey?" Anson said.
Mickey had been an affectionate nickname that Anson had
called his younger brother during a particularly difficult period
of their childhood.
When Mitch looked up from his unsteady hands, Anson said,
"Nothing will happen to her. I promise you, Mickey. I swear
nothing will happen to Holly. Nothing."
Through the formative years of Mitch's life, his brother had
been a trustworthy pilot, bringing them through storms, or
a wingman flying defense as it was needed. He seemed overreaching
now, however, when he promised a safe landing, for
surely Holly's kidnappers controlled this flight.
"What do they want us to do?" he asked again. "Is it even
possible, is it something that can be done, or is it as crazy as
it seemed to me the moment I first heard him demand two
million?"
Instead of replying, Anson sat down. Leaning forward, shoulders
hunched, beefy arms on the table, the wineglass all but
concealed by his large hands, he was an imposing presence.
He still looked bearish but no longer cuddly. The women
usually drawn to him as the tides to the moon, upon seeing him
in this mood, would take a wide orbit around him.
This particular set to Anson's jaw, the flare of his nostrils, a
perceived change in his eyes from a soft seawater green to an
emerald hardness heartened Mitch. He knew this look. This was
Anson rising to meet injustice, which always brought out in him
a stubborn, effective resistance.
Although relieved to have his brother's assistance, Mitch felt
guilty, too. "I'm sorry about this. Man, I never anticipated you'd
be dragged into it. I was blindsided by that. I'm sorry."
""You don't have anything to be sorry about. Nada, zip, zero."
"If I'd have done something different..."
"If you'd done anything different, maybe Holly would be dead
now. So what you've done so far is the right thing."
Mitch nodded. He needed to believe what his brother had
said. He felt useless nonetheless. "What do they want us to do?"
he asked again.
"First, Mickey, I want to hear everything that's happened.
What the sonofabitch on the phone told me isn't a fraction of
it. I need to hear it from the beginning until you rang my bell."
Surveying the room, Mitch wondered where an eavesdropping
device might be hidden.
"Maybe they're listening to us right now, maybe they're not,"
Anson said. "It doesn't matter, Mickey. They already know
everything you're going to tell me because they did it to you."
Mitch nodded. He fortified himself with some Chianti. Then
he gave Anson an account of this hellish day.
In case they were being monitored, he withheld only the story
of his encounter with John Knox in the garage loft.

Anson listened intently and interrupted only a few times to
ask clarifying questions. When Mitch finished, his brother sat
with eyes closed, ruminating on what he'd been told.
Megan had the highest IQ of the Rafferty children, but Anson
had always scored a close second to hen Holly's situation
remained as dire now as it had been half an hour ago, but Mitch
took comfort in the fact that his brother had joined the fight.
He himself had done nearly as well as Anson on the tests. He
felt somewhat cheered not because a higher intelligence had set
to work on the problem, but because he was no longer alone.
He had never been any good alone.
Getting up from his chair, Anson said, "Sit tight, Mickey. I'll
be right back," and left the kitchen.
Mitch stared at the telephone. He wondered if he would
recognize a listening device if he took the phone apart.
He glanced at the clock-- 7:48. He had been given sixty hours
to raise the money, and fifty-two were left.
That didn't seem correct. The events that brought him here
had left him feeling wrung out, pressed flat. He felt as if he'd
already been through the entire sixty hours.
Because he experienced no effect from what he'd thus far
drunk, he finished the wine remaining in his glass.
Anson returned, wearing a sports coat. "ve have places to go.
I'll tell you everything in the car. I'd rather you drove."
"Give me a second to finish this wine," Mitch said, although
his glass was empty.
On the notepad, he printed one more message: they can

TRACK MY CAR.
Although no one had tailed him on his way to his parents'
house, the kidnappers had known that he'd gone there. And
later, when he had parked in the church lot to take the
six-o'clock call, they had known his precise location.
Is that the church you and your parents attended?
If they had attached tracking devices to his truck and tothe
Honda, they had been able to follow him at a distance, out of
sight, monitoring his whereabouts electronically.
Although Mitch didn't know the practical details of how such
technology worked, he did understand that the use of it meant
Holly's abductors were even more sophisticated than he had
initially thought. The extent of their resources --that is, their
knowledge and their criminal experience--made it increasingly
clear that any attempt at resistance would be unlikely to succeed.
On the brighter side, the kidnappers' professionalism argued
that any action they directed Mitch and Anson to undertake
would have been well thought out and would be likely to
succeed, whether robbery by proxy or another crime. With luck,
the ransom would be raised.
In response to the warning in the latest note, Anson switched
off the flame under the pot of soup, and produced the keys to
his SUV. "Let's take my Expedition. You drive."
Mitch caught the keys when they were tossed to him, then
quickly gathered the notes that he had printed, and threw them
in the trash.
He and his brother left by the kitchen door. Anson neither
turned off any lights nor engaged the lock, perhaps recognizing
that, in this tempest, he could not keep out those whom he
wished to bar, only those who had no desire to enter.
Softened by ferns and dwarf nandina, a brick courtyard separated
the front and rear condos. The smaller back unit was above
a pair of garages.
Anson's two-stall garage contained the Expedition and a 1947
Buick Super Woody Wagon, which he himself had restored.
Mitch got behind the wheel of the SUV "What if they have
tracking devices on your cars, too?"
As he pulled shut the passenger's door, Anson said, "Doesn't
135


matter. I'm going to do exactly what they want. If they're able
to track us, they'll be reassured."
Backing out of the garage, into the alley, Mitch said, "So what
do they want, what have we got to do? Hit me with it."
"They want two million bucks transferred to a numbered
account in the Grand Cayman Islands."
"~ieah, well, I guess that's better than having to give it to them
in pennies, two hundred million damn pennies, but whose
money do we have to rip off?"
The violent light of a red sunset flooded the alleyway.
Anson pressed the remote to close the garage door. He said,
"We don't have to rip off anybody. It's my money, Mickey. They
want my money, and for this they can have it."
21



The burning sky made radiant the alley, and a furnace glow
filled the Expedition.
Flushed with a fiery reflection of the smoldering sun, Anson's
face appeared fierce, and a golden eyeshine gilded his stare, but
in his soft voice was the tender truth of him: "Everything I have
is yours, Mickey."
As if he had crossed a busy city street and, glancing back,
saw a primeval forest where a metropolis had just stood, Mitch
sat for a moment in bewildered silence, and then said, "You
have two million dollars? Where did you get two million
dollars?"
"I'm good at what I do, and I've worked hard."
"I'm sure you're good at what you do, you're good at everything
you do, but you don't live like a rich man."
"Don't want to. Flash and status don't interest me."
"I know some people with money keep a low profile, but..."
"Ideas interest me," Anson said, "and getting real freedom
someday, but not having my picture in the society pages."
Mitch remained lost in the forest of this new reality. "You
mean you have, really have, two million in the bank?"
"I'll have to liquidate investments. It can be done by phone,
by computer, once the exchanges open tomorrow. Three hours
tops."
Dry seeds of hope swelled with the irrigation provided by this
amazing, this astonishing news.
Mitch said, "How . . . how much do you have? I mean,
altogether."
"This will almost wipe out my liquidity," Anson said, "but I'll
still have the equity in the condo."
"Wipe you out. I can't let that happen."
"If I earned it once, I can earn it again."
"Not that much. Not easily."
"What I do with my money is my business, Mickey. And what
I want to do with it is get Holly home safe."
Through the streaming crimson light, through soft dusky
shadows fast hardening toward night, along the alley came a
ginger cat.
Caught in cross tides of emotion, Mitch did not trust himself
to speak, so he watched the cat and drew slow deep breaths.
Anson said, "Because I'm not married, don't have kids, these
scum came after Holly and you as a way to get at me."
The revelation of Anson's wealth had so surprised Mitch that
he had not at once grasped this obvious explanation of the
heretofore inexplicable abduction.
"If there'd been someone closer to me," Anson continued,
"if I had been more vulnerable that way, then my wife or child
would have been snatched, and Holly would've been spared."
Slinking slowly to a stillness, the ginger cat stopped in front
of the Expedition, peered up at Mitch. In a streetscape of
reflected fire, only the cat's eyes produced original light, radium
green.
"It could've been one of our sisters they grabbed, couldn't it?
Megan, Connie, Portia? And this is no different from that."
Mitch wondered, "The way you live, so middle-class, how did
they know?"
"Someone working in a bank, a stock brokerage, one bent nail
where there shouldn't be any."
"You have any idea who?"

"I haven't had time to think about it, Mickey. Ask me tomorrow."
Breaking
stillness, sneaking forward, the ginger cat passed
close by the SUV, vanishing from sight.
In that instant, a bird flew up, a pigeon or a dove that had
lingered late over scattered crumbs, thrashing its wings against
the driver's-door window as it swooped off toward some safe
bower.
Mitch was startled by the sound and by the dreamlike
perception that the cat, on vanishing, had become the bird.
Facing his brother again, Mitch said, "I couldn't see a way to
go to the cops. But everything's changed now. You have that
option."
Anson shook his head. "They shot a guy to death right in front
of you to make a point."
"Yeah."
"And you got the point."
"Yeah."
"Well, so did I. Unless they get what they want, they'll kill
without compunction, and they'll pin it on you or on both of us.
We get Holly back, and then we go to the cops."
"Two million dollars."
"It's only money," Anson said.
Mitch remembered what his brother had said about not
caring to have his picture in the society pages, about instead
being interested in ideas and in "getting real freedom someday."
Now he repeated those four words and said, "I know what
that means. The sailing yacht. A life on the sea."
"It doesn't matter, Mickey."
"Sure it matters. With that much money, you're close to
having the boat and a life without chains."
Anson's turn had come to look for the cat or an equivalent
distraction in the rouge light, the mordant shadows.
Mitch said, "I know you're a planner. "Vbu always have been.
When did you plan to retire, to go for it?"
"It's a child's dream anyway, Mickey. Pirate yarns and naval
battles."
"When?" Mitch insisted.
"In two years. When I turned thirty-five. So it'll be a few years
later. And I might make it back quicker than I think. My business
is growing fast."
"The China deal."
"The China deal and others. Ymgpod&t what I do."
"No way I'd turn you down," Mitch said. "I'd die for Holly, so
I'm sure as hell willing to let you go broke for her. But I won't
let you minimize the sacrifice. It's one mother of a sacrifice." Anson reached out, put a hand around the back of Mitch's
neck, pulled him close, gently pressed forehead to forehead, so
they were not looking at each other but down at the gearshift
console between them. "Tell you something, bro."
"Tell me."
"Normally I'd never mention this. But so you don't chew out
your own liver with guilt, which is the way you are ... you should
know you aren't the only one who's needed help."
"What do you mean?"
"How do you think Connie bought her bakery?"
"You?"
"I structured a loan so a portion converts into a tax-free gift
each year. I don't want to be repaid. It's fun to do this. And
Megan's dog-grooming business."
Mitch said, "The restaurant Portia and Frank are opening."
"That, too."
Still sitting bowed head to bowed head, Mitch said, "How did
they figure out you had so much?"
"They didn't. I saw what they needed. I've been trying to
think what you need, but you've always seemed ... so damned
self-reliant."
"This is way different from a loan to buy a bakery or open a
little restaurant."
"No shit, Sherlock."
Mitch laughed shakily.
"Growing up in Daniel's rat maze," Anson said, "the only thing
any of us had was one another. The only thing that mattered.
That's still the way it is, fratellopiccolo. That's the way it's always
going to be."
"I'll never forget this," Mitch said.
"Damn right. You owe me forever."
Mitch laughed again, less shakily. "Free gardening for life."
"Hey, bro?"
"Yeah?"
'Are you gonna drip snot on the gearshift?"
"No," Mitch promised.
"Good. I like a clean car. You ready to drive?"
"Yeah."
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"Then let's roll."
22



Only the thinnest wound of the fallen day bled along
the far horizon, and otherwise the sky was dark, and the
sea dark; and the moon had not yet risen to silver the deserted

beaches.
Anson said he needed to think, and he thought clearly and
well aboard a car in motion, because it was akin to a boat under
sail. He suggested Mitch drive south.
At that hour, light traffic plied the Pacific Coast Highway,
and Mitch stayed in the right-hand lane, in no hurry.
"They'll call the house tomorrow at noon," Anson said, "to
see what progress I've made with the financials."
"I don't like this wire transfer to the Cayman Islands."
"Neither do I. Then they have the money and Holly."
"Better we have a face-to-face," Mitch said. "They bring Holly,
we bring a couple suitcases of cash."
"That's also iffy. They take the money, shoot all of us."
"Not if we make it a condition that we can be armed."
143


Anson was dubious. "That would intimidate them? They're
really gonna believe we know guns?"
"Probably not. So we take weapons that don't require us to be
great shooters. Like shotguns."
"Where do we get shotguns?" Anson asked.
"We buy them at a gun shop, at Wal-Mart, wherever."
"Isn't there a waiting period?"
"I don't think so. Only with handguns."
"We'd need to practice with them."
"Not much," Mitch said, "just to get comfortable."
"Maybe we could go out Ortega Highway. Once we had the
guns, I mean. There's still some desert they haven't slammed full
of houses. We could find a lonely place, fire some rounds."
Mitch drove in silence, and Anson rode in silence, the eastern
hills speckled with the lights of expensive houses, the black sea
to the west, and the sky black, with no horizon line visible
anymore, sea and sky merging into one great black void.
Then Mitch said, "It doesn't feel real to me. The shotguns."
"It feels movie," Anson agreed.
"I'm a gardener. "You're a linguistics expert."
"Anyway," Anson said, "I don't see kidnappers letting us set
conditions. Whoever has the power makes the rules."
They worried southward. The graceful highway curved, rose,
and descended into downtown Laguna Beach.
In mid-May the tourist season had begun. People strolled the
sidewalks, going to and from dinner, peering in the windows of
the closed shops and galleries.
When his brother suggested that they grab something to eat,
Mitch said he wasn't hungry. "You have to eat," Anson pressed.
Resisting, Mitch said, "What're we going to talk about over
dinner? Sports? We don't want to be overheard talking about this."
"So we'll eat in the car."
Mitch parked in front of a Chinese restaurant. Painted on the
windows, a dragon rampant tossed its mane of scaly flagella.
While Anson waited in the SUV, Mitch went inside. The
girl at the takeout counter promised to have his order in ten
minutes.
The animated conversation of the diners at the tables grated
on him. He resented their carefree laughter.
Aromas of coconut rice, sweet-chili rice, deep-fried corn balls,
cilantro, garlic, sizzling cashews raised an appetite. But soon the
fragrant air grew oppressive, oily; his mouth turned dry and sour.
Holly remained in the hands of murderers.
They had hit her.
They had made her scream for him, and for Anson.
Ordering Chinese takeout, eating dinner, attending to any tasks of ordinary life seemed like betrayals of Holly, seemed to
diminish the desperation of her situation.
If she had heard the threats made to Mitch on the phone -- that her fingers would be sawn off, her tongue cut out--then her
fear must be unbearable, desolating.
When he imagined her unrelenting fear, thought of her
bound in darkness, the humility arising from his helplessness
began at last to make way for greater anger, for rage. His face
was hot, his eyes stinging, his throat so swollen with fury he
could not swallow.
Irrationally, he envied the happy diners with an intensity that
made him want to knock them out of their chairs, smash their
faces.
The orderly decor offended him. His life had fallen into chaos,
and he burned with the desire to spend his misery in a violent
spree.
Some secret savage splinter of his nature, long festering, now
flamed to full infection, filling him with the urge to tear down
the colorful paper lanterns, shred the rice-paper screens, rip
from the walls the red-enameled wooden letters of the Chinese
language and spin them, as if they were martial-arts throwing
stars, to slash and gouge everything in their path, to shatter
windows.
Presenting two white bags containing his order, the counter
girl sensed the pending storm in him. Her eyes widened, and she
tensed.
Only a week ago, a deranged customer in a pizzeria had shot
and killed a cashier and two waiters before another customer, an
off-duty cop, had brought him down with two shots. This girl
probably replayed in her mind the TV reports of that slaughter.
The realization that he might be frightening her was a lifeline
that reeled Mitch back from fury to anger, then to a passive
misery that dropped his blood pressure and quieted his thundering
heart.
Leaving the restaurant, stepping into the mild spring night,
he saw that his brother, in the Expedition, was on his cell phone.
As Mitch got behind the steering wheel, Anson concluded
the call, and Mitch said, "Was it them?"
"No. There's this guy I think we should talk to."
Giving Anson the larger bag of takeout, Mitch said, "What
guy?"
"We're in deep water with sharks. We're no match for them.
We need advice from someone who can keep us from being
eaten like chum."
Although earlier he had given his brother the option of going
to the authorities, Mitch said, "They'll kill her if we tell
anyone."
"They said no cops. We aren't going to the police."
"It still makes me nervous."
"Mickey, I see the risks. We're playing a trip wire with a violin
bow. But if we don't try to make some music, we're screwed
anyway."
Tired of feeling powerless, convinced that docile obedience
to the kidnappers would be repaid with contempt and cruelty,
Mitch said, "Okay. But what if they're listening to us right now?"
"They're not. To bug a car and listen in real time, wouldn't
they have to plant more than a microphone? Wouldn't they have
to package it with a microwave transmitter and a power source?"
"Would they? I don't know. How would I know?"
"I think so. It would be too much equipment, too bulky, too
complicated to conceal easily or to set up quickly."
With chopsticks, which he had requested, Anson ate
Szechuan beef from one container, rice with mushrooms from
another.
"What about directional microphones?"
"I've seen the same movies you have," Anson said. "Directional
mikes work best when the air is still. Look at the trees. We have
a breeze tonight."
Mitch ate moo goo gai pan with a plastic fork. He resented
the deliciousness of the food, as though he would be more faithful
to Holly if he gagged down a flavorless meal.

"Besides," Anson said, "directional mikes don't work between
one moving vehicle and another."
"Then let's not talk about it till we're moving."
"Mickey there's a very thin line between sensible caution and
paranoia."
"I passed that line hours ago," Mitch said, "and for me there's
no going back."
23



The moo goo gai pan left an unsavory aftertaste that Mitch
tried unsuccessfully to wash away with Diet Pepsi as he
drove.
He headed south on Coast Highway. Buildings and trees
screened the sea from sight except for glimpses of an abyssal
blackness.
Sipping from a tall paper cup of lemon tea, Anson said, "His
name is Campbell. He's ex-FBI."
Alarmed, Mitch said, "This is exactly who we can't turn to."
"Emphasis on the ex, Mickey. £x-FBI. He was shot, and shot
bad, when he was twenty-eight. Other guys would have lived on
disability, but he built his own little business empire."
"What if they've got a tracking device on the Expedition, and
they figure out we're powwowing with an ex-FBI agent?"
"They won't know that he was. If they know anything at all
about him, they might know I did a large piece of business with
him a few years ago. That'll just look like I'm putting together
the ransom."
149


The tires droned on the blacktop, but Mitch felt as though
the highway under them were no more substantial than the skin
of surface tension on a pond, across which a mosquito might
skate confidently until a feeding fish rose and took it.
"I know what soil bougainvillea needs, what sunlight loropetalum
requires," he said. "But this stuff is another universe to me."
"Me too, Mickey. Which is why we need help. No one has
more real-world knowledge, more street smarts than Julian
Campbell."
Mitch had begun to feel that every yes-no decision was a
switch on a bomb detonator, that one wrong choice would atomize
his wife.
If this continued, he would soon worry himself into paralysis.
Inaction would not save Holly. Indecision would be the death
of her.
'All right," he relented. "Where does this Campbell live?"
"Get to the interstate. We're going south to Rancho Santa Fe."
East-northeast of San Diego, Rancho Santa Fe was a community
of four-star resorts, golf courses, and multimillion-dollar
estates.
"Jam it," Anson said, "and we'll be there in ninety minutes."
When together, they were comfortable with silences, perhaps
because each of them, as a kid, had separately and alone spent
much time in the learning room. That chamber was better
soundproofed than a radio-station studio. No noise penetrated
from the outside world.
During the drive, Mitch's silence and his brother's were
different from each other. His was the silence of futile thrashing
in a vacuum, of a mute astronaut tumbling in zero gravity.
150 DEAN KOONTZ

Anson's was the silence of feverish but ordered thought. His
mind raced along chains of deductive and inductive reasoning
faster than any computer, without the hum of electronic calculation.
They
had been on I-5 for twenty minutes when Anson said,
"Do you sometimes feel we were held for ransom our entire
childhood?"
"If not for you," Mitch said, "I'd hate them."

"I do hate them sometimes," Anson said. "Intensely but briefly.
They're too pathetic to hate for more than a moment. It would
be like wasting your life hating Santa Claus because he doesn't
exist."
"Remember when I got caught with the copy of Charlotte's WebF
"%u were almost nine. %u spent twenty days in the learning
room." Anson quoted Daniel: "'Fantasy is a doorway to superstition.'"
"Talking
animals, a humble pig, a clever spider--"
"A corrupting influence,'" Anson quoted. '"The first step in a
life of unreason and irrational beliefs.'"
Their father saw no mystery in nature, just a green machine.
Mitch said, "It would have been better if they hit us."
"Much better. Bruises, broken bones--that's the kind of thing
that gets the attention of Child Protective Services."
After another silence, Mitch said, "Connie in Chicago, Megan
in Atlanta, Portia in Birmingham. Why are you and I still here?"

"Maybe we like the climate," Anson said. "Maybe we don't
think distance heals. Maybe we feel we have unfinished business."
The last explanation resonated with Mitch. He had often
thought about what he would say to his parents if the opportunity
arose to question the disparity between their intentions and
methods, or the cruelty of trying to strip from children their
sense of wonder.
When he left the interstate and drove inland on state highways,
desert moths swirled as white as snowflakes in the headlights
and burst against the windshield.
Julian Campbell lived behind stone walls, behind an imposing
iron gate framed by a massive limestone chambranle. The ascendants
of the chambranle featured rich carvings of leafy vines
that rose to the capping transverse, joining to form a giant
wreath at the center.
"This gate," Mitch said, "must've cost as much as my house."
Anson assured him: "Twice as much."
24



To the left of the main gate, the stacked-stone estate wall
incorporated a guardhouse. As the Expedition drifted to a
stop, the door opened, and a tall young man in a black suit
appeared.
His clear dark eyes read Mitch as instantly as a cashier's scanner
reads the bar code on a product. "Good evening, sir." He at
once looked past Mitch to Anson. "Pleased to see you, Mr.
Rafferty."
With no sound that Mitch could detect, the ornate iron gates
swung inward. Beyond lay a two-lane driveway paved with
quartzite cobblestones, flanked by majestic phoenix palms, each
tree lighted from the base, the great crowns forming a canopy
over the pavement.
He drove onto the estate with the feeling that, all forgiven,
Eden had been restored.
The driveway was a quarter of a mile long. Vast, magically
illuminated lawns and gardens receded into mystery on both
sides.
Anson said, "Sixteen manicured acres."
"There must be a dozen on the landscape staff alone."
"I'm sure there are."
From red tile roofs, limestone walls, mullioned windows radiant
with golden light, columns, balustrades, and terraces, the
architect had conjured as much grace as grandeur. So large that
it should have been intimidating, the Italianate house instead
looked welcoming.
The driveway ended by encircling a reflecting pond with
a center fountain from which crisscrossing jets, like sprays of
silver coins, arced and sparkled in the night. Mitch parked
beside it.
"Does this guy have a license to print money?"
"He's in entertainment. Movies, casinos, you name it."
This splendor overawed Mitch but also raised his hopes that
Julian Campbell would be able to help them. Having built such
wealth after being critically wounded and released from the FBI
on permanent disability, having been dealt such a bad hand yet
having played it to win, Campbell must be as street-smart as
Anson promised.
A silver-haired man, with the demeanor of a butler, greeted
them on the terrace, said his name was Winslow, and escorted
them inside.
They followed Winslow across an immense white-marble
receiving foyer capped by a coffered plaster ceiling with gold
leaf details. After passing through a living room measuring
at least sixty by eighty feet, they came finally into a mahogany paneled library.
In response to Mitch's question, Winslow revealed that the
book collection numbered over sixty thousand volumes. "Mr.
Campbell will be with you momentarily," he said, and departed.
The library, which incorporated more square footage than
Mitch's bungalow, offered half a dozen seating areas with sofas
and chairs.
They settled into armchairs, facing each other across a coffee
table, and Anson sighed. "This is the right thing."
"If he's half as impressive as the house--"
"Julian is the best, Mickey. He's the real deal."
"He must think a lot of you to meet on such short notice, past
ten o'clock at night."
Anson smiled ruefully. "What would Daniel and Kathy say if
I turned away your compliment with a few words of modesty?"
"'Modesty is related to diffidence,'" Mitch quoted. "'Diffidence
is related to shyness. Shyness is a synonym for timidity.
Timidity is a characteristic of the meek. The meek do not inherit
the earth, they serve those who are self-confident and self
assertive.'"
"I love you, little brother. You're amazing."
"I'm sure you could quote it word for word, too."
"That's not what I mean. You were raised in that Skinner box,
that rat maze, and yet you're maybe the most modest guy I know."
"I've got issues," Mitch assured him. "Plenty of them."
"See? Your response to being called modest is self-criticism."
Mitch smiled. "Guess I didn't learn much in the learning
room."
"For me, the learning room wasn't the worst," Anson said.
"What I'll never scrape out of my mind is the shame game."
Memory flushed Mitch's face. "'Shame has no social usefulness.
It's a signature of the superstitious mind.'"
"When did they first make you play the shame game,
Mickey?"
"I think I was maybe five."
"How often did you have to play it?"
"I guess half a dozen times over the years."
"They put me through it eleven times that I remember, the
last when I was thirteen."
Mitch grimaced. "Man, I remember that one. %u were given
a full week of it."
"Living naked twenty-four/seven while everyone else in the
house remains clothed. Being required to answer in front of
everyone the most embarrassing, the most intimate questions
about your private thoughts and habits and desires. Being
watched by two other family members at every toilet, at least
one of them a sister, allowed no smallest private moment. . .
Did that cure you of shame, Mickey?"
"Look at my face," Mitch said.
"I could light a candle off that blush." Anson laughed softly, a
warm and bearish laugh. "Damn if we're getting him anything
for Father's Day."
"Not even cologne?" Mitch asked.
This was a jokey routine from childhood.
"Not even a pot to piss in," Anson said.
"What about the piss without the pot?"
"How would I wrap it?"
"With love,"Mitch said, and they grinned at each other.
"I'm proud of you, Mickey. You beat 'em. It didn't work with
you the way it worked with me."
"The way what worked?"
"They broke me, Mitch. I have no shame, no capacity for
guilt." From under his sports coat, Anson withdrew a pistol.
25



Mitch held his smile in anticipation of the punch line, as
if the pistol would prove to be not a weapon but instead
a cigarette lighter or a novelty-store item that shot bubbles.
If the salty sea could freeze and keep its color, it would have
been the shade of Anson's eyes. They were as clear as ever, as
direct as always, but they were further colored by a quality that
Mitch had never seen before, that he could not identify, or
would not.
"Two million. Truth is," Anson said almost sadly, without bite
or rancor, "I wouldn't pay two million to ransom you, so Holly
was dead the moment she was snatched."
Mitch's face set marble-hard, and his throat seemed to be full
of broken stones that weighed down speech.
"Some people I've done consulting work for--sometimes they
come across an opportunity that is crumbs to them but meat
to me. Not my usual work, but things that are more directly
criminal."
Mitch had to struggle to focus his attention, to hear what was
said, for his head was filled with a roar of lifelong perceptions
collapsing like a construct of termite-eaten timbers.
"The people who kidnapped Holly are the team I put together
for one of those jobs. They made a bundle from it, but they
found out my take was bigger than I told them, and now they're
greedy."
So Holly had been kidnapped not solely because Anson had
enough money to ransom her, but also because--primarily because--Anson had cheated her abductors.
"They're afraid to come directly after me. I'm a valuable resource
to some serious people who'd pop anyone who popped me."
Mitch assumed he would soon meet some of those "serious
people," but whatever threat they might pose to him, it could
not equal the devastation of this betrayal.

"On the phone," Anson revealed, "they said if I don't ransom
Holly, they'll kill her and then shoot you down in the street one
day, like they shot Jason Osteen. The poor dumb babies. They
think they know me, but they don't know what I really am.
Nobody does."
Mitch shivered, for his mental landscape had turned wintry,
his thoughts a storm of sleet, an icy and unrelenting barrage.
"Jason was one of them, by the way. Sweet brainless Breezer.
He thought his pals were going to shoot the dog to make their
point with you. By shooting him instead, they made a sharper
point and improved the split of the remaining partners."
Of course, Anson had known Jason as long as Mitch had
known him. But Anson evidently had remained in touch with
Jason long after Mitch had lost track of his former roommate.
"Is there something you want to say to me, Mitch?"
159


Perhaps another man in his position would have had a thousand
angry questions, bitter denunciations, but Mitch sat
frozen, having just experienced an emotional and intellectual
polar shift, his previous equatorial view of life having flipped
arctic in an instant. The landscape of this new reality was
unknown to him, and this man who so resembled his brother
was not the brother he had known, but a stranger. They were
foreigners to each other, with no common language, here on a
desolate plain.
Anson seemed to take Mitch's silence as a challenge or even
an affront. Leaning forward in his chair, he sought a reaction,
though he spoke in the brotherly voice that he had always used
before, as if his tongue was so accustomed to the soft tones of
deceit that it could not sharpen itself to the occasion.
"Just so you won't feel that you mean less to me than Megan,
Connie, and Portia, I should clarify something. I didn't give
them money to start businesses. That was bullshit, bro. I handled
you."
Because a response was clearly wanted, Mitch did not
give one.
A man with a fever can suffer chills, and Anson's stare
remained icy though its intensity revealed a feverishly agitated
mind. "Two million wouldn't wipe me out, bro. The truth is ...
I've got closer to eight."
From behind the burly bearish charm, a goatish other
watched, and Mitch sensed, without fully understanding what
he meant, that he and his brother, alone in the room, were in
» fact not alone.

