Dean Koontz - Winter Moon

"I know," Heather said from her side of the bed. "I don't mean not just right away. I mean never."

"I know, baby," she said tenderly, and reached out to find and hold his hand. "Is it that obvious?"

"It's been a bad couple of weeks."

"I'm sorry."

"You had to go through it."

"I thought I'd be on the street until I retired. It's all I ever wanted to do."

"Things change," she said. "I can't risk it now. I've lost my confidence."

"You'll get it back."

"Maybe."

"You will," she insisted. "But you still won't go back on the street… You can't. You've done your part, you've pushed your luck as far as any cop could be expected to push it. Let someone else save the world."

"I feel…"

"I know."

"… empty…"

"It'll get better. Everything does."

"… like a sorry-ass quitter."

"You're no quitter." She slid against his side and put her hand on his chest. "You're a good man and you're brave-too damn brave, as far as I'm concerned. If you hadn't decided to get off the street, I'd have decided it for you. One way or another, I'd have made you do it, because the odds are, next time, I'll be Alma Bryson and your partner's wife will be coming to sit at my side, hold my hand. I'll be damned to hell before I'll let that happen. You've had two partners shot down beside you in one year, and there's been seven cops killed here since January. Seven. I'm not going to lose you, Jack." He put his arm around her, held her close, profoundly grateful to have found her in a hard world where so much seemed to depend on random chance. For a while he couldn't speak, his voice would have been too thick with emotion. At last he said, "So I guess from here on out, I'll park my butt in a chair and be a desk jockey of one kind or another."

"I'll buy you a whole case of hemorrhoid cream"

"I'll have to get a coffee mug with my name on It."

"And a supply of notepads that say From the Desk of Jack Mcgarvey."

" He said, "It's going to mean a salary cut. Won't pay as much as being on the street."

"We'll be all right."

"Will we? I'm not so sure. It's going to be tight." She said,

"You're forgetting Mcgarvey Associates. Inventive and flexible custom programs. Tailored to your needs. Reasonable rates. Timely delivery.

Better legs than Bill Gates."

And that night, in the darkness of their bedroom, it did seem that finding security and happiness again in the City of Angels might be possible, after all.

During the next ten days, however, they were confronted by a series of reality checks that made it impossible to sustain the old L.A… fantasy.

Yet another city budget shortfall was rectified in part by reducing the compensation of street cops by five percent and that of the deskbound in the department by twelve percent, a job that already paid less than Jack's previous position now paid markedly less. A day later, government statistics showed the economy slipping again, and a new client, on the verge of signing a contract with Mcgarvey Associates, was so unnerved by those numbers that he decided against investing in new computer programs for a few months. Inflation was up.

Taxes were way up. The debt-strapped utility company was granted a rate increase to prevent bankruptcy, which meant electricity rates were going to climb. Water rates had already risen, natural-gas prices were next. They were clobbered with a car-repair bill of six hundred forty dollars on the same day that Anson Oliver's first film, which had not enjoyed a wide or successful theatrical run in its initial release, was reissued by Paramount, reigniting media interest in the shootout and in Jack. And Richie Tendero, husband to the flamboyant and unshakable Gina Tendero of the black leather clothes and red-pepper Mace, was hit by a shotgun blast while answering a domestic-dispute call, resulting in the amputation of his left arm and plastic surgery to the left side of his face. On August fifteenth, an eleven-year-old girl was caught in gang crossfire one block from the elementary school that Toby would soon be attending. She was killed instantly. Events unfold in uncanny sequences. Long-forgotten acquaintances turn up again with news that changes lives. A stranger appears and speaks a few words of wisdom, solving a previously insoluble problem, or something in a recent dream transpires in reality. Suddenly the existence of God seems confirmed.

On the afternoon of August eighteenth, as Heather stood in the kitchen, waiting for the Mr. Coffee machine to brew a fresh pot and sorting through mail that had just arrived, she came across a letter from Paul Youngblood, an attorney-at-law from Eagle's Roost, Montana. The envelope was heavy, as if it contained not merely a letter but a document. According to the postmark, it had been sent on the sixth of the month, which led her to wonder about the gypseian route by which the postal service had chosen to deliver it. She knew she'd heard of Eagle's Roost. She could not recall when or why. Because she shared a nearly universal aversion to attorneys and associated all correspondence from law firms with trouble, she put the letter on the bottom of the stack, choosing to deal with it last. After throwing away advertisements, she found that the four other remaining items were bills. When she finally read the letter from Paul Youngblood, it proved to be so utterly different from the bad news she had expected-and so astonishing-that immediately after finishing it, she sat down at the kitchen table and read it again from the top. Eduardo Fernandez, a client of Youngblood's, had died on the fourth or fifth of July. He had been the father of Sometimes, life seems to have a higher meaning. lthe late Thomas Fernandez.

That was Tommy-murdered at Jack's side eleven months before the events at Hassam Arkadian's service station. Eduardo Fernandez had named Jack Mcgarvey of Los Angeles, California, as his sole heir. Serving as executor of Mr. Fernandez's estate, Youngblood had tried to notify Jack by phone, only to discover that his number was no longer listed… The estate included an insurance policy that would cover the fifty-five percent federal inheritance tax, leaving Jack the unencumbered six-hundred-acre Quartermass Ranch, the four-bedroom main house with furnishings, the caretaker's house, the ten-horse stable, various tools and equipment, and "a substantial amount of cash." Instead of a legal document, six photographs were included with the single-page letter.

With shaky hands, Heather spread them in two rows on the table in front of her. The modified-Victorian main house was charming, with just enough decorative millwork to enchant without descending into Gothic oppressiveness. It appeared to be twice as large as the house in which they now lived. The mountain and valley views in every direction were breathtaking. Heather had never been filled with such mixed emotions as she experienced at that moment. In their hour of desperation, they had been given salvation, a way out of darkness, escape from despair.

She had no idea what a Montana attorney would regard as a "substantial amount of cash," but she figured the ranch alone, if liquidated, must be worth enough to pay off all their bills and their current mortgage, with money left hadn't known since she had been a small child and had still believed in fairy tales, miracles. On the other hand, their good fortune would have been Tommy Fernandez's good fortune if he had not been murdered. That dark and inescapable fact tainted the gift and dampened her pleasure in it. For a while she brooded, torn between delight and guilt, and at last decided she was responding too much —. like a Beckerman and too little like a Mcgarvey. She would have done anything to bring Tommy Fernandez back to life, even if it meant that this inheritance would never have been hers and Jack's, but the cold truth was that Tommy was dead, in the ground over sixteen months now, and beyond the help of anyone. Fate was too often malicious, too seldom generous. She would be a fool to greet this staggering beneficence with a frown. Her first thought was to call Jack at work.