Dean Koontz - The Servants of Twilight

With a little luck, the Toyota's owner wouldn't notice that his plates were missing until tomorrow, perhaps later. Once he did notice, he might not bother reporting the incident to the police, at least not immediately. Anyway, the police wouldn't put stolen plates on the hot sheet the way they would if the entire car was stolen, wouldn't have every cop in the state looking for just a pair of tags, and wouldn't be likely to connect this small crime with the bigger theft of the LTD.

They'd treat the plate-nabbing report as just a case of vandalism.

Meanwhile, the stolen LTD would have new tags and a new identity, and it would, in effect, cease to be a hot car.

They left Ventura, heading north, and reached Santa Barbara at 9:50 Thesday night.

Santa Barbara was one of Charlie's favorite getaway places when the pressures of work became overwhelming. He usually stayed at either the Biltmore or the Montecito Inn. This time, however, he chose a slightly shabby motel, The Wile-Away Lodge, at the east end of State Street.

Considering his well known taste for the finer things in life, this was about the last place anyone would look for him.

There was a kitchenette unit available, and Charlie took it for a week, signing the name Enoch Flint to the register and paying cash in advance, so he wouldn't have to show the clerk a credit card.

The room had turquoise draperies, burnt-orange carpet, and bedspreads in a loud purple and yellow pattern; either the decorator had been limited by a tight budget and had bought whatever was available within a certain price range-or he had been a blind beneficiary of the Equal Opportunity Employment Act.

The pair of queen-size beds had mattresses that were too soft and lumpy.

A couch converted into a third bed, which looked even less comfortable.

The furniture was mismatched and well used. The bathroom had an age-yellowed mirror, lots of cracked floor tiles, and a vent fan that wheezed asthmatically. In the kitchen alcove, out of sight from the bedroom, there were four chairs and a table, a sink with a leaky faucet, a battered refrigerator, a stove, cheap plates and cheaper silverware, and an electric percolator with complimentary packets of coffee, Sanka, sugar, and non-dairy creamer. It wasn't much, but it was cleaner than they had expected.

While Christine put Joey to bed, Charlie brewed a pot of Sanka.

When she came into the kitchenette a few minutes later, Christine said,

"Mmmmm, that smells heavenly."

He poured two cups for them." How's Joey?"

"He was asleep before I finished tucking him in. The dog's on the bed with him, and I usually don't allow that, but, what the hell, I figure any day that starts out with a bomb attack and goes downhill from there is a day you should be allowed to have your dog on your bed."

They sat at the kitchen table, by a window that presented a view of one end of the motel parking lot and a small swimming pool ringed by a wrought-iron fence in need of paint. The wet macadam and the parked cars were splashed with orange neon light from the motel's sign. The storm was winding down again.

The coffee was good, and the conversation was better. They talked about everything that came to mind-politics, movies, books, favorite vacation spots, work, music, Mexican foodeverything but Grace Spivey and the Twilight. They seemed to have an unspoken agreement to ignore their current circumstances. They desperately needed a respite.

But, to Charlie, their conversation was much more than that; it was a chance to learn about Christine. With the obsessive curiosity of a man in love, he wanted to know every detail of her existence, every thought and opinion, no matter how mundane.

Maybe he was only flattering himself, but he suspected that his romantic interest in her was matched by her interest in him.

He hoped that was the case. More than anything, he wanted her to want him.

By midnight, he found himself telling her things he had never told anyone before, things he had long wanted to forget. They were events he thought had lost the power to hurt him, but as he spoke of them he realized the pain had been there all the while.

He talked about being poor in Indianapolis, when there wasn't always enough food or enough heat in the winter because the welfare checks were used first for wine, beer, and whiskey. He spoke of being unable to sleep for fear that the rats infesting their tumble-down shack would get up on the bed with him and start chewing on his face.

He told her about his drunken, violent father, who had beaten his mother as regularly as if that were a husband's duty. Sometimes the old man had beaten his son, too, usually when he was too drunk and unsteady to do much damage. Charlie's mother had been weak and foolish, with her own taste for booze; she hadn't wanted a child in the first place, and she had never interfered when her husband struck Charlie.

"Are your mother and father still alive?" Christine asked.

"Thank God, no! Now that I've done well, they'd be camping on my doorstep, pretending they'd been the best parents a kid ever had. But there was never any love in that house, never any affection." "You've come a long way up the ladder," Christine said.

"Yeah. Especially considering I didn't expect to live long."

She was looking out at the parking lot and swimming pool.

He turned his eyes to the window, too. The world was so quiet and motionless that they might have been the only people in it.

He said, "I always thought my father would kill me sooner or later. The funny thing is, even way back then, I wanted to be a private detective because I saw them on TV-Richard Diamond and Peter Gunn-and I knew they were never afraid of anything.

Iwas always afraid of everything, and more than anything else Iwanted not to be afraid."

"And now, of course, you're fearless," she said with irony.

He smiled." How simple it seems when you're just a kid."

A car pulled into the lot, and both of them stared at it until the doors opened and a young couple got out with two small children.

Charlie poured more Sanka for both of them and said, "I used to lie in bed, listening to the rats, praying that both my parents would die before they got a chance to kill me, and I became real angry with God because He didn't answer that prayer. I couldn't understand why He would let those two go on victimizing a little kid like me. I couldn't defend myself. Why wouldn't God protect the defenseless? Then, when I got a little older, I decided God couldn't answer my prayers because God was good and wouldn't ever kill anyone, not even moral rejects like my folks. So I started praying just to get out of that place. 'Dear God, this is Charlie, and all I want is to some day get out of here and live in a decent house and have money and not be scared all the time." "

He suddenly recalled a darkly comic episode he hadn't thought about in years, and he laughed sharply at the bizarre memory.

She said, "How can you laugh about it? Even though I know things turned out pretty well for him, I still feel terrible for that little boy back there in Indianapolis. As if he's still there."

"No, no. It's just. I remembered something else, something that is funny in a grim sort of way. After a while, after I'd been praying to God for maybe a year, I got tired of how long it took for a prayer to be answered, and I went over to the other side for a while."

" Other side?"

Staring out the window as a squall of rain whirled through the darkness, he said, "I read this story about a man who sold his soul to the devil.

He just one day wished for something he really needed, said that he'd sell his soul for it, and poof, the devil showed up with a contract to sign. I decided the devil was much more prompt and efficient than God, so I started praying to the devil at night."