"I bought the yacht in March," Anson said. "Come September,
I'll run my consulting service at sea, with a satellite uplink.
Freedom. I've earned it, and no one's gonna bleed me for two
cents of it."
The library door closed. Someone had arrived--and wanted
privacy for what came next.
Rising from his chair, pistol ready, Anson tried once more to
sting a reaction from Mitch. "%u can take some comfort from
the fact that this will be over for Holly quicker now than
midnight Wednesday."
Defined by a confidence and grace that suggested miscegenation
with a panther somewhere in his heritage, a tall man
arrived, his iron-gray eyes bright with curiosity, his nose raised
as if seeking an elusive scent.
To Mitch, Anson said, "When I'm not home to take their call
at noon, and when they can't get you on your cell phone, they'll
know my buttons can't be pushed. They'll whack her, dump her,
and run."
The confident man wore tasseled loafers, black silk slacks,
and a gray silk shirt the shade of his eyes. A gold Rolex brightened
his left wrist, and his manicured fingernails were buffed to
a shine.
"They won't torture her," Anson continued. "That was bluff.
They probably won't even screw her before they kill her, though
I would if I were them."
Two solid men stepped from behind Mitch's chair, flanking
him. Both had pistols fitted with silencers, and their eyes were
like those you usually saw only from the free side of a cage.
"He's carrying a piece in the small of his back," Anson told
them. To Mitch, he said, "I felt it when I hugged you, bro."
In retrospect, Mitch wondered why he hadn't mentioned the
pistol to Anson once they were in the Expedition, in motion,
and not likely to be monitored. Perhaps in the deepest catacombs
of his mind had been interred a distrust of his brother
that he had not been able to acknowledge.
One of the gunmen had a bad complexion. Like aphids at a
leaf, acne had pitted his face. He told Mitch to stand, and Mitch
got up from the chair.
The other gunman lifted the back of his sports coat and took
the pistol from him.
When told to sit down, Mitch obeyed.
At last he spoke to Anson, but only to say, "I pity you," which
was true, though it was a wretched kind of pity, with some
compassion but no tenderness, leeched of mercy but transfused
with revulsion.
However this pity might be qualified, Anson wanted none of
it. He had said that he was proud of Mickey for not being
molded in their parents' forge, that he himself felt broken. Those
were lies, the lubricating oil of a manipulator.
His pride was reserved for his own cunning and ruthlessness.
At Mitch's declaration of pity, disdain narrowed Anson's eyes,
and his clear contempt brought a harder edge of brutality to his
features.
As if he sensed that Anson was sufficiently offended to do
something rash, the man in silk raised one hand, Rolex glittering,
to stay a gunshot. "Not here."
After a hesitation, Anson returned his pistol to the shoulder
holster under his sports coat.
Unsought, into Mitch's mind came the seven words that
Detective Taggart had spoken to him eight hours before, and
though he did not know their source and did not fully see their
appropriateness to the moment, he felt compelled to speak
them. "'Blood crieth unto me from the ground.'"
For an instant, Anson and his associates were as motionless as
figures in a painting, the library hushed, the air still, the night
crouched at the French doors, and then Anson walked out of
the room, and the two gunmen retreated a few steps, remaining
alert, and the man in silk perched on the arm of the chair in
which Anson had sat.
"Mitch," he said, "you've been quite a disappointment to your
brother."
26



Julian Campbell had the golden glow that could have been
achieved only with a tanning machine of his own, a sculpted
physique that was proof of a home gym and a personal trainer,
and a smooth face that, for a man in his fifties, suggested a
plastic surgeon on retainer.
The wound that had ended his FBI career was not evident,
nor any sign of disability. His triumph over his physical injuries
evidently equaled his economic success.
"Mitch, I'm curious."
'About what?"
Instead of answering, Campbell said, "I'm a practical man. In
my business I do what I need to do, and I don't get acid indigestion
over it."
Mitch translated those words to mean that Campbell did not
allow himself to be troubled by guilt.
"I know a lot of men who do what needs done. Practical men."
In thirteen and a half hours, the kidnappers would call Anson's
house. If Mitch wasn't there to take the call, Holly would be
killed.
"But this is the first time I've seen a man drop the dime on
his own brother just to prove he's the hardest hardcase around."
"For money," Mitch corrected.
Campbell shook his head. "No. Anson could have asked me
to teach these pussies a lesson. They aren't as tough as they
think."
Below this darkest level of the day's descent lay something
darker.
"In twelve hours, we could have them begging to pay us to
take your wife back unharmed."
Mitch waited. For now there was nothing to do but wait.
"These guys have mothers. We burn down one mom's house,
maybe smash another old lady's face, she needs a year of reconstructive
surgery."
Campbell was as matter-of-fact as if he had been explaining
the terms of a real-estate deal.
"One of them has a daughter by an ex-wife. She means something
to him. We stop the kid on her way home from school,
strip her naked, set her clothes on fire. We tell her dad--next
time we burn little Suzie with her clothes."
Earlier, in his naivete, Mitch had been willing to have Iggy
dragged into this mess to spare Anson.
Now he wondered if he would have been willing for other
innocent people to be beaten, burned, and savaged in order to
save Holly. Perhaps he should be thankful that the choice had
not been offered to him.
"If we tweaked twelve of theirs in twelve hours, those pussies
THE HUSBAND
165


would send your wife home with apologies and a Nordstrom gift
certificate for a new wardrobe."
The two gunmen never took their eyes off Mitch.
"But Anson," Campbell continued, "he wants to make a statement
so nobody ever underestimates him again. Indirectly, the
statement's also for my benefit. And I gotta say ... I'm
impressed."
Mitch could not let them see the true intensity of his terror.
They would assume that extreme fear would make him reckless,
and they would watch him even more diligently than they
watched him now.
He must appear to be fearful but, more than fearful, despairing.
A man in the grip of despair, who has utterly abandoned
hope, is not a man with the will to fight.
"I'm curious," Campbell repeated, coming around at last to
where he had started. "For your brother to be able to do this to
you ... what did you do?"
"Loved him," Mitch said.
Campbell regarded Mitch as a wading heron regards a swimming
fish, and then smiled, "yes, that would do it. What if one
day he found himself reciprocating?"
"He's always wanted to go far, and to get there fast."
"Sentiment is an encumbrance," Campbell said.
In a voice weighed low with despair, Mitch said, "Oh, it's a
chain and an anchor."
From the coffee table where one of the gunmen had put it,
Campbell picked up the pistol that had been taken from Mitch.
"Have you ever fired this?"
Mitch almost said that he had not, but then realized that the
magazine lacked one bullet, the round with which Knox accidentally
shot himself. "Once. I fired it once. To see what it felt
like."
Amused, Campbell said, 'And did it feel scary?"
"Scary enough."
"Your brother says you're not a man for guns."
"He knows me better than I know him."
"So where did you get this?"
"My wife thought we should keep one in the house."
"How right she was."
"It's been in a nightstand drawer since the day we bought it,"
Mitch lied.
Campbell rose to his feet. With his right arm extended full
length, he pointed the pistol at Mitch's face. "Stand up."
27



Meeting the blind stare of the pistol, Mitch rose from the
armchair.
The two nameless gunmen moved to new positions, as though
their intent was to cut down Mitch in triangulated fire.
"Take off your coat and put it on the table," Campbell said.
Mitch did as he was told, and then followed another instruction
to turn out the pockets of his jeans. He put his ring of
keys, his wallet, and a couple of wadded Kleenex on the coffee
table.
He recalled being a boy in darkness and silence. Instead of
concentrating for days on the simple lesson his incarceration
was meant to teach him, he had conducted imaginary conversations
with a spider named Charlotte, a pig named Wilbur, a rat
named Templeton. That had been the closest he had come to
defiance--then or since.
He doubted that these men would shoot him while in the
house. Even when scrubbed away and no longer visible to the
eye, blood left a protein signature that special chemicals and
lights could reveal.
One of the gunmen picked up Mitch's coat, searched the
pockets, and found only the cell phone.
To his watchful host, Mitch said, "How did you go from being
an FBI hero to this?"
Campbell's puzzlement was brief. "Is that the yarn Anson
spun to get you here? Julian Campbell--FBI hero?"
Although the gunmen had seemed as humorless as carrion
eating beetles, the one with smooth skin laughed, and the other
smiled.
"You probably didn't make your money in entertainment,
either," Mitch said.
"Entertainment? That could be true enough," Campbell said,
"if you have an elastic definition of entertainment."
The acne-scarred gunman had produced a folded plastic
garbage bag from a hip pocket. He shook it open.
Campbell said, "And Mitch, if Anson told you these two
gentlemen are candidates for the priesthood, I should warn you
they aren't."
The carrion beetles were further amused.

The gunman with the plastic bag stuffed it with the sports
coat, cell phone, and other items that they had taken off Mitch.
Before throwing away the wallet, he stripped out the cash and
gave it to Campbell.
Mitch remained on his feet, waiting.

The three men were more relaxed with him than they had
first been. They knew him now.
He was Anson's brother but only by blood. He was an evader,
not a hunter. He would obey. They knew he would not effectively
resist. He would retreat within himself. Eventually he would beg.
They knew him, knew his kind, and after the gunman finished
putting items in the garbage bag, he produced a pair of handcuffs.
Before
Mitch could be asked to extend his hands, he offered
them.
The man with the cuffs hesitated, and Campbell shrugged,
and the man with the cuffs snapped them around Mitch's wrists.
"You seem very tired," Campbell said.
"Funny how tired," Mitch agreed.
Putting down the gun they had confiscated, Campbell said,
"It's that way sometimes."
Mitch didn't bother to test the cuffs. They were tight, and
the shackle chain between the wrists was short.
As Campbell counted the forty-odd dollars that had been
taken from Mitch's wallet, his voice had an almost tender
quality: "You might even fall asleep on the way."
"Where are we going?"
"I knew a guy who fell asleep one night, on a drive like the
one you're taking. It was almost a shame to wake him when we
got there."
'Are you coming?" Mitch asked.
"Oh, I haven't in years. I'll stay here with my books. You don't
need me. You'll be all right. Everyone's all right, at the end."
Mitch looked around at the aisles of books. "Have you read
any?"
"The histories. I'm fascinated by history, how almost no one
ever learns from it."
"Have you learned from it?"

"I am history. I'm the thing nobody wants to learn."
Campbell's hands, as dexterous as those of a magician, folded
Mitch's money into his own wallet with an economy of movement
that was nevertheless theatrical.
"These gentlemen will be taking you to the car pavilion. Not
through the house, but across the gardens."
Mitch assumed that the household staff--night maids, the
butler--either were not aware of the hard side of Campbell's
business or collaborated in a pretense of ignorance.
"Good-bye, Mitch. You'll be all right. It's not long now. You
might even doze on the way."
Flanking Mitch, each holding him by one arm, the gunmen
walked him across the library to the French doors. The man with
the pitted face, on his right, pressed the muzzle of a pistol into
his side, not cruelly, only as a reminder.
Just before stepping across the threshold, Mitch glanced back
and saw Campbell reviewing the titles on a shelf of books. He
stood with the hipshot grace of a loitering ballet dancer.
He appeared to be choosing a book to take to bed. Or maybe
not to bed. A spider does not sleep; neither does history.
Terrace to steps, descending to another terrace, the gunmen
expertly conveyed Mitch.
The moon lay drowned in the swimming pool, as pale and
undulant as an apparition.
Along garden pathways where hidden toads sang, across a
broad lawn, through a copse of tall lacy silver sheens shimmering
like the scales of schooling fish, by a roundabout route, they
came to a large but elegant building encircled by a romantically
lighted loggia.
The gunmen's vigilance never wavered during the walk.
Night-blooming jasmine twined the columns of the loggia and
festooned the eaves.
Mitch drew slow deep breaths. The heavy fragrance was so
sweet as to be almost narcoleptic.
A slow-moving black long-horned beetle crossed the floor of
the loggia. The gunmen guided Mitch around the insect.
The pavilion contained exquisitely restored cars from
the 1930s and 1940s --Buicks, Lincolns, Packards, Cadillacs,
Pontiacs, Fords, Chevrolets, Kaizers, Studebakers, even a
Tucker Torpedo. They were displayed like jewels under precisely
focused arrays of pin lights.
Estate vehicles in daily use were not kept here. Evidently, by
taking him to the main garage, they would have risked encountering
members of the household staff.
The gunman with the pitted face fished from his pocket a set
of keys and opened the trunk of a midnight-blue Chrysler
Windsor from the late 1940s. "Get in."
For the same reason they had not shot him in the library, they
would not shoot him here. Besides, they wouldn't want to risk
doing damage to the car.
The trunk was roomier than those of contemporary cars.
Mitch lay on his side, in the fetal position.
"You can't unlock it from the inside," the scarred man said.
"They had no child-safety awareness in those days."
His partner said, "We'll be on back roads where no one will
hear you. So if you make a lot of noise, it won't do you any
good."
Mitch said nothing.
The scarred man said, "It'll just piss us off. Then we'll be
harder on you at the other end than we have to be."
"I don't want that."
"No. You don't want that."
Mitch said, "I wish we didn't have to do this."
"Well," said the one with smooth skin, "that's how it is."
Backlighted by the pin spots, their faces hung over Mitch like
two shadowed moons, one with an expression of bland indifference,
the other tight and cratered with contempt.
They slammed the lid, and the darkness was absolute.
28



Holly lies in darkness, praying that Mitch will live.
She fears less for herself than for him. Her captors at
all times wear ski masks in her presence, and she assumes they
would not bother to conceal their faces if they intended to
kill her.
They aren't just wearing them as a fashion statement. No one
looks good in a ski mask.
If you were hideously disfigured, like the Phantom of the
Opera, maybe you would want to wear a ski mask. But it defied
reason that all four of these men would be hideously disfigured.
Of course, even if they hoped not to harm her, something
could go awry with their plans. In a moment of crisis, she might
be shot accidentally. Or events could change the kidnappers' intentions toward her.
Always an optimist, having believed since childhood that
every life has meaning and that hers will not pass before she
finds its purpose, Holly does not dwell on what might go wrong,
but envisions herself released, unharmed.
She believes envisioning the future helps shape it. Not that
she could become a famous actress merely by envisioning
herself accepting an Academy Award. Hard work, not wishes,
builds careers.
Anyway, she doesn't want to be a famous actress. She would
have to spend a lot of time with famous actors, and most of the
current crop creep her out.
Free again, she will eat marzipan and chocolate peanut-butter
ice cream and potato chips until she either embarrasses herself
or makes herself sick. She hasn't thrown up since childhood, but
even vomiting is an affirmation of life.
Free, she will celebrate by going to Baby Style, that store in
the mall, and buying the huge stuffed bear she saw in their
window when she passed by recently. It was fluffy and white
and so cute.
Even as a teenage girl, she liked teddy bears. Now she needs
one anyway.
Free, she will make love to Mitch. When she is done with him,
he'll feel as if he's been hit by a train.
Well, that isn't a particularly satisfying romantic image.
It's not the kind of thing that sells millions of Nicholas Sparks
novels.
She made love to him with every fiber of her being, body and soul,
and when at last their passion passed, he was splattered all over the
room as if he had thrown himself in front of a locomotive.
Envisioning herself as a best-selling novelist would be a waste
of effort. Fortunately, her goal is to be a real-estate agent.
So she prays that her beautiful husband will live through this
terror. He is physically beautiful, but the most beautiful thing
about him is his gentle heart.
Holly loves him for his gentle heart, for his sweetness, but she
worries that certain aspects of his gentleness, such as his
tendency toward passive acceptance, will get him killed.
He possesses a deep and quiet strength, too, a spine of steel,
which is revealed in subtle ways. Without that, he would have
been broken by his freak-show parents. Without that, Holly
would not have led him on a chase all the way to the altar.
So she prays for him to stay strong, to stay alive.
During her prayers, during her ruminations about kidnappers'
fashions and gluttony and vomiting and big fluffy teddy bears,
she works steadily at the nail in the floorboard. She has always been an excellent multitasker.
The wood floor is rough. She suspects that the planks are
thick enough to have required heavier than usual flooring nails.
The nail that interests her has a large flat head. The size of
the head suggests that this nail may be large enough to qualify
as a spike.
In a crisis, a spike might serve as a weapon.
The flat head of the nail is not snug to the wood. It is raised
maybe a sixteenth of an inch. This gap gives her a little leverage,
a grip with which to work the nail back and forth.

Though the nail isn't loose, one of her virtues is perseverance.
She will keep working at the nail, and she will envision it loose,
and eventually she will extract it from the plank.
She wishes she had acrylic fingernails. They look nice; and
when she's a real-estate agent, she'll certainly need to have them.
Good acrylic fingernails might give her an advantage with the
spike.
On the other hand, they might break and split easier than
her real fingernails. If she had them, they might prove to be a
terrible disadvantage.
Ideally, when she had been kidnapped, she would have had
acrylic nails on her left hand and none on her right. And two
steel teeth set with a gap in the front of her mouth.
An ankle cuff and a length of chain shackle her right leg to a
ringbolt in the floor. This leaves both of her hands free to work
on the not-yet-loose nail.
The kidnappers have made some considerations for her
comfort. They have provided her with an air mattress to lie on,
a six-pack of bottled water, and a bedpan. Earlier they had given
her half of a cheese-and-pepperoni pizza.
This is not to suggest that they are nice people. They are not
nice people.
When they needed her to scream for Mitch, they hit her.
When they needed her to scream for Anson, they pulled her hair
suddenly, sharply, and so hard that she thought her scalp was
coming off.
Although these are not people you would ever meet in church,
they are not cruel sheerly for the fun of it. They are evil, but
they have a business goal, so to speak, on which they remain
focused.
One of them is evil and crazy
He's the one who worries her.
They have not made her privy to their scheme, but Holly
177


vaguely understands that they are imprisoning her in order to
use Mitch to manipulate Anson.
She doesn't know why or how they think Anson can tap a
fortune to ransom her for Mitch, but she is not surprised that
he stands at the center of the whirlwind. She has long felt that
Anson is not only what he pretends to be.
Now and then she has caught him staring at her in a way that
the loving brother of her husband should never stare. When he
realizes he has been caught, the predatory lust in his eyes and
the hungry cast of his face vanish under his usual charm so
instantaneously that it's easy to believe you must have imagined
the glint of savage interest.
Sometimes when he laughs, his mirth sounds manufactured
to her. She seems to be alone in this perception. Everyone else
finds Anson's laugh infectious.
She has never shared her doubts about Anson. Until she met
Mitch, all that he had were his sisters --who had fled to far
points of the compass--his brother, and his passion for working
in fertile earth, for making green things grow. Her hope has
always been to enrich his life, not to subtract anything from it.
She can put her life in Mitch's strong hands and fall at once
into a dreamless sleep. In a sense, that is what marriage is
about--a good marriage--a total trusting with your heart, your
mind, your life.
But with her fate in Anson's hands, as well, she might not sleep
at all, and if she sleeps, there will be nightmares.
She worries, worries, worries the nail until her fingers ache.
Then she uses two different fingers.
As the dark silent minutes pass, she tries not to brood about
how a day that began with such joy could spiral into these desperate circumstances. After Mitch had gone to work and
before the masked men had burst into her kitchen, she had used
the kit that she'd bought the previous day but that she'd been
too nervous to consult until this morning. Her period is nine
days overdue, and according to the pregnancy test, she is going
to have a baby.
For a year, she and Mitch have been hoping for this. Now here
it is, on this of all days.
The kidnappers are unaware that two lives are at their mercy,
and Mitch is unaware that not only his wife but also his child
depend upon his cunning and his courage, but Holly knows. This
knowledge is at once a joy and an anguish.

She envisions a child of three--sometimes a girl, sometimes a
boy--at play in their backyard, and laughing. She envisions it
more vividly than she has envisioned anything before, in the
hope that she can make it come to pass.
She tells herself that she will be strong, that she will not cry.
She does not sob or otherwise disturb the stillness, but sometimes
tears come.
To shut off that hot flow, she works more aggressively at the
nail, the stubborn damn nail, in the blinding dark.

After a long period of silence, she hears a solid thud with a
hollow metallic quality: ca-chunk.
Alert, wary, she waits, but the thud does not repeat. No other
noise follows it.
The sound is tantalizingly familiar. A mundane noise--and
yet her instinct tells her that her fate hangs on that ca-chunk.
She is able to replay the sound in her memory, but she is not
at first able to connect it to a cause.
After a while, Holly begins to suspect that the sound was
imagined rather than real. More accurately, that it occurred in
her head, not beyond the walls of this room. This is a peculiar
notion, but it persists.
Then she recognizes the source, something she has heard
perhaps hundreds of times, and although it has no ominous
associations for her, she is chilled. The ca-chunk is the sound of
a lid slamming shut on a car trunk.
Just the lid slamming shut on a car trunk, whether imagined
or actually heard, should not cause crystals of creeping frost to
form in the hollows of her bones. She sits very erect, the nail
forgotten for the moment, breathing not at all, then shallowly,
quietly.
Part Two

Would You Die for Love?
Would You Kill?
29



In the late 1940s, if you owned a car like a Chrysler Windsor,
you knew the engine was big because it made a big sound. It
had the throb of a bull's heart, low fierce snort and heavy stamp
of hooves.
The war was over, you were a survivor, large swaths of Europe
lay in ruin, but the homeland was untouched, and you wanted to
feel alive. "You didn't want a sound-proofed engine compartment.
You didn't want noise-control technology. You wanted power,
balanced weight, and speed.
The car's dark trunk reverberated with engine knock and
rumble transferred along the drive shaft, through the body and
the frame. The thrum and stutter of road noise rose and fell in
direct relation to the tempo of the turning wheels.
Mitch smelled faint traces of exhaust gases, perhaps from a
leak in the muffler, but he was in no danger of being overcome
by carbon monoxide. Stronger were the rubbery scent of the
mat on which he lay and the acidity of his own fear sweat.
Although as dark as the chamber in his parents' house, this
mobile learning room otherwise failed to impose sensory deprivation.
Yet one of the greatest lessons of his life was being driven
home to him mile by mile.
His father says there is no tao, no natural law we are born to
understand. In his materialist view, we should conduct ourselves
not according to any code, only according to self-interest.
Rationality is always in a man's self-interest, Daniel says.
Therefore, any act that is rational is right and good and
admirable.
Evil does not exist in Daniel's philosophy. Stealing, rape,
murder of the innocent-these and other crimes are merely irrationalbecause they put he who commits them in jeopardy of
his freedom.
Daniel does acknowledge that the degree of irrationality
depends on the criminal's chances of escaping punishment.
Therefore, those irrational acts that succeed and have only positive
consequences for the perpetrator may be right and
admirable, if not good for society.
Thieves, rapists, murderers, and their ilk might benefit from therapy and rehabilitation, or they might not. In either
case, Daniel says, they are not evil; they are recovering-or
irredeemable--irrationalists, only that and nothing more.
Mitch had thought that these teachings had not penetrated
him, that he'd not been singed by the fire of a Daniel Rafferty
education. But fire produced fumes; he'd been smoked in his
father's fanaticism so long that some of what steeped into him

had stayed.
He could see, but he had been blind. He could hear, but he

had been deaf.
This day, this night, Mitch had come face-to-face with evil. It
was as real as stone.
Although an irrational man should be met with compassion
and therapy, an evil man was owed nothing more or less than
resistance and retribution, the fury of a righteous justice.
In Julian Campbell's library, when the gunman had produced
the handcuffs, Mitch had at once held out his hands. He had
not waited for instructions.
If he had not appeared worn down, had not seemed meek and
resigned to his fate, they might have cuffed his hands behind him.
Reaching the revolver in his ankle holster would have been more
difficult; using it with accuracy would have been impossible.
Campbell had even commented on Mitch's weariness, by
which he had meant primarily the weariness of mind and heart.
They thought they knew the kind of man he was, and maybe
they did. But they didn't know the kind of man he could become
when the life of his wife was in the balance.
Amused by his lack of familiarity with the pistol that they had
confiscated, they had not imagined he would have a second
weapon. Not only good men are disadvantaged by their expectations.
Mitch
pulled up the leg of his jeans and retrieved the revolver.
He unstrapped the holster and discarded it.
Earlier, he had examined the weapon and had not found a
safety. In movies, only some pistols had safeties, never revolvers.
If he lived through the next two days and got Holly back alive,
he would never again allow himself to be put in a position where
he had to rely on Tinseltown's grasp of reality for his or his
family's survival.
When he had first swung open the cylinder, he had discovered
five rounds in five chambers, where he expected six.
He would have to score two hits out of five rounds. Direct
hits, not just wing shots.
Perhaps one of the gunmen would open the trunk. It would
be better if the two were there, giving him the advantage of
surprise with both.
Both would have their weapons drawn--or only one. If one,
Mitch must be quick enough to target his armed adversary
first.
A peaceable man, planning violence, was plagued by thoughts that were not helpful: As a teenager, cursed by the explosions of acne
that had left his face a moonscape, the scarred gunman must have
suffered much humiliation.
Sympathy for the devil was a kind of masochism at best, a
death wish at worst.
For a while, rocking to the rhythms of road and rubber, and
of internal combustion, Mitch tried to imagine all the ways that
the violence might go down when the trunk lid went up. Then
he tried not to imagine.
According to his radiant watch, they traveled more than half
an hour and then, slowing, changed from blacktop to an unpaved
road. Small stones rattled through the undercarriage, rapped
hard against the floor pan.
He smelled dust and licked the alkaline taste of it from his
lips, but the air never became foul enough to choke him.
After twelve minutes at an easy speed, on the dirt road, the
car came slowly to a stop. The engine idled for half a minute,
and then the driver switched it off.
(After forty-five minutes of drone and drum, the silence was
like a sudden deafness.
One door opened, then the other.
They were coming.
Facing the back of the car, Mitch splayed his legs, bracing his
feet in opposite corners of the space. He could not sit erect until
the lid raised, but he waited with his back partly off the floor of
the trunk, as if in the middle of doing a series of stomach
crunches at the gym.
The cuffs all but required that he hold the revolver in a two
hand grip, which was probably better anyway.
He didn't hear footsteps, just the gallop of his heart, but then
he heard the key in the trunk lock.
Through his mind's eye blinked an image of Jason Osteen
being shot in the head, blinked and blinked, repeating like a film
loop, Jason slammed by the bullet, skull exploding, slammed by
the bullet, skull exploding....
As the lid lifted, Mitch realized that the trunk did not have a
convenience light, and he began to sit up, thrusting the revolver
forward.
The full-pitcher moon spilled its milk, backlighting the two
gunmen.
Mitch's eyes were adapted to absolute blackness, and theirs
were not. He sat in darkness, and they stood in moonlight. They
thought he was a meek and broken and helpless man, and he
was not.
He didn't consciously squeeze off the first shot, but felt the
hard recoil and saw the muzzle flash and heard the crash, and
then he was aware of squeezing the trigger the second time.
Two point-blank rounds knocked one silhouette down out of
the moon-soaked night.
The second silhouette backed away from the car, and Mitch
sat all the way up, squeezing off one, two, three more rounds.
The hammer clicked, and there was just the quiet of the
moon, and the hammer clicked, and he reminded himself Only
five, only five!
He had to get out of the trunk. With no ammunition, he was
a fish in a barrel. Out. Out of the trunk.
30



Rising too fast, Mitch knocked his head against the lid,
.. almost fell back, but maintained forward momentum.
He scrambled out of the trunk.
His left foot came down on solid ground, but he planted his
right on the twice-shot man. He staggered, stepped on the body
again, and it shifted under him, and he fell.
He rolled away from the gunman, to the verge of the road. He
was stopped by a wild hedge of mesquite, which he identified by
its oily smell.
He had lost the revolver. It didn't matter. No ammunition.
Around him lay a parched moon-silvered landscape: the
narrow dirt road, desert scrub, barren soil, boulders.
Sleek, its ample chrome features lustrous with lunar polish,
the Chrysler Windsor seemed strangely futuristic in this primitive
land, like a ship meant to sail the stars. The driver had
switched off the headlights when he killed the engine.
The gunman on whom Mitch had twice stepped, when
exiting the trunk, had not cried out. He had not reared up or
clutched at Mitch. He was probably dead.
Maybe the second man had been killed, too. Coming out of
the trunk, Mitch had lost track of him.
If one of the last three rounds had found its target, the second
man should have been a buffet for vultures on the dirt road
behind the car.
The sandy soil of the roadbed was rich in silica. Glass is made
from silica, mirrors from glass. The single-lane track offered
much higher reflectivity than any surface in the night.
Lying facedown and flat, head cautiously raised, Mitch could
see a significant distance along the pale ribbon as it dwindled
through the gnarled and bristling scrub, in the direction from
which they had come. No second body lay on the road.
If the guy hadn't been at least winged, surely he would have
charged, firing, as Mitch clambered out of the Chrysler.
Hit, he might have hobbled or crawled into the scrub or
behind a formation of stone. He could be anywhere out there,
assessing his wound, reviewing his options.
The gunman would be angry but not scared. He lived for
action like this. He was a sociopath. He wouldn't scare easily.
Definitely, unequivocally, Mitch was afraid of the man hiding
in the night. He also feared the one who was lying on the road
at the back of the Chrysler.
The guy near the car might be dead, but even if he was crow
bait, Mitch was afraid of him anyway. He didn't want to go
near him.
He had to do what he didn't want to do, because whether the
sonofabitch was a carcass or unconscious, he possessed a
weapon. Mitch needed a weapon. And quick.
He had discovered that he was capable of violence, at least in
self-defense, but he hadn't been prepared for the rapidity with
which events unfolded following the first shot, for the speed
with which decisions must be made, for the suddenness with
which new challenges could arise.
On the farther side of the road, several blinds of scraggly vegetation
offered concealment, as did low batters of weathered rock.
If the light breeze that had been active toward the coast had
made its way this far inland, the desert had swallowed it to the
last draught. Any movement of the brush would reveal not the
hand of Nature but instead his enemy.
As far as he could tell in this murk, all was still.
Acutely aware that his own movement made a mark of him,
hampered by the handcuffs, Mitch wriggled on his belly to the
man behind the car.
In the gunman's open and unblinking eyes, the mortician
moon had laid coins.
Beside the body rested a familiar shape of steel made sterling
in this light. Mitch seized it gratefully, almost squirmed away,
but realized that he had found the useless revolver.
Wincing at the faint jingle produced by the short chain
between his handcuffs, he patted down the corpse--and pressed
his fingers in a wetness. Sickened, shuddering, he wiped his hand
on the dead man's clothes.
As he was about to conclude that this guy had gotten out of
the Chrysler without a weapon, he discovered the checked grip
of the pistol protruding from under the corpse. He pulled the
gun free.
A shot cracked. The dead man twitched, having taken the
round meant for Mitch.
He flung himself toward the Chrysler and heard a second shot
and heard the whispery whine of passing death and heard a
bullet ricochet off the car. He also heard a closer whisper,
although he might have imagined two near misses with one
round and might in fact have heard nothing after the insectile
shriek of the ricochet.
With the car between himself and the shooter, he felt safer,
but then almost at once not safe at all.
The gunman could come around the Chrysler at either the
front end or the back. He had the advantage of choosing his
approach and initiating the action.
Meanwhile, Mitch would be forced to keep an alert watch in
both directions. An impossible task.
Already the other might be on the move.
Mitch thrust up from the ground and away from the car. He
ran in a crouch, off the road, through the natural hedge of
mesquite, which crackled revealingly and at the same time
shushed as if warning him to be quiet.
The land sloped down from the road, which was good. If it
had sloped up, he would have been visible, his broad back an
easy target, the moment the gunman rounded the Chrysler.
He had lucked into firm but sandy soil, instead of shale or
loose stones, so he didn't make a clatter as he ran. The moon
mapped his route, and he weaved among clumps of brush instead
of thrashing through them, mindful that keeping his balance was more difficult with his hands cuffed in front of him.
At the bottom of the thirty-foot slope, he turned right. Based
on the position of the moon, he believed that he was heading
almost due west.
Something like a cricket sang. Something stranger clicked and
shrilled.
A colony of pampas-grass clumps drew his attention with
scores of tall feathery panicles. They glowed white in the
moonlight, and reminded him of the plumed tails of proud
horses.
From the round clumps sprayed very narrow, sharp-edged,
pointed, recurved blades of grass three to five feet in length.
They were waist-high on Mitch. When dry, these blades could
scratch, prickle like needles, even cut.
Each clump respected the territorial integrity of the other.
He was able to pass among them.
In the heart of the colony, he felt safely screened by the white
feathery panicles that rose higher than his head. He remained
on his feet and, through gaps between the plumes, he peered
back the way that he had come.
The ghostly light did not reveal a pursuer.
Mitch shifted his position, gently pushed aside a panicle, and
another, surveying the edge of the roadway at the top of the
slope. He didn't see anyone up there.
He did not intend to hide in the pampas for long. He had fled
his vulnerable position at the car only to gain a couple of
minutes to think.
He wasn't concerned that the remaining gunman would drive
away in the Chrysler. Julian Campbell wasn't the kind of boss to
whom you could report failure with the confidence that you
would keep either your job or your head.
Besides, to the guy out there on the hunt, this was sport, and
Mitch was the most dangerous game of all. The hunter was
motivated by vengeance, by pride, and by the taste for violence
that had led him into this kind of work in the first place.
Had he been able to hide until dawn or slip away, Mitch would
not have done so. He wasn't boiling over with macho enthusiasm for a confrontation with this second professional killer, but he
understood too well the consequences of avoiding it altogether.
If the remaining gunman lived and reported back to
Campbell, Anson would know sooner rather than later that his fratellopiccolo, his little brother, was alive and free. Mitch would
lose his ease of movement and the advantage of surprise.
Most likely, Campbell didn't expect a report from his pair of
executioners until morning. Perhaps he would not even seek
them out until the following afternoon.
Indeed, Campbell might miss the Chrysler Windsor before
he missed the men. That depended on which of his machines he
most valued.
Mitch needed to be able to catch Anson by surprise, and
he needed to be in his brother's house at noon to take the call
from the kidnappers. Holly was on a higher and narrower ledge
than ever.
He could not hide, and his enemy would not. For predator
and prey--whoever might be which--this had to be a fight to
the death.
31



Surrounded by noble white plumes that suggested an
encircling protectorate of helmeted knights, Mitch in the
pampas grass recalled the hard crack of the two shots that had
almost drilled him as he had been taking the pistol from the
dead gunman.
If his adversary's weapon had been equipped with a sound
suppressor, as it had been in the library, the reports would not
have been so loud. He might not have heard them.
In this desolate place, the gunman had not been concerned
about attracting unwanted attention, but he had not removed
the silencer just for the satisfaction of a louder bang. He must
have had another reason.
Sound suppressors were most likely illegal. They facilitated
quiet murder. They were meant for use in close quarters--as in
a mansion where the household staff was not reliably corrupt.
Logic led Mitch quickly to conclude that a sound suppressor
was useful only in discreet situations because it diminished the accuracy of the weapon.
When you were standing over your captive in a library or
when you forced him to kneel before you on a lonely desert
road, a pistol with a sound suppressor might serve you well. But
at a distance of twenty feet, or thirty, perhaps it reduced the
accuracy to such a degree that you were more certain to hit your
target by throwing the pistol than by shooting it.
Small stones rattled like tumbling dice.
The sound seemed to have arisen west of him. He turned in
that direction. With caution, he parted the pampas panicles.
Fifty feet away, the gunman crouched like a hunchback troll.
He was waiting for any repercussions of the noise that he had
made.
Even when still, the man could not be mistaken for a thrust
of rock or for desert flora, because he'd drawn attention to himself
in the process of crossing a long barren swath of alkaline
soil. That patch of ground appeared not merely reflective but
luminous.
If Mitch had not paused here, if he had continued west, he
would have encountered the killer in the open, perhaps coming
face-to-face as in a Western-movie showdown.
He considered lying in wait, letting his stalker draw closer
before firing.
Then instinct suggested that the colony of pampas grass and
similar features of the landscape were exactly the places that
would most interest the gunman. He expected Mitch to hide;
and he would regard the pampas with suspicion.
Mitch hesitated, for the advantage still seemed to be his. He
could fire from cover, while the troll stood in the open. He had
not yet squeezed off a shot with this pistol, while his adversary
had expended two.

