Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

The thump-thump-thump of the windshield wipers sounded like a strange, inhuman heartbeat.

Charlie said, "We'll go into L.A., I think. The Church of the Twilight does some work in the city, but most of its activities are centered in Orange and San Diego Counties. There're fewer of Grace's people floating around in L.A., so there'll be less chance of anyone accidentally spotting us. In fact, almost no chance at all."

"They're everywhere," she said.

"Be optimistic," he said." Remember little ears."

She glanced back at Joey, a pang of guilt cutting through her at the realization that she might be frightening him. But he seemed not to have been paying attention to the conversation in the front seat. He still stared out the window, not at the ocean any longer but at the array of shops along the highway in Corona Del Mar.

"In L.A., we'll buy suitcases, clothes, toiletries, whatever you need,"

Charlie said.

"Then? "

"We'll have dinner."

"Then?"

"Find a hotel."

"What if one of her people works at the hotel?"

"What if one of her people is mayor of Peking?" Charlie said.

"We'd better not go to China, either."

She found a weak smile for him, after all. It wasn't much, but it was all she had in her, and she was surprised she could respond even that well.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what? Being human? Human and afraid?"

"I don't want to get hysterical."

"Then don't."

" won't."

"Good. Because there are favorable developments."

"Such as?"

"One of the three dead men from last night-the red-head you shot-has been identified. His name's Pat O'Hara. They were able to get positive ID on him because he's a professional burglar with three arrests and one conviction on his record."

"Burglar?" she said, baffled by this unexpected introduction of a more ordinary criminal element.

"The cops have done better than come up with a name for him. They can also tie him to Grace."

She sat up straight, startled." How?"

"His family and friends say he joined the Church of the Twilight eight months ago."

"Then there it is!" she said, excited." There's what they need to go after Grace Spivey."

"Well, they've gone back to the church to talk to her again, of course"

"That's all? Just talk to her?"

"At this point, they don't have any proof-"

"O'Hara was one of hers!"

"But there's no proof he was acting on her say-so.

"They all do what she tells them, exactly what she tells them."

"But Grace claims her church believes in free will, that none of her people is any more controlled than Catholics or Presbyterians, no more brainwashed than any Jew in any synagogue."

" Bullshit," she said softly but with feeling.

"True," he said." But it's damned hard to prove it, especially since we can't put our hands on any ex-members of the church who might tell us what it's like in there."

Some of her excitement drained away." Then what good does it do us to have O'Hara identified as a Twilighter?"

"Well, it gives some substance to your claims that Grace is harassing you. The cops take your story a whole lot more seriously now than they first did, and that can't hurt."

"We need more than that."

"There's a little something else."

"What? "

"O'Hara-or maybe it was the other guy who came with him-left something outside your house. An airline flight bag. There were burglary tools in it, but there were others things, too. A large plastic jar full of a colorless liquid that turned out to be ordinary water. They don't know why it was there, what purpose it was meant to serve. More of interest was a small brass crossand a copy of the Bible."

"Doesn't that prove they were there on some crackpot religious mission?"

"Doesn't prove it, no, but it's interesting, anyway. It's one more knot in the hangman's noose, one more little thing that helps build a case against Grace Spivey."

"At this rate we'll have her in court by the turn of the century,"

Christine said sourly.

They were traveling MacArthur Boulevard now, climbing and descending a series of hills that took them past Fashion Island, past hundreds of million-dollar homes, a marshy area of backwater from Newport Bay, and fields of tall grass that bent with the driving rain and then stood straight up and quivered as the erratic storm wind abruptly changed directions. In spite of the fact that it was midday, most of the cars in the oncoming lane had their headlights on.

Christine said, "The police know what Grace Spivey teaches about the coming of Twilight, doomsday, the Antichrist?"

"Yes. They know all of it," Charlie said.

"They know she thinks the Antichrist is already among us?"

"Yes."

"And they know that she's spent the past few years searching for him?"

"Yes."

"And that she intends to kill him when she finds him?"

"She's never said as much in a speech or in any of the religious literature she's had published."

"But that is what she intends. We know it."

"What we know and what we can prove are two different things."

"The police should be able to see that this is why she's fixated on Joey and-"

"Last night, when the police questioned her, she denied knowing you and Joey, denied the scene at South Coast Plaza.

She says she doesn't understand what you have against her, why you're trying to smear her. She said she hadn't found the Antichrist yet and didn't even think she was close. They asked her what she would do if she ever found him, and she said she'd direct prayers against him. They asked if she would try to kill him, and she pretended to be outraged by the very idea. She said she was a woman of God, not a criminal. She said prayer would be enough. She said she'd chain the devil in prayers, bind him up with prayers, drive him back to Hell with nothing but prayer." "And of course they believed her."

"No. I talked to a detective this morning, read the report of their session with her. They think she's unbalanced, probably dangerous, and ought to be considered the primary suspect in the attempts on your lives."

She was surprised.

He said, "You see? You've got to be more positive. Things are happening. Not as fast as you'd like, no, because there are procedures the police must follow, rules of evidence, constitutional rights that must be respected-"

"Sometimes it seems like the only people who have constitutional rights are the criminals among us."

"I know. But we've got to work within the system as best we can."

They passed the Orange County Airport and got on the San Diego Freeway, heading north toward Los Angeles.

Christine glanced back at Joey. He was no longer staring out the window or petting the dog. He was slumped down in a corner of the back seat, eyes closed, mouth open, breathing softly and deeply. The motion of the car had lulled him to sleep.

To Charlie, she said, "What worries me is that while we have to work within the system, slowly and carefully, that Spivey bitch doesn't have any rules holding her back. She can move fast and be brutal. While we're treading carefully around her fights, she'll kill us all."

"She might self-destruct first," he said.

"What do you mean?"

"I went to the church this morning. I met her. She's completely around the bend, Christine. Utterly irrational. Coming apart at the seams."

He told her about his meeting with the old woman, about the bloody stigmata on her hands and feet.

If he intended to reassure her by painting a picture of Grace Spivey as a babbling lunatic teetering on the edge of collapse, he failed. The intensity of the old woman's madness only made her seem more threatening, more predictable, more relentless than ever.

"Have you reported this to the cops?" Christine asked." Have you told them that she threatened Joey to your face?"