Dean Koontz - False Memory

Dogs possessed so many admirable qualities, in fact, that Dusty sometimes wondered if God had created this world expressly for them above all other creatures. Human beings might have been put here as an afterthought, to ensure that dogs would have companions to prepare their meals, to groom them, to tell them they were cute, and to rub their bellies.

While Valet made quick work of the kibble, Dusty fished his cell phone from under the driver’s seat and called home. On the third ring, the answering machine responded.

Assuming that Martie was screening calls, he said, “Scarlett, it’s me. Rhett. Just calling to say I do give a damn, after all.”

She didn’t pick up.

“Martie, are you there?” He waited. Then, stretching the message to give her time to get to the study — and the answering machine — from anywhere in the house, he said: “Sorry I’m running late. Hell of a day. I’ll be there in half an hour, we’ll go out for dinner. Somewhere we can’t afford. I’m sick of always being so damn responsible. Choose something extravagant. Maybe even a place where the food comes on real plates instead of in Styrofoam containers. We’ll take a bank loan if we have to.”

Either she hadn’t heard the phone or she wasn’t home.

Valet had finished his kibble. He used his tongue to imitate an airplane propeller, making 360-degree sweeps of his chops and muzzle, collecting crumbs.

When traveling with the dog, Dusty carried bottled water. He poured a few ounces into the blue dish.

After Valet finished drinking, they walked the dimly lighted lawns that embraced three sides of New Life Clinic. This stroll was ostensibly for the purpose of giving the dog a chance to do his post-dinner dump, but it also provided Dusty with an opportunity to examine more closely the rambling structure.

Even if the clinic were less legitimate than it appeared to be, Dusty had no idea where he should look for clues to its true nature. There would be no hidden door to the vast subterranean headquarters of a flamboyant James Bond-style villain. Nor could he expect to discover the soulless personal servant of Count Dracula clandestinely transferring the undead nobleman’s coffin from a horse-drawn lorry into the basement of the building. This was southern California in the dazzling new millennium, and it was, therefore, full of far stranger creatures than Goldfinger and vampires — though currently none appeared to be lurking in this neighborhood.

Dusty’s suspicion was difficult to sustain in the face of the unrelenting ordinariness of the clinic grounds. The grass was well manicured, the earth still slightly squishy from the recent rain. The shrubs were neatly trimmed. The night shadows were only shadows.

Although Valet was easily spooked, he was so comfortable here that he completed his toilet without any nervous hesitation — and did itin the amber glow of a landscape lamp, which allowed his master to pick up easily after him.

The fully loaded, conspicuous blue bag gave Dusty an excuse to explore the alleyway behind the clinic, where no grass bordered the pavement. As he located a small trash Dumpster and deposited the bag, he surveyed this more humble aspect of the building: delivery and service entrances, utilities boxes, a second small Dumpster.

Neither he nor his four-legged Dr. Watson discovered anything amiss in the backstreet — although beside the second Dumpster, the dog found a grease-stained Big Mac container that he would have enjoyed sniffing and licking for six or seven hours.

Retreating from the alley, passing once more across the lawn along the south side of the clinic, Dusty glanced up at Skeet’s room — and saw a man standing at the window. Backlit by a single well-shaded lamp, he was a featureless silhouette.

Though the angle was deceiving, the guy seemed too tall and too broad-shouldered to be Skeet or Dr. Donklin. Tom Wong was gone for the night, but he, too, was a different physical type from this man.

Dusty could discern nothing of the stranger’s face, not even the vague glint of his eyes. Nevertheless, he was sure the man was watching him.

As though he were in a staring contest with a ghost, Dusty gazed up at the window until, with the ectoplasmic fluidity of a haunting spirit, the dark form turned away from the glass and drifted out of sight.

Dusty considered hurrying to his brother’s room to learn the identity of the watcher. Almost certainly, however, the man would prove to be a staff member. Or another patient, visiting Skeet.

On the other hand, if this nagging suspicion were merited, rather than being mere paranoia, if the man at the window were up to no good, he would not hang around now that Dusty had seen him. No doubt he was already gone.

Common sense argued against suspicion. Skeet had no money, no prospects, no power. There was nothing to be gotten from him that would motivate anyone to engineer an elaborate conspiracy.

Besides, an enemy — in the unlikely event that gentle Skeet had one — would realize the futility of engaging in elaborate schemes to torment and destroy the kid. Left to his own devices, Skeet would torture himself more ruthlessly than could the most cruel dungeon master, and he would diligently pursue his own destruction.

Maybe this wasn’t even Skeet’s room. Dusty had been sure it was the kid’s window when he first looked up. But… perhaps Skeet’s window was to the left of this one.

Dusty sighed. The ever sympathetic Valet sighed as well.

“Your old man’s losin’ it,” Dusty said.

He was eager to go home to Martie, to walk out of the insanity of this day and return to reality.

Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her husband forty whacks.

That bastardized line of verse swung back and forth through Martie’s mind, repeatedly cleaving her train of thought, so she had to struggle to remain focused.

The workbench in the garage featured a vise. After bracing the ax with a block, Martie cranked the jaws shut until they tightened on the handle.

She was able to pick up a pistol-grip hacksaw only with great effort. It was a dangerous instrument, but less fearsome than the ax, which must be destroyed. Later, she’d wreck the hacksaw, too.

Using the saw, she attacked the wooden handle at the neck. The cast-steel head would still be deadly once it had been severed, but the ax, intact, was far more lethal than either of its parts.

Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her husband forty whacks.

The hacksaw blade torqued, bound in the ax handle, stuttered loose, torqued again, and made a sloppy kerf in the hard wood. She threw it on the floor.

In the tool collection were two carpenter’s saws. One was a rip-saw, for cutting with the grain of the wood, the other a crosscut saw, but Martie didn’t know which was which. Hesitantly, she tried one, then the other, and both frustrated her.

When the job was neatly done, she gave him another forty-one.

Among the power tools was a hand-held reciprocating saw with a blade so fierce that she required all the courage she could muster to plug it in, pick it up, and switch it on. Initially the teeth stuttered with little effect across the oak, and the saw vibrated violently, but when Martie bore down, the blade buzzed through the wood, and the severed ax head, with handle stump, fell onto the workbench.

She switched off the saw and set it aside. Opened the jaws of the vice. Freed the ax handle. Threw it on the floor.

Next, she decapitated the sledgehammer.

Then the shovel. Longer handle. Cumbersome. Getting it into the vise was more difficult than dealing with the ax or sledgehammer.

The reciprocating saw tore through it, and the shovel blade clattered onto the workbench.