A spare magazine. Given that mayhem was the gunman's business,
he probably carried a spare magazine, maybe two.

He would approach the pampas colony cautiously. He would
not make an easy target of himself

When Mitch fired and missed because of distance, angle, distorting
light, and lack of experience, the gunman would return
fire. Vigorously.

The pampas offered visual cover, not protection. A barrage of
eight rounds followed at least by another volley of ten would
not be survivable.

Still crouching, the trollish figure took two tentative steps
forward. He paused again.

Inspiration came to Mitch, a bold idea that for a moment he
considered discarding as reckless but then embraced as his best
chance.

He let the panicles ease into their natural positions. He
slipped out of the colony opposite from the point at which the
gunman approached it, hoping to keep it between them as long
as possible.

To a choir of crickets and the more sinister clicking-shrilling
of the unknown insect musician, Mitch hurried eastward, along
the route that he had taken earlier. He passed the point at which
he had descended the embankment; that unscreened ascent
would leave him too exposed if he failed to reach the top before
the gunman rounded the pampas colony.

About sixty feet farther, he arrived at a wide shallow swale in
the otherwise uniform face of the slope. Chaparral thrived in
this depression and spilled up over the edges of it.
In need of his cuffed hands to climb, Mitch jammed the
pistol under his belt. Previously, moonlight had shown him the
way, but now moonshadows obscured and deceived. Always
conscious that quiet was as important as swift progress, he
insinuated himself upward through the chaparral.
He stirred up a musky scent that might have had a plant
source but that suggested he was trespassing in one kind of
animal habitat or another. Brush snared, poked, scratched.
He thought of snakes, and then he refused to think of them.
When he reached the top without drawing gunfire, he eeled
out of the swale, onto the shoulder of the road. He crawled to
the center of the dirt lane before standing.
If he attempted to circle behind where he thought the
gunman might be headed, he would find that meanwhile
the gunman would have done some anticipating of his own,
would have changed course in hope of surprising his quarry even
as his quarry schemed to surprise him. Stalking and counter
stalking, they could spend a lot of precious time wandering the
wilderness, now and then finding each other's spoor, until one
of them made a mistake.
If that was the game, the fatal mistake would be Mitch's, for
he was the less experienced player. As had been true thus far, his
hope lay in not fulfilling his enemy's expectations.
Because Mitch had surprised them with the revolver, the
gunman would expect him to have as savage an instinct for
self-preservation as any cornered animal. He had proved, after
all, not to be paralyzed by fear, self-pity, and self-loathing.
But the gunman might not expect a cornered animal, once
having broken free, to return voluntarily to the corner that it
had recently escaped.
The vintage Chrysler stood sixty feet west of him, the trunk
lid still half raised.
Mitch hurried to the car and paused beside the corpse. Eyes
filled with the starry wonder of the heavens, the acne-scarred
gunman lay supine.
Those eyes were two collapsed stars, black holes, exerting
such gravity that Mitch assumed they would pull him to destruction
if he stared at them too long.
In fact, he felt no guilt. In spite of his father, he realized that
he believed in meaning and in natural law, but killing in self
defense was no sin by any tao.
Neither was it an occasion for celebration. He felt that he had
been robbed of something precious. Call it innocence, but that
was only part of what he had lost; with innocence had gone a
capacity for a certain kind of tenderness, a heretofore lifelong
expectation of an impending, sweet, ineffable joy.
Looking back, Mitch studied the ground for footprints he
might have left. In sunshine, the hard-packed dirt might betray
him; but he saw no tracks now.
Under the moon's mesmerizing stare, the desert seemed to
be asleep and dreaming, rendered in the silver-and-black palette
of most dreams, every shadow as hard as iron, every object as
insubstantial as smoke.
When he looked into the trunk, where the moon declined to
peer, the darkness suggested the open mouth of some creature
without mercy. He could not see the floor of the space, as though
it were a magical compartment offering storage for an infinite
amount of baggage.
He withdrew the pistol from under his belt.
He lifted the lid higher, climbed into the trunk, and pulled
the lid partway shut again.
After a little experimentation, he figured out that the sound
suppressor was threaded to the barrel of the pistol. He
unscrewed it and set it aside.
Sooner rather than later, when he failed to find Mitch hiding
in pampas grass or in chaparral, or in a niche of weather-sculpted
rock, the gunman would come back to watch the Chrysler. He
would expect his prey to return to the car in the hope that the
keys might be in the ignition.
This professional killer would not be capable of understanding
that a good husband could never drive away from his vows,
from his wife, from his best hope of love in a world that offered
little of it.
If the gunman established a surveillance point behind the car,
he might cross the road in the moonlight. He would be cautious
and quick, but a clear target nonetheless.
The possibility existed that he would watch the front of the
vehicle. But if time passed and nothing happened, he might
undertake another general exploration of the area and, on
returning, cross Mitch's sights.
Only seven or eight minutes had passed since the pair had
opened the trunk to receive a greeting of gunfire. The surviving
man would be patient. But eventually, if his surveillance and his
searches were not fruitful, he would consider packing up and
getting out of here, regardless of how much he might fear his
boss.
At that time, if not before, he would come to the back of the
car to deal with the corpse. He would want to load it into the
trunk.
Now Mitch half sat, half lay, swaddled in darkness, his head
raised just enough to see across the sill of the trunk.
He had killed a man.
He intended to kill another.
The pistol felt heavy in his hand. He smoothed his trembling
fingers along its contours, seeking a clickable safety, but he found
none.
As he stared at the lonely moon-glazed road crowded by
the spectral desert, he understood that what he had lost
innocence, and that fundamentally childlike expectation of
impending, ineffable joy--was gradually being replaced by
something else, and not by something bad. The hole in him was
filling, with what he could not yet say.
From the car trunk he had a limited view of the world, but in
that wedge he perceived far more this night than he would have
been capable of perceiving previously.
The silvery road receded from him but also approached, offering
him a choice of opposite horizons.
Some stone formations contained chips of mica that sparkled
in the moonlight, and where the rock rose in silhouette against
the sky, the stars appeared to have salted themselves upon the
earth.

Out of the north, southbound, on its feathered sails, a great
horned owl, as pale as it was immense, swooped low and silent
across the road, then rowed itself higher into the night, much
higher and away.
Mitch sensed that what he seemed to be gaining for what he
had lost, what so quickly healed the hole in him, was a capacity
for awe, a deeper sense of the mystery of all things.
Then he pulled back from the brink of awe, to terror and to
grim determination, when the gunman returned with an intention
that had not been foreseen.
32



So stealthily had the killer returned that Mitch was unaware
of his presence until he heard one of the car doors click
open and swing wide with the faintest creak.
The man had approached from the front of the Chrysler.
Risking exposure in the brief glow of the car's interior lights, he
got in and pulled the door shut as softly as it could be closed.
If he had gotten behind the wheel, he must intend to leave
the scene.
No. He wouldn't drive away with the trunk lid open. And
surely he wouldn't leave the corpse.
Mitch waited in silence.
The gunman was silent, too.
Slowly the silence became a kind of pressure that Mitch could
feel on his skin, on his eardrums, on his unblinking eyes, as if
the car were descending into a watery abyss, an ever-increasing
weight of ocean bearing down on it.
The gunman must be sitting in the dark, surveying the night,
waiting to learn whether the throb of light had drawn attention,
whether he had been seen. If his return inspired no response,
what would he do next?
The desert remained breathless.

In these circumstances, the car would seem as sensitive to
motion as a boat on water. If Mitch moved, the killer would be
alerted to his presence.
A minute passed. Another.
Mitch pictured the smooth-faced gunman sitting up there in
the car, in the gloom, at least thirty years old, maybe thirty-five,
yet with such a remarkably soft smooth face, as if life had not
touched him and never would.
He tried to imagine what the man with the smooth face was
doing, planning. The mind behind that mask remained inaccessible
to Mitch's imagination. He might have more profitably
pondered what a desert lizard believed about God or rain or
jimsonweed.
After a long stillness, the gunman shifted positions, and the
movement proved to be a revelation. The unnerving intimacy of
the sound indicated that the man wasn't behind the wheel of
the Chrysler. He was in the backseat.
He must have been sitting forward, watchful, ever since
getting into the car. When at last he leaned back, the upholstery
made a sound like leather or vinyl does when stressed, and the
seat springs quietly complained.
The backseat of the car formed the back wall of the trunk.
He and Mitch were within a couple feet of each other.

They were almost as close to each other as they had been on
the walk from the library to the car pavilion.
Lying in the trunk, Mitch thought about that walk.
THE HUSBAND 205

The gunman made a low sound, either a stifled cough or a
groan further muffled by the intervening wall of upholstery.
Perhaps he had been wounded, after all. His condition wasn't
sufficiently serious to persuade him to pack up and leave,
although it might be painful enough to discourage a lot of
roaming.
Clearly, he settled in the car because he hoped that eventually,
in desperation, his quarry would return to it. He figured Mitch
would be circumspect in his approach, thoroughly scoping out
the immediate surrounding territory, but would not expect death
to be waiting for him in the shadows of the backseat.
In this makeshift learning room, Mitch thought about that
walk between the library and the car pavilion: the moon like a
lily pad floating in the pool, the muzzle of the pistol pressed into
his side, the songs of the toads, the lacy branches of the silver sheens, the pistol pressed into his side....
A car of this vintage would not feature a fire wall or a crash
panel between the trunk and the passenger compartment. The
back of the rear seat might have been finished with a quarter
inch fiberboard panel or even just with cloth.
The backrest might contain six inches of padding. A bullet
would meet some resistance.
The barrier wasn't bulletproof. No one armored with a mere
sofa cushion would expect to walk unscathed through a barrage often high-velocity rounds.
Currently Mitch half lay and half sat on his left side, facing
the night through the open trunk lid.
He would need to roll onto his right side in order to bring the
pistol to bear on the back wall of the trunk.
He weighed a hundred and seventy pounds. No degree in
physics was required to figure out that the car would respond to
that much weight shifting position.
Turn fast, open fire--and maybe he would discover that he
was wrong about the partition between trunk and passenger
compartment. If there was indeed a metal panel, he might not
only be nailed by a ricochet but also fail to hit his target.
Then he would be wounded and out of ammunition, and the
gunman would know where to find him.
A bead of sweat slipped along the side of his nose to the
corner of his mouth.
The night was mild, not hot.
An urge to act pulled his nerves as taut as bowstrings.
33


As Mitch lay in indecision, he heard in memory Holly's
. scream, and the sharp slap of her being hit.

A real sound refocused his attention on the present: his
enemy, in the passenger compartment, stifling a series of coughs.

The noise had been so effectively muffled that it wouldn't
have been heard beyond the car. As before, the coughing lasted
only a few seconds.

Maybe the gunman's cough related to a wound. Or he was
allergic to desert pollen.

When the guy coughed again, Mitch would seize the opportunity
to change positions.

Beyond the open trunk, the desert seemed to darkle, brighten,
darkle rhythmically, but in fact the acuity of his vision sharpened
briefly with each systolic thrust of his pounding heart.

A sudden illusion of snow, however, had a basis in reality.
Moonlight frosted the phosphorescent wings of swarming
moths that whirled like flakes of winter across the road.
Mitch's cuffed hands gripped the pistol so fiercely that his
knuckles began to ache. His right forefinger hooked the trigger
guard, rather than the trigger itself, because he feared that a
nervous twitch would cause him to fire before he intended.

His teeth were clenched. He heard himself inhale, exhale. He
opened his mouth to breathe more quietly.
Even though his heart raced, time ceased to be a river
running and became a creeping flow of mud.
Instinct had served Mitch well in recent hours. Likewise, a
sixth sense might at any moment alert the gunman that he was
not alone.
A sludge of seconds filled an empty minute, filled another,
and another-- and then the man's third bout of stifled coughing
gave Mitch cover to roll from his left side to his right. The
maneuver complete, he lay with his back to the open end of the
trunk, very still.
The gunman's silence seemed to have a quality of heightened
vigilance, of suspicion. The world now came to Mitch's five
senses through a distorting lens of extreme anxiety.
What angle of fire? What pattern?
Think.
The man with the smooth face would not be sitting upright.
He would slump to take full advantage of the darkness in the
backseat.
In other circumstances, the assassin might have preferred
a corner, where he could further ensure his invisibility. But
because the raised lid of the trunk obstructed an easy view of
him through the rear window of the car, he could safely sit in
the center, the better to cover both front doors.
Keeping the cuff chain taut, Mitch quietly put down the
pistol. He dared not risk knocking the weapon against something
during the exploration he needed to perform.
Blindly reaching forward with both hands, he found the back
wall of the trunk. Although firm under his fingertips, the surface
had a cloth covering.
The Chrysler might not have been restored with a hundred
percent fidelity. Campbell might have chosen some custom
upgrades, including more refined materials in the trunk.
A pair of synchronized spiders, his hands crept left to right
across the surface, testing. He pressed gently, and then a little
harder.
Beneath his questing fingertips, the surface flexed slightly.
Quarter-inch fiberboard, covered in cloth, might flex that way.
It did not have the feel of metal.
The panel accepted his pressure in silence, but when he relaxed
his hands, it returned to form with a subtle buckling noise.
From the passenger compartment came the protest of
stressed upholstery, a short twist of sound and nothing more.
The gunman had most likely adjusted his position for comfort-- though he might have turned to listen more intently.

Mitch felt the floor, seeking the pistol, and rested his hands
on it.
Lying on his side, knees drawn up, with no room to extend
his arms, he was not in a good shooting position.
If he tried to move toward the open end of the trunk before
firing, he would give himself away. A mere second or two of warning
might be enough for the experienced gunman to roll off the
backseat, onto the floor.
Mitch went through it in his mind one more time, to be sure
that he had not overlooked anything. The smallest miscalculation
could be the death of him.
He raised the pistol. He would shoot left to right, then right
to left, a double spray, five rounds in each arc.
When he squeezed the trigger, nothing happened. Just a faint
but crisp metallic snick.
His heart was both hammer and anvil, and he had to hear through that roar, but he was pretty sure the gunman had not
moved again, had not detected the small sound of the stubborn
pistol.
Earlier he had explored the weapon and hadn't found a safety
click.
He eased off the trigger, hesitated, squeezed again.
Snick.
Before panic could seize him, serendipity fluttered against his
cheek and into his open mouth: a moth, not as cold as they had
looked when whirling like snowflakes.
Reflexively, he sputtered, spat out the insect, gagging, and
pulled the trigger again. A stop was incorporated into the
trigger--maybe that was the safety--through which you had to
pull to fire, a double action, and because he pulled harder than
before, the pistol boomed.
The recoil, exacerbated by his position, rocked him, and
the crash couldn't have been louder if it had been the door to
Hell slamming behind him, and he was surprised by a blow
back of debris, bits of singed cloth and flecks of fiberboard
spraying his face, but he squinched his eyes shut and kept fir
211


ing, left to right, the gun trying to pull up, pull wild, then right to left, controlling the weapon, not just shooting it, and though
he had thought he would be able to count the rounds as he
fired them, he lost track after two, and then the magazine was
depleted.
34



If the gunman wasn't dead, even if wounded, he could return
fire through the backrest. The car trunk was still a potential
deathtrap.
Abandoning the useless pistol, Mitch scrambled out, knocking
a knee against the sill, an elbow against the bumper, dropped
to his hands and knees in the road, then thrust to his feet. He
ran in a crouch for ten yards, fifteen, before stopping and looking
back.
The gunman hadn't gotten out of the Chrysler. The four doors
were closed.
Mitch waited, sweat dripping off the tip of his nose, off
his chin.
Gone were the snowflake moths, the great horned owl, the
songs of crickets, the click-shrill of the sinister something.
Under the mute moon, in the petrified desert, the Chrysler
looked anachronistic, like a time machine in the early Mesozoic,
sleek and gleaming two hundred million years before it was built.
When the air, as dry as salt, began to sear his throat, he
stopped breathing through his mouth, and when the sweat began
to dry on his face, he asked himself how long he should wait
before assuming that the man was dead. He looked at his watch.
He looked at the moon. He waited.
He needed the car.
He had timed the trip on the dirt track at twelve minutes.
They had been making perhaps twenty-five miles per hour on
that last leg of the journey. The math put him five miles from a
paved road.
Even when he got that far back toward civilization, he might
find himself in lonely territory without much traffic. Besides, in
his current condition, dirty and rumpled and no doubt wild
eyed, no one would give him a ride, except maybe an itinerant
psychopath cruising for a victim.
Finally he approached the Chrysler.
He circled the vehicle, staying as far from the sides of it as
the width of the road would allow, alert for a smooth ghostly
face peering from the shadows within. After arriving without
incident at the trunk from which he had twice escaped, he
paused and listened.
Holly was in a bad place, and if the kidnappers tried to reach
Mitch, they wouldn't have any luck because his cell phone was
in that white plastic bag back at Campbell's estate. The noon
call to Anson's house would be his only chance to reconnect with
them before they decided to chop their hostage and move on to
another game.
Without further hesitation, he went to the back door on the
driver's side and opened it.
Lying on the seat, eyes open, bloody but still alive, was the
smooth-faced man, with his pistol aimed at the door. The
muzzle looked like an eyeless socket, and the gunman looked
triumphant when he said, "Die."
He tried to pull the trigger, but the pistol wobbled in his hand,
and then he lost his grip on it. The weapon dropped to the floor
of the car, and the gunman's hand dropped into his lap, and now
that his one-word threat had turned out to be a prediction of
his own fate, he lay there as if making an obscene proposition.

Leaving the door open, Mitch walked to the side of the road
and sat on a boulder until he could be certain that, after all, he was not going to vomit.
35



Sitting on the boulder, Mitch had much to consider.
When this was finished, if it was ever finished, maybe the
best thing would be to go to the police, tell his story of desperate
self-defense, and present them with the two dead gunmen in the
trunk of the Chrysler.
Julian Campbell would deny that he had employed them or at
least that he had directed them to kill Mitch. Men like these
two were most likely paid in cash; from Campbell's point of view,
the fewer records the better, and the gunmen hadn't been the
type to care that, if paid in cash with no tax deductions, they
would eventually be denied their Social Security.
The possibility existed that no authorities were aware of the
dark side to Campbell's empire. To all appearances, he might be
one of California's most upstanding citizens.
Mitch, on the other hand, was a humble gardener already set
up to take the fall for his wife's murder in the event that he failed
to ransom her. And in Corona del Mar, on the street in front of
Anson's house, the trunk of his Honda contained the body of
John Knox.
Although he believed in the rule of law, Mitch didn't for a
minute believe that crime-scene investigation was as meticulous--or
CSI technicians as infallible--as portrayed on TV. The
more evidence that suggested his guilt, even if it was planted,
the more they would find to support their suspicion, and the
easier they would find it to ignore the details that might exonerate
him.
Anyway, the most important thing right now was to remain
free and mobile until he ransomed Holly. He would ransom her.
Or die trying.
After he'd met Holly and fallen almost at once in love, he had
realized that he'd previously been only half alive, buried alive in
his childhood. She had opened the emotional casket in which
his parents had left him, and he had risen, flourished.
His transformation had amazed him. He had thought himself
fully alive, at last, when they married.
This night, however, he realized that part of him had
remained asleep. He had awakened to a clarity of vision no
less exhilarating than it was terrifying.
He had encountered evil of a purity that a day previously he
had not thought existed, that he had been educated to deny
existed. With the recognition of evil, however, came a growing
awareness of more dimensions in every scene, in nearly every
object, than he had seen before, greater beauty, strange promise,
and mystery.
He did not know precisely what he meant by that. He only
217


knew that it was the case, that he'd opened his eyes to a higher
reality. Behind the layered and gorgeous mysteries of this new
world around him, he sensed a truth that veil by veil would reveal
itself.
In this state of enlightenment, funny that he should find
the most urgent task before him to be the disposal of a pair of
dead men.
A laugh rose in him, but he swallowed it. Sitting in the desert,
near midnight, with no company but corpses, laughing at the
moon did not seem to be the first step on the right path out
of here.
From high in the east, a meteor slid westward like the
pull-tab of a zipper, opening the black sky to reveal a glimpse of
whiteness beyond, but the teeth of the zipper closed as quickly
as they opened, keeping the sky clothed, and the meteor became
a cinder, a vapor.
Taking the falling star as an omen to get on with his grisly
work, Mitch knelt beside the scarred gunman and searched his
pockets. He quickly found the two things he wanted: the handcuff
key and the keys to the Chrysler Windsor.
Having freed himself of the cuffs, he threw them in the open
trunk of the car. He rubbed his chafed wrists.
He dragged the body of the gunman to the south shoulder of
the road, through the screening brush, and left it there.
Getting the second one out of the backseat involved unpleasant
wrestling, but in two minutes the dead pair were lying side
by side, faceup to the wonder of the stars.
At the car once more, Mitch found a flashlight on the front
seat. He'd figured there would be one because they must have
intended to bury him nearby and would have needed a light to
guide them.
The car's weak ceiling lamp had not shown him as much of
the backseat as he needed to see. He examined it with the flashlight.
Because
the gunman had not died instantly, he'd had time to
bleed, and he'd done a thorough job of it.
Mitch counted eight holes in the backrest, rounds that
punched through from the trunk. The other two had evidently
been deflected or fully stopped by the structure of the seat.
In the back of the front seat were five holes; but only one
bullet had drilled all the way through. A pockmark in the glove
box door indicated the end point of its trajectory.
He found the spent slug on the floor in front of the passenger's
seat. He threw it away into the night.
Once he got off the dirt track and onto paved roads, though
he would be in a hurry, he would have to obey the posted speed
limits. If a highway-patrol officer stopped him and got one
glimpse of the blood and destruction in the backseat, Mitch
would probably be eating at the expense of the state of
California for a long time.
The two gunmen had not brought a shovel.
Considering their professionalism, he doubted they would
have left his body to rot where hikers or off-road racers might
have found it. Familiar with the area, they had known a feature of the landscape that served as a natural tomb unlikely to be
discovered casually.
Searching for that burial place at night, with a flashlight, did
not appeal to Mitch. Nor did the prospect of the bone collection
that he might find there.
He returned to the bodies and relieved them of their wallets
to make identification more difficult. He was becoming less
squeamish about handling them--and his new attitude disturbed
him.
After dragging the dead men farther from the road, he
interred them in a tight grove of waist-high manzanita. Shrouds
of leathery leaves concealed them from easy discovery.
Although the desert seems hostile to life, many species thrive
in it, and a number are carrion eaters. Within an hour, the first
of these would be drawn to the double treat in the manzanita.
Some were beetles like the one that the gunmen had taken
care not to crush underfoot as they had led him along the
car-pavilion loggia.
In the morning, the desert heat would begin to do its work as
well, significantly hastening the process of decomposition.
If they were ever found, their names might never be known.
And which of them suffered terrible acne scars and which had a
smooth face would matter to no one, and count for nothing.
In the car pavilion, as they had been closing him into the
trunk of the Chrysler, he had said I wish we didn't have to do this.
Well, said the one with the smooth skin, that's how it is.
Another shooting star drew his attention to the deep clear
sky. A brief bright scar, and then the heavens healed.
He returned to the car and closed the trunk lid.
Having gotten the best of two experienced killers, perhaps he
should have felt empowered, proud, and fierce. Instead, he had
been further humbled.
To spare himself the stench of blood, he rolled down the
windows in all four doors of the Chrysler Windsor.
The engine started at once: a full-throated song of power. He
switched on the headlights.
He was relieved to see that the fuel gauge indicated the tank
was nearly three-quarters full. He didn't want to stop at any
public place, not even at a self-service station.
He had turned the car around and driven four miles on the
dirt road when, topping a rise, he came upon a sight that caused
him to brake to a stop.
To the south, in a shallow bowl of land, lay a lake of mercury
with concentric rings of sparkling diamonds floating on it,
moving slowly to the currents of a lazy whirlpool, as majestic as
a spiral galaxy.
For a moment the scene was so unreal that he thought it must be a hallucination or a vision. Then he understood that it was a
field of grass, perhaps squirreltail with its plumelike flower
spikes and silky awns.
The moonlight silvered the spikes and struck sparkles from
the high sheen of the awns. A wind eddy, the laziest of spiral
breezes, pulsed around the bowl of land with such grace and
consistent timing that, were there music for this dance of grass,
it would be a waltz.
In mere grass was hidden meaning, but the stink of blood
brought him back from the mystic to the mundane.
He continued to the end of the dirt road and turned right
because he recalled that they had turned left on the way here.
The paved roads were well marked, and he returned not to the
Campbell estate--which he hoped he would not see again--but
to the interstate.
Post-midnight traffic was light. He drove north, never faster
than five miles per hour above the speed limit, an excess that
the law rarely punished.
The Chrysler Windsor was a beautiful machine. Seldom do
dead men return to haunt the living in such style.
36



Mitch arrived in the city of Orange at 2:20 a.m., and
parked on a street that was a block away from the one
on which his house stood.
He rolled up the four windows and locked the Chrysler.
With his shirttail pulled out to conceal it, he carried a pistol
under his belt. The weapon had belonged to the smooth-faced
gunman who, having said Die, failed to find the strength to flex
his trigger finger one last time. It contained eight cartridges;
Mitch hoped that he would not need any of them.
He was parked under an old jacaranda in full flower, and when
he moved into the light from the street lamp, he saw that he
walked on a carpet of purple petals.
Warily, he approached his property along the alleyway behind
it.
A rattling induced him to switch on his flashlight. From
between two trash cans that had been set out for morning
collection, a city-adapted possum, like a large pale-faced rat,
twitched its pink nose.
Mitch clicked off the light and proceeded to his garage. The
gate at the corner of the building was never locked. He passed
through it into the backyard.
His house keys, with his wallet and other personal items, had
been confiscated in Campbell's library.
He kept a spare key in a small key safe that was padlocked to
a ringbolt low on the garage wall, concealed behind a row of
azaleas.
Risking the flashlight but hooding it with his fingers, Mitch
parted the azaleas. He dialed in the combination, disengaged
the lock, plucked the key from the safe, and switched off the
light.
Making not a sound, he let himself into the garage, which was
keyed to match the house.
The moon had traveled westward; and trees let little of that
light through the windows. He stood in the dark, listening. Either the silence convinced him that he was alone or the
darkness reminded him too much of the car trunk that he had
twice escaped, and he switched on the garage lights.
His truck was where he had left it. The Honda's space was
empty.
He climbed the stairs to the loft. The boxes were still stacked
to disguise the gap in the railing.
At the front of the loft, he discovered that the recorder and
electronic surveillance gear were gone. One of the kidnappers
must have come to collect the equipment.
He wondered what they thought had happened to John Knox.
He worried that Knox's disappearance had already had consequences
for Holly.
When a fit of tremors shook him, he forced his mind away
from that dark speculation.
He was not a machine, and neither was she. Their lives had
meaning, they had been brought together by destiny for a
purpose, and they would fulfill their purpose.
He had to believe that was true. Without it, he had nothing.
Leaving the garage dark, he entered the house through the
back door, confident that the place was no longer watched.
The staged murder scene in the kitchen remained as he had
last seen it. The spattered blood, dry now. Hand prints on the
cabinetry.
In the adjacent laundry room, he took off his shoes and examined
them in the fluorescent light. He was surprised to find no
blood.
His socks were not stained, either. He stripped them off anyway
and threw them in the washing machine.
He found small smears on his shirt and jeans. In the shirt
pocket, he found Detective Taggart's card. He saved the card,
tossed the clothes in the machine, added soap, and started the
wash cycle.
Standing at the laundry sink, he scrubbed his hands and forearms
with soap and a soft-bristle brush. He wasn't washing away
evidence. Perhaps certain memories were what he hoped to flush
down the drain.
With a wet rag, he wiped his face, his neck.

His weariness was profound. He needed rest, but he had no
time for sleep. Anyway, if he tried to sleep, his mind would be
ridden by dreads both known and nameless, would be ridden
hard in circles, howling, to wide-eyed exhaustion.
In shoes and underwear, carrying the pistol, he returned to
the kitchen. From the refrigerator, he got a can of Red Bull, a
high-caffeine drink, and chugged it.
Finishing the Red Bull, he saw Holly's purse open on a nearby
counter. It had been there earlier in the day.
Earlier, however, he had not taken time to notice the debris
scattered on the counter beside the purse. A wadded cellophane
wrapper. A small box, the top torn open. A pamphlet of instructions.
Holly
had bought a home pregnancy-test kit. She had opened
it and evidently had used it, sometime between when he had left
for work and when the kidnappers had taken her.
Sometimes as a child in the learning room, when you have
spoken to no one for a long time, nor heard a voice other than
your muffled own, and when you have been denied food-- though never water--for as much as three days, when for a week
or two you have seen no light except for the brief daily interruption
when your urine bottles and waste bucket are traded
for fresh containers, you reach a point where the silence and
the darkness seem not like conditions any longer but like objects with real mass, objects that share the room with you and, growing
by the hour, demand more space, until they press on you
from all sides, the silence and the darkness, and weigh on you
from above, squeezing you into a cubic minim that your body
can occupy only if it is condensed like an automobile compressed
by a junkyard ram. In the horror of that extreme claustrophobia,
you tell yourself that you cannot endure another
minute, but you do, you endure another minute, another,
another, an hour, a day, you endure, and then the door opens,
the banishment ends, and there is light, there is always eventually
light.
Holly had not revealed that her period was overdue. False
hopes had been raised twice before. She had wanted to be sure
this time before telling him.
Mitch had not believed in destiny; now he did. And if a man
believes in destiny, after all, he must believe in one that is golden,
one that shines. He will not wait to see what he is served, damn
if he will. He'll butter his bread thick with fate and eat the whole
loaf.
Carrying the pistol, he hurried to the bedroom. The switch
by the door turned on one of two bedside lamps.
With single-minded purpose, he went to the closet. The door
stood open.
His clothes were disarranged. Two pair of jeans had slipped
from their hangers and lay on the closet floor.
He didn't remember having left the closet in this condition,
but he snatched a pair of jeans from the floor and pulled
them on.
Shrugging into a dark-blue long-sleeved cotton shirt, he
turned from the closet and for the first time saw the clothes
strewn on the bed. A pair of khakis, a yellow shirt, white
athletic socks, white briefs and T-shirt.
They were his clothes. He recognized them.
They were mottled with dark blood.

