Dean Koontz - One Door Away From Heaven

"They usually say it's not the case. They're ashamed. The truth comes out only through counseling."

"I know that's often the way it goes. But she's different, this kid. She's tough, very smart. She speaks her mind. She'd tell me if there were sexual abuse. She says there isn't. and I believe her."

"Do you see her regularly? Do you speak to her?"

"She came to our place for dinner last night. She was—"

"So she's not being confined? We're not talking about abuse by cruel restraint?"

"Restraint? Well, maybe we are, in a way."

"In what way?"

The room was insufferably warm. As in many modern high-rises, for reasons of efficient ventilation and energy conservation, windows did not open. The system fan was on, but it produced more noise than air circulation. "She doesn't want to be in that family. No one would."

"None of us gets to choose our family, Ms. Bellsong. If that alone constituted child abuse, my caseload would quadruple. By cruel restraint, I mean has she been shackled, locked in a room, locked in a closet, tied to a bed?"

"No, nothing like that. But—"

"Criminal neglect? For instance, is the girl suffering from an untreated chronic illness? Is she underweight, starved?"

"She's not starved, no, but I doubt her nutrition's the best. Her mother's apparently not much of a cook."

Leaning back, raising her eyebrows, F said, "Not much of a cook? What am I missing here, Ms. Bellsong?"

Having slid forward on her chair, Micky sat in a supplicatory posture that felt wrong, that made it seem as though she were trying to sell her story to the caseworker. She straightened up, eased back. "Look, Ms. Bronson, I'm sorry, I'm not going about this at all well, but I'm really not wasting your time. This is a unique case, and the standard questions just don't get to the heart of it."

Disconcertingly, while Micky was still talking, F turned to the computer on her desk, as if impatient, and began to type. Judging by the speed at which her fingers flew over the keys, she was familiar with this satanic technology. "All right, let's open a case file, get the basic facts. Then you can tell me the story in your own words, if that'll be easier, and I'll condense it for the report. Your name is Bell-song, Micky?"

"Bellsong, Michelina Teresa." Micky spelled all three names.

F asked for an address and telephone. "We don't disclose any information about the complainant — that's you — to the family we're investigating, but we've got to have it for our records."

When the caseworker requested it, Micky also presented her social-security card.

After entering the number from the card, F worked with the computer for a few minutes, pausing repeatedly to study the screen, entirely involved with the data she summoned, as if she'd forgotten that she had company.

Here was the dehumanizing influence of technology, which she'd so recently decried.

Micky couldn't see the screen. Consequently, she was surprised when F, still focused on the computer, said, "So you were convicted of the possession of stolen property, aiding and abetting document forgery, and possession of forged documents with the intention to sell — including phony driver's licenses, social-security cards. "

F's words did what too much lemon vodka and chocolate doughnuts had failed to accomplish: caused a tremor of nausea to slide through Micky's stomach. "I'm… I mean. I'm sorry, but I don't think you have a right to ask me about this."

Still gazing at the screen, F said, "I didn't ask. Just ran an ID check. Says you were sentenced to eighteen months."

"None of that has anything to do with Leilani."

F didn't reply. Her slender fingers stroked the keys, no longer hammering, as though she were finessing information from the system.

"I didn't do anything," Micky said, despising the defensiveness in her voice, and the meekness. "The guy I was with at the time, he was into stuff I didn't know about."

F remained more interested in what the computer told her about Micky than what Micky had to say about herself.

The less that F asked, the more Micky felt obliged to explain. "I just happened to be in the car when the cops took him down. I didn't know what was in the trunk — not the phony paper, the stolen coin collection, not any of it."

As though she hadn't heard a word of Micky's reply, F said, "You were sent to the Northern California Women's Facility. That's south of Stockton, isn't it? I went to the asparagus festival in Stockton once. One of the booths offered dishes created by Women's Facility inmates involved in a culinary vocational program. Far as I remember, none of them was particularly tasty. This says you're still there."

"Yeah, well, that's so wrong. I've never been to the asparagus festival." When Micky saw F's face tighten, she bit the tartness out of her voice, tried to sound contrite: "I was released last week. I came to live with my aunt until I get on my feet."

"Says here you're still at NCWF. Two more months."

"I was granted early release."

"Doesn't mention parole here."

"I'm not a parolee. I served my time, minus good behavior."

"Be right back." F rose from her desk and, without making eye contact, went to the door.

ACROSS THE BADLANDS, through the night, as the clouds move east and the sky purifies, the boy drives westward to the dog's direction.

Gradually the desert withers away. A grassy prairie grows under the rolling tires.

Dawn comes pink and turquoise, painting a sky now as clear as distilled water. A hawk, gliding on high thermals, seems to float like the mere reflection of a bird on the surface of a still pool.

The engine dies for lack of fuel, requiring them to proceed afoot in more fertile land than any they have seen since Colorado. By the time the Mountaineer coughs out the fumes from its dry tank, they're finished with the prairie, as well. They are now in a shallow valley where cottonwood and other trees shade a swift-slipping stream and where green meadows roll away from the banks of the watercourse.

Throughout the long drive, no one shot at them, and no more charred cadavers tumbled out of the night. Mile after mile, the only lights in the sky were stars, and at dawn, the great constellations conceded the stage to the one and nearest star that warms this world.

Now, when Curtis gets out of the SUV, the only sounds in the morning are the muted pings and ticks of the cooling engine.

Old Yeller is exhausted, as she ought to be, good scout and stalwart navigator. She totters to the edge of the brook and laps noisily at the cool clear current.

Kneeling upstream of the dog, Curtis slakes his thirst, too.

He sees no fish, bin he's sure that the brook must contain them.

If he were Huckleberry Finn, he'd know how to catch breakfast. Of course, if he were a bear, he'd catch even more fish than Huck.

He can't be Huck because Huck is just a fictional character, and he can't be a bear because he's Curtis Hammond. Even if there were a bear around here somewhere, to provide him with a detailed example of bear structure and bear behavior, he wouldn't dare get naked and try to be a bear and wade into the stream after fish, because later when he was Curtis once more and put on his clothes, he'd be starting all over in this new identity that remains his best hope of survival, and therefore he would be easier to spot if the worse scalawags showed up again, searching for him with their tracking scopes.

"Maybe I am, stupid," he tells the dog. "Maybe Gabby was right. He sure seemed smart. He knew everything about the government, and he got us out of that trouble. Maybe he was right about me, too."

The dog thinks otherwise. With typical doggy devotion, she grins and wags her tail.