Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"I've never heard of him," Micky said.

Leilani appeared to be surprised. "Don't you read newspapers?"

"I stopped reading them when they stopped carrying news," said Geneva. "They're all opinion now, front page to last."

"He's been all over television," Leilani said.

Geneva shook her miswired head. "I don't watch anything on TV except old movies."

"I just don't like news," Micky explained. "It's mostly bad, and when it isn't bad, it's mostly lies."

"Ah." Leilani's eyes widened. "You're the twelve percenters."

"The what?"

"Every time the newspaper or TV people take a poll, no matter what the question, twelve percent of the public has no opinion. You could ask them if a group of mad scientists ought to be allowed to create a new species of human beings crossed with crocodiles, and twelve percent would have no opinion."

"I'd be opposed," said Geneva, brandishing a carrot stick.

"Me, too," Micky agreed.

"Some human beings are mean enough without crocodile blood in their veins," Geneva said.

"What about alligators?" Micky asked her aunt.

"Opposed," Geneva responded with firm resolve.

"What about human beings crossed with wildly poisonous vipers?" Micky proposed.

"Not if I have anything to say about it," Geneva promised.

"Okay, then what about human beings crossed with puppy dogs?"

Geneva brightened. "Now you're talking."

To Leilani, Micky said, "So I guess we're not twelve percenters, after all. We have lots of opinions, and we're proud of them."

Grinning, Leilani bit into a crisp dill pickle. "I really like you, Micky B. You, too, Mrs. D."

"And we like you, sweetheart," Geneva assured her.

"Only one of you was shot m the head," Leilani said, "but you've both got scrambled wiring for the most part in a nice way."

"You're a master of the gracious compliment," Micky said.

"And so smart," Aunt Gen said proudly, as if the girl were her daughter. "Micky, did you know she's got an IQ of one eighty-six?"

"I thought it would be at least one ninety," Micky replied.

"The day of the test," Leilani said, "I had chocolate ice cream for breakfast. If I'd had oatmeal, I might've scored six or eight points higher. Sinsemilla's not a boffo mom when it comes to keeping the fridge stocked. So I took the test through a sugar rush and a major post-sugar crash. Not that I'm making excuses or complaining. I'm lucky there was ice cream and not just marijuana brownies. Heck, I'm lucky I'm not dead and buried in some unmarked grave, with worms making passionate worm love inside my empty skull — or taken away in an extraterrestrial starship, like Lukipela, and hauled off to some godforsaken alien planet where there's nothing worth watching on TV and the only flavor of ice cream is chunky cockroach with crushed-glass sprinkles."

"So now," said Micky, "in addition to your perpetually wasted tofu-peaches-bean-sprouts mother and your murderous stepfather, we're to believe you had a brother who was abducted by aliens."

"That's the current story," Leilani said, "and we're sticking to it. Strange lights in the sky, pale green levitation beams that suck you right out of your shoes and up into the mother ship, little gray men with big heads and enormous eyes — the whole package. Mrs. D, may I have one of those radishes that looks like a rose?"

"Of course, dear." Geneva slid the dish of garnishes across the table.

Laughing softly, shaking her head, Micky said, "Kiddo, you've pushed this Addams Family routine one step too far. I don't buy the alien abduction for a second."

"Frankly," Leilani said, "neither do I. But the alternative is too hideous to consider, so I just suspend my disbelief."

"What alternative?"

"If Lukipela isn't on an alien planet, then he's somewhere else, and wherever that somewhere might be, you can bet it's not warm, clean, with good potato salad and great chicken sandwiches."

For an instant, in the girl's lustrous blue eyes, behind the twin mirror images of the window and its burden of smoldering summer-evening light, behind the smoky reflections of the layered kitchen shadows, something seemed to turn with horrid laziness, like a body twisting slowly, slowly back and forth at the end of a hangman's noose. Leilani looked away almost at once, and yet on the strength of a single Budweiser, Micky imagined that she had glimpsed a soul suspended over an abyss.

LIKE THE SUPERNATURAL SYLPH of folklore, who inhabited the air, she approached along the hallway as though not quite touching the floor, tall and slim, wearing a platinum-gray silk suit, as graceful as a quiver of light.

Constance Veronica Tavenall-Sharmer, wife of the media-revered congressman who disbursed payoffs in airsickness bags, had been born from the headwaters of the human gene pool, before the river flowed out of Eden and became polluted with the tributaries of a fallen world. Her hair wasn't merely blond but the rich shade of pure-gold coins, fitting for a descendant of an old-money family that earned its fortune in banking and brokerage. Matte-satin skin. Features that would, if carved in stone, earn their sculptor the highest accolades and also immortality, if you measure immortality by mere centuries and expect to find it in museums. Her willow-leaf eyes were as green as spring and as cool as the layered shade deep in a grove of trees.

When he'd met her two weeks ago, Noah Farrel had disliked this woman on first sight, strictly as a matter of principle. Born to wealth and blessed with great beauty, she would skate through life with a smile, warm in even the most bitter wind, describing graceful arabesques upon her flashing blades, while all around her people perished in the cold and fell through the ice that, though solid under her, was treacherously thin for them.

By the time Mrs. Sharmer had left his office at the end of that first meeting, Noah's determination to dislike her had given way to admiration. She wore her beauty with humility, but more impressively, she kept her pedigree in her purse and never flashed it, as did so many others of her economic station.

At forty, she was only seven years older than Noah. Another Woman this beautiful would inspire his sexual interest — even an octogenarian kept youthful by a vile diet of monkey glands. By this third meeting, however, he regarded her as he might have regarded a sister: with the desire only to protect her and earn her approval.

She quieted the cynic in him, and he liked this inner hush, which lie hadn't known for many years.

When she arrived at the open door of the presidential suite where Noah stood, she offered her hand; if younger and more foolish, he might have kissed it. Instead, they shook. Her grip was firm.

Her voice wasn't full of money, no disdain or evidence of tutor-shaped enunciation, but rich with quiet self-possession and faraway music. "How are you this evening, Mr. Farrel?"

"Just wondering how I ever took pleasure in this line of work."

"The cloak-and-dagger aspect ought to be fun, and the sleuthing. I've always loved the Rex Stout mysteries."

"Yeah, but it never quite makes up for always being the bearer of had news." He stepped back from the door to let her enter.

The presidential suite was hers, not because she had booked the use of it, but because she owned the hotel. She was directly engaged in all her business enterprises; if her husband were having her followed, this early-evening visit wouldn't raise his suspicions.

"Is bad news what you always bring?" she asked as Noah closed the door and followed her into the suite.

"Often enough that it seems like always."

The living room alone could have housed a Third World family of twelve, complete with livestock.

"Then why not do something else?" she asked.