By now he knew the look of planted evidence. Some new
outrage was to be hung around his neck.
He retrieved the pistol from the closet shelf where he had put
it while dressing.
The door stood open to the dark bathroom.
Like a dowser's divining rod, the pistol guided him to that
darkness. Crossing the threshold, he flipped the light switch and
with bated breath stepped into the bathroom brightness.
He expected to find something grotesque in the shower or a
severed something in the sink. But all was normal.
His face in the mirror was clenched with dread, as tight as a
fist, but his eyes were as wide as they had ever been and were no
longer blind to anything.
Returning to the bedroom, he noticed something out of place
on the nightstand with the extinguished lamp. He clicked the
switch.
Two colorful polished spheres of dinosaur dung stood there
on small bronze stands.
Although they were opaque, they made him think of crystal
balls and sinister fortunetellers in old movies, predicting dire
fates.
"Anson," Mitch whispered, and then a word uncommon to
him, "My God. Oh, God."
37



The hard winds that came out of the eastern mountains
were usually born with the rising or setting of the sun.
Now, many hours after sunset, and hours before sunrise, a strong
spring wind suddenly blew down upon the lowlands as if it had
burst through a great door.
Along the alleyway where wind whistled, to the Chrysler,
Mitch hurried but with the hesitant heart of a man making the
short journey from his cell on death row to the execution
chamber.
He didn't take time to roll down the windows. As he drove,
he opened only the one in the driver's door.

A gruff wind huffed at him, pawed his hair, its breath warm
and insistent.
Insane men lack self-control. They see conspiracies all around
them and reveal their lunacy in irrational anger, in ludicrous
fears. Genuinely insane men don't know they are deranged, and
therefore they see no need to wear a mask.
Mitch wanted to believe that his brother was insane. If Anson
was instead acting with cold-blooded calculation, he was a
monster. If you had admired and loved a monster, your gullibility
should shame you. Worse, it seemed that by your willingness
to be deceived, you empowered the monster. You shared at least
some small portion of the responsibility for his crimes.
Anson did not lack self-control. He never spoke of conspiracies.
He feared nothing. As for masks, he had an aptitude for
misdirection, a talent for disguise, a genius for deception. He
was not insane.
Along the night streets, queen palms thrashed, like madwomen
in frenzies tossing their hair, and bottle-brush trees shed millions
of scarlet needles that were the petals of their exotic flowers.
The land rose, and low hills rolled into higher hills, and in the
wind were scraps of paper, leaves, kiting pages from newspapers,
a large transparent plastic bag billowing along like a jellyfish.
His parents' house was the only one on the block with lights
in the windows.
Perhaps he should have been discreet, but he parked in the
driveway. He put up the window, left the pistol in the car,
brought the flashlight.
Filled with voices of chaos, rich with the smell of eucalyptus,
the wind lashed the walkway with tree shadows.
He did not ring the doorbell. He had no false hope, only an
awful need to know
As he had thought it might be, the house was unlocked. He
stepped into the foyer and closed the door behind him.
To his left, to his right, an uncountable number of Mitches
receded from him in a mirror world, all of them with a ghastly
expression, all of them lost.
The house was not silent, for the wind gibbered at windows,
groaned in the eaves, and eucalyptus trailers scourged the walls.
In Daniel's study, a spectacle of shattered glass display shelves
glittered on the floor, and scattered everywhere were the colorful
polished spheres, as if a poltergeist had played billiards with
them.
Room by room, Mitch searched the first floor, turning on
lights where they were off. In truth, he expected to find nothing
more on this level of the big house, and he did not. He told
himself that he was just being thorough. But he knew that he
was delaying his ascent to the second floor.
At the stairs, he gazed up, and heard himself say, "Daniel,"
but not loud, and "Kathy," no louder.
For what awaited Mitch, he should have had to descend.
Climbing to it seemed all wrong. Sepulchers are not constructed
at the tops of towers.
As he climbed, nature's long exhale grew more fierce.
Windows thrummed. Roof beams creaked.
In the upstairs hall, a black object lay on the polished wood
floor: the shape of an electric razor but a bit larger. The business
end featured a four-inch-wide gap between two gleaming metal
pegs.
He hesitated, then picked it up. On the side of the thing
was a seesaw switch. When he pressed it, a jagged white arc of
electricity snapped between the metal pegs, the poles.
This was a Taser, a self-defense weapon. Chances were that
Daniel and Kathy had not used it to defend themselves.
231


More likely, Anson had brought it with him and had assaulted
them with it. A jolt from a Taser can disable a man for minutes,
leave him helpless, muscles spasming as his nerves misfire.
Although Mitch knew where he must go, he delayed the
terrible moment and went instead to the master bedroom.

The lights were on except for a nightstand lamp that had been
knocked to the floor in a struggle, the bulb broken. The sheets
were tangled. Pillows had slid off the bed.
The sleepers had been literally shocked awake.
Daniel owned a large collection of neckties, and perhaps a
score were scattered across the carpet. Bright serpents of silk.
Glancing through other doors but not taking the time to
inspect fully the spaces beyond, Mitch moved more purposefully
to the room at the end of the shorter of the two upstairs halls.
Here the door was like all the others, but when he opened
it, another door faced him. This one was heavily padded and
covered with a black fabric.
Shaking badly, he hesitated. He had expected never to return
here, never to cross this threshold again.
The inner door could be opened only from the hall, not from
the chamber beyond. He turned the latch release. The well
fitted channels of an interlocking rubber seal parted with a
sucking sound as he pushed the door inward.
Inside, there were no lamps, no ceiling fixture. He switched
on the flashlight.
After Daniel himself had layered floor, walls, and ceiling with
eighteen inches of various soundproofing materials, the roonj
had been reduced to a windowless nine-foot square. The ceiling
was six feet.
The black material that upholstered every surface, densely
woven and without sheen, soaked up the beam of the flashlight.
Modified sensory deprivation. They had said it was a tool for
discipline, not a punishment, a method to focus the mind inward
toward self-discovery--a technique, not a torture. Numerous
studies had been published about the wonders of one degree or
another of sensory deprivation.
Daniel and Kathy lay side by side: she in her pajamas, he in
his underwear. Their hands and ankles had been bound with
neckties. The knots were cruelly tight, biting the flesh.
The bindings between the wrists and those between the
ankles had been connected with another necktie, drawn taut, to
further limit each victim's movement.
They had not been gagged. Perhaps Anson had wanted to have
a conversation with them.
And screams could not escape the learning room.
Although Mitch stooped just inside the door, the aggressive
silence pulled at him, as quicksand pulls what it snares, as gravity
the falling object. His rapid, ragged breathing was muffled to
a whispery wheeze.
He could not hear the windstorm anymore, but he was sure
that the wind abided.
Looking at Kathy was harder than looking at Daniel, though
not as difficult as Mitch had expected. If he could have
prevented this, he would have stood between them and his
brother. But now that it was done ... it was done. And the heart
sank rather than recoiled, and the mind fell into despondency
but not into despair.
Daniel's face, eyes open, was wrenched by terror, but there
was clearly puzzlement in it as well. At the penultimate moment,
he must have wondered how this could be--how Anson, his one
success, could be the death of him.
Systems of child-rearing and education were numberless, and
no one ever died because of them, or at least not the men and
women who dedicated themselves to conceiving and refining
the theories.
Tasered, tied, and perhaps following a conversation, Daniel
and Kathy had been stabbed. Mitch did not dwell upon the
wounds.
The weapons were a pair of gardening shears and a hand
trowel.

Mitch recognized them as having come from the rack of tools
in his garage.
Mitch closed the bodies in the learning room, and he sat
at the top of the stairs to think. Fear and shock and
one Red Bull weren't sufficient to clear his thoughts as fully as
four hours of sleep would have done.
Battalions of wind threw themselves against the house, and
the walls shuddered but withstood the siege.
Mitch could have wept if he had dared to allow himself tears,
but he would not have known for whom he was crying.
He had never seen Daniel or Kathy cry. They believed in applied
reason and "mutual supportive analysis" in place of easy emotion.
How could you cry for those who never cried for themselves,
who talked and talked themselves through their disappointments,
their misadventures, and even their bereavements?
No one who knew the truth of this family would fault him if
he cried for himself, but he had not cried for himself since he
was five because he had not wanted them to have the satisfaction
of his tears.
He would not cry for his brother.
The wretched kind of pity that he had felt for Anson earlier
was vapor now. It had not boiled away here in the learning room,
but in the trunk of the vintage Chrysler.
During his drive north from Rancho Santa Fe, with four windows
open to ventilate the car, he let the draft blow from him
all delusion and self-deception. The brother whom he had
thought he knew, had thought he loved, in fact had never
existed. Mitch had loved not a real person but instead a
sociopath's performance, a phantom.
Now Anson had seized the moment to take vengeance on
Daniel and Kathy, pinning the crimes on his brother, whom he
thought would never be found.
If Holly was not ransomed, her kidnappers would kill her and
perhaps dispose of her body at sea. Mitch would take the fall for
her murder--and, somehow, for the shooting of Jason Osteen.
Such a killing spree would thrill the cable-channel true-crime
shows. If he was missing--in fact dead in a desert grave --the
search for him would be their leading story for weeks if not for
months.
In time he might become a legend like D. B. Cooper, the
airline hijacker who, decades earlier, had parachuted out of a
plane with a fortune in cash, never to be heard from again.
Mitch considered returning to the learning room to collect
the gardening shears and the hand trowel. The thought of
wrenching the blades from the bodies repulsed him. He had
done worse in recent hours; but he could not do this.
Besides, clever Anson had probably salted other evidence iri
addition to the gardening tools. Finding it would take time, and
Mitch had no time to spare.
DEAN KOONTZ


His wristwatch read six minutes past three in the morning. In
less than nine hours, the kidnappers would call Anson with
further instructions.
Forty-five of the original sixty hours remained until the
midnight-Wednesday deadline.
This would be over long before then. New developments
required new rules, and Mitch was going to set them.
With an imitation of wolves, the wind called him into the
night.
After turning off the upstairs lights, he went down to the
kitchen. In the past, Daniel had always kept a box of Hershey's
bars in the refrigerator. Daniel liked his chocolate cold.
The box waited on the bottom shelf, only one bar missing.
These had always been Daniel's treats, off limits to everyone else.
Mitch took the entire box. He was too exhausted and too
tightly knotted with anxiety to be hungry, but he hoped that
sugar might substitute for sleep.
He turned out the first-floor lights and left the house by the
front door.
Brooms of fallen palm fronds swept the street, and in their
wake came a rolling trash can spewing its contents. Impatiens
withered and shredded themselves, shrubs shook as if trying to
pull themselves up by their roots, a ripped window awning--
actually green, but black in this light--flapped madly like the
flag of some demonic nation, the eucalyptuses gave the wind a
thousand hissing voices, and it seemed as if the moon would be
blown down and the stars snuffed out like candles.
In the haunted Chrysler, Mitch set out in search of Anson.
Holly works at the nail even though she makes no progress
with it, because if she doesn't work at the nail, she will
have nothing to do, and with nothing to do, she will go mad.
For some reason, she remembers Glenn Close playing a madwoman
in Fatal Attraction. Even if she were to go crazy, Holly is
not capable of boiling anyone's pet bunny in a soup pot, unless
of course her family is starving and has nothing to eat or the
bunny is possessed by a demon. Then all bets are off.
Suddenly the nail begins to wiggle, and that's exciting. She is
so excited that she almost needs the bedpan that her kidnappers
left with her.
Her excitement wanes as, during the next half-hour, she
manages to extract only about a quarter of an inch of the nail
from the floor plank. Then it binds and won't budge farther.
Nevertheless, a quarter of an inch is better than nothing. The
spike might be--what? --three inches long. Cumulatively-- discounting the breaks she took for the pizza they allowed her
L
to have, and to rest her fingers --she has spent perhaps seven
hours on the nail. If she can tease it out just a little faster, at the
rate of an inch a day, by the Wednesday-midnight deadline, she
will have only an inch to go.
In the event that Mitch has raised the ransom by that time,
they will all just have to wait another day until she extracts the
damn nail.
She has always been an optimist. People have called her sunny
and cheerful and buoyant and ebullient; and annoyed by her
unflagging positive outlook, a sourpuss once asked her if she
was the love child of Mickey Mouse and Tinkerbell.
She could have been mean and told him the truth, that her
father died in a traffic accident and her mother in childbirth,
that she had been raised by a grandmother rich in love and
mirth.
Instead she told him Yes, but because Tink doesn't have the hips for
childbirth, I was carried to term by Daisy Duck.
At the moment, uncharacteristically, she finds it difficult to
keep her spirits up. Being kidnapped fractures your funny bone.

She has two broken fingernails, and the pads of her fingers
are sore. If she hadn't wrapped them in the tail of her blouse, to
pad them, while she worked on the nail, they would probably be
bleeding.
In the scheme of things, these injuries are insignificant. If her
captors start cutting off her fingers like they promised Mitch, that would be something to bitch about.
She takes a break from her work with the nail. She lies back
on the air mattress in the dark.
Although she is exhausted, she does not expect to sleep. Then
she is dreaming about being in a lightless place different from
the room in which the kidnappers have imprisoned her.
In the dream, she is not tethered to a ringbolt in the floor.
She is walking in darkness, carrying a bundle in her arms.

She is not in a room but in a series of passageways. A maze of
tunnels. A labyrinth.
The bundle grows heavy. Her arms ache. She doesn't know
what she carries, but something terrible will happen if she puts
it down.
A dim glow draws her. She arrives in a chamber brightened by
a single candle.
Mitch is here. She's so happy to see him. Her father and
mother, whom she has never known except from photographs,
are here, too.
The bundle in her arms is a sleeping baby. Her sleeping baby.
Smiling, her mother comes forward to take the baby. Holly's arms ache, but she holds fast to the precious bundle.
Mitch says Give us the baby, sweetheart. He should be with us. You
don't belong here.
Her parents are dead, and so is Mitch, and when she lets go
of the infant, it will not just be sleeping anymore.

She refuses to give her son to them--and then somehow it is
in her mother's arms. Her father blows out the candle.
Holly wakes to a howling beast that is only the wind, but beast
enough, hammering the walls, shaking dust down from the roof
beams.
A soft glow, not a candle but a small flashlight, brings minimal
relief from the darkness in which she has been imprisoned. It
reveals the knitted black ski mask, the chapped lips, and the
beryl-blue eyes of one of her keepers kneeling before her--the
one who worries her.
"I've brought you candy," he says.
He holds out to her a Mr. Goodbar.
His fingers are long and white. His nails are bitten.
Holly dislikes touching anything that he has touched. Hiding
her distaste, she accepts the candy bar.
"They're asleep. This is my shift." He puts on the floor in front
of her a can of cola beaded with icy sweat. "You like Pepsi?"
"Yes. Thank you."
"Do you know Chamisal, New Mexico?" he asks.
He has a soft, musical voice. It could almost be a woman's
voice, but not quite.
"Chamisal?" she says. "No. I've never been there."
"I've had experiences there," he says. "My life was changed."
Wind booms and something rattles on the roof, and she uses
the noise as an excuse to look up, hoping to see a memorable
detail of her prison for later testimony.
She was brought here in a blindfold. At the end, they came up
narrow steps. She thinks she might be in an attic.
Half the lens of the small flashlight has been taped over. The
ceiling remains unrevealed in gloom. The light reaches only to
the nearest bare-board wall, and all else around her is lost in
shadow.
They are careful.
"Have you been to Rio Lucio, New Mexico?" he asks.
"No. Not there, either."
"In Rio Lucio, there is a small stucco house painted blue with
yellow trim. Why don't you eat your chocolate?"
"I'm saving it for later."
"Who knows how much time any of us has?" he asks. "Enjoy
it now. I like to watch you eat."
Reluctantly, she peels the wrapper off the candy bar.
"A saintly woman named Ermina Lavato lives in the blue-and
yellow stucco house in Rio Lucio. She is seventy-two."
He believes that statements like this constitute conversation.
His pauses suggest that obvious rejoinders are available to Holly.
After swallowing chocolate, she says, "Is Ermina a relative?"
"No. She's of Hispanic origin. She makes exquisite chicken
fajitas in a kitchen that looks like it came from the 1920s."
"I'm not much of a cook," Holly says inanely.
His gaze is riveted on her mouth, and she takes a bite from
the Mr. Goodbar with the feeling that she's engaged in an
obscene act.
"Ermina is very poor. The house is small but very beautiful. Each room is painted a different soothing color."
As he stares at her mouth, she returns the scrutiny, to the
extent his mask allows. His teeth are yellow. The incisors are
sharp, the canines unusually pointed.
"Her bedroom walls hold forty-two images of the Holy
Mother."
His lips look as if they are perpetually chapped. Sometimes
he chews at the loose shreds of skin when he isn't talking.
"In the living room are thirty-nine images of the Sacred Heart
of Jesus, pierced by thorns."
The cracks in his lips glisten as if they might start seeping.
"In Ermina Lavato's backyard, I buried a treasure."
'As a gift for her?" Holly asks.
"No. She would not approve of what I buried. Drink your
Pepsi."
She does not want to drink from a can he handled. She opens
it anyway, and takes a sip.
"Do you know Penasco, New Mexico?"
"I haven't traveled much in New Mexico."
He is silent for a moment, and the wind howls into his silence,
and his gaze drops to her throat as she swallows Pepsi. Then:
"My life changed in Penasco."
"I thought that was Chamisal." .
"My life has changed often in New Mexico. It's a place of
change and great mystery."
Having thought of a use for the Pepsi can, Holly sets it aside
with the hope he will allow her to keep it if she hasn't finished
the cola by the time he leaves.
"You would enjoy Chamisal, Penasco, Rodarte, so many beautiful
and mysterious places."
She considers her words before she speaks. "Let's hope I live
to see them."
He meets her stare directly. His eyes are the blue of a somber
sky that suggests an impending storm even in the absence of
clouds.
In a voice still softer than usual, not in a whisper but with a
quiet tenderness, he says, "May I speak to you in confidence?"
If he touches her, she will scream until she wakes the others.
Interpreting her expression as consent, he says, "There were
five of us, and now just three."
This is not what she has expected. She holds his gaze though
it disturbs her.
"To improve the split from five ways to four, we killed Jason."
She cringes inwardly at the revelation of a name. She doesn't
want to know names or see faces.
"NowJohnny Knox has disappeared," he says. "Johnny was
running surveillance, hasn't called in. The three of us--we didn't
agree to improve the split from four. The issue was never raised."
Mitch, she thinks at once.
Outside, the tenor of the wind changes. Ceasing to shriek, it
rushes with a great shush, counseling Holly in the wisdom of
silence.
"The other two were out on errands yesterday," he continues,
"separately, at different times. Either could have killed Johnny."
To reward him for these revelations, she eats more chocolate.
Watching her mouth once more, he says, "Maybe they decided
on a two-way split. Or one of them may want to have it all."
Not wishing to appear to sow discord, she says, "They
wouldn't do that."
"They might," he says. "Do you know Vallecito, New Mexico?"
Licking chocolate from her lips, Holly says, "No."
'Austere," he says. "So many of these places are austere but so
beautiful. My life changed in Vallecito."
"How did it change?"
Instead of answering, he says, "You should see Las Trampas,
New Mexico, in the snow. A scattering of humble buildings,
white fields, low hills dark with chaparral, and the sky as white
as the fields."
"You're something of a poet," she says, and half means it. "They have no casinos in Las Vegas, New Mexico. They have life and they have mystery."
His white hands come together, not in contemplation,
certainly not in prayer, but as though each possesses its own
awareness, as if they are pleased by the feel of each other.
"In Rio Lucio, Eloisa Sandoval has a shrine to Saint Anthony
in her small adobe-walled kitchen. Twelve ceramic figures
arranged in tiers, one for each child and grandchild. Candles
every evening in the vespers hour."
She hopes that he will make new revelations about his partners,
but she knows that she must appear discreetly intrigued by
everything he says.
"Ernest Sandoval drives a '64 Chevy Impala with giant steel
chain links for a steering wheel, a custom-painted dashboard,
and a ceiling upholstered in red velvet."
The long fingers with spatulate pads smooth one another,
smooth and smooth.
"Ernest is interested in saints with whom his pious wife is
unfamiliar. And he knows ... amazing places."
The Mr. Goodbar has begun to cloy in Holly's mouth, to stick
in her throat, but she takes another bite of it. "Ancient spirits dwell in New Mexico, since before the existence
of humanity. Are you a seeker?"
If she encourages him too much, he will read her as insincere.
"I don't think so. Sometimes we all feel . . . something is
missing. But that's everyone. That's human nature."
"I see a seeker in you, Holly Rafferty. A tiny seed of spirit
waiting to bloom."
His eyes are as clear as a limpid stream, but cloaked by silt at
the bottom are strange forms that she cannot identify.
Lowering her gaze, she says demurely, "I'm afraid you see too
much in me. I'm not a deep thinker."
"The secret is not to think. We think in words. And what lies
beneath the reality we see is a truth that words can't contain.
The secret is to feel."
"See, to you that's a simple concept, but even that's too deep
for me." She laughs softly at herself. "My biggest dream is to be
in real estate."
"%u underestimate yourself," he assures her. "Within you
are ... enormous possibilities."
His large bony wrists and long pale hands are utterly hairless,
either naturally or because he uses a depilatory cream.
40



With hobgoblins of wind threatening at the open window
in the driver's door, Mitch cruised past Anson's house in
Corona del Mar.
Large creamy-white flowers had been shaken from the big
magnolia tree and had blown in a drift against the front door,
revealed in a stoop lamp that remained on all night. Otherwise,
the house was dark.
He did not believe that Anson had come home, washed up,
and gone happily to sleep almost at once after killing their
parents. He must be out somewhere--and up to something.
Mitch's Honda no longer stood at the curb where he had
left it when he had first come here at the direction of the
kidnappers.
In the next block, he parked, finished a Hershey's bar, rolled
up the window, and locked the Chrysler Windsor. Unfortunately,
it drew attention to itself among the surrounding contemporary
vehicles, museum grandeur in a game arcade.

Mitch walked to the alleyway on which Anson's garage had
247


access. Lights blazed throughout the lower floor of the rear
condo above the pair of two-car garages.
Some people might have work that kept them busy just past
three-thirty in the morning. Or insomnia.
Standing in the alleyway, Mitch planted his feet wide to resist
the rushing wind. He studied the high curtained windows.

Since Campbell's library, he had entered a new reality. He saw
things more clearly now than he had seen them from his former
perspective.
If Anson had eight million dollars and a fully paid-off yacht,
he probably owned both condos, not just one, as he had claimed.
He lived in the front unit and used the back condo for the office
in which he applied linguistic theory to software design, or
whatever the hell he did to get rich.
The toiler in the night, behind those curtained windows, was
not a neighbor. Anson himself sat up there, bent to a computer.
Perhaps he was plotting a course, by yacht, to a haven beyond
the authority of all law
A service gate opened onto a narrow walkway beside the
garage. Mitch followed it into the brick courtyard that separated
the two condos. The courtyard lights were off.
Bordering the brick patio were planting beds lush with
nandina and a variety of ferns, plus bromeliads and anthuriums
to provide a punctuation of red blooms.
The houses to the front and back, the tall side fences, and
the neighboring houses crowding close on their narrow lots
all blocked the wind. Though still marked by blustering crosscurrents,
a more genteel version slipped down the roof slopes
and danced with the courtyard greenery instead of whipping it.
248 DEAN KOONTZ

Mitch slipped under the arching fronds of a Tasmanian tree
fern, which swayed, trembled. He crouched there, peering out
at the patio.
The skirt of broad, spreading, lacy fronds rose and dipped,
rose and dipped, but the patio was not entirely screened from
him at any time. If he remained alert, he couldn't miss a man
passing from the back condo to the front.
In the shelter of the tree-fern canopy, he smelled rich planting
soil, an inorganic fertilizer, and the vaguely musky scent
of moss.
At first this comforted him, reminded him of life when it
had been simpler, just sixteen hours ago. After a few minutes,
however, the melange of odors brought to mind instead the smell
of blood.
In the condo above the garages, the lights went out.
Perhaps assisted by the windstorm, a door slammed shut.
The chorus of wind voices did not entirely cover the thud of
heavy hurried footsteps that descended exterior stairs to the
courtyard.
Between the fronds, Mitch glimpsed a bearish figure crossing
the brick patio.
Anson was not aware of his brother behind him, closing, and
let out a strangled cry only when the Taser short-circuited his
nervous system.
When Anson staggered forward, trying to stay on his
feet, Mitch remained close. The Taser delivered another fiftythousand-volt
kiss.
Anson embraced the bricks. He rolled onto his back. His
burly body twitched. His arms flopped loosely. His head rolled
side to side, and he made noises that suggested he might be in
danger of swallowing his tongue.
Mitch didn't want Anson to swallow his tongue, but he wasn't
going to take any action to prevent it from happening, either.
41



Apocalyptic flocks of wind beat wings against the walls and
swoop the roof, and the darkness itself seems to vibrate.
The hairless hands, white as doves, groom each other in the
dim glow of the half-taped flashlight.
The gentle voice regales her: "In El Valle, New Mexico, there
is a graveyard where the grass is seldom cut. Some graves have
stones, and some do not."
Holly has finished the chocolate. She feels half sick. Her
mouth tastes like blood. She uses Pepsi as a mouthwash.
"A few graves without headstones are surrounded by small
picket fences crafted from the slats of old fruit and vegetable
crates."
All this is leading somewhere, but his thoughts proceed along
neural pathways that can be anticipated only by a mind as bent
as his.
"Loved ones paint the pickets in pastels--robin's-egg blue,
pale green, the yellow of faded sunflowers."
In spite of the sharp enigmas underlying their soft color, his
eyes repel her less, right now, than do his hands.
"Under a quarter moon, hours after a new grave was closed,
we did some spade work and opened the wooden casket of a
child."
"The yellow of faded sunflowers," Holly repeats, trying to fill
her mind with that color as defense against the image of a child
in a coffin.
"She was eight, taken by cancer. They buried her with a Saint
Christopher medal folded in her left hand, a porcelain figurine
of Cinderella in her right because she loved that story."
The sunflowers will not sustain, and in her mind's eye, Holly
sees the small hands holding tight to the protection of the saint
and to the promise of the poor girl who became a princess.
"By virtue of some hours in the grave of an innocent, those
objects acquired great power. They were death-washed and
spirit-polished."
The longer she meets his eyes, the less familiar they become.
"We took from her hands the medal and the figurine, and
replaced them with ... other items."
One white hand vanishes into a pocket of his black jacket.
When it reappears, it holds the Saint Christopher medal by a
silver chain.
He says, "Here. Take it."
That the object comes from a grave does not repulse her, but
that it has been taken from the hand of a dead child offends.
More is happening here than he is putting into words. There
is a subtext that Holly does not understand.
She senses that to reject the medal for any reason will have
terrible consequences. She holds out her right hand, and he
drops the medal into it. The chain ravels in random coils on her
palm.
"Do you know Espanola, New Mexico?"
Folding her hand around the medal, she says, "It's another
place I've missed."
"My life will be changed there," he reveals as he picks up the
flashlight and rises to his feet.
He leaves her in pitch black with the half-full can of Pepsi,
which she expects him to take. Her intention is--or had been-- to squash the can and to create from it a miniature pry bar with
which to work on the stubborn nail.
The Saint Christopher medal will do a better job. Cast in brass
and plated with silver or nickel, it is much harder than the soft
aluminum of the can.
Her keeper's visit has changed the quality of this lightless
space. It had been a lonely darkness. Now Holly imagines it
inhabited by rats and waterbugs and legions of crawling things.
42



Anson fell hard in front of the back door, and the wind
. seemed to cheer his collapse.
Like a creature accustomed to filtering its oxygen from water
and now helpless on a beach, he twitched, spasmed. His hands
flopped, and his knuckles rapped on the bricks.
He gawped at Mitch, moving his mouth, as if trying to speak,
or maybe he was trying to scream in pain. All that came out was
a thin squeal, a mere thread of sound, as if his esophagus had
constricted to the diameter of a pin.
Mitch tried the door. Unlocked. He pushed it open and
stepped into the kitchen.
The lights were off. He didn't switch them on.
Not sure how long the effects of the shock would last, hoping
for at least a minute or two, he put the Taser on a counter and
returned to the open door.
Warily, he grabbed Anson by the ankles, but his brother was
not capable of trying to kick him. Mitch dragged him into the
house, and winced when the back of Anson's head stuttered
against the raised threshold.
Closing the door, he turned on the lights. The blinds were
shut, as they had been when he and Anson received the phone
call from the kidnappers.
The pot aizuppa massaia remained on the stove, cold but still
fragrant.
Adjacent to the kitchen lay a laundry room. He checked it
and found it to be as he remembered: small, no windows.
At the kitchen table, the four dinette chairs were retro-chic
stainless steel and red vinyl. He moved one of them to the
laundry room.
On the floor, hugging himself as if he were freezing, but most likely trying to stop the twitching, trying to get control of the
less dramatic but still continuous muscle spasms, Anson made
the pitiable sounds of a dog in pain.
The agony might be real. It might be a performance. Mitch
kept a safe distance.
He retrieved the Taser. Reaching to the small of his back, he
withdrew the pistol that he had tucked under his belt.
"Anson, I want you to roll over, facedown."
His brother's head lolled from side to side, not in refusal but
perhaps involuntarily.
Anticipation of revenge had been in its way a different kind
of sugar rush. In reality, nothing about it tasted sweet.
"Listen to me. I want you to roll over and crawl as best you
can to the laundry room."
Drool escaped a corner of Anson's mouth. His chin glistened.
"I'm giving you a chance to do it the easy way."
Anson continued to appear disoriented and not in easy
control of his body.
Mitch wondered if two Taser shots in quick succession, and
the second held perhaps too long, could have done permanent
damage. Anson seemed to have been worse than stunned.
The big man's fall might have contained an element of tragedy
if he had fallen from a height, but he had gone from low to
lower.
Mitch hounded him, repeatedly making the same commands.
Then: "Damn it, Anson, if I have to, I can give you a third shock
and drag your ass in there while you're helpless."
The back door rattled, distracting Mitch. Only the hand of
the wind tested the latch as a strong gust swept more boldly into
the sheltered courtyard.
When he looked at Anson again, he saw an acute awareness
in his brother's eyes, a sly calculation, which vanished in that
glaze of disorientation. Anson's eyes rolled back in his head.
Mitch waited half a minute. Then he moved quickly toward
his brother.
Anson sensed him coming, thought he was going to use the
Taser, and sat up to block it, grab it.
Instead Mitch squeezed off a shot, intentionally missing his
brother, but not by much. At the report of the pistol, Anson
flinched back in surprise, and Mitch slammed the gun against
the side of his head, hard enough to hurt bad--hard enough, as
it turned out, to knock him unconscious.
The point had been to gain Anson's cooperation by convincing
him that he was not dealing with the same Mitch. But this
worked, too.
He ain't heavy, he's my brother. Bullshit. He was Mitch's
brother, and he was heavy.
Dragging him across the polished wood floor of the kitchen
and into the laundry room proved harder than Mitch expected.
Hoisting him into the chair was one door away from impossible,
but Mitch got it done.
The upholstered panel on the back of the chair fit between
two steel verticals. Between each side of that padded panel and
the frame was an open space.
He pulled Anson's hands through those gaps. With the handcuffs
that he himself had worn earlier, he shackled his brother's
wrists behind the chair.
Among the items in a utility drawer were three spare electrical
extension cords. A thick orange cord was about forty feet long.
After weaving it through the chair's legs and stretcher bars,
Mitch tied it around the washing machine. Far less flexible than
rope, the rubber cord would allow only loose knots, so he tied
three.
Although Anson might be able to rise into a half crouch, he
would have to lift the chair with him. But anchored to the
washer, he could not go anywhere.
The blow with the pistol had cut his ear. He was bleeding but
not heavily.
His pulse was slow but steady. He might come around quickly.
Leaving the overhead light on, Mitch went upstairs to the
master bedroom. He saw what he expected: two small night
lights plugged into wall outlets, neither switched on at the
moment.
As a child, Anson had slept with a lamp on low. As a teenager,
he had settled for a night-light similar to these. In every room of
this house, as preparation for a power failure, he kept a flashlight
that received fresh batteries four times a year.
Downstairs again, Mitch glanced in the laundry room. Anson
remained unconscious in the chair.
Mitch searched the kitchen drawers until he found where
Anson kept keys. He plucked out a spare house key. He also took
the keys for three different cars, including his Honda, and left
the house by the back door.
He doubted that the neighbors could have heard the shot-- or, having heard it, could have recognized it for what it
was--after it had been filtered through the boom and cry of
the wind at war with itself. Nevertheless, he was relieved to see
no lights in the houses to either side.
He climbed the stairs to the condo above the garages and tried
the door, which was locked. As he expected, the key to Anson's
house also opened this one.
Inside, he found Anson's home office occupying space that
DEAN KOONTZ


