Dean Koontz - From the Corner of His Eye

Agnes ran to the kitchen, where she had been working when the doorbell rang, packing boxes of groceries to be delivered with the honey-raisin pear pies that she and Jacob had baked this morning.

Barty's bassinet was beside the table.

She expected him to be gone, snatched by an accomplice who had come in the back way while Deed had distracted her at the front door.

The baby was where she had left him, sleeping serenely.

To the windows, then, drawing all the blinds securely down. And still, irrationally, she felt watched.

Trembling, she sat beside the bassinet and gazed at her baby with such love that the force of it ought to have rocked him awake.

She expected Deed to ring the doorbell again. He did not.

“Imagine me thinking you'd be gone,” she said to Barty. “Your old mum is losing it. I never made a deal with Rumpelstiltskin, so there's nothing for him to collect."

She couldn't kid herself out of her fear.

Nicholas Deed was not the knave. He had already brought all the ruin into their lives that he was going to bring.

But a knave there was, somewhere, and his day would come.

To avoid making Maria feel responsible for the dire turn of mood when red aces weft followed by disturbing jacks, Agnes had pretended to take her son's card-told fortune lightly, especially the frightful part of it. In fact, a coldness had twisted through her heart.

Never before had she put faith in any form of prognostication. In the whispery falling of those twelve cards, however, she heard the faint voice of truth, not quite a coherent truth, not as clear a message as she might have wished, but a murmur that she couldn't ignore.

Tiny Bartholomew wrinkled his face in his sleep.

His mother said a prayer for him.

She also sought forgiveness for the hardness with which she had treated Nicholas Deed.

And she asked to be spared the visitation of the knave.

THE DEAD DETECTIVE, grinning in the moonlight, a pair of silvery quarters gleaming in the sockets once occupied by his eyes.

This was the image that plied the turbulent waters of Junior Cain's imagination when he sailed out of the driver's door and came around to face the Studebaker, his heart dropping like an anchor.

His dry tongue, his parched mouth, his desiccated throat felt packed fall of sand, and his voice lay buried alive down there.

Even when he saw no cop cadaver, no ghoulish grin, no two-bit eyes, Junior was not immediately relieved. Warily, he circled the car, expecting to find the detective crouching and poised to spring.

Nothing.

The dome light was on in the car, because the driver's door was standing open.

He didn't want to lean inside and peer over the front seat. He had no weapon. He would be unbalanced, vulnerable.

Still cautious, Junior approached the back door, the window. Vanadium's body lay on the car floor, wrapped in the tumbled blanket.

He had not heard the lawman rising up with malevolent intent, as he had imagined. The body had simply rolled off the backseat onto the floor during the too-sharp 180-degree turn.

Briefly, Junior felt humiliated. He wanted to drag the detective out of the car and stomp on his smug, dead face.

That would not be a productive use of his time. Satisfying, but not prudent. Zedd tells us that time is the most precious thing we have, because we're born with so little of it.

Junior got in the car once more, slammed the door, and said, “Panfaced, double-chinned, half-bald, puke-collecting creep."

FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE 213

Surprisingly, he received a lot of gratification from voicing this insult, even though Vanadium was too dead to hear it.

“Fat-necked, splay-nosed, jug-eared, ape—browed, birth marked freak."

This was better than taking slow deep breaths. Periodically, on the way to Vanadium's house, Junior spat out a string of insults, punctuated by obscenities.

He had time to think of quite a few, because he drove five miles per hour below the posted speed limit. He couldn't risk being stopped for a traffic violation when Thomas Vanadium, the human stump, was dead and bundled in the back.

During the past week, Junior had undertaken quiet background research on the prestidigitator with a badge. The cop was unmarried. He lived alone, so this bold visit entailed no risk.

Junior parked in the two-car garage. No vehicle occupied second space.

On one wall hung an impressive array of gardening tools. In the comer was a potting bench.

In a cabinet above the bench, Junior found a pair of clean, cotton gardening gloves. He tried them on, and they fit well enough.

He had difficulty picturing the detective puttering in the garden on weekends. Unless there were bodies buried under the roses.

With the detective's key, he let himself into the house.

While Junior had been hospitalized , Vanadium had searched his lace, with or without a warrant. Turnabout was satisfying.

Vanadium clearly spent a lot of time in the kitchen; it was the only room in the house that felt comfortable and lived-in. Lots of culinary gadgets, appliances. Pots and pans hanging from a ceiling rack. A basket of onions, another of potatoes. A grouping of bottles with colorful labels proved to be a collection of olive oils.

The detective fancied himself a cook.

Other rooms were furnished as sparely as those in a monastery. Indeed, the dining room contained nothing whatsoever.

A sofa and one armchair provided the seating in the living room. No coffee table. A small table beside the chair. A wall unit held a fine stereo system and a few hundred record albums.

Junior examined the music collection. The policeman's taste ran to big band music and vocalists from the swing era.

Evidently, either Frank Sinatra was an enthusiasm that Victoria and the detective shared, or the nurse purchased some of the crooner's records expressly for their dinner engagement.

This was not the time to ponder the nature of the relationship between the treacherous Miss Bressler and Vanadium. Junior had a bloody trail to cover, and precious time was ticking away.

Besides, the possibilities repulsed him. The very thought of a splendid-looking woman like Victoria submitting to a grotesque like Vanadium would have withered his soul if he had possessed a soul.

The study was the size of a bathroom. The cramped space barely allowed for a battered pine desk, a chair, and one filing cabinet.

The unmatched suite of bedroom furniture, cheap and scarred, might have been purchased at a thrift shop. A double bed and one nightstand. A small dresser.

As was true of the entire house, the bedroom was immaculate. The wood floor gleamed as though polished by hand. A simple white chenille spread conformed to the bed as smoothly and tautly as the top blanket tucked around a soldier's barracks bunk.

Knickknacks and mementos were not to be found anywhere in the house. And until now Junior had seen nothing hanging on the barren walls except a calendar in the kitchen.

A cast-bronze figure, fixed to lacquered walnut in want of raw dogwood, suffered above the bed. This crucifix, contrasting starkly with the white walls, reinforced the impression of monastic economy.

In Junior's estimation, this was not the way that a normal person lived. This was the home of a deranged loner, a dangerously obsessive man.

Having been an object of Thomas Vanadium's fixation, Junior felt fortunate to have survived. He shuddered.

In the closet, a limited wardrobe did not fully occupy available rod space. On the floor, shoes were neatly arranged toe-to-heel.

The upper shelf of the closet held boxes and two inexpensive suitcases: pressboard laminated with green vinyl. He took down the suitcases and put them on the bed.