Dean Koontz - False Memory

Rosettes, conchas, and rope braids were carved into the arched front door. The hand-forged, hand-stamped iron coyote knocker hung from its hind legs. Its forelegs swung against a large iron clavo set in the door, and when Dusty knocked, the sound carried across the forecourt in the cold, still air.

The thirty-something woman who responded to the knock must have been only two generations out of Italy on one side of her family; but another branch of her tree unmistakably had Navajo grafted on to it. Lovely, with high cheekbones, eyes as black as raven feathers, hair even blacker than Martie’s, she was a Southwest princess in a white blouse with bluebirds embroidered on the collar, a faded denim skirt, folded bobbysocks and scuffed white sneakers.

Dusty introduced himself and Martie. “We’re looking for Chase Glyson.”

“I’m Zina Glyson,” she said, “his wife. Maybe I can help.”

Dusty hesitated, and Martie said, “We’d very much like to talk to him about Dr. Ahriman. Mark Ahriman.”

No tension came into Mrs. Glyson’s serene face, and her voice remained pleasant when she said, “You come here to my door, speaking the devil’s name. Why should I talk to you?”

“He’s not the devil,” Martie said. “He's more a vampire, and we want to drive a stake straight through the bastard’s heart.”

Mrs. Glyson’s direct and analytic stare was as penetrating as that of any elder sitting on a tribal council. After a moment, she stepped back and invited them off the cold porch, into the warm rooms beyond the thick adobe walls.

Ordinarily, the doctor did not carry a concealed weapon, but with all the unknowables of the Rhodes situation, he believed that prudence required him to be armed.

Martie and Dusty were no immediate danger to him out there in New Mexico. They would pose no threat when and if they returned, either, unless he wasn’t able to get close enough to them to speak the names — Shaw, Narvilly — that activated their programs.

Skeet was another matter. His holey brain, drilled by drugs, didn’t seem able to hold the essential details of a control program without periodic reloading. If the little dope fiend, for whatever reason, got it into his addled head to stalk Ahriman, he might not respond immediately to Dr. Yen Lo and might be able to use a knife or gun or whatever other weapon he was carrying.

The doctor’s double-breasted, gray pinstripe suit by Ermenegildo Zegna was elegantly tailored; and strictly as a fashion issue, there ought to have been a federal law against spoiling the garment’s lines by wearing a shoulder holster under it. Fortunately, ever the man of foresight, the doctor had commissioned a custom holster of supple leather, which carried his pistol so deep under the arm and so snugly against the body that even the master tailors in Italy would not have been able to detect the weapon.

Unsightly bulge was eliminated, as well, by the fact that the weapon was a compact automatic, the Taurus PT-111 Millennium fitted with a Pearce grip extension. Quite small but powerful.

After his busy night, the doctor had slept late, which was possible because he didn’t need to keep the usual Thursday-morning appointment with Susan Jagger now that she was so dead. With no commitments until after lunch, he enjoyed a visit to his favorite antique-toy store, where he purchased a mint-condition Gunsmoke Dodge City playset by Marx for only $3,250, and a die-cast Johnny Lightning Custom Ferrari for only $115.

A couple of other customers were browsing in the store, chatting with the owner, and Dr. Ahriman had great fun imagining what it would be like to surprise them by drawing his pistol and gut-shooting them without provocation. He did not do this, of course, because he was pleased with his purchases and wanted the owner to feel comfortable with him when he returned to shop for other treasures in the future.

The kitchen was redolent of baking corn bread, and from a large pot on the stove rose the beefy aroma of beanless chili.

Zina phoned her husband at work. They owned a gallery on Canyon Road. When he heard why Martie and Dusty had sought him out, he came home in less than ten minutes.

While waiting for him, Zina set out red ceramic mugs of strong coffee mellowed with cinnamon, and pinwheel cookies topped with toasted pine nuts.

Chase, when he arrived, appeared to earn his living not in an art gallery but as a cowboy on the range: tall and lanky, tousled straw-yellow hair, a handsome face abraded by wind and sun. He was one of those men who, just by walking through any stable, would win the trust of horses, which would nicker softly at him and strain their necks across stall doors to nuzzle his hands.

His voice was quiet but intense as he sat down at the kitchen table with them. “What has Ahriman done to you and yours?”

Martie told him about Susan. The worsening agoraphobia, the suspected rapes. The sudden suicide.

“He made her do it somehow,” Chase Glyson said. “I believe It. I absolutely do. You came all this way because of your friend?”

“Yes. My dearest friend.” Martie saw no reason to tell more.

“Over nineteen years,” Chase said, “since he ruined my family, and more than ten since he hauled his sick ass out of Santa Fe. For a white, I hoped he was dead. Then he got famous with his books.”

“Do you mind if we tape what you tell us?” Dusty asked.

“No, don’t mind at all. But what I’ve got to say… hell, I’ve said it all maybe a hundred times to the cops, to different district attorneys over the years, until I was bluer in the face than a blue coyote. No one listened to me. Well, the once when someone listened and thought I might be telling the truth, then some big-shot friends of Ahriman’s paid him a visit, taught him some religion, so he’d know what he damn well was supposed to believe about my mom and dad.”

While Martie and Dusty taped Chase Glyson, Zina perched on a stool before an easel near the adobe fireplace, drawing a pencil study of a humble tableau that she’d earlier set up on one corner of the distressed-pine table at which the rest of them sat. Five pieces of Indian pottery in unusual shapes, including a double-spouted wedding pitcher.

The essence of Chase’s story was the same as in the clippings from Roy Closterman’s file. Teresa and Carl Glyson had for years operated a successful preschool, the Little Jackrabbit School, until they and three employees were accused of molesting children of both sexes. As in the Ornwahl case in Laguna Beach years later, Ahriman conducted supposedly careful, psychiatrically valid exploratory conversations with the kids, sometimes using hypnotic regression — and found a pattern of stories supporting the original accusations.

“The whole thing was a lot of bushwa, Mr. Rhodes,” said Chase Glyson. “My folks were the best people you’d want to meet.”

Zina said, “Terri, that was Chase’s mother, would have cut off her hand before she’d raise it to hurt a child.”

“My daddy, too,” said Chase. “Besides, he was hardly ever at the Little Jackrabbit. Only to do some repairs now and then, ‘cause he was handy. The school was my mother’s business. Daddy was half owner of a car dealership, and it kept him busy. Lots of people in town, they never believed a word of it.”

“But there were those who did,” Zina added darkly.

“Oh,” said Chase, “there’s always those who’ll believe anything about anybody. You whisper in their ear that ‘cause there was wine at the Last Supper, Jesus must’ve been a drunkard, and they’ll gossip their souls into perdition, passing it along. Most people figured it couldn’t be true, and with no physical evidence, it might never have resulted in convictions… until Valerie-Marie Padilla killed herself.”