would normally be a living room and dining area. The nautical
paintings were by some of the artists featured in the front condo.
Four computer workstations were served by a single wheeled
office chair. The size of the logic units, far larger than anything
ordinarily seen in a home, suggested his work required rapid
multitiered computation and massive data storage.
Mitch wasn't a computer maven. He had no illusions that he
could boot up these machines--if boot up was even a term in use
anymore--and discover the nature of the work that had made
his brother rich.
Besides, Anson would have layers of security, passwords and
procedures, to keep out even serious hackers. He had always
been delighted by the elaborate codes and arcane symbolism of
the maps that pirates drew to their caches of treasure in those
tales that enthralled him as a boy.
Mitch left, locked the door, and went down to the first of
the garages. Here were the Expedition that he had driven to
Campbell's estate in Rancho Santa Fe and the 1947 Buick Super
Woody Wagon.
In the other two-car garage were an empty stall and Mitch's
Honda, which he had left on the street.
Perhaps Anson had stored it here after driving it to Orange
and taking two of Mitch's garden tools as well as some of his
clothes, to Daniel and Kathy's place to murder them, and then
to Mitch's again to plant the incriminating evidence.
Mitch opened the trunk. John Knox's body remained wrapped
in the weathered canvas tarp.
The accident in the loft seemed to have happened in a long
ago time, in another life.
He returned to the first garage, started the Expedition, and
moved it to the empty stall in the second garage.
After moving his Honda to park it beside the Buick wagon,
he closed the big roll-up door on that garage.
Grimly, he wrestled the recalcitrant body from the trunk of
the Honda. While it lay on the garage floor, he rolled the corpse
out of the tarp.
Serious putrescence had not set in yet. The dead man had a
sinister sweet-and-sour smell, however, that Mitch was eager to
get away from.
The wind keened at the small high windows of the garage, as
if it had a taste for the macabre and had blown itself a long way
across the world to see Mitch at this gruesome work.
He thought that all this dragging around of bodies should
have about it a quality of farce, especially considering that Knox was stiff with rigor mortis and hellaciously cumbersome. But at
the moment he had a serious case of laugh-deficit disorder.
After he had loaded Knox into the Buick wagon and closed
the tailgate, he folded the tarp and put it in the trunk of the
Honda. Eventually he would dispose of it in a Dumpster or in a
stranger's trash can.
He couldn't recall ever having been this exhausted: physically,
mentally, emotionally. His eyes felt singed, his joints half-melted,
his muscles fully cooked and tender enough to fall off the bone.
Maybe the sugar and caffeine in the Hershey's bars prevented
his engine from stalling. Fear fueled him, too. But what most
kept his wheels turning was the thought of Holly in the hands
of monsters.
Till death us do part was the stated commitment in their vows.
For Mitch, however, the loss of her would not release him. The
commitment would endure. The rest of his life would pass in
patient waiting.
He walked the alleyway to the street, returned to the Chrysler
Windsor, and drove it back to the second garage. He parked it
beside the Expedition and closed the roll-down door.
He consulted his wristwatch--4:09.
In ninety minutes, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less,
the furious wind would blow dawn in from the east. Because of
dust flung high into the atmosphere, the first light would be
pink, and it would rapidly squall across the heavens, fading to
the color of a more mature sky as it was blown toward the sea.
Since he had met Holly, he had greeted every day with great
expectations. This day was different.
He returned to the house and found Anson awake in the
laundry room, and in a mood.
The cut on his left ear had crusted shut, and body heat was
quickly drying the blood that had trickled down his cheek
and neck.
His bearish good looks had settled into harder edges, as
though a genetic contagion had introduced major wolf DNA
into his face. Jaws clenched so tight that his facial muscles
knotted, eyes molten with rage, Anson sat in seething silence.
The wind wasn't loud here. A vent pipe carried sighs and whispers
from outside into the dryer, so it seemed as if a troubled
spirit haunted that machine.
Mitch said, "%u're going to help me get Holly back alive."
That statement elicited neither agreement nor refusal, only a
glower.
"They'll be calling in a little more than seven and a half hours
with wiring instructions."
Paradoxically, confined in the chair, restrained, Anson looked
bigger than he had before. Shackles emphasized his physical
power, and it seemed that, like some figure out of myth, if he
attained the pinnacle of his potential rage, he would be able to
snap his bonds as if they were string.
In Mitch's absence, Anson had tried determinedly to wrench
the chair free of the washing machine. The steel legs of the chair
had scraped and chattered against the tile floor, leaving scars
that revealed the intensity of his futile effort. Also, the washer
had been pulled out of alignment with the clothes dryer.
"You said you could put it together by phone, by computer,"
Mitch reminded him. "You said three hours tops."
Anson spat on the floor between them.
"If you've got eight million, you can spare two for Holly. When
it's done, you and I never see each other again. You get to go
back to the sewer of a life you've made for yourself."
If Anson discovered that Mitch knew about Daniel and Kathy
dead in the learning room, there would be no way to force
his cooperation. He would think Mitch had already undone
the planted evidence to focus the eye of the law on the true
perpetrator.
As long as he believed those murders were not yet known, he
could hope that cooperation would lead to a moment when
Mitch made a mistake that reversed their fortunes.
"Campbell didn't just let you go," Ajison said.
"No."
"So... how?"
"Killed those two."
"Your
"Now I've got to live with that."
"You popped Vosky and Creed?"
"I don't know their names."
"Those were their names, all right."
"Because of you," Mitch said.
"Vosky and Creed? It doesn't compute."
"Then Campbell must have let me go."
"Campbell would never let you go."
"So believe what you want."
From under a beetled brow, Anson studied him with sour eyes.
"Where did you get it--the Taser?"
"Vosky and Creed," Mitch lied.
"You just took it away from them, huh?"
"Like I told you--I took everything away from them. Now
I'm giving you a few hours to think about things."
"You can have the money."
"That's not what I want you to think about."
"You can have it, but I've got some conditions."
"You don't get to make the rules," Mitch said.
"It's my two million."
"No. It's mine now. I've earned it."
"Cool down, all right?"
"If you were them, you'd screw her first."
"Hey, you know, that's just a thing I said."
"If you were them, you'd kill her but screw her first."
"It was just something to say. Anyway, I'm not them."
"No, you're not them. You're the cause of them."
"Wrong. Things happen. They just happen."
"Without you, they wouldn't be happening to me."
"If you want to look at it that way, you will."
"Here's what you need to think about--who I am now."
"You want me to think about who you are?"
"No more fratello piccolo. Huh? You understand?"
"But you are my little brother."
"If you think of me that way, you'll pull some dumb move I
would have fallen for then, but I won't fall for it now."
"If we can make a deal, I'm not pulling any moves."
"We've already made the deal."
"You've got to cut me some slack, man."
"So you can hang me with it?"
"How can any deal work without at least a little trust?"
"You just sit here and think about how fast you could be dead."
Mitch switched off the lights and stepped across the threshold.
In the dark, windowless laundry room, Anson said, "What're
you doing?"
"Providing the best learning environment," Mitch said, and
pulled the door shut.
"Mickey?" Anson called.
Mickey. After all this, Mickey.
"Mickey, don't do this."
At the kitchen sink, Mitch scrubbed his hands, using a lot
of soap and hot water, trying to wash away the tactile memory
of John Knox's body, which felt as if it had been imprinted
on his skin.
From the refrigerator, he got a package of cheddar-cheese slices and a squeeze bottle of mustard. He found a loaf of bread
and made a cold cheese sandwich.
"I hear you out there," Anson called from the laundry room.
"What are you doing, Mickey?"
Mitch put the sandwich on a plate. He added a dill pickle.
From the refrigerator he got a bottle of beer.
"What's the point of this, Mickey? We've already got a deal.
There's no point to this."
Mitch tilted another kitchen chair under the knob of the
laundry-room door, bracing it.
"What's that?" Anson asked. "What's happening?"
Mitch switched off the kitchen lights. He went upstairs to
Anson's bedroom.
After putting the pistol and the Taser on the nightstand, he
sat on the bed, his back against the padded headboard.
He didn't turn down the quilted silk bedspread. He didn't take
off his shoes.
After eating the sandwich and the pickle, and drinking the
beer, he set the clock radio for 8:30 a.m.
He wanted Anson to have time to think, but he was taking
this four-hour break primarily because his own thinking had
been slowed by exhaustion. He needed a clear head for what was
coming.
Raging across the roof, beating on the windows, speaking
in the wild voice of a mob, the wind seemed to mock him, to
promise that his every plan would end in chaos.
This was a Santa Ana, the dry wind that harried moisture from
the vegetation in the canyons around which many southern
California communities had been built, turning that dense
growth into tinder. An arsonist would toss a burning rag, another
would use a cigarette lighter, another would strike a match-- and for days the news would be filled with fire.
The drapes were shut, and when he switched off the lamp, a
coverlet of darkness fell over him. He didn't use either of Anson's
small night-lights.
Holly's lovely face rose into his mind, and he said aloud, "God,
please give me the strength and the wisdom to help her."
This was the first time in his life that he had spoken to God.
He made no promises of piety and charity. He didn't think it
worked that way. You could not make deals with God.
With the most important day of his life soon to dawn, he
didn't think that he could sleep, but he slept.
45



The nail waits.
Holly sits in the dark, listening to the wind, fingering the
Saint Christopher medal.
She sets aside the can of Pepsi without drinking the last half
of it. She does not want to have to use the bedpan again, at least
not when the sonofabitch on duty is the sonofabitch with the
white hairless hands.
The thought of him emptying her bedpan creeps her out. Just
asking him to do it would create an intolerable intimacy.
As she fingers the medal in her left hand, her right hand drops
to her belly. Her waist is narrow, her stomach flat. The child
grows in her, a secret, as private as a dream.
They say that if you listen to classical music while pregnant,
your child will have a higher IQ. As an infant, he or she will cry
less and be more content.
This may be true. Life is complex and mysterious. Cause and
effect are not always clear. Quantum physicists say that sometimes
effect comes before cause. She had watched a one-hour
program about that on the Discovery Channel. She hadn't made
much sense of it; and the scientists describing the various
phenomena admitted they could not explain them, only observe
them.
She moves her hand in slow circles over her belly, thinking
how fine it would be, how sweet, if the baby gave a twitch that
she could feel. Of course, it is only a ball of cells at this stage,
not yet capable of giving a Hi, Mom kick.
Even now, however, its full potential is there, a tiny person in
the shell of her body, like a pearl steadily accreting in an oyster,
and everything she does will affect her little passenger. No more
wine with dinner. Cut way back on the coffee. Perform faithful
but sensible exercise. Avoid another kidnapping.
Saint Christopher, being the protector of children, has
brought her to a reconsideration of the nail as she blindly traces
his image with her fingertips.
She's probably being irrational, taking this babies-learn-in
the-womb business too far. Yet it seems that if, while pregnant,
she thrusts a nail into some guy's carotid artery or through
his eye into his brain, the incident will surely have an effect on
the baby.
Extremely strong emotion--again, according to the
Discovery Channel--causes the brain to order the release
into the blood of veritable floods of hormones or other
chemicals. A homicidal frenzy would seem to qualify as a strong
emotion.
If too much caffeine in the blood can put the unborn child at
risk, torrents of killer-mommy enzyme can't be desirable. She
intends to use the nail on a bad guy, of course, a really bad guy,
but the baby has no way of knowing the victim isn't a good guy.
The baby won't be born with homicidal tendencies because
of a single incident of violent self-defense. Nevertheless, Holly
broods about the nail.
Maybe this irrational worrying is a symptom of pregnancy,
like morning sickness, which she hasn't experienced yet, or like
a craving for chocolate ice cream with pickles.
Prudence also plays a role in her rethinking of the nail scheme.
When you deal with people like those who had kidnapped her,
you better not strike out against them unless you are certain
that you can carry through with the assault successfully.
If you try to thrust a nail through someone's eye but instead
stab him in the nose, you are going to have an angry nose
stabbed criminal psychopath on your case. Not good.
She is still fingering the Saint Christopher medal, pondering
the pros and cons of fighting vicious gunmen with only a three
inch nail, when the representative of the New Mexico Tourist
Board returns.
He comes behind a flashlight with a half-taped lens, as before,
and still has the hands of a pianist from Hell. He kneels in front
of her and puts the flashlight on the floor.
""You like the medallion," he says, sounding pleased to see her
smoothing it between her fingers as if it is a worry bead.
Instinct encourages her to play to his weirdness. "It has an
interesting... feel."
"The girl in the coffin wore a simple white dress with cheap
lace tacked to the collar and cuffs. She looked so peaceful."
He has chewed all the shreds of loose skin from his chapped
lips. They are mottled red and appear to be tender, swollen.
"She wore white gardenias in her hair. When we opened the
lid, the pent-up perfume of the gardenias was intense."
Holly closes her eyes to avoid his.
"We took the medallion and the figurine of Cinderella to a
place near Angel Fire, New Mexico, where there's a vortex." Evidently he thought she knew what he meant by vortex.
His gentle voice becomes gentler, and almost sad, when he
adds, "I killed them both in their sleep."
For a moment, she thinks this statement relates to the vortex
in Angel Fire, New Mexico, and she tries to make sense of it
in that context. When she realizes what he means, she opens
her eyes.
"They pretended they didn't know what happened to John
Knox, but at least one of them had to know, all right, and probably
both."
In a room nearby are two dead men. She didn't hear gunfire.
Maybe he slit their throats.
She can picture his pale hairless hands wielding a straight razor
with the grace of a magician rolling coins across his knuckles.
Holly has grown accustomed to the manacle on her ankle, to
the chain that connects her to a ringbolt in the floor. Suddenly
she is again acutely aware that she is not only imprisoned in a
room with no windows but also is limited to the portion of the
room that the chain permits her to reach.
He says, "I would have been next, and they would have done a
two-way split."
Five people had planned her kidnapping. Only one remains.
If he touches her, there is no one to respond to her scream.
They are alone together.
"What happens now?" she asks, and at once wishes that she
hadn't.
"I'll speak to your husband at noon, as scheduled. Anson will
have fronted him the money. Then it's up to you."
She parses his third sentence, but it's a dry lemon from which
she can't squeeze any juice. "What do you mean?"
Instead of answering her question, he says, "As part of a
church festival, a small carnival comes to Penasco, New Mexico,
in August."
She has the crazy feeling that if she snatches off his knitted
ski mask, there will be no features to his face other than the
beryl-blue eyes and the mouth with yellow teeth and sore lips.
No eyebrows, no nose, no ears, the skin as smooth and featureless
as white vinyl.
"Just a Ferris wheel and a few other rides, a few games--and
last year a fortuneteller."
His hands swoop up to describe the shape of the Ferris wheel
but then come to roost on his thighs.
"The fortuneteller calls herself Madame Tiresias, but of
course that is not her real name."
Holly is squeezing the medallion so tightly in one hand that
her knuckles ache and the raised image of the saint is no doubt
impressed in her palm.
"Madame Tiresias is a fraud, but the funny thing is, she has
powers of which she's unaware."
He pauses between each statement as if what he has said is so
profound that he wants her to have time to absorb it.
"She would not have to be a fraud if she could recognize what
she really is, and I intend to show her this year."
Speaking without a tremor in her voice requires self-control,
but Holly brings him back to the question he would not answer:
"What did you mean--then it will be up to me?"
When he smiles, part of his mouth disappears from the
horizontal slit in the mask. This makes his smile seem sly and
knowing, as if no one's secrets are safe from him.
"You know what I mean," he says. "You're not Madame
Tiresias. You have full knowledge of yourself."
She senses that if she denies his assertion, she will test his
patience and perhaps make him angry. His soft voice and his
gentle manner are sheep's clothing, and Holly does not want to
poke the wolf beneath the fleece.
"You've given me so much to think about," she says.
"I am aware of that. You've been living behind a curtain, and
now you know there's not just a window under it, but a whole
new world beyond."
Afraid that one wrong word will shatter the spell that the
killer has cast over himself, Holly says only, "Yes."
He rises to his feet. "You have some hours yet to decide. Do
you need anything?"
A shotgun, she thinks, but she says, "No."
"I know what your decision will be, but you need to reach it
on your own. Have you ever been to Guadalupita, New Mexico?"
"No."
His smile curves up behind the slit in the black mask. "You
will go there, and you will be amazed."
He follows his flashlight, leaving her alone in darkness.
273


Gradually Holly realizes that the wind is still blowing hard.
From the moment he'd told her that he killed the other kidnappers,
the wind had vanished from her consciousness.
For a while she has heard only his voice. His sinuous, insidious
voice.
She has not even heard her heart, but she hears it now and
feels it, too, shaking the cage of ribs against which it pounds.
The baby, tiny ball of cells, is now bathed in the fight-or-flight
chemicals that her brain has ordered released into her blood.
Maybe that isn't so bad. Maybe it's even good. Maybe being
marinated in that flood will make Baby Rafferty, him or her,
tougher than would otherwise be the case.
This is a world that increasingly requires toughness of good
people.
With the Saint Christopher medal, Holly sets diligently to
work on the stubborn nail.
Part Three

Until Death
Us Do Part.
46



The alarm woke Mitch at eight-thirty, and the wind that
had worried his dreams still churned the real world.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a minute, yawning, looking
at the backs of his hands, at the palms. After what those hands
had done the previous night, they ought to have looked different
from the way they had always looked before, but he could
discern no change.
Passing the mirrored closet doors, he saw that his clothes were
not unusually wrinkled. He had awakened in the same position
in which he had fallen asleep; and he must not have moved
in four hours.
In the bathroom, searching drawers, he found several
unopened toothbrushes. He unwrapped one and used it, then
shaved with Anson's electric razor.
Carrying the pistol and the Taser, he went downstairs to the
kitchen.,
The chair was still braced under the laundry-room doorknob.
No sound came from in there.
He cracked three eggs, spiced them with Tabasco sauce,
scrambled them, sprinkled Parmesan on them, and ate them
with two slices of buttered toast and a glass of orange juice.
By habit, he began to gather the dishes to wash them, but
then realized the absurdity of being a thoughtful guest under
these circumstances. He left the dirty dishes on the table.
When he opened the laundry and switched on the lights, he
found Anson cuffed as before, soaked in sweat. The room wasn't
unusually warm.
"Have you thought about who I am?" Mitch asked.
Anson didn't appear angry anymore. He slumped in the chair
and hung his burly head. He did not look physically smaller; but
in some way he had been diminished.
When his brother didn't answer, Mitch repeated the question:
"Have you thought about who I am?"
Anson raised his head. His eyes were bloodshot, but his lips
were pale. Jewels of sweat glittered in his beard stubble.
"I'm in a bad way here," he complained in a voice that he had
never used before, one with a whine and with the particular note
of offense that suggested he felt victimized.
"One more time. Have you thought about who I am?"
"You're Mitch, but you're not the Mitch I know."
"That's a start."
"There's some part of you now ... I don't know what you
are."
"I'm a husband. I cultivate. Preserve."

"What's that supposed to mean?"
"I don't expect you to understand."
279


"I've got to go to the bathroom."
"Go ahead."
"I'm bursting. I really have to piss."
"You won't offend me."
"You mean here?'
"It's messy but it's convenient."
"Don't do this to me, bro."
"Don't call me bro."
Anson said, ""fou're still my brother."
"Biologically."
"Man, this isn't right."
"No, it isn't."
The legs of the chair had scraped a lot more glaze off the floor
tiles. Two tiles were cracked.
"Where do you keep the cash?" Mitch asked.
"I wouldn't take your dignity like this."
"You handed me over to killers."
"I didn't humiliate you first."
"You said you'd rape my wife and kill her."
'Are you stuck on that? I explained that."

He had struggled so fiercely to free the chair from the washer
that the thick orange extension cord had dimpled the metal of
the machine at one corner.
"Where do you keep the cash, Anson?"
"I've got, I don't know, a few hundred in my wallet."
"I'm not stupid. Don't handle me."

Anson's voice cracked. "This hurts like a sonofabitch."
"What hurts?"
"My arms. My shoulders are on fire. Let me change position.
Cuff my hands in front of me. This is torture."
Almost pouting, Anson looked like a big little boy. A boy with
a coldly calculating reptilian brain.
"Let's talk about the cash first," Mitch said.
"You think there's cash, like a lot of cash? There's not."
"If I wire-transfer the money, I'll never see Holly again."
"You might. They don't want you crying to the cops."
"They won't risk her identifying them in court."
"Campbell could persuade them to drop this."
"By beating their mothers, raping their sisters?"
"You want Holly back or not?"
"I killed two of his men. He'd help me now?"
"Maybe. There'd be a respect thing now."
"It wouldn't be a two-way respect thing."
"Man, you've got to stay flexible about people."
"I'm going to tell the kidnappers it has to be a cash trade in
person."
"Then it's not going to happen."
"You've got cash somewhere," Mitch insisted.
"Money earns interest, dividends. I don't put it in a mattress."
"You
read all those pirate stories."
"So?"
"You identified with the pirates, thought they were way cool."
Grimacing as if in pain, Anson said, "Please, man, let me go to
the bathroom. I'm in a real bad way."
"Now you are a pirate. Even got your own boat, gonna run
your business from sea. Pirates don't put their money in banks.
They like to touch it, look at it. They bury it in lots of places so
they can get to it easy when their fortunes change."
"Mitch, please, man, I'm having bladder spasms."
"The money you make consulting--yeah, it goes in the bank.
But the money from jobs that are--how did you put it?--'more
directly criminal,' like whatever job you did with these guys and
then cheated them on the split, that doesn't go in the bank. You
don't pay taxes on it."
Anson said nothing.
"I'm not going to march you over to your office and watch
while you use the computer to move funds around, arrange a
wire transfer. You're bigger than me. You're desperate. I'm not
giving you a chance to turn the tables. You're in that chair till
this is done."
Accusatorily, Anson said, "I was always there for you."
"Not always."
"As kids, I mean. I was always there for you when we were
kids."
"Actually," Mitch said, "we were there for each other."
"We were. That's right. Real brothers. We can get back to
that," Anson assured him.
"Yeah? How do we get back to that?"
"I'm not saying it'll be easy. Maybe we start with some
honesty. I screwed up, Mitch. It was horrible what I did to you.
I was doing some drugs, man, and they messed with my head."

"You weren't doing any drugs. Don't blame it on that. Where's
the cash?"„
"Bro, I swear to you, the dirty money gets laundered. It ends
up in the bank, too."
"I don't believe it."
"You can grind me, but it doesn't change what's true."
"Why don't you think about it some more?" Mitch advised.
"There's nothing to think about. What is is."
Mitch switched off the light.
"Hey, no," Anson said plaintively.
Stepping across the threshold, pulling the door shut behind
him, Mitch closed his brother in the dark.
47



Mitch started in the attic. A trapdoor in the walk-in closet
off the master bedroom gave access. A ladder folded
down off the trap.
Two bare lightbulbs inadequately illuminated the high space,
revealing cobwebs in the angles of the rafters.
Eager breathing, hissing, and hungry panting arose at every
vent in the eaves, as though the attic were a canary cage and the
wind a voracious cat.
Such was the disquieting nature of a Santa Ana wind that even
the spiders were agitated by it. They moved restlessly on their
webs.
Nothing was stored in the attic. He almost retreated, but was
held by suspicion, by a hunch.
This empty space was floored with plywood. Anson would
probably not conceal a hoard of cash under a sheet of plywood
held down by sixteen nails. He wouldn't be able to get at it fast
in an emergency.
Nevertheless, ducking to avoid the lower rafters, Mitch
walked back and forth, listening to his hollow footsteps. An odd
prophetic feeling seized him, a sense that he was on the brink of
a discovery.
His attention was drawn to a nail. The other nails in the floor
were pounded flat, but one was raised about a quarter of an inch.
He knelt in front of the nail to examine it. The head was wide
and flat. Judging by the size of the head and the thickness of the
quarter-inch of shank revealed, it was at least three inches long.
When he pinched the nail between thumb and forefinger and
tried to wiggle it, he found that it was firmly lodged.
An extraordinary feeling overcame him, akin to--but different
from--what he had experienced when he had first seen the
field of squirreltail grass transformed into a silvery whirlpool by
the eddying breeze and the moonlight.
Suddenly he felt so close to Holly that he looked over his
shoulder, half expecting her to be there. The feeling did not fade,
but swelled, until a chill nubbed the flesh on the nape of his
neck.
He left the attic and went down to the kitchen. In the drawer
where he had found the car keys was a small collection of the
most commonly used tools. He selected a screwdriver and a claw
hammer.
From the laundry room, Anson said, "What's going on?"
Mitch didn't reply.
In the attic once more, he applied the claw end of the
hammer and pulled up the nail. Using the screwdriver as a wedge,
tapping the handle with the hammer, he levered the next nail
a quarter-inch out of the plywood, and then used the claw to
extract it, too.
Agitated spiders plucked silent arpeggios from their silken
harps, and the wind was never silent.
The chill on the back of his neck intensified nail by nail.
When the last was extracted, he eagerly lifted aside the sheet of
plywood.
He found only floor joists. Blankets of fiberglass insulation
filled the spaces between the joists.
He lifted out the fiberglass. No strongbox or plastic-wrapped bundles of currency were concealed beneath the insulation.
The prophetic feeling had passed, as had the sense that somehow
he had been close to Holly. He sat in mystification.
What the hell was that all about?
Surveying the attic, he felt no compulsion to take up other
sheets of plywood.
His original assessment had been correct. In concern of a fire,
if for no other reason, Anson wouldn't hide a lot of money where
he couldn't get at it quickly.
Mitch left the spiders in darkness with the ever-seeking wind.
In the master closet, after putting up the folding ladder and
the trapdoor, he continued his search. He looked behind the
hanging clothes, checked drawers for false bottoms, felt under
every shelf and along every molding for a hidden lever that might
spring open a panel.
In the bedroom, he peered behind paintings in hope of finding
a wall safe, although he doubted that Anson would be that
obvious. He even rolled the king-size bed out of place, but he
found no loose square of carpet concealing a floor vault.
Mitch worked through two bathrooms, a hall closet, and two
spare bedrooms that had not been furnished. Nothing.
Downstairs, he began in the mahogany-paneled, book-lined
study. There were so many potential hiding places that he had
only half finished with the room when he glanced at his watch
and saw it was 11:33.
The kidnappers would be calling in twenty-seven minutes.
In the kitchen, he picked up the pistol and went to the laundry
room. When he opened the door, the stink of urine met him.
He switched on the light and found Anson in misery.
Most of the flood had been soaked up by his pants, his socks,
his shoes, but a small yellow puddle had formed on the tiles at
the feet of the chair.
Other than rage, the closest thing sociopaths have to human
emotions is self-love and self-pity, the only love and only pity of
which they are capable. Their extreme self-love is beyond mere
rampant egomania.
Psychotic self-love includes nothing as worthy as self-respect,
but it does encompass a kind of overweening pride. Anson could
not feel shame, but his pride had fallen from a high place into a
swamp of self-pity.
His tan could not conceal an ashen undertone. His face
appeared spongy, fungoid. The bloodshot eyes were filmy pools
of torment.
"Look what you've done to me," he said.
"You did it to yourself."
If self-pity left room in him for anger, he hid it well.
"This is sick, man."
"It's way sick," Mitch agreed.
"You're having a good laugh."
"No. Nothing funny here."
"bu're laughing inside."
"I hate this."
"If you hate this, where's your shame now?"
Mitch said nothing.
"Where's your red face? Where's my blushing brother?"
"We're running out of time, Anson. They'll be calling soon. I
want the cash."
"What do I get? What's in it for me? Why am I supposed to
just give and give?"
Arm extended full length, assuming the posture that
Campbell had taken with Mitch himself, he pointed the
gun at his brother's face.
"bu give me the money, and I'll let you live."
"What kind of life would I have?"
""You keep everything else you've got. I pay the ransom, take
care of this without the police ever knowing there was a
kidnapping, so nobody has to get a statement from you."
No doubt Anson was thinking about Daniel and Kathy.
"%u go on like before," Mitch lied, "make whatever kind of
life you want."
Anson would have been able to pin their parents' deaths on
Mitch with ease if Mitch had been dead and buried in a desert
grave beyond discovery. Not so easy now.
"I give you the money," Anson said, "you set me loose."
"That's right."
Dubious, he said, "How?"
"Before I leave to make the trade, I Taser you again, and the£ I take off the cuffs. I leave while you're still twitching."
Anson thought it over.
DEAN KOONTZ


"Come on, pirate boy. Give up the treasure. If you don't tell
me before the phone rings, it's over."
Anson met his eyes.
Mitch didn't look away. "I'll do it."
"You're just like me," Anson said.
"If that's what you want to think."
Anson's gaze didn't waver. His eyes were bold. His eyes were
direct and probing.
He was shackled to a chair. His shoulders ached and his arms
ached. He had wet his pants. He was staring down the muzzle of
a gun.
Yet his eyes were steady, and full of calculation. A graveyard
rat, having tunneled to make nests in a series of skulls, seemed
now to occupy this living head, peering out with rat-quick cunning.
"There's a floor safe in the kitchen," Anson said.
The lower cabinet to the left of the sink featured two
roll-out shelves. They contained pots and pans.
Mitch unloaded the shelves and detached them from the
tracks in which they rolled, exposing the floor of the cabinet in
perhaps one minute.
In the four corners were what appeared to be small wooden angle braces. They were in fact pins holding the otherwise
unsecured floor panel in place.
He removed the pins, lifted the floor out of the cabinet, and
exposed the concrete slab on which the house had been built.
Sunk in the concrete was a floor safe.
The combination that Anson had given him worked on the
first try. The heavy lid hinged away from him.
The fireproof box measured approximately two feet long,
eighteen inches wide, and one foot deep. Inside were thick
packets of hundred-dollar bills in kitchen plastic wrap sealed
with clear tape.
The safe also contained a manila envelope. According to
Anson, it held bearer bonds issued by a Swiss bank. They were
almost as liquid as the hundred-dollar bills but more compact
and easier to transport across borders.
Mitch transferred the treasure to the kitchen table and
checked the contents of the envelope. He counted six bonds
denominated in U.S. dollars, one hundred thousand each,
payable to the bearer regardless of whether or not he had been
the purchaser.
Just a day previous, he would never have expected to be in
possession of so much money; and he doubted that he would
ever find himself with this much cash again in his life. Yet he
experienced not even the briefest amazement or delight at the
sight of such wealth.
This was Holly's ransom, and he was grateful to have it. This
money was also why she had been kidnapped, and for that
reason, he regarded it with such antipathy that he was loath to
touch it.
The kitchen clock read 11:54.
Six minutes until the call.
He returned to the laundry, where he had left the door open
and the light on.
As self-involved as he was self-saturated, Anson sat in the wet
chair but was somewhere else. He didn't come back to the
moment until Mitch spoke to him.
"Six hundred thousand in bonds. How much in cash?"
"The rest of it," Anson said.
"The rest of the two million? So there's a million four
hundred thousand in cash?"
"That's what I said. Isn't that what I said?"
"I'm going to count it."
"Go ahead."
"If it's not all there, the deal is off. I don't turn you loose when
I leave."
In frustration, Anson rattled his handcuffs against the chair.
"What're you trying to do to me?"
"I'm just saying how it is. For me to keep the deal, you have to
keep the deal. I'll start counting now."
Mitch turned away from the door, toward the kitchen table,
and Ajison said, "There's eight hundred thousand in cash."
"Not a million four?"
"The whole bundle, cash and bonds, is a million four. I got
confused."
"Yeah. Confused. I need six hundred thousand more."
"That's all there is. I don't have any more."
"You said you didn't have this, either."
"I don't always lie," Anson said.
"Pirates don't bury everything they've got in one place."
"Will you stop with this pirate crap?"

