Dean Koontz - False Memory

All her dread expectations became dread realities in gruesome detail when she pushed through the door into Mark Ahriman’s reception lounge and was received by bodies sprawled in blood.

The doctor lay faceup, but without a face: thin noxious smoke rising from scorched hair, terrible craters in the flesh, cheekbones imploded, red pools where eyes had once been — and beyond one torn and gaping cheek, half a grin.

Facedown, Skeet was the less dramatic figure of the two, and yet more real. His own red lake surrounded him, and he was so frail that he seemed to float in the crimson as though he were but a tangle of rags.

Martie was rocked harder by the sight of Skeet than she would have expected to be. Skeet the feeb, perpetual boy, so earnest but so weak, self-destructive, always seeking to do to himself what his mother had failed to do with a pillow. Martie loved him, but only now did she realize how much she loved him — and only now was she able to understand why. For all his faults, Skeet was a gentle soul, and like his precious brother, his heart was kind; in a world where kind hearts were more rare than diamonds, he was a treasure flawed but a treasure nonetheless. She could not bear to stoop to him, touch him, and find that he was also a treasure broken beyond repair.

Heedless of the blood, Dusty dropped to his knees and put his hands on his brother’s face, touched Skeet’s closed eyes, felt the side of his neck, and in a voice torn as Martie had never heard it torn, he cried, “Oh, Jesus, an ambulance! Hurry, someone!”

Jennifer appeared at the open door to her work area. “I called. They’re coming. They’re on their way.”

The woman in pink stood at the reception window, on the ledge of which she had placed two guns, including the machine pistol that Skeet had taken off Eric’s body. “Jennifer, don’t you think it would be a good idea if you put these out of the way someplace until the police arrive? Have you called the police?”

“Yes. They’re coming, too.”

Warily, Jennifer went around to the inside of the window, took possession of the guns, and put them aside on her desk.

Maybe it was because Skeet was dying, maybe it was the horror of Ahriman’s ghastly face and the blood everywhere, but whatever the reason, Martie couldn’t think clearly enough to make sense of what had happened here. Had Skeet shot Ahriman? Had Ahriman shot Skeet? Who had shot first and how often? The positions of the bodies didn’t support any scenario that she could imagine. And the eerie calm of the woman in pink, as though she were accustomed to witnessing gun battles daily, seemed to argue that she had played some mysterious role.

The woman stepped to the least spattered corner of the lounge, withdrew a cell phone from her purse, and placed a call.

Still far away but drawing nearer, distorted by distance and topography, the shrillness of sirens sounded fearsome and curiously prehistoric, organic rather than mechanical, a pterodactyl shriek.

Jennifer hurried to the entrance door, opened it, and placed a small rubber wedge to prevent it from closing.

To Martie, she said, “Help me move these chairs out to the end of the hall, so the paramedics will have room to work when they get here.”

Martie was glad to have something to do. She felt that she was standing on a crumbling brink. Helping Jennifer, she was able to step back from the abyss.

Holding the phone away from her mouth, the woman in pink paid a compliment to Jennifer: “You’re quite impressive, young lady.”

The receptionist cast an odd look at her. “Uh, thanks.”

By the time the last chair and small table had been transferred to the nearer end of the corridor, multiple sirens had grown louder and then, one by one, had cycled into silence. Help must be in the elevators.

Speaking into her cell phone, the woman in pink said, “Will you stop babbling, Kenneth? For an expensive attorney, you’re something of a ninny. I’ll need the finest criminal-defense attorney, and I’ll need him immediately. Now get a grip on yourself and do it.”

When she terminated the call, the woman smiled at Martie.

Then she took a card from her purse and held it out to Jennifer. “You’ll be needing a job, I suppose. I could use a young woman as competent as you, if you’re interested.”

Jennifer hesitated, but then she took the card.

On his knees in blood, repeatedly smoothing Skeet’s hair back from his pale face, her special husband was talking softly to his brother, though there was no indication that the kid could hear him. Dusty spoke about the old days, about things they had done as boys, pranks they had played, discoveries they had made together, escapes they had planned, dreams they had shared.

Martie heard men running in the hall, the heavy booted feet of fire-department paramedics, and she had the crazy wonderful feeling, just for a moment, that when they burst through the open doorway, one of them would be Smilin’ Bob.

Out of chaos, more chaos for a while. Too many strangers’ faces and too many voices talking at once, paramedics and police, quickly but noisily negotiating jurisdictional boundaries between the living and the dead. If confusion had been loaves of bread and if suspicion had been fishes, no miracles would have been required to provide a banquet for multitudes.

Martie’s confusion was only fed by the startling news that the woman in the pink Chanel suit had shot both Skeet and Ahriman. She admitted to the shooting, requested to be arrested, and would provide no further details, though she complained about the lingering stink from the doctor’s burnt hair.

Skeet on a gurney, lifeless to the layman's eye, was attended by four beefy paramedics in white, their uniforms strangely radiant under the fluorescent corridor lights, as if they were linebackers who had gone to Heaven and now returned here dressed in this modern version of angels’ robes. One sprinting ahead to block the elevator, one pulling, one pushing, one holding an W bottle high and running alongside the gurney, they swept Skeet away, swiftly and smoothly, and to Martie it seemed that neither the wheels nor their feet were actually touching the floor, as though they were flying down the long corridor, not conveying a wounded man to a hospital, but escorting an immortal soul on a far longer journey.

Having been cleared by Jennifer — and by the pink lady’s succinct confession — Dusty was given permission by the police to accompany his brother. He gripped Martie by the shoulders and pulled her close, held her fiercely for a moment, kissed her, and then ran after the gurney.

She watched him until he turned the corner into the elevator alcove, out of sight, and then she saw that his hands had left faint bloody impressions on her sweater. Shaking uncontrollably, Martie crossed her arms over her breasts, placing her hands on the terrible red marks, as though by touching those vague prints, she would be with Dusty and Skeet in spirit, allowing her to draw strength from them and they from her.

Martie was detained at the scene. Because the police in Malibu had, too late, contacted the police in Newport, the link between this shooting and Eric Jagger’s death by crossbow was established, marking both Martie and Dusty as material witnesses in one case and perhaps in both. An officer was en route to the hospital, to question Dusty in the waiting room, but the police preferred to conduct the initial interrogation of at least one of them here rather than elsewhere, now rather than later.

Police photographer, SID technicians, representatives from the coroner’s office, detectives, all bitching about the contamination of the crime scene, methodically gathered evidence, in spite of the pink lady's confession, because she might, of course, retract it later or claim police intimidation.