"Why? Because it makes you feel like you've never grown up?"
The clock showed 11:55.
Inspiration struck Mitch, and he said, "Stop with the pirate
crap because maybe I'll think of the yacht, "ibu bought yourself
a sailing yacht. How much do you have stashed aboard it?"
"Nothing. I've got nothing on the boat. Haven't had time to
fit it out with a safe."
"If they kill Holly, I'll go through your records here," Mitch
said. "I'll get the name of the boat, where it's moored. I'll go
down to the harbor with an axe and a power drill."
"Do what you have to do."
"I'll rip it up bow to stern, and when I find the money and
know you lied to me, I'll come back here and tape your mouth
shut so you can't lie to me anymore."

"I'm telling you the truth."
"I'll close you here in the dark, no water, no food, close you in
here to die of dehydration in your own filth. I'll sit right there in
the kitchen, at your table, eating your food, listening to you die
in the dark."
Mitch didn't believe that he could kill anyone in such a cruel
fashion, but to his own ear he sounded hard and cold and
convincing.
If he lost Holly, maybe anything was possible. Because of her,
he had come fully to life. Without her, a part of him would die,
and he would be less of a man.
Anson seemed to follow that same chain of reasoning, for he
said, "All right. Okay. Four hundred thousand."
"What?"
"In the boat. I'll tell you where to find it."
"We're still two hundred thousand short."
"There's no more. Not cash. I'd have to liquidate some stock."
Mitch turned to look at the kitchen clock--11:56.
"Four minutes. No time left for lies, Anson."
"Would you for once believe me? Just for once? There's no
more in easy cash."
"I already have to change the conditions of the trade," Mitch
worried, "no wire transfer. Now I also have to bargain them
down two hundred thousand."
293


"They'll take it," Anson assured him. "I know these pigs. Are
they gonna turn down a million eight? No way. Not these pigs."
"You better be right."
"Listen, we're okay now, aren't we? Aren't we okay? So don't
leave me in the dark."
Mitch had already turned away from him. He didn't switch
off the laundry-room light, and he didn't close the door.
At the table, he stared at the bearer bonds and the cash. He
picked up the pen and the notepad and went to the phone.
He could not bear the sight of the telephone. Phones had not
brought him good news lately.
He closed his eyes.
Three years ago, they were married with no family in attendance.
Dorothy, the grandmother who had raised Holly, had
passed suddenly five months previously. On her father's side
were an aunt and two cousins. She didn't know them. They didn't
care.
Mitch couldn't invite his brother and three sisters without
extending an invitation to his parents. He didn't want Daniel
and Kathy to be there.
He wasn't motivated by bitterness. He didn't exclude them
in anger or as punishment. He'd been afraid for them to be
present.
This marriage was his second chance at family, and if it failed, he wouldn't have the nerve to try a third time. Daniel and Kathy
were a systemic disease of families, a disease that, allowed in at
the roots, would surely deform the plant and wither its fruit.
Afterward, they told his family they had eloped, but actually
they'd had a small ceremony and reception at the house for a
limited number of friends. Iggy was right: The band had been
woofy. Too many numbers with tambourines. And a guy singer
who thought his best trick was extended passages in falsetto.
After everyone had gone and the band was a comic memory,
he and Holly had danced alone, to a radio, on the portable dance
floor that had been set up in the backyard for the event. She
had been so lovely in the moonlight, almost otherworldly, that
he unconsciously held her too tight, as if she might fade
like a phantom, until she said, "I'm breakable, you know," and
he relaxed, and she put her head on his shoulder. Although
he was usually a clumsy dancer, he never once put a foot wrong,
and around them turned the lush landscaping that was the
consequence of his patient labor, and above them shone the stars
that he had never offered her because he wasn't a man given to
poetic declarations, but she owned the stars already, and the
moon bowed to her, as well, and all the heavens, and the night.
The phone rang.
49



He answered on the second ring and said, "This is Mitch."
"Hello, Mitch. Are you feeling hopeful?"
This mellow voice was not the same as on the previous calls,
and the change made Mitch uneasy.
"Yes. I'm hopeful," he said.
"Good. Nothing can be achieved without hope. It was hope
that brought me from Angel Fire to here, and it's hope that'll
carry me back again."
On consideration, the change didn't disturb Mitch so much
as did the nature of the voice. The man spoke with a gentleness
that was just one station up the dial from spooky.
"I want to talk to Holly."
"Of course you do. She is the woman of the hour--and acquitting
herself very well. This lady is a solid spirit."
Mitch didn't know what to make of that. What the guy had
said about Holly was true, but from him, it sounded creepy.
Holly came on the line. 'Are you okay, Mitch?"
"I'm all right. I'm going crazy, but I'm all right. I love you."
"I'm okay, too. I haven't been hurt. Not really."
"We're going to pull this off," he assured her. "I'm not going
to let you down."
"I never thought you would. Never."
"I love you, Holly."
"He wants the phone back," she said, and returned it to her
captor.
She had sounded constrained. Twice he'd told her that he
loved her, but she had not responded in kind. Something was
wrong.
The gentle voice returned: "There's been one change in the
plan, Mitch, one important change. Instead of a wire transfer,
cash is king."
Mitch had worried that he would not be able to talk them
out of having the ransom sent by wire. He should have been
relieved by this development. Instead it troubled him. It was
another indication that something had happened to put the
kidnappers off their game. A new voice on the phone, then
Holly sounding guarded, and now a sudden preference for
cash.
"Are you with me, Mitch?"
"Yeah. It's just, you've thrown me a curve here. You should
know... Anson hasn't been as full of brotherly concern as maybe
you thought he would be."
The caller was amused. "The others thought he would be. I
was never sure. I don't expect genuine tears from a crocodile."
"I'm handling the situation," Mitch assured him.
"Have you been surprised by your brother?"
"Repeatedly. Listen, right now I can guarantee eight hundred
thousand in cash and six hundred thousand in bearer bonds."
Before Mitch could mention the additional four hundred
thousand that was supposedly aboard Anson's boat, the kidnapper
said, "That's a disappointment, of course. That other six
hundred thousand would buy a lot of time to seek."
Mitch didn't catch the last word. "To what?"
"Do you seek, Mitch?"
"Seek what?"
"If we knew the answer, there'd be no need to seek. A million
four will be all right. I'll think of it as a discount for paying
cash."
Surprised by the ease with which the lower figure had been
accepted, Mitch said, "You can speak for everyone, your partners?"
"Yes.
If I don't speak for them, who will?"
"Then ... what's next?"
"You come alone."
'All right."
"Unarmed."
'All right."
"Pack the money and bonds in a plastic trash bag. Don't tie
the top shut. Are you familiar with the Turnbridge house?"
"Everyone in the county knows the Turnbridge house."
"Come there at three o'clock. Don't get cute and think you
can come early and lie in wait. All you'll get for that is a dead
wife."
"I'll be there at three. Not a minute earlier. How do I get in?"
"The gate will appear to be chained, but the chain will be
loose. After you drive onto the site, replace the chain as it was.
What will you be driving?"
"My Honda."
"Stop directly in front of the house. You'll see an SUV.
Park well away from it. Park with the back of the Honda toward
the house and open the trunk. I want to see no one's in the
trunk."
"All right."
"At that point, I'll phone you on your cell with instructions."
"Wait. My cell. It's dead." Actually it was somewhere in
Rancho Santa Fe. "Can I use Anson's?"
"What's that number?"
Anson's cell phone lay on the kitchen table, beside the money
and the bonds. Mitch snared it. "I don't know the number. I
have to switch it on and look. Give me a minute."
As Mitch waited for the phone company logo to leave the
screen, the man with the gentle voice said, "Tell me, is Anson
alive?"
Surprised by the question, Mitch said only, "Yes."
Amused, the caller said, "The simple answer tells me so
much."
"What does it tell you?"
"He underestimated you."
"You're reading too much into one word. Here's the cell
number."
After Mitch read the number and then repeated it, the man
on the phone said, "We want a smooth simple trade, Mitch. The
best piece of business is one from which everyone walks away a
winner."
Mitch considered that this was the first time the man with
the gentle voice had said we instead of I.
"Three o'clock," the caller reminded him, and hung up.
50



Everything in the laundry room was white, everything
except the red chair and Anson in it and the small yellow
puddle.
Reeking, restless, rocking side to side on the chair, Anson was
resigned to cooperation. "Yeah, there's one of them talks like
that. Name's Jimmy Null. He's a pro, but he's not a front guy. If
he's on the phone with you, the others are dead."
"Dead how?"
"Something went wrong, a disagreement about something,
and he decided to bag the whole payoff."
"So you think there's just one of them now?"
"That makes it harder for you, not easier."
"Why harder?"
"Once he's wasted the others, his tendency will be to clean up
totally behind himself."
"Holly and me."
"Only when he's got the money." In his misery, Anson found a
ghastly smile. "You want to know about the money, bro? You
want to know what I do for a living?"
Anson would be offering this information only if he believed
that the knowledge would do his brother harm.
Mitch knew that the glint of vicious glee in Anson's eyes
was an argument for continued ignorance, but his curiosity
outweighed his caution.
Before either of them could speak, the telephone rang.
Mitch returned to the kitchen, briefly considered not answering,
but worried that it might be Jimmy Null calling with additional
instructions.
"Hello?"
'Anson?"
"He's not here."
"Who's this?"
The voice didn't belong to Jimmy Null.
"I'm a friend of Anson's," Mitch said.
Now that he'd taken the call, the best thing was to carry
through with it as if all were normal here.
"When will he be back?" the caller asked.

"Tomorrow."
"Should I try his cell?"
The voice teased Mitch's memory.
Picking up Anson's cell phone from the counter, Mitch said, "He forgot to take it with him."
"Can you give him a message?"
"Sure. Go ahead."
"Tell him that Julian Campbell called."
The glimmer of the gray eyes, the glitter of the gold Rolex.
"Anything else?" Mitch asked.
"That's everything. Although I do have one concern, friend

of Anson."
Mitch said nothing.

"Friend of Anson, are you there?"

"Yes."
"I hope you're taking good care of my Chrysler Windsor. I
love that car. See you later."
51



Mitch located the kitchen drawer in which Anson kept
two boxes of plastic trash-can liners. He chose the
smaller of the sizes, a white thirteen-gallon bag.
He put the blocks of cash and the envelope of bearer bonds
in the bag. He twisted the top but didn't tie a knot.

At this hour, in the usual traffic, Rancho Santa Fe was as
much as two hours from Corona del Mar. Even if Campbell had
associates at work here in Orange County, they wouldn't arrive
immediately.
When Mitch returned to the laundry room, Anson said,
"Who called?"
"He was selling something."
Sea-green and bloodshot, Anson's eyes were oceans murky
with shark's work. "It didn't sound like sales."
""Vfou were going to tell me what you do for a living."
Malicious glee swam into Anson's eyes again. He wanted to fc share his triumph less out of pride than because somehow it was
knowledge that would wound Mitch.
"Imagine you send data to a customer over the Internet, and
on receipt it appears to be innocent material--say photos and a
text history of Ireland."
"Appears to be."
"It's not like encrypted data, which is meaningless if you don't
have the code. Instead it appears clear, unremarkable. But when
you process it with a special software, the photos and text combine and re-form into completely different material, into the hidden truth."
"What is the truth?"
"Wait. First. . . your customer downloads the software and
never has a hard copy. If police search his computer and try to
copy or analyze the operative software, the program selfdestructs
beyond reconstitution. Likewise documents stored on
the computer in either original or converted form."
Having striven to keep his computer knowledge to the
minimum that the modern world would allow, Mitch wasn't sure
that he saw the most useful applications of this, but one
occurred to him.
"So terrorists could communicate over the Internet, and
anyone sampling their transmissions would find them sharing
only a history of Ireland."
"Or France or Tahiti, or long analyses of John Wayne's films.
No sinister material, no obvious encryption to raise suspicion.
But terrorists aren't a stable, profitable market."
"Who is?"
"There are many. But I want you to know especially about the
work I did for Julian Campbell."
"The entertainment entrepreneur," Mitch said.
"It's true he owns casinos in several countries. Partly he uses
them to launder money from other activities."
Mitch thought he knew the real Anson, a man far different
from the one who had ridden south with him to Rancho Santa
Fe. No more illusions. No more self-imposed blindness.
Yet in this essential moment, a chilling third iteration of the
man revealed itself, almost as much a stranger to Mitch as had
been the second Anson who first appeared in Campbell's library.
His face seemed to acquire a new tenant that slouched
through the chambers of his skull and brought a darker light to
those two familiar green windows.
Something about his body changed, as well. A more primitive
hulk seemed to occupy the chair than he who'd sat there a
minute previous, still a man but a man in whom the animal was
more clearly visible.
This awareness came to Mitch before his brother had begun
to reveal the business done with Campbell. He could not pretend
that the effect was psychological, that Anson's revelation
had transformed him in Mitch's eyes, for the change preceded
the disclosure.
"One-half of one percent of men are pedophiles," Anson said.
"In the U.S. --one and a half million. And millions of others
worldwide."
In this bright white room, Mitch felt on the threshold of a
darkness, a terrible gate opening before him, and no turning
back.
"Pedophiles are eager consumers of child pornography,"
Anson continued. "Though they might be buying it through a
police sting operation that will destroy them, they risk everything
to get it."
Who did Hitler's work, Stalin's, Mao Tse-tung's? Neighbors
did the work, friends, mothers and fathers did the work, and
brothers.
"If the stuff comes in the form of dull text about the history
of British theater and converts into exciting pictures and even
video, if they can get their need filled safely, their appetite
becomes insatiable."
Mitch had left the pistol on the kitchen table. Perhaps he had
unconsciously suspected some outrage like this and had not
trusted himself with the weapon.
"Campbell has two hundred thousand customers. In two
years, he expects a million worldwide, and revenues of five billion
dollars."
Mitch remembered the scrambled eggs and toast he had made
in this creature's kitchen, and his stomach curdled at the
thought of having eaten off plates, with utensils, that those
hands had touched.
"Profit on gross sales is sixty percent. The adult performers
do it for the fun. The young stars aren't paid. What do they need
with money at their age? And I've got a little piece of Julian's
business. I told you I have eight million, but it's three times that
much."
The laundry room was intolerably crowded. Mitch sensed
that in addition to him and his brother, unseen legions were
attendant.
"Bro, I just wanted you to understand how filthy the money is
that's going to buy Holly. The rest of your life, when you kiss
her, touch her, you're going to think about the source of all that
dirty, dirty money."
Chained helpless to the chair, sitting in urine, soaked in the
fear sweat that earlier the darkness had wrung from him, Anson
raised his head defiantly and thrust out his chest, and his eyes
shone with triumph, as though having done what he had done,
having facilitated Campbell's vile enterprise, was payment
enough, that having had the opportunity to serve the appetite
of the depraved at the expense of the innocent was all the reward
he would need to sustain him through his current humiliation
and through the personal ruination to come.
Some might call this madness, but Mitch knew its real name.
"I'm leaving," he announced, for there was nothing else to be
said that would matter.
"Taser me," Anson demanded, as if to assert that Mitch did
not have the power to hurt him in any lasting way.

"The deal we made?" Mitch said. "Screw it."
He switched out the lights and pulled shut the door. Because
there are forces against which it is wise to take extra--and even
irrational--precautions, he wedged the door shut with a chair.
He might have nailed it shut, as well, if he'd had time.
He wondered if he would ever feel clean again.
A fit of the shakes took him. He felt as if he would be sick.
At the sink, he splashed cold water in his face.
The doorbell rang.
52



The chimes played a few bars of "Ode to Joy."
Only minutes had passed since Julian Campbell terminated
their phone call. Five billion a year in revenues was a
treasure that he would do anything to protect, but he couldn't
have gotten a fresh pair of gunmen to Anson's place this quickly.
Mitch cranked off the water at the sink and, face dripping,
tried to think if there was any reason he should risk checking on
the identity of the visitor through a living-room window. His
imagination failed him.
Time to get out of here.
He grabbed the trash bag that held the ransom and plucked
the pistol off the table. He headed for the back door.
The Taser. He had left it on a counter by the ovens. He
returned for it.
Again the unknown visitor rang the bell.
"Who's that?" Anson asked from the laundry room.
"The postman. Now shut up."
Nearing the back door once more, Mitch remembered his
brother's cell phone. It had been on the table beside the
ransom, yet he had grabbed the bag and left the phone.
Julian Campbell's call, Anson's hideous revelations, and the
doorbell, coming one on the heels of the other, had rocked him
off balance.
After retrieving the cell phone, Mitch turned in a circle,
surveying the kitchen. As far as he could tell, he had forgotten
nothing else.
He turned off the lights, stepped out of the house, and locked
the door behind him.
The inexhaustible wind played chase-and-hide with itself
among the ferns and bamboo. Leathery, wind-seared banyan
leaves, blown in from another property, scrabbled this way and
that across the patio, scratching at the bricks.
Mitch went to the first of the two garages, entering by the
courtyard door. Here his Honda waited, and John Knox ripened
in the back of the Buick Super Woody Wagon.
He'd had a vague plan for hanging Knox's death around
Anson's neck at the same time that he extricated himself from
the setup for Daniel's and Kathy's murders. But Campbell's
looming reentry into the situation left him feeling that he was
roller-skating on ice, and the vague plan was now no plan at all.
None of that mattered at the moment anyway. When Holly
was safe, John Knox and the bodies in the learning room and
Anson handcuffed to the chair would matter again, and matter
big-time, but now they were incidental to the main problem.
More than two and a half hours remained before he could
swap the money for Holly. He opened the trunk of the Honda
and tucked the bag into the wheel well.
In the front seat of the Woody, he found a garage-door
remote. He clipped it to the Honda's sun visor, so he could close
the roll-up door from the alleyway.
He put the pistol and the Taser in the storage pocket in the
driver's door. Sitting behind the steering wheel, he could look
down and see the weapons, and they were easier to reach than
they would have been under the seat.
Triggering the remote control, he watched in the rearview
mirror as the big door rolled up.
Backing out of the garage, he glanced to his right, saw the
alleyway was clear--and stamped on the brakes in surprise as
someone rapped on the driver's-door window. Snapping his
head to the left, he discovered that he was face-to-face with
Detective Taggart.


53




Muffled by glass: "Hello there, Mr. Rafferty."
Mitch stared at the detective too long before putting
down the car window. His surprise would have been expected;
however, he must have looked shocked, fearful.

Warm wind tossed Taggart's sports coat and flapped the
collar of his yellow-and-tan Hawaiian shirt as he leaned close to
the window. "Do you have time for me?"

"Well, I do have a doctor's appointment," Mitch said.

"Good. I won't keep you too long. Should we talk in the
garage, out of this wind?"

John Knox's body lay exposed in the back of the station
wagon. The homicide detective might be drawn to it by a keen
nose for the earliest odors of decomposition, or by admiration
for the beautiful old Buick.

"Sit with me in the car," Mitch said, and he put up the
window as he finished backing out of the garage.

He remoted the big door and parked parallel to it, out of the
center of the alley, as it rolled down.
Getting into the passenger's seat, Taggart said, "Have you
called an exterminator about those termites?"
"Not yet."
"Don't put it off too long."
"I won't."
Mitch sat facing forward, staring at the alley, determined to
glance at Taggart only from time to time, because he remembered
the penetrating power of the cop's stare.
"If it's pesticides you're worried about, they don't have to use
them anymore."
"I know. They can freeze the creepers in the walls."
"Better yet, they've got this highly condensed orange extract
that kills them on contact. All natural, and the house smells
great."
"Oranges. I'll have to look into that."
"I guess you've been too busy to think about termites."
An innocent man might wonder what this was about and
might be impatient to get on with his day, so Mitch risked
asking, "Why are you here, Lieutenant?"
"I came to see your brother, but he didn't answer the door."
"He's away until tomorrow."
"Where's he gone?"
"Vegas."
"Do you know his hotel?"
"He didn't say."
"Didn't you hear the doorbell?" Taggart asked.
"I must have left before it rang. I had a few things to do in
the garage."
"Looking after the place for your brother while he's away?"
"That's right. Why do you want to talk to him?"
The detective drew up one leg and turned sideways in his seat,
facing Mitch directly, as though to compel more eye contact.
""Vbur brother's phone numbers were in Jason Osteen's address
book."
Glad to have something truthful to say, Mitch reported: "They
met when Jason and I were roommates."
"You didn't stay in touch with Jason, but your brother did?"
"I don't know Maybe. They got along well."
During the night and the morning, all the loose leaves and
the litter and the dust had been blown to the sea. Now the wind
carried no debris to suggest its form. As invisible as Shockwaves,
massive slabs of crystalline air slammed along the alleyway,
rocking the Honda.
Taggart said, "Jason was hooked up with this girl named
Leelee Morheim. Ifou know her?"
"No."
"Leelee says Jason hated your brother. Says your brother
cheated Jason in some deal."
"What deal?"
"Leelee doesn't know. But one thing's pretty clear about
Jason--he didn't do honest work."
That statement required Mitch to meet the detective's eyes
and to frown with convincing puzzlement. "Are you saying
Anson was involved in something illegal?"
"Do you think that's possible?"
"He's got a Ph.D. in linguistics, and he's a computer geek."
"I knew a professor of physics who murdered his wife, and a
minister who murdered a child."
Considering recent events, Mitch no longer believed that the
detective might be one of the kidnappers.
If you had spilled your guts to him, Mitch, Holly would be dead now.
Neither did he any longer worry that the kidnappers were
keeping him under surveillance or were monitoring his conversations.
The Honda might be fitted out with a transponder that
allowed it to be tracked easily, but that was of no concern
anymore, either.
If Anson was right, Jimmy Null--he of the gentle voice, with
concern that Mitch should remain hopeful--had killed his
partners. He was the whole show now. Here in the final hours of
the operation, Null would be focused not on Mitch but on
preparations to trade his hostage for the ransom.
This did not mean that Mitch could turn to Taggart for help.
John Knox, laid out in the Woody Wagon as if it were a hearse,
thrice dead of a broken neck and a crushed esophagus and a
gunshot wound, would require some explaining. No homicide
detective would be quickly convinced that Knox had perished
in an accidental fall.
Daniel and Kathy would be no more easily explained than
Knox.
When Anson was discovered in such miserable condition in
the laundry room, he would appear to be a victim, not a
victimizer. Given his talent for deception, he would play innocent
with conviction, to the confusion of the authorities.
Only two and a half hours remained before the hostage swap.
Mitch had little confidence that the police, as bureaucratic as
any arm of the government, would be able to process what had
happened thus far and do the right thing for Holly.
Besides, John Knox had died in one local jurisdiction, Daniel
and Kathy in another, and Jason Osteen in a third. Those were
three separate sets of bureaucracies.
Because this was a kidnapping, the FBI would most likely also
have to be involved.
The moment Mitch revealed what had happened and asked
for help, his freedom of movement would be curtailed. The
responsibility for Holly's survival would devolve from him to
strangers.
Dread filled him at the thought of having to sit helplessly
as the minutes ticked away and the authorities, even if well
meaning, tried to get their minds around the current situation
and the events that had led to it.
Taggart said, "How is Mrs. Rafferty?"
Mitch felt known to the bone, as if the detective had already
untied many of the knots in the case and used that rope to snare
him.
Reacting to Mitch's nonplussed expression, Taggart said, "Did
she get some relief from her migraine?"
"Oh. Yeah." Mitch almost could not conceal his relief that the
source of Taggart's interest in Holly was the mythical migraine.
"She's feeling better."
"Not entirely well, though? Aspirin really isn't the ideal treatment
for a migraine."
Mitch sensed that a trap had been laid before him, but he
could not tell its nature--bear, snare, or deadfall--and he didn't
know how to avoid it. "Well, aspirin is what she's comfortable
with."
"But now she's missed a second day of work," Taggart said.
The detective could have learned Holly's place of employment
from Iggy Barnes. His knowledge didn't surprise Mitch,
but that he had followed up on the migraine-headache story was
alarming.
"Nancy Farasand says it's unusual for Mrs. Rafferty to take a
sick day."
Nancy Farasand was another secretary at the Realtor's office
where Holly was employed. Mitch himself had spoken to her
the previous afternoon.
"Do you know Ms. Farasand, Mitch?"
"Yes."
"She strikes me as a very efficient person. She likes your wife
very much, thinks very highly of her."
"Holly likes Nancy, too."
"And Ms. Farasand says it's not at all like your wife to fail to
report in when she's going to miss work."
This morning Mitch should have called in sick for Holly. He
had forgotten.
He'd also forgotten to phone Iggy to cancel the day's schedule.
Having triumphed over two professional killers, he had been
tripped up by inattention to a mundane task or two.
"Yesterday," Detective Taggart said, "you told me that when
you saw Jason Osteen shot, you were on the phone with your
wife."
317


The car had gotten stuffy. Mitch wanted to open the window
to the wind.
Lieutenant Taggart was approximately Mitch's size, but now
he seemed to be larger than Anson. Mitch felt crowded, in a
corner.
"Is that still what you remember, Mitch, that you were on the
phone with your wife?"
In fact, he had been on the phone with the kidnapper. What
had seemed a safe and easy lie at the time might now be a noose
into which he was being invited to place his neck, but he could
see no way to abandon this falsehood without having a better
one to use in its place.
"Yeah. I was on the phone with Holly."
"You said she called to tell you that she was leaving work early
because of a migraine."
"That's right."
"So you were on the phone with her when Osteen was shot."
"Yes."
"That was at eleven forty-three a.m. You said it was eleven
forty-three."
"I checked my watch right after the shot."

"But Nancy Farasand tells me that Mrs. Rafferty called in sick early yesterday, that she wasn't in the office at all."
Mitch did not reply. He could feel the hammer coming down.
"And Ms. Farasand says that you called her between twelve
fifteen and twelve-thirty yesterday afternoon."
The interior of the Honda felt like a tighter space than the
trunk of the Chrysler Windsor.
Taggart said, "You were still at the crime scene at that time,
waiting for me to ask a series of follow-up questions. Your helper,
Mr. Barnes, continued planting flowers. Do you remember?"
When the detective waited, Mitch said, "Do I remember
what?"
"Being at the crime scene," Taggart said drily.
"Sure. Of course."
"Ms. Farasand says that when you called her between twelve
fifteen and twelve-thirty, you asked to speak to your wife."
"She's very efficient."
"What I can't understand," Taggart said, "is why you would
call the Realtor's office and ask to speak to your wife as much as
forty-five minutes after, according to your own testimony, your
wife had already called you to say that she was leaving there with
a terrible migraine."
Great clear turbulent tides of air drowned the alleyway.
As Mitch lowered his gaze to the dashboard clock, a helpless
sinking of the heart overcame him.
"Mitch?"
"Yeah."
"Look at me."
Reluctantly, he met the detective's gaze.

Those hawkshaw eyes didn't pierce Mitch now, didn't drill at
him as they had before. Instead, worse, they were sympathetic
and invited confidence, encouraged trust.
Taggart said, "Mitch ... where is your wife?"
54



Mitch remembered the alley as it had been the previous
evening, flooded with the crimson light of sunset, and
the ginger cat stalking shadow to shadow behind radium-green
eyes, and how the cat had seemed to morph into a bird.
He had allowed himself hope then. The hope had been Anson,
and the hope had been a lie.
Now the sky was hard and wind-polished and a frigid blue, as
if it were a dome of ice that borrowed its color by reflection
from the ocean not far to the west of here.
The ginger cat was gone, and the bird, and nothing living
moved. The sharp light was a flensing knife that stripped the
shadows to the lean.
"Where is your wife?" Taggart asked again.
The money was in the car trunk. The time and place of the
swap were set. The clock was ticking down to the moment. He
had come so far, endured so much, gotten so close.fc
He had discovered Evil with an uppercase E, but he had also
come to see something better in the world than he had seen
before, something pure and true. He perceived mysterious
meaning where he had previously seen only the green machine.
If things happened for a purpose, then perhaps there was a
purpose he must not ignore in this encounter with the persistent
detective.
For richer or poorer. In sickness and in health. To love, honor, and
cherish. Until death us do part.
The vows were his. He had made them. Nobody else had made
them to Holly. Only he had made them to her. He was the
husband.
No one else would be so quick to kill for her, to die for her. To
cherish means to hold dear and to treat as dear. To cherish means
to do all you can for the welfare and the happiness of the one
you cherish, to support and to comfort and to protect her.
Perhaps the purpose of bringing him together here with
Taggart was to warn him that he had reached the limits of his
ability to protect Holly without backup, to encourage him to
realize that he could not go any further alone.
"Mitch, where is your wife?"
"What do you think of me?"
"In what sense?" Taggart asked.
"In every sense. What's your take on me?"
"People seem to think you're a stand-up guy."
"I asked what you think."
"I haven't known you until this. But inside you're all steel
springs and ticking clocks."
"I wasn't always."
"No one could be. You'd blow up in a week. And you've
changed."
321






"You've only known me one day."
'And you've changed."
"I'm not a bad man. I guess all bad men say that."
"Not so directly."
In the sky, perhaps high enough to be above the wind, miles
too high to cast a shadow on the alley, a sun-silvered jet caught
his eye as it sailed north. The world seemed shrunken now to
this car, to this moment of peril, but the world was not shrunken,
and the possible routes between any place and any other place
were nearly infinite.
"Before I tell you where Holly is, I want a promise."
"I'm just a cop. I can't make plea bargains."
"So you think I've hurt her."
"No. I'm just being level with you."
"The thing is ... we don't have much time. The promise I
want is, when you hear the essence of it, you'll act fast, and not
waste time picking at details."
"The devil's in the details, Mitch."
"When you hear this, you'll know where the devil is. But with
so little time, I don't want to screw with police bureaucracies."
"I'm one cop. All I can promise is --I'll do my best for you."
Mitch took a deep breath. He blew it out. He said, "Holly has
been kidnapped. She's being held for ransom."
Taggart stared at him. "Am I missing something?"
"They want two million dollars or they'll kill her."
"You're a gardener."
"Don't I know."„
"Where would you get two million bucks?"
"They said I'd find a way. Then they shot Jason Osteen to
impress on me how serious they are. I thought he was just a guy
walking a dog, thought they shot some passerby to make a
point."
The detective's eyes were too sharp to read. His gaze filleted.
"Jason thought they were going to shoot the dog. So they
scared obedience into me and at the same time cut the eventual
split from five ways to four."
"Go on," Taggart said.
"Once I got home and saw the scene they staged for me there,
once they had me in knots, they sent me to my brother for the
money."
"For real? He's got that much?"
"Anson once pulled some criminal operation with Jason
Osteen, John Knox, Jimmy Null, and two others whose names
I've never heard."
"What was the operation?"
"I don't know. I wasn't part of it. I didn't know Anson was into
this crap. And even if I did know what the operation was, it's
one of the details you don't need now."
"All right."
"The essence is ... Anson cheated them on the split, and they
only found out what the real take was a lot later."
"Why snatch your wife?" Taggart asked. "Why not go after him?"
"He's untouchable. He's too valuable to some very important
and very hard people. So they went after him through his little
brother. Me. They figured he wouldn't want to see me lose my
wife."
Mitch thought he had made a flat statement, but Taggart saw
the hidden hills in it. "He wouldn't give you the money."
"Worse. He turned me over to some people."
"Some people?"
"To be killed."
"Your brother did?"
"My brother."
"Why didn't they kill you?"
Mitch maintained eye contact. Everything was on the line
now, and he could not hold back too much and expect cooperation.
He said, "Some things went wrong for them."
"Sweet Jesus, Mitch."
"So I came back to see my brother."
"Must've been some reunion."
"No champagne, but he had second thoughts about helping
me."
"He gave you the money?"
"He did."
"Where is your brother now?"
"Alive but restrained. The swap is at three o'clock, and I've
got reason to believe one of the kidnappers popped the others.
Jimmy Null. Now it's just him holding Holly."

"How much have you left out?"
"Most of it," Mitch said truthfully.
The detective stared through the windshield at the alley.
From a coat pocket, he withdrew a roll of hard-caramel
candies. He peeled the end of the roll, extracted a candy. He
held the sweet circlet between his teeth while he folded shut
the roll. As he returned the roll to his pocket, his tongue took
the caramel from between his teeth. This procedure had the
quality of a ritual.
"So?" Mitch said. "You believe me?"
"I've got a bullshit detector even bigger than my prostate,"
said Taggart. "And it isn't ringing."
Mitch didn't know whether to be relieved or not.
If he went alone to ransom Holly, and if they were both killed,
at least he would not have to live with the knowledge that he
had failed her.
If the authorities took it out of his hands, however, and if then
Holly was killed but he lived, the responsibility would be a
burden of intolerable weight.
He had to acknowledge that no possible scenario would put
him in control, that inevitably fate was his partner in this. He
must do what seemed right for Holly, and hope that what seemed right turned out to be right.
"Now what?" he asked.
"Mitch, kidnapping is a federal offense. We have to notify
the FBI."
"I'm afraid of the complication."
"They're good. Nobody's more experienced with this kind of
crime. Anyway, because we have only two hours, they won't be
able to get a specialty team in place. They'll probably want us to
take the lead."
"How should I feel about that?"
"We're good. Our SWAT's first-rate. We have an experienced
hostage negotiator."
"So many people," Mitch worried.
"I'll be running this. You think I'm trigger-happy?"

"No."
"You don't think I'm a dog for details?" Taggart asked.
"I think maybe you're best of show."
The detective grinned. "Okay. So we'll get your wife back."
Then he reached across the console and plucked the car key
from the ignition.
Startled, Mitch said, "Wh/d you do that?"
"I don't want you having second thoughts, bolting off on your
own, after all. That isn't what's best for her, Mitch."
"I've made the decision. I need your help. You can trust me
with the keys."
"In a little while. I'm only looking out for you here, for you
and Holly. I've got a wife I love, too, and two daughters--I told
you about the daughters--so I know where you are right now, in
your head. I know where you are. Trust me."
The keys disappeared into a jacket pocket. From another
pocket, the detective withdrew a cell phone.
As he switched on the phone, Taggart crunched what remained
of the circlet of candy. A caramel aroma sweetened the air.
Mitch watched the detective speed-dial a number. A part of
him felt that with the contact of that finger to that button, not
only a call had been placed but also Holly's fate had been sealed.

As Taggart spoke police code to a dispatcher and gave Anson's
address, Mitch looked for another sun-silvered jet high above.
The sky was empty.
Terminating the call, pocketing the phone, Taggart said, "So t your brother's back there in the house?"

Mitch could no longer pretend Anson was in Vegas. "Yeah."
DEAN KOONTZ


"Where?"
"In the laundry room."
"Let's go talk to him."
"Why?"
"He pulled some sort of job with this Jimmy Null, right?"
"Yeah."
"So he must know him well. If we're going to get Holly out of
Null's hands smooth and easy, nice and safe, we need to know
every damn thing about him we can learn."
When Taggart opened the passenger's door to get out, a clear
wind blasted into the Honda, bringing neither dust nor litter,
but the promise of chaos.
For better or worse, the situation was spinning out of Mitch's
control. He didn't think it would be for the better.
Taggart slammed the passenger's door, but Mitch sat behind
the wheel for a moment, his thoughts spinning, tumbling,
his mind busy, and not just his mind, and then he got out into
the whipping wind.
The polished sky and the sharp light and the flaying wind,
and from the overhead power lines, a keening like an
animal in mourning.
Mitch led the detective to the painted wooden service gate.
The wind tore it from his hand as he slipped the latch, and
banged it against the garage wall.
Undoubtedly, Julian Campbell was sending men here, but
they were no threat now, because they would not arrive before
the police. The police were only minutes away.
Following the narrow brick walkway, which was sheltered
from the worst of the wind, Mitch came upon a collection of
dead beetles. Two were as big as quarters, one the diameter of
a dime. On the underside they were yellow with stiff black
legs. They were on their backs, balanced on curved shells, and a
gentle eddy of wind spun them in slow circles.
Cuffed to a chair, sitting in urine, Anson would make a
pathetic figure, and he would play the victim convincingly, with
the skill of a cunning sociopath.
Even though Taggart had implied that he heard truth in
Mitch's story, he might wonder at the hard treatment Anson
had received. With no experience of Anson, having heard only
the condensed version of events, the detective might think the
treatment had been worse than hard, had been cruel.
Crossing the courtyard, where the wind badgered again,
Mitch was aware of the detective close behind him. Although
they were in the open, he felt crowded, pinched by claustrophobia.
He
could hear Anson's voice in his mind: He told me that he killed our mom and dad. He stabbed them with garden tools. He said
hed come back to kill me, too.
At the back door, Mitch's hands were shaking so much that
he had trouble fitting the key in the lock.
He killed Holly, Detective Taggart. He made up a story about
her being kidnapped, and he came to me for money, but then he admitted
killing her.
Taggart knew that Jason Osteen hadn't earned an honest
living. He knew from Leelee Morheim that Jason had done a
job with Anson and had been cheated. So he knew Anson was
bent.
Nevertheless, when Anson told a story conflicting with
Mitch's, Taggart would consider it. Cops were always presented
with competing stories. Surely the truth most often lay somewhere
between them.
Finding the truth will take time, and time is a rat gnawing at
Mitch's nerves. Time is a trapdoor under Holly, and time is a
noose tightening around her neck.
The key found the keyway. The deadbolt clacked open.
THE HUSBAND
329


Standing on the threshold, Mitch switched on the lights.
At once he saw on the floor a long blood smear that hadn't
concerned him before, but which alarmed him now.
When Anson had been clubbed alongside the head, his ear
had torn. As he'd been dragged to the laundry room, he'd left
a trail.
The wound had been minor. The smears on the floor suggested
something worse than a bleeding ear.
By such misleading evidence were doubts raised and suspicions
sharpened.
Trapdoor, noose, and gnawing rat, time sprung a coiled spring
in Mitch, and as he entered the kitchen, he slipped open a
button on his shirt, reached inside, and withdrew the Taser that
was tucked under his belt, against his abdomen. As he'd delayed
getting out of the Honda, he had retrieved the weapon from the
storage pocket in the driver's door.
"The laundry room is this way," Mitch said, leading Taggart a
few steps forward before turning suddenly with the Taser.
The detective wasn't following as close as Mitch had thought.
He was a prudent two steps back.
Some Tasers fire darts trailing wires, which deliver a disabling
shock from a moderate distance. Others require that the business
end be thrust against the target, resulting in an intimacy
equal to that of an assault with a knife.
This was the second Taser model, and Mitch had to get in
close, get in fast.
As Mitch thrust with his right arm, Taggart blocked with his
left. The Taser was almost knocked out of Mitch's hand.
Retreating, the detective reached cross-body, under his sports
jacket, with his right hand, surely going for a weapon in a shoulder
holster.
Taggart backed into a counter, Mitch feinted left, thrust right,
and here came the gun hand from under the jacket. Mitch
wanted bare skin, didn't want to risk fabric providing partial
insulation against the shock, and he got the detective in the
throat.
Eyes rolling back in his head, jaw sagging, Taggart fired one
round, his knees folded, and he dropped.
The shot seemed unusually loud. The shot shook the room.
Mitch was not wounded, but he thought about John Knox
self-shot in the fall from the garage loft, and he knelt
worriedly beside the detective.
On the floor at Taggart's side lay his pistol. Mitch shoved it
out of reach.
Taggart shuddered as if chilled to the marrow, his hands
clawed at the floor tiles, and bubbles of spit sputtered on
his lips.
Faint, thin, pungent, a ribbon of smoke unraveled from
Taggart's sports jacket. The bullet had burned a hole through it.
Mitch pulled back the jacket, looking for a wound. He didn't
find one.
The relief he felt did not much buoy him. He was still guilty
of assaulting a police officer.
This was the first time he had hurt an innocent person.
Remorse, he found, actually had a taste: a bitterness rising at
the back of the throat.
Pawing at Mitch's arm, the detective could not close his hand
DEAN KOONTZ


into a grip. He tried to say something, but his throat must be
tight, his tongue thick, his lips numb.
Mitch wanted to avoid having to Taser him a second time. He
said, "I'm sorry," and set to work.
The car key had vanished into Taggart's jacket. Mitch found
it in the second pocket he searched.
In the laundry room, having digested the gunshot and having
come to a conclusion about what it might mean, Anson began
shouting. Mitch ignored him.
Taking Taggart by the feet, Mitch dragged him out of the
house, onto the brick patio. He left the detective's pistol in the
kitchen.
As he pulled the back door shut, he heard the doorbell ring
inside. The police were at the front of the house.
As Mitch took time to lock the door to delay their exposure
to Anson and his lies, he said to Taggart, "I love her too much to
trust anyone else with this. I'm sorry."
He sprinted across the courtyard, along the side of the garage,
and through the open back gate into the windswept alleyway.
When no one answered the doorbell, the cops would come
around the side of the house, into the courtyard, and find
Taggart on the bricks. They would be in the alley seconds later.
He threw the Taser on the passenger's seat as he got behind
the wheel. Key, switch, the roar of the engine.
In the storage pocket of the door was the pistol that belonged
to one of Campbell's hired killers. Seven rounds remained in the
magazine.
He wasn't going to pull a gun on the police. His only option
was to get the hell out of there.
333


He drove east, fully expecting that a squad car would suddenly have across the end of the alleyway, thwarting him.
Panic is fear expressed by numbers of people simultaneously,
by an audience or a mob. But Mitch had enough fear for a crowd,
and panic seized him.
At the end of the alleyway, he turned right into the street. At
the next intersection, he turned left, heading east again.
This area of Corona del Mar, itself a part of Newport Beach,
was called the Village. A grid of streets, it could be sealed off
with perhaps as few as three roadblocks.
He needed to get beyond those choke points. Fast.
In Julian Campbell's library, in the trunk of the Chrysler, and
in that trunk a second time, he'd known fear, but nothing as
intense as this. Then he had been afraid for himself; now he was
afraid for Holly.
The worst that could happen to him was that he would be
captured or shot by the police. He had weighed the costs of his
options and had chosen the best game. Now he didn't care what
happened to him except to the extent that if anything happened
to him, Holly would stand alone.
In the Village, some of the streets were narrow. Mitch was on
one of them. Vehicles were parked on both sides. With too much
speed, he risked sheering a door off if somebody opened one.
Taggart could describe the Honda. In minutes, they would
have the license-plate number from the Department of Motor
Vehicles. He could not afford to rack up body damage that would
make the car even more identifiable.,
He arrived at a traffic signal at Pacific Coast Highway. Red.
Heavy traffic surged north and south on the divided highway.
334 DEAN KOONTZ

He couldn't jump the light and weave into the flow without
precipitating a chain reaction of collisions, with himself at the
center of the ultimate snarl.
He glanced at the rearview mirror. Some kind of paneled
truck or muscle van approached, still a block away. The roof
appeared to be outfitted with an array of emergency beacons,
like those on a police vehicle.
This was a street lined with mature trees. The dappling shadows
and piercework of light rippled in veils across the moving
vehicle, making it difficult to identify.
Out on northbound lanes of the Pacific Coast Highway, a
police car passed, parting the traffic before it with emergency
beacons but not with a siren.
Behind the Honda, the worrisome vehicle cruised within half
a block, at which point Mitch could read the word ambulance
on the brow above the windshield. They were in no hurry. They
must be off duty or carrying the dead.
He exhaled a pent-up breath. The ambulance braked to a stop
behind him, and his relief was short-lived when he wondered
whether paramedics usually listened to a police scanner.
The traffic light changed to green. He crossed the southbound
lanes and turned left, north on Coast Highway.
One bead of sweat chased another down the nape of his neck,
under his collar, along the spillway of his spine.
He had traveled only a block on Coast Highway when a siren
shrilled behind him: this time, in the rearview mirror, a police
car.
Only fools led cops on a chase. They had air resources as well
as a lot of iron on the ground.
Defeated, Mitch steered toward the curb. As he vacated the
lane, the squad car shot past him and away.
From the curb, Mitch watched until the cruiser left the
highway two blocks ahead. It turned left into the north end of
the Village.
Evidently Taggart hadn't yet sufficiently recovered his wits to
give them a description of the Honda.
Mitch took a very deep breath. He took another. He wiped
the back of his neck with one hand. He blotted his hands on his
jeans.
He had assaulted a police officer.
Easing the Honda back into the northbound traffic, he
wondered if he had lost his mind. He felt resolved, and perhaps
reckless in a venturous sense, but not shortsighted. Of course,
a lunatic could not recognize madness from the inside of his
bubble.
57



After Holly extracts the nail from the plank, she turns it k over and over in her stiff sore fingers, assessing whether
or not it is as lethal as she imagined when it was sheathed in
wood.
Straight, more than three but less than four inches long, with
a thick shank, it qualifies as a spike, all right. The point is not as
sharp as, say, the wicked point of a poultry skewer, but plenty
sharp enough.
While the wind sings of violence, she spends time imagining
the ways the spike might be employed against the creep. Her
imagination is fertile enough to disturb her.
After quickly grossing herself out, she changes the subject
from the uses of the spike to the places where it might be
hidden. What value it has is the value of surprise.

Although the spike probably won't show if tucked in a pocket
of her jeans, she worries that she'll not be able to extract it
quickly in a crisis. When they had transported her from her

L
house to this place, they had bound her wrists tightly with a
scarf. If he does the same when he takes her away from here, she
will not be able to pull her hands apart and, therefore, might
not be able to get her fingers easily into a particular pocket.
Her belt offers no possibilities, but in the dark, by touch, she
considers her sneakers. She can't carry the nail inside the shoe;
it will rub and blister her foot, at the least. Maybe she can
conceal it on the outside of the shoe.
She loosens the laces on her left sneaker, carefully tucks the
nail between the tongue and one of the flaps, and reties the shoe.
When she gets to her feet and walks a circle around the ringbolt
to which she is tethered, she quickly discovers that the rigid
nail is an impediment to a smoothly flexed step. She can't avoid
limping.
Finally she pulls up her sweater and secrets the nail in her bra.
She isn't as extravagantly endowed as the average female mud
wrestler, but Nature has been more than fair. To prevent the
nail from slipping out between the cups, she presses the point
through the elastic facing, thus pinning it in place.
She has armed herself
With the task complete, her preparations seem pathetic.
Restless, she turns to the ringbolt, wondering if she can set
herself free or at least augment her meager weaponry.
With her questing hands, she had earlier determined that the
ringbolt is welded to a half-inch-thick steel plate that measures
about eight inches on a side. The plate is held to the floor by
what must be four countersunk screws.
She is unable to say with certainty that they are screws, for
some liquid has been poured into the sink around each one and
has formed a hard puddle. This denies her access to the slot in
the head of each screw, if indeed they are screws.
Discouraged, she lies on her back on the air mattress, her head
raised on the pillow portion.
Earlier, she had slept fitfully. Her emotional exhaustion breeds
physical fatigue, and she knows that she could sleep again. But she does not want to doze off.
She is afraid that she will wake only as he falls upon her.
She lies with her eyes open, though this darkness is deeper
than the one behind her eyelids, and she listens to the wind,
though there is no comfort in it.
A timeless time later, when she wakes, she is still in darkness
absolute, but she knows she isn't alone. Some subtle scent alerts
her or perhaps an intuitive sense of being encroached upon.
She sits up with a start, the air mattress squeaking under
her, the chain rattling against the floor between manacle and
ringbolt.
"It's only me," he assures her.
Holly's eyes strain at the blackness because it seems that the
gravity of his madness ought to condense the darkness around
him into something yet darker, but he remains invisible.
"I was watching you sleep," he says, "then after a while, I was
concerned that my flashlight would wake you."
Judging his position by his voice is not as easy as she might
have expected.
"This is nice," he says, "being with you in the numinous dark."
To her right. No more than three feet away. Perhaps on his
knees, perhaps standing.
'Are you afraid?" he asks.
"No," she lies without hesitation.
"You would disappoint me if you were afraid. I believe you
are arising into your full spirit, and one who is arising must be
beyond fear."
As he speaks, he seems to move behind her. She turns her
head, listening intently.
"In El Valle, New Mexico, one night the snow came down as
thick as ever it has anywhere."
If she is correct, he has moved to her right side and stands
over her, having made no sound that the wind failed to mask.
"The valley floor received six inches in four hours, and the
land was eerie in the snowlight..."
Hairs quiver, flesh prickles on the back of her neck at the
thought of him moving confidently in pitch-black conditions.
He does not reveal himself even by eyeshine, as might a cat.
". . . eerie in a way it is nowhere else in the world, the flats
receding and the low hills rising as if they are just fields of
mist and walls of fog, illusions of shapes and dimensions, reflections
of reflections, and those reflections only reflections of a
dream."
The gentle voice is in front of her now, and Holly chooses
to believe that it has not moved, that it has always been in front
of her.
Startled from sleep, she should expect her senses to be at first
unreliable. Such perfect darkness displaces sound, disorients.
He says, "The storm was windless at ground level, but
hard wind blew at higher elevations, because when the snow
abated, most of the clouds were quickly torn into rags and were
flung away. Between the remaining clouds, the sky was black,
festooned with ornate necklaces of stars."
She can feel the nail between her breasts, warmed by her body
heat, and tries to take comfort from it.
"The glassmaker had fireworks left over from the past July,
and the woman who dreamed of dead horses offered to help him
set them up and set them off."
His stories always lead somewhere, although Holly has
learned to dread their destinations.
"There were star shells, Catherine wheels, fizgigs, girandoles,
twice-changing chrysanthemums, and golden palm trees...."
His voice grows softer, and he is close now. He may be leaning
toward her, his face but a foot from her face.
"Red and green and sapphire-blue and gold bursts brightened
the black sky, but they were also colorful and diffusely reflected
on the fields of snow, soft swaths of pulsing color on the fields
of snow."
As the killer talks, Holly has the feeling that he will kiss her
here in the darkness. What will his reaction be when inevitably
she recoils in revulsion?
"Some last snow was falling, a few late flakes as big as silver
dollars, descending in wide lazy gyres. They caught the color,
too."
She leans back and turns her head aside in fearful anticipation
of the kiss. Then she thinks it might come not on her lips
but on the nape of her neck.
"Shimmering with red and blue and gold fire, the flakes slowly
glimmered to the ground, as if something magical were aflame
high in the night, some glorious palace burning on the other side
of Heaven, shedding jewel-bright embers."
He pauses, clearly expecting a response.
As long as he is kept talking, he will not kiss. Holly says, "It sounds so magnificent, so beautiful. I wish I'd
been there."
"/wish you'd been there," he agrees.
Realizing that what she's said might be taken as an invitation,
she hurries to entreat him: "There must be more. What else
happened in El Valle that night? Tell me more."
"The woman who dreamed of dead horses had a friend who
claimed to be a countess from some eastern European country.
Have you ever known a countess?"
"No."
"The countess had a problem with depression. She balanced
it by taking ecstasy. She took too much ecstasy and walked into
that field of snow transfigured by fireworks. Happier than she
had ever been in her life, she killed herself."
Another pause requires a response, and Holly can think of
nothing she dares to say except, "How sad."
"I knew you would see. Yes, sad. Sad and stupid. El Valle is a
portal that makes possible a journey to great change. On that
night, and in that special moment, transcendence was offered to
everyone present. Yet there are always some who cannot see."

"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 //--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, "ibu 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
more 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

I 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."
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 spring
field. 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
352 DEAN KOONTZ

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, "%s. 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.
353


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.
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
this 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 build
ing, 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.

L
356 DEAN KOONTZ

He did not think that the guard had seen him, and then he
was out of sight, past the corner.
The side parking lot ended at a low concrete-block wall. He
vaulted it, onto a property belonging to a fast-food franchise.
Cautioning himself not to run like a fugitive, he crossed
the parking lot, passed a queue of vehicles waiting in line for
takeout, the air redolent of exhaust fumes and greasy French
fries, rounded the back of the restaurant, came to another low
wall, vaulted it.
Ahead lay a small strip center with six or eight stores. He
slowed down, looking in the windows as he passed, just a guy
out on an errand, with one point four million to spend.

As he came to the end of the block, a squad car went by
on the main boulevard, emergency beacons flashing red-blue,
red-blue, red-blue, heading in the direction of the gun shop. And
immediately behind it sped another one.
Mitch turned left on the small cross street, away from the
boulevard. He picked up his pace again.
The commercial zone was only one lot wide, facing the boulevard.
Behind lay a residential neighborhood.
In the first block were condos and apartment houses. After
that he found single-family homes, most of them two stories,
occasionally a bungalow.
The street trees were huge old podocarpuses that cast a lot of
shade. Most lawns were green, trimmed, shrubs well kept. But
every community has landscape slobs eager to exert their rights
to be bad neighbors.
When the police didn't find him at the gun shop, they would
357


search surrounding neighborhoods. In a few minutes, they could
have half a dozen or more units cruising the area.
He had assaulted a police officer. They tended to put his kind
at the top of their priority list.
Most of the vehicles parked on this residential street were
SUVs. He slowed down, squinting through the passenger-door
windows at the ignitions, hoping to spot a key.
When he glanced at his watch, he saw the time was 1:14. The
exchange was set for 3:00, and now he didn't have wheels.
60


The ride lasts about fifteen minutes, and Holly, bound and
blindfolded, is too busy scheming to consider a scream.

This time when her lunatic chauffeur stops, she hears him put
the van in park and apply the hand brake. He gets out, leaving
his door open.

In Rio Lucio, New Mexico, a saintly woman named Ermina
Something lives in a blue-and-green or maybe blue-and-yellow
stucco house. She is seventy-two.

The killer returns to the van and drives it forward about
twenty feet, and then gets out again.

In Ermina Something's living room are maybe forty-two or
thirty-nine images of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, pierced by
thorns.

This has given Holly an idea. The idea is daring. And scary.
But it feels right.

When the killer returns to the van, Holly guesses that he has
opened a gate to admit them to someplace, and then has closed
it behind them.
In Ermina Something's backyard, the killer buried a "treasure"
of which the old woman would not approve. Holly wonders
what that treasure might be, but hopes she will never know.
The van coasts forward maybe sixty feet, on an unpaved
surface. Small stones crunch together and rattle under the tires.
He stops again and this time switches off the engine. "We're
here."
"Good," she says, for she is trying to play this not as if she is
a frightened hostage but as if she is a woman whose spirit is
arising to its fullness.
He unlocks the back door and helps her out of the van.
The warm wind smells vaguely of wood smoke. Maybe
canyons are afire far to the east.
For the first time in more than twenty-four hours, she feels
sun on her face. The sun feels so good she could cry.
Supporting her right arm, escorting her in an almost courtly
fashion, he leads her across bare earth, through weeds. Then
they follow a hard surface with a vague limy smell.
When they stop, a strange muffled sound is repeated three
times--thup, thup, thup -- accompanied by splintering-wood and
shrieking-metal noises.
"What's that?" she asks.
"I shot open the door."
Now she knows what a pistol fitted with a silencer sounds
like. Thup, thup, thup. Three shots.
He conducts her across the threshold of the place into which
he has shot his way. "Not much farther."
The echoes of their slow footsteps give her a sense of
cavernous spaces. "It feels like a church."
"In a way it is," he says. "We are in the cathedral of excessive
exuberance."
She smells plaster and sawdust. She can still hear the wind,
but the walls must be well insulated and the windows triple
pane, for the blustery voice is muted.
Eventually they come into a space that sounds smaller than
those before it, with a lower ceiling.
After halting her, the killer says, "Wait here." He lets go of
her arm.
She hears a familiar sound that makes her heart sink: the
rattle of a chain.
Here the scent of sawdust is not as strong as in previous
spaces, but when she remembers their threat to cut off her
fingers, she wonders if the room contains a table saw.
"One point four million dollars," she says calculatedly. "That
buys a lot of seeking."
"It buys a lot of everything," he replies.
He touches her arm again, and she does not recoil. Around
her left wrist, he wraps a chain and makes some kind of connection.
"When
there's always a need to work," she says, "there's never
really time to seek," and though she knows this is ignorance, she
hopes it is the kind of ignorance to which he relates.
"Work is a toad squatting on our lives," he says, and she knows
she has struck a chord with him.
He unties the scarf that binds her hands, and she thanks him.
When he removes her blindfold, she squints and blinks,
adjusting to the light, and discovers that she's in a house under
construction.
After entering this place, he has put on his ski mask again.
He is at least pretending that she can choose her husband over
him and that he will let them live.
"This would have been the kitchen," he says.

The space is enormous for a kitchen, maybe fifty feet by thirty
feet, the ultimate for catering large parties. The limestone floor
is adrift in dust. Finished drywall is in place, although no cabinets
or appliances have been installed.
A metal pipe about two inches in diameter, perhaps a gas line,
protrudes from low in a wall. The other end of her chain has
been padlocked to this pipe, as it was padlocked to her wrist.
The metal cap on the end of the pipe, almost a full inch wider
than the pipe itself, prevents the chain from being slipped
loose.
He has given her eight feet of links. She can sit, stand, and
even move around a little.
"Where are we?" she wonders.
"The Turnbridge house."
"Ah. But why? Do you have some connection with it?"
"I've been here a few times," he says, "though I've always made
a more discreet entrance than shooting out the lock. He draws
me. He's still here."
"Who?"
"Turnbridge. He hasn't moved on. His spirit's here, curled up
tight on itself like one of the ten thousand dead pill bugs that
litter the place."
Holly says, "I've been thinking about Ermina in Rio Lucio."
"Ermina Lavato."
"Yes," she says, as if she had not forgotten the surname. "I can
almost see the rooms of her house, each a different soothing
color. I don't know why I keep thinking of her."
Within his knitted mask, his blue eyes regard her with feverish
intensity.
Closing her eyes, standing with her arms limp at her sides and
with her face tilted toward the ceiling, she speaks in a murmur.
"I can see her bedroom walls covered with images of the Holy
Mother."
"Forty-two," he says.
"And there are candles, aren't there?" she guesses.
"es. Votive candles."
"It's a lovely room. She's happy there."
"She's very poor," he says, "but happier than any rich man."
"And her quaint kitchen from the 1920s, the aroma of chicken
fajitas." She takes a deep breath, savoring, and lets it out.
He says nothing.
Opening her eyes, Holly says, "I've never been there, I've
never met her. Why can't I get her and her house out of my
mind?"
His continued silence begins to worry her. She is afraid that
she has overacted, struck a false note.
Finally he says, "Sometimes people who've never met can
resonate with each other."
She considers the word: "Resonate."
"In one sense, you live far from her, but in another sense you
might be neighbors."
If Holly reads him right, she has sparked more interest than
suspicion. Of course, it may be a fatal mistake to think that she
can ever read him right.
363


"Strange," she says, and drops the subject.
He wets his peeled lips with his tongue, licks them again, and
yet again. Then: "I've got some preparations to make. I'm sorry
for the chain. It won't be necessary much longer."
After he has left the kitchen, she listens to his footsteps
fading through vast hollow rooms.
The cold shakes seize her. She isn't able to get them under
control, and the links of her chain sing against one another.
61



Mitch in the shuddering shade of the wind-tossed
podocarpuses, squinting through windows, finally
began to test the doors of the vehicles parked at the curb. When
they weren't locked, he opened them and leaned inside.
If keys weren't in the ignition, they might be in a cup holder
or tucked behind a sun visor. Each time that he didn't find keys
in those places, either, he closed the door and moved on.
Born of desperation, his boldness nevertheless surprised him.
Because a police car might turn one corner or another momentarily,
however, caution rather than assurance would be his
downfall.
He hoped that these residents were not people with a sense
of community, that they had not joined the Neighborhood
Watch program. Their police mentor would have coached them
to notice and report suspicious specimens exactly like him.
For laid-back southern California, for low-crime Newport
Beach, a depressing percentage of these people locked their
parked cars. Their paranoia gradually began to piss him off.
When he had gone over two blocks, he saw ahead a Lexus
parked in a driveway, the engine idling, the driver's door open.
No one sat behind the wheel.
The garage door also stood open. He cautiously approached
the car, but no one was in the garage, either. The driver had
dashed back into the house for a forgotten item.
The Lexus would be reported stolen within minutes, but
the cops wouldn't be looking for it immediately. There would
be a process for reporting a stolen car; a process was part of
a system, a system the work of a bureaucracy, the business of
bureaucracy delay.
He might have a couple of hours before the plates were on a
hot sheet. He needed no more time than two hours.
Because the car faced the street, he slipped behind the wheel,
dropped the trash bag on the passenger's seat, pulled the door
shut, and rolled at once out of the driveway, turning right, away
from the boulevard and the gun shop.
At the corner, ignoring the stop sign, he turned right once
more and went a third of a block before he heard a thin shaky
voice in the backseat say, "What is your name, honey?"
An elderly man slumped in a corner. He wore Coke-bottle
glasses, a hearing aid, and his pants just under his breasts. He
appeared to be a hundred years old. Time had shrunken him,
though not every part in proportion to every other.
"Oh, you're Debbie," the old man said. "Where are we going,
Debbie?"
Crime led to more crime, and here were the wages of crime:
certain destruction. Mitch himself had now become a kidnapper.
"Are we going to the pie store?" the old man inquired, a note
of hope in his quavery voice.
Maybe some Alzheimer's was happening here.
"Yes," Mitch said, "we're going to the pie store," and he turned
right again at the next corner.
"I like pie."
"Everybody likes pie," Mitch agreed.
If his heart had not been knocking hard enough to hurt, if his
wife's life had not depended on his remaining free, if he had not
expected to encounter roving police at any moment, and if he
had not expected them to shoot first and discuss the fine points
of his civil rights later, he might have found this amusing. But it
wasn't amusing; it was surreal.
"You aren't Debbie," the old man said. "I'm Norman, but
you're not Debbie."
"No. You're right. I'm not."
"Who are you?"
"I'm just a guy who made a mistake."
Norman thought about that until Mitch turned right at the
third corner, and then he said, "You're gonna hurt me. That's
what you're gonna do."
The fear in the old man's voice inspired pity. "No, no. Nobody
is gonna hurt you."
"You're gonna hurt me, you're a bad man."
"No, I just made a mistake. I'm taking you right back home,"
Mitch assured him.
"Where are we? This isn't home. We're nowhere near home."
The voice, to this point wispy, suddenly gained volume and shrillness. "You're a badsonofabitch!"
"Don't get yourself worked up. Please don't." Mitch felt sorry
for the old man, responsible for him. "We're almost there. "You'll
be home in a minute."
"You're a badsonofabitchl You're a bad' sonofabitch!"
At the fourth corner, Mitch turned right, onto the street
where he'd stolen the car.
"YOU'RE A BAD SONOFABITCH!"
In the desiccated depths of that time-ravaged body, Norman
found the voice of a bellowing youth.
"YOU'REA BAD SONOFABITCH!"
"Please, Norman. You're gonna give yourself a heart attack."
He had hoped to be able to pull the car into the driveway and
leave it where he'd found it, with nobody the wiser. But a woman
had come out of the house into the street. She spotted him
turning the corner.
She looked terrified. She must have thought that Norman had
gotten behind the wheel.
"YOU'RE A BAD SONOFABITCH, A BAD, BAD SONOFABITCH!"
Mitch
stopped in the street near the woman, put the car in
park, tramped on the emergency brake, grabbed the trash bag,
and got out, leaving the door open behind him.
Fortysomething, slightly stout, she was an attractive woman
with Rod Stewart hair that a beautician had painstakingly
streaked with blond highlights. She wore a business suit and
heels too high to be sensible for a trip to the pie store.
'Are you Debbie?" Mitch asked.
Bewildered, she said, 'Am I Debbie?"
Maybe there was no Debbie.
Norman still shrieked in the car, and Mitch said, "I'm so sorry.
Big mistake."
He walked away from her, toward the first of the four corners
around which he had driven Norman, and heard her say
"Grandpapa? Are you all right, Grandpapa?"
When he reached the stop sign, he turned and saw the woman
leaning in the car, comforting the old man.
Mitch rounded the corner and hurried out of her line of sight.
Not running. Walking briskly.
A block later, as he reached the next corner, a horn blared
behind him. The woman was pursuing him in the Lexus.
He could see her through the windshield: one hand on the
wheel, the other holding a cell phone. She was not calling her
sister in Omaha. She was not calling for a time check. She was
calling 911.
62



Leaning into the resisting wind, Mitch hurried along the
sidewalk, and miraculously escaped being stung when a
violent gust shook a cloud of bees out of a tree nest.
The determined woman in the Lexus stayed far enough back
that she could hang a U-turn and elude him if he changed
directions and sprinted toward her, but she maintained sight of
him. He started to run, and she accelerated to match his pace.
Evidently she intended to keep him located until the police arrived. Mitch admired her guts even though he wanted to shoot
out her tires.
The cops would be here soon. Having found his Honda, they
knew that he was in the area. The attempted theft of a Lexus
just a few blocks from the gun shop would ring all their bells.
The car horn blared, blared again, and then relentlessly. She
hoped to alert her neighbors to the presence of a criminal
in their midst. The over-the-top urgency of the horn blasts
suggested Osama bin Laden was loose on the street.
Mitch left the sidewalk, crossed a yard, opened a gate, and
hurried around the side of a house, hoping he wouldn't find a pit
bull in the backyard. No doubt most pit bulls were as nice as
nuns, but considering the way his luck was cutting, he wouldn't
run into Sister Pit but instead would stumble over a demon dog.
The backyard proved to be shallow, encircled by a seven-foot
cedar fence with pointed staves. He didn't see a gate. After tying
the twisted neck of the trash bag to his belt, he climbed into a
coral tree, crossed the fence on a limb, and dropped into an alley.
Police would expect him to prefer these service alleys to
streets, so he couldn't use them.
He passed through a vacant lot, sheltered by the weeping
boughs of long-untrimmed California pepper trees, which
whirled and flounced like the many-layered skirts of eighteenth
century dancers in a waltz.
As he was crossing the next street in midblock, a police car
swept through the intersection to the east. The shriek of its
brakes told him that he had been seen.
Across a yard, over a fence, across an alley, through a gate,
across a yard, across another street, very fast now, the plastic
bag slapping against his leg. He worried that it would split,
spilling bricks of hundred-dollar bills.
The last line of houses backed up to a small canyon, about
two hundred feet deep and three hundred wide. He scaled a
wrought-iron fence and was at once on a steep slope of loose
eroded soil. Gravity and sliding earth carried him down.
Like a surfer chasing bliss along the treacherous face of a fully
macking monolith, he tried to stay upright, but the sandy earth
proved to be not as accommodating as the sea. His feet went
out from under him, and on his back he slid the last ten yards,
raising a wake of white dust, then thrashed feetfirst through a
sudden wall of tall grass and taller weeds.
He came to a stop under a canopy of branches. From high
above, the floor of the canyon had appeared to be choked with
greenery, but Mitch hadn't expected large trees. Yet in addition
to some of the scrub trees and brush that he had envisioned, he
found an eclectic forest.
California buckeyes were garlanded with fragrant white flowers.
Bristling windmill palms thrived with California laurels and
black myrobalan plums. Many of the trees were gnarled and
twisted and rough, junk specimens, as though the urban-canyon
soil fed mutagens to their roots, but there were acer japonicums
and Tasmanian snow gums that he would have been pleased to
use in any high-end landscaping job.
A few rats scattered on his arrival, and a snake slithered away
through the shadows. Maybe a rattlesnake. He couldn't be sure.
While he remained in the cover of the trees, no one could see
him from the canyon rim. He no longer was at risk of immediate
apprehension.
So many branches of different trees interlaced that even the
raging wind could not peel back the canopy and let the sun shine
in directly. The light was green and watery. Shadows trembled,
swayed like sea anemones.
A shallow stream slipped through the canyon, no surprise this
recently after the rainy season. The water table might be so close
to the surface here that a small artesian well maintained the flow
all year.
He untied the plastic trash-can liner from his belt and examined
it. The bag had been punctured in three places and had
sustained a one-inch tear, but nothing seemed to have fallen
out of it.
Mitch fashioned a loose temporary knot in the neck of the
bag and carried it against his body, in the crook of his left arm.
As he remembered the lay of the land, the canyon narrowed
and the floor rose dramatically toward the west. The purling
water eased lazily from that direction, and he paralleled it at a
faster pace.
A damp carpet of dead leaves cushioned his step. The pleasant
melange of moist earth, wet leaves, and sporing toadstools
gave weight to the air.
Although the population of Orange County exceeded three
million, the bottom of the canyon felt so remote that he might
have been miles from civilization. Until he heard the helicopter.
He was surprised they were up in this wind.
Judging by sound alone, the chopper crossed the canyon
directly over Mitch's head. It went north and circled the
neighborhood through which he'd made his run, swelling
louder, fading, then louder again.
They were searching for him from the air, but in the wrong
place. They didn't know he'd descended into the canyon.
He kept moving--but then halted and cried out softly in
surprise when Anson's phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket,
relieved that he hadn't lost or damaged it.
"This is Mitch."
Jimmy Null said, 'Are you feeling hopeful?"
"Yes. Let me talk to Holly."

"Not this time. You'll see her soon. I'm moving the meet from
three to two o'clock."
"You can't do that."
"I just did it."
"What time is it now?"
"One-thirty," Jimmy Null said.
"Hey, no, I can't make two o'clock."
"Why not? Anson's place is only minutes from the Turnbridge
house."
"I'm not at Anson's place."
"Where are you, what are you doing?" Null asked.
Feet planted wide in wet leaves, Mitch said, "Driving around,
passing time."
"That's stupid. You should've stayed at his place, been ready."
"Make it two-thirty. I've got the money right here. A million
four. I've got it with me."
"Let me tell you something."
Mitch waited, and when Null didn't go on, he said, "What?
Tell me what?"
"About the money. Let me tell you something about the
money."
'M right."
"I don't live for money. I've got some money. There are things
that mean more to me than money."
Something was wrong. Mitch had felt it before, when talking
to Holly, when she had sounded constrained and had not told
him that she loved him.»
"Listen, I've come so far, we've come so far, it's only right we
finish this."
"Two o'clock," Null said. "That's the new time. You aren't
where you need to be at two sharp, it's over. No second chance."
"All right."
"Two o'clock."
"All right."
Jimmy Null terminated the call.
Mitch ran.
63

C

hained to the gas pipe, Holly knows what she must do,
what she will do, and therefore she can pass her time
only by worrying about all the ways things could go wrong or by
marveling at what she can see of the uncompleted mansion.
Thomas Turnbridge would have had one fantastic kitchen
if he had lived. When all the equipment had been installed, a
high-end caterer with platoons of staff could have cooked and
served from here a sit-down dinner for six hundred on the
terraces.
Turnbridge had been a dot-com billionaire. The company that
he founded--and that made him rich--produced no product,
but it had been on the cutting edge of advertising applications
for the Internet.
By the time Forbes estimated Turnbridge's net worth at three
billion, he was buying homes on a dramatic Pacific-view bluff
in an established neighborhood. He bought nine, side by side,
by paying more than twice the going price. He spent over sixty
million dollars on the houses and tore them down to make a
single three-acre estate, a parcel with few if any equals on the
southern California coast.
A major architectural firm committed a team of thirty to the
design of a three-level house encompassing eighty-five thousand
square feet, a figure that excluded the massive subterranean
garages and mechanical plant. It was to be in the style of an
Alberto Pinto-designed residence in Brazil.
Such elements as interior-exterior waterfalls, an underground
shooting range, and an indoor ice-skating rink required heroic
work of the structural, systems, and soil engineers. Two years
were required for plans. During the first two years of construction,
the builder worked solely on the foundation and subterranean
spaces.
No budget. Turnbridge spent whatever was required.
Exquisite marbles and granites were purchased in matched
lots. The exterior of the house would be clad in French limestone;
sixty seamless limestone columns, from plinth to abacus,
were fabricated at a cost of seventy thousand dollars each.
Turnbridge had been as passionately committed to the company
he had created as to the house he was building. He believed
it would become one of the ten largest corporations in the world.
He believed this even after a rapidly evolving Internet exposed
flaws in his business model. From the start, he sold his shares
only to finance lifestyle, not to broaden investments. When his
company's stock price fell, he borrowed to buy more shares at
market. The price fell further, and he leveraged more purchases.
When the share price never recovered and the company
imploded, Turnbridge was ruined. Construction of the house
came to a halt.
Pursued by creditors, investors, and an angry ex-wife, Thomas
Turnbridge came home to his unfinished house, sat in a folding
chair on the master-bedroom balcony, and with a 240-degree
ocean-and-city-lights view to enchant him, washed down an
overdose of barbiturates with an icy bottle of Dom Perignon.
Carrion birds found him a day before his ex-wife did.
Although the three-acre coastal property is a plum, it has not
sold after Turnbridge's death. A snarl of lawsuits entangle it. The
actual value of the land now appraises at the sixty million dollars
that Turnbridge overpaid for it, which allows only a small pool
of potential buyers.
To complete this project as specified in the plans, a buyer will
need to spend fifty million on the finish work, so he better like
the style. If he demos existing construction and starts again, he
needs to be prepared to spend five million on top of the sixty
million for the land, because he will be dealing with steel-and
concrete construction meant to ride out an 8.2 quake with no
damage.
As a hope-to-be real-estate agent, Holly doesn't dream of
getting the commission for the Turnbridge house. She will be
content selling properties in middle-class neighborhoods to
people who are thrilled to have their own homes.
In fact, if she could trade her modest real-estate dream for a
guarantee that she and Mitch would survive the ransom
exchange, she would be content to remain a secretary. She is a
good secretary and a good wife; she will try hard to be a good
mom, too, and she will be happy with that, with life, with love.
But no such deal can be made; her fate remains in her own
hands, literally and figuratively. She will have to act when the
time comes for action. She has a plan. She is ready for the risk,
the pain, the blood.
The creep returns. He has put on a gray windbreaker and a
pair of thin, supple gloves.
She is sitting on the floor when he enters, but she gets to her
feet as he approaches her.
Violating the concept of personal space, he stands as close to
Holly as a man would stand just before taking her in his arms to
dance.
"In Duvijio and Eloisa Pacheco's house in Rio Lucio, there
are two red wooden chairs in the living room, railback chairs
with carved cape tops."
He places his right hand on her left shoulder, and she is glad
that it is gloved.
"On one red chair," he continues, "stands a cheap ceramic
figurine of Saint Anthony. On the companion chair stands a
ceramic of a boy dressed for church."
"Who is the boy?"
"The figurine represents their son, also named Anthony,
who was run down and killed by a drunk driver when he was six.
That was fifty years ago, when Duvijio and Eloisa were in their
twenties."
Not yet a mother but hopeful of being one, she cannot imagine
the pain of such a loss, the horror of its suddenness. She says,
'A shrine."
"Yes, a shrine of red chairs. No one has sat in those chairs in
fifty years. The chairs are for the two figurines."
"The two Anthonys," she corrects.
He may not recognize it as a correction.
"Imagine," he says, "the grief and the hope and the love and
the despair that have been focused on those figurines. Half a
century of intense yearning has imbued those objects with
tremendous power."
She remembers the girl in the lace-trimmed dress, buried with
the Saint Christopher medal and the Cinderella figurine.
"I will visit Duvijio and Eloisa one day when they are not
home, and take the ceramic of the boy."
This man is many things, including a cruel strip-miner of
other people's faith and hope and treasured memories.
"I have no interest in the other Anthony, the saint, but the
boy is a totem of magical potential. I will take the boy to
Espanola--"
"Where your life will change again."
"Profoundly," he says. 'And perhaps not only my life."
She closes her eyes and whispers, "Red chairs," as if she is
picturing the scene.
This seems to be encouragement enough for him right now,
because after a silence, he says, "Mitch will be here in a little
more than twenty minutes."
Her heart races at this news, but her hope is tempered by her
fear, and she does not open her eyes.
"I'll go now to watch for him. He'll bring the money into this
room--and then it will be time to decide."
"In Espanola, is there a woman with two white dogs?"
"Is that what you see?"
"Dogs that seem to vanish in the snow."
"I don't know. But if you see them, then I'm sure they must
be in Espanola."
"I see myself laughing with her, and the dogs so white." She
opens her eyes and meets his. "bu better go watch for him."
"Twenty minutes," he promises, and leaves the kitchen.
Holly stands quite still for a moment, amazed by herself.
White dogs, indeed. Where had that come from? White dogs
and a laughing woman.
She almost laughs now at his gullibility, but there is no humor
in the fact that she has gotten inside his head deep enough to
know what imagery will work with him. That she could travel in
his mad world at all does not seem entirely admirable.
The shakes seize her, and she sits down. Her hands are cold,
and a chill traces every turn of her bowels.
She reaches under her sweater, between her breasts, and
extracts the nail from her bra.
Although the nail is sharp, she wishes it were sharper. She has
no means to file it to a keener point.
Using the head of the nail, she scratches industriously at the
drywall until she has produced a small pile of powdered plaster.
The time has come.
When Holly was a little girl, for a while she feared an array of
night monsters born of a good imagination: in closet, under bed,
at the windows.
Her grandmother, good Dorothy, had taught her a poem that,
she claimed, would repel every monster: vaporize those in the
closet, turn to dust those under the bed, and send those at the
windows away to swamps and caves where they belonged.
Tears later, Holly learned that this poem, which cured her fear
of monsters, was titled "A Soldier--His Prayer." It had been
HUSBAND
381


written by an unknown British soldier and had been found on a
slip of paper in a trench in Tunisia during the battle of El Agheila. Quietly but aloud, she recites it now:

"Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold: My little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me, God, and make me strong."

She hesitates then, but only for a moment.
The time has come.

64



Shoes caked with mud and wet leaves, clothes rumpled and
dirty, a white trash bag cradled in his arms and pressed
against his chest as if it were a precious baby, eyes so bright with
desperation that they might have been lamps to light his way if
this had been night, Mitch hurried along the shoulder of the
highway.
No officer of the law, happening to drive past, would fail to
give him special scrutiny. He had the look of a fugitive or a
madman, or both.
Fifty yards ahead stood a combination service station and
minimart. Advertising a tire sale, scores of bright pennants
snapped in the wind.
He wondered if ten thousand dollars cash would buy him a
ride to the Turnbridge house. Probably not. The way he looked,
most people would expect him to kill them en route.
A guy looking like a hobo, waving around ten thousand bucks,
wanting to buy a ride, would make the station manager nervous.
He might call the cops.
Yet buying a ride seemed to be his only option other than
carjacking someone at gunpoint, which he would not do. The
owner of the car might foolishly grab for the gun and be
accidentally shot.
As he drew near the service station, a Cadillac Escalade angled
off the highway and stopped at the outermost pumps. A tall
blonde got out, clutching her purse, and strode into the mini
mart, leaving the driver's door open.
The two rows of pumps were both self-service. No attendants
were in sight.
Another customer was fueling a Ford Explorer. He focused
on his windows, working with a squeegee.
Mitch shambled up to the Escalade and peered through the
open door. The keys were in the ignition.
Leaning inside, he checked the backseat. No grandpapa, no
child in a safety seat, no pit bull.
He climbed in behind the wheel, pulled the door shut, started
the engine, and drove onto the highway.
Although he half expected people to run after him, waving
their arms and shouting, the rearview mirror revealed no one.
The highway was divided. He considered driving over the
median planter strip. The Escalade could handle it. Fate being
what fate is, a patrol car would happen by at just that moment.
He sped north a few hundred yards to a turning lane, and then
headed south.
When he passed the service station, no tall angry blonde had
yet put in an appearance. He raced past, but with respect for
the posted speed limit.
Ordinarily, he was not an impatient driver who ranted at slow
384 DEAN KOONTZ

or clueless motorists. During this trip, he wished upon them all
kinds of plagues and hideous misfortunes.
By 1:56, he arrived in the neighborhood where Turnbridge's
folly stood incomplete. Out of sight of the mansion, he pulled
to the curb.
Cursing the stubborn buttons, he stripped out of his shirt.
Jimmy Null would most likely make him take it off anyway, to
prove that he was not concealing a weapon.
He had been told to come unarmed. He wanted to appear to
be in compliance with that demand.
From the trash bag, he retrieved the box of .45 ammunition,
and from a pocket of his jeans, he withdrew the original magazine
for the Springfield Champion. He added three cartridges
to the seven already in the magazine.
A movie memory served him well. He pulled back the slide
and inserted an eleventh round in the chamber.
The cartridges slipped in his sweaty trembling fingers, so he
had time to load only two of the three spare magazines. He
stashed the box of ammo and the extra magazine under the
driver's seat.
One minute till two o'clock.
He shoved the two loaded magazines in the pockets of his
jeans, put the loaded pistol in the bag with the money, twisted
the top of the bag but didn't knot it, and drove to the Turnbridge
place.
A long chain-link construction fence fitted with privacy
panels of green plastic fabric separated the street from the big
Turnbridge property. The nearby residents who had put up
with this ugliness for years must wish the entrepreneur hadn't

-J

killed himself if only so they could now torment him with
lawyers and neighborly invective.
The gate was closed, draped with chain. As Jimmy Null promised,
it wasn't locked.
Mitch drove onto the property and parked with the back of
the SUV facing the house. He got out and opened all five doors,
hoping by this gesture to express his desire to fulfill the terms of
the agreement to the best of his ability.
He closed the construction gate and draped the chain in place
once more.
Carrying the trash bag, he walked to a spot between the
Escalade and the house, stopped, and waited.
The day was warm, not hot, but the sun was hard. The light
cut at his eyes, and the wind.
Anson's cell phone rang.
He took the call. "This is Mitch."
Jimmy Null said, "It's a minute past two. Oh, now it's two past.
You're late."
65



The unfinished house appeared as large as a hotel. Jimmy
Null could have been watching Mitch from any of scores
of windows.
"You were supposed to come in your Honda," he said.
"It broke down."

"Where'd you get the Escalade?"
"Stole it."
"No shit."
"None."
"Park it parallel to the house, so I can see straight through
the front and back seats."
Mitch did as told, leaving the doors open as he repositioned
the vehicle. He stepped away from the SUV and waited with the
trash bag, the phone to his ear.
He wondered if Null would shoot him dead from a distance
and come take the money. He wondered why he wouldn't do that.
"I'm disturbed you didn't come in the Honda."

"I told you, it broke down."
"What happened?"
"Flat tire. You brought the swap forward an hour, so I didn't
have time to change it."
"A stolen car--the cops could have chased your ass here."
"No one saw me take it."
"Where'd you learn to hot-wire a car?"
"The keys were in the ignition."
Null considered in silence. Then: "Enter the house by the
front door. Stay on the phone."
Mitch saw that the door had been shot open. He went inside.
The entry hall was immense. Although no finish work had
been done, even Julian Campbell would have been impressed.
After leaving Mitch to stew for a minute, Jimmy Null said,
"Pass through the colonnade into the living room directly ahead
of you."
Mitch went into the living room, where the west windows
extended floor to ceiling. Even through dusty glass, the view was
so stunning that he could understand why Turnbridge had
wanted to die with it.
'All right. I'm here."
"Turn left and cross the room," Null directed. 'A wide doorway
leads into a secondary drawing room."
None of the doors were hung. Those separating these two
rooms would have to be nine feet tall to fill the opening.
When Mitch reached the drawing room, which offered an
equally spectacular view, Null said, "You'll see another wide
doorway across from the one you're standing in, and a single
door to your left."
"Yes."
"The single leads to a hallway. The hall passes other rooms
and leads to the kitchen. She's in the kitchen. But don't go
near her."
Moving across the drawing room toward the specified doorway,
Mitch said, "Why not?"
"Because I'm still making the rules. She's chained to a pipe. I
have the key. %u stop just inside the kitchen."
The hallway seemed to recede from him the farther he followed
it, but he knew the telescoping effect had to be psychological.
He was frantic to see Holly.
He didn't look in any of the rooms he passed. Null might have
been in one of them. It didn't matter.
When Mitch entered the kitchen, he saw her at once, and his
heart swelled, and his mouth went dry. Everything that he had
been through, every pain that he had suffered, every terrible
thing that he had done was in that instant all worthwhile.
66



Because the creep arrives in the kitchen to stand beside
her during the last of his phone conversation, Holly hears
him give the final directions.
She holds her breath, listening for footsteps. When she hears
Mitch approaching, hot tears threaten, but she blinks them
back.
A moment later Mitch enters the room. He says her name so
tenderly. Her husband.
She has stood with her arms crossed over her breasts, her
hands fisted in her armpits. Now she lowers her arms and stands
with her hands fisted at her sides.
The creep, who has drawn a wicked-looking pistol, is intently
focused on Mitch. 'Arms straight out like a bird."
Mitch obeys, a white trash bag dangling from his right hand.
His clothes are filthy. His hair is windblown. His face has lost
all color. He is beautiful.
The killer says, "Come slowly forward."
As instructed, Mitch approaches, and the creep tells him to
stop fifteen feet away.
As Mitch halts, the killer says, "Put the bag on the floor."
Mitch lowers the bag to the dusty limestone. It settles but
does not flop open.
Covering Mitch with the pistol, the killer says, "I want to see
the money. Kneel in front of the bag."
Holly doesn't like to see Mitch kneeling. This is the position
that executioners instruct their victims to take before the coup
de grace.
She must act, but the time feels not quite right. If she makes
her move too soon, the scheme might fail. Instinct tells her to
wait, though waiting with Mitch on his knees is so hard.
"Show me the money," the killer says, and he has a two-hand
grip on the pistol, finger tightened on the trigger.
Mitch opens the neck of the bag and withdraws a plastic
wrapped brick of cash. He tears off one end of the plastic, and
riffles the hundred-dollar bills with his thumb.
"The bearer bonds?" the killer asks.
Mitch drops the cash into the sack.
The creep tenses, thrusting the pistol forward as Mitch
reaches into the bag again, and he does not relax even when
Mitch produces only a large envelope.
From the envelope, Mitch extracts half a dozen official
looking certificates. He holds one forward for the killer to read.
'All right. Put them back in the envelope."
Mitch obeys, still on his knees.
The creep says, "Mitch, if your wife had a chance for previTHE HUSBAND 391

ously undreamed-of personal fulfillment, the opportunity for
enlightenment, for transcendence, surely you would want her to
follow that better destiny."
Bewildered by this turn, Mitch does not know what to say,
but Holly does. The time has come.
She says, "I've been sent a sign, my future is New Mexico."
Raising her hands from her sides, opening her fists, she reveals
her bloody wounds.
An involuntary cry escapes Mitch, the killer glances at Holly,
and her stigmata drip for his astonishment.
The nail holes are not superficial, though they don't go all the
way through her hands. She stabbed herself and worked the
wounds with brutal determination.
The worst had been having to bite back every cry of pain. If
he had heard her agony expressed, the killer would have come
to see what she was doing.
At once, the wounds had bled too much. She had packed them
with powdered plaster to stop the bleeding. Before the plaster
worked, blood had dripped on the floor, but she had covered it
with a quick redistribution of the thick dust.
With her hands fisted in her armpits, as Mitch entered the
room, Holly had clawed the plugs of plaster from the wounds,
tearing them open once more.
Blood flows now for the killer's fascination, and Holly says,
"In Espanola, where your life will change, lives a woman named
Rosa Gonzales with two white dogs."
With her left hand, she pulls down the neck of her sweater,
revealing cleavage.
His gaze rises from her breasts to her eyes.
She slips her right hand between her breasts, palms the nail,
and fears not being able to hold it in her slippery fingers.
The killer glances at Mitch.
She grips the nail well enough, reveals it, and rams it into the
killer's face, going for his eye, but instead pinning his mask to
him, piercing the hollow of his cheek and ripping.
Screaming, tongue flailing on the nail, he reels back from her,
and his pistol fires wildly, bullets thudding into walls.
She sees Mitch rising and moving fast, with a gun of his own.
67



Mitch shouted, "Holly, move," and she was moving on the
first syllable of Holly, separating herself from Jimmy
Null as much as her chain allowed.
Point-blank, aiming abdomen, hitting chest, pulling down
from the recoil, firing again, pulling down, firing, firing, he
thought a couple of shots went wide, but saw three or four
rounds tearing into the windbreaker, each roar so big booming
through the big house.
Null reeled backward, off balance. His pistol had an extended
magazine. It seemed to be fully automatic. Bullets stitched a
wall, part of the ceiling.
Because he now had only a one-hand grip on the weapon,
maybe the recoil tore it from him, maybe he lost all strength,
but for whatever reason, it flew The gun hit the wall, clattered
to the limestone.
Driven backward by the impact of the .45s, rocked on his
heels, Null staggered, dropped on his side, rolled onto his face.
When the echoes of the echoes of the gunfire faded, Mitch



could hear Jimmy Null's ragged wheezing. Maybe that was how
you breathed when you had a fatal chest wound.
Mitch wasn't proud of what he did next, didn't even take any
savage delight in it. In fact he almost didn't do it, but he knew
that almost would buy no dispensation when the time came to
reckon for the way he lived his life.
He stepped over the wheezing man and shot him twice in the
back. He would have shot him a third time, but he had expended
all eleven rounds in the pistol.
Crouching defensively during the gunfire, Holly rose to meet
Mitch as he turned to her.
"Anyone else?" he asked.
"Just him, just him."
She exploded into him, threw her arms around him. He had
never before been held so tight, with such sweet ferocity.
"Your hands."
"They're okay."
"Your hands," he insisted.
"They're okay, you're alive, they're okay."
He kissed every part of her face. Her mouth, her eyes, her
brow, her eyes again, salty now with tears, her mouth.
The room stank of gunfire, a dead man lay on the floor, Holly
was bleeding, and Mitch's legs felt weak. He wanted fresh air,
the brisk wind, sunshine to kiss her in.
"Let's get out of here," he said.
"The chain."
A small stainless-steel padlock coupled the links around her
wrist.
"He has the key," she said.
Staring at the body, Mitch withdrew a spare magazine from a
pocket of his jeans. He ejected the spent clip, replaced it with
the fresh.
Pressing the muzzle against the back of the kidnapper's head,
he said, "One move, I'll blow your brains out," but of course he
got no answer.
Nevertheless, he pressed hard on the gun and, with his free
hand, was able to search the side pockets of the windbreaker.
He found the key in the second one.
The chain fell away from her wrist as the dropped padlock
rapped the limestone floor.
"'Vbur hands," he said, "your beautiful hands."
The sight of her blood pierced him, and he thought of the
staged scene in their kitchen, the bloody hand prints, but this
was worse, so much worse to see her bleeding.
"What happened to your hands?"
"New Mexico. It's not as bad as it looks. I'll explain. Let's go.
Let's get out of here."
He snatched the bag of ransom off the floor. She started
toward a doorway, but he led her to the entrance from the hall,
which was the only route he knew
They walked with her right arm around his shoulders and his
left arm around her waist, past empty rooms haunted or not,
and his heart knocked no softer and no slower than when he had
been in the quick of the gunfire. Maybe it would race like this
for the rest of his life.
The hall was long, and in the drawing room, they could not
help looking toward the vast, dust-filmed view.
As they stepped into the living room, an engine roared to life
elsewhere in the house. The racket rattled room to hall to room,
and chattered off the high ceilings, making it impossible to
determine where it originated.
"Motorcycle," she said.
"Bulletproof," Mitch said. "A vest under the windbreaker."
The impact of the slugs, especially the two in the back, jarring
the spine, must have knocked Jimmy Null briefly unconscious.
He had not intended to leave in the van that he'd driven here.
Having stashed a motorcycle near the kitchen, perhaps in the
breakfast room, he'd been prepared to leave--if things went
wrong--through any wing of the house, any door. Once outside
the house, he could flee not only by the construction gate that
led into the street but also by switchbacking down the bluff, or
by some third route.
As the clatter of the engine swelled, Mitch knew that Jimmy
was not intent on fleeing. It wasn't the ransom that drew him,
either.
Whatever had happened between him and Holly--New
Mexico and Rosa Gonzales and two white dogs and bloody
stigmata--all that drew him, and he was drawn, too, by the
humiliation of the nail in the face. For the nail, he wanted Holly
more than money, wanted her dead.
Logic suggested that he was at their backs and would come
from the drawing room.
Mitch hurried Holly across the enormous living room, toward
the equally huge receiving hall and the front door beyond.
Logic flopped. They had crossed less than half the living room
when Jimmy Null on a Kawasaki shot out of somewhere, bulleting along the colonnade that separated them from the receiving
room.
Mitch drew her back as Null steered between columns into
the receiving room. He made a wide turn out there and came
straight at them, across that room, across the width of the
colonnade, gaining speed.
Null didn't have his pistol. Out of ammunition. Or wild with
rage, the gun forgotten.
Shoving Holly behind him, Mitch raised the Champion in
both hands, remembering the front sight, a white dot, and
opened fire as Null was passing across the colonnade.
Aiming chest this time, hoping for head. Fifty feet and
closing, thunder crashing off walls. First shot high, pull it down,
second,pull it down, thirty feet and closing, third shot. PULL IT
DOWN! The fourth turned off Jimmy Null's brain so abruptly,
his hands sprang away from the handlebars.
The dead man stopped, the cycle did not, rearing on its
back wheel, tire barking, smoking, screaming forward until it
toppled, tumbled toward them, past them, hit one of the big
windows, and shattered through, gone.
Be sure. Evil has cockroach endurance. Be sure, be sure. The
Champion in both hands, approach him cool, no hurry now,
circle him. Step around the spatters on the floor. Gray-pink spatters,
bits of bone and twists of hair. He can't be alive. Take nothing
for granted.
Mitch peeled up the mask to see the face, but it wasn't a face
anymore, and they were done now They were done.
In the summer that Anthony is three years old, they celebrate
Mitch's thirty-second birthday with a backyard party.
Big Green owns three trucks now, and there are five employees
besides Iggy Barnes. They all come with their wives and kids,
and Iggy brings a wahine named Madelaine.
Holly has made good friends --as she always makes good
friends --at the real-estate agency where she is second in sales
so far this year.
Although Dorothy followed Anthony by just twelve months,
they have not moved to a bigger house. Holly had been raised
here; this house is her history. Besides, already they have made
quite a history here together.
They will add a second story before there is a third child. And
there will be a third.
Evil has been across this threshold, but the memory of it will
not drive them from the place. Love scrubs the worst stains
clean. Anyway, there can be no retreat in the face of evil, only
resistance. And commitment.
Sandy Taggart comes, as well, with his wife, Jennifer, and their
two daughters. He brings the day's newspaper, wondering if
Mitch has seen the story, which he has not: Julian Campbell,
between conviction and appeal, throat slit in prison--a contract
hit suspected, but no inmate yet identified as the killer.
Although Anson is in a different prison from the one to which
Campbell was sent, he will eventually hear about the hit. It will
give him something to ponder as his attorneys work to stave off
his own lethal injection.
Mitch's youngest sister, Portia, comes to the party all the way
from Birmingham, Alabama, with her restaurateur husband
Frank and their five children. Megan and Connie remain distant
in more than one sense, but Mitch and Portia have grown close,
and he entertains hope of finding a way to gather his other two
sisters to him, in time.
Daniel and Kathy had produced five children because he said
continuation of the species could not be left to the irrationalists.
Materialists must breed as vigorously as believers or the
world would go to Hell by way of God.
Portia had balanced her father's five with five of her own,
and raised them by traditional standards that did not involve a
learning room.
On this birthday evening, they eat a feast at tables on the
patio and lawn, and Anthony sits proudly on his special chair.
Mitch built it for him to a design sketched by Holly, and she
painted it a cheerful red.
"This chair," she had told Anthony, "is in memory of a boy
who was six years old for fifty years and much loved for fifty-six
years. If you ever think that you aren't loved, you will sit in this
DEAN KOONTZ


chair and know you are loved as much as that other Anthony
was loved, as much as any boy ever has been loved."
Anthony, being three, had said, "Can I have ice cream?"
After dinner, there is a portable dance floor on the lawn, and
the band is not as woofy as the one at their wedding. No
tambourines and no accordion.
Later, much later, when the band has departed and all the
guests are gone, when Anthony and Dorothy are sound asleep
on the back-porch glider, Mitch asks Holly to dance to the music
of a radio, now that they have the entire floor to themselves. He
holds her close but not too tight, for she is breakable. As they
dance, husband and wife, she puts a hand to his face, as though
after all this time she is still amazed that he brought her home
to him. He kisses the scar in the palm of her hand, and then
the scar in the other. Under a great casting of stars, in the
moonlight, she is so lovely that words fail him, as they have so
often failed him before. Although he knows her as well as he
knows himself, she is as mysterious as she is lovely, an eternal
depth in her eyes, but she is no more mysterious than are the
stars and the moon and all things on the earth.
About the Author

DEAN KOONTZ is the author of many New York Times bestsellers. He lives with his wife, Gerda, and their dog, Trixie,
in southern California.

Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:

Dean Koontz
P. O. Box 95:29
Newport Beach, California 92658, USA

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