Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

"No, thanks."

"Mind if I have something?"

"Go ahead."

He stared at her trim legs as she went to the wet bar in the wall of bookcases. "Sicilian Stinger. Sure you wouldn't like one? They're delicious."

"I'm fine."

As she mixed the drink with professional expertise, she stood with her back to him, her hips artfully canted, her round butt thrust toward him. It might have been the unconscious stance of a girl not yet fully aware of her womanliness, with only a partial understanding of the effect her pneumatic body could have on men. Or it might have been completely contrived.

When she returned to the sofa with her drink, Chase said, "Are you old enough to drink?"

"Seventeen," she said. "Almost eighteen. No longer a child, right? Maybe I'm not of legal age yet, but this is my own home, so who's going to stop me?"

"Of course."

Only seven years ago, when he'd been her age, seventeen-year-old girls seemed seventeen. They grew up faster now — or thought that they did.

Sipping her drink, she leaned back against the couch and crossed her bare legs.

He saw the hard tips of her breasts against the thin halter.

He said, "It's just occurred to me that your mother may be in bed, if she gets up early for work. I didn't mean—"

"Mother's working now," Louise said. She looked at him coyly, her lashes lowered and her head tilted to one side. "She's a cocktail waitress. She goes on duty at seven, off at three, home about three-thirty in the morning."

"I see."

"Are you frightened?"

"Excuse me?"

She smiled mischievously. "Of being here alone with me?"

"No."

"Good. So… where do we begin?" With another coy look, she tried to make the question seductive.

For the following half hour, he guided her through her memories of Monday night, augmenting them with his own, questioning her on details, urging her to question him, looking for some small thing that might be the key. They remembered nothing new, however, though the girl genuinely tried to help him. She was able to talk about Mike Karnes's murder with complete detachment, as though she had not been there when it happened but had only read about it in the papers.

"Mind if I have another one?" she asked, raising her glass.

"Go ahead."

"I'm feeling good. Want one this time?"

"No, thank you," he said, recognizing the need to keep his head clear.

She stood at the wet bar in the same provocative pose as before, and when she returned to the couch, she sat much closer to him than she had previously. "One thing I just thought of — he was wearing a special ring."

"Special in what way?"

"Silver, squarish, with a double lightning bolt. A guy Mom dated for a while wore one. I asked him about it once, and he told me it was a brotherhood ring, from this club he belonged to."

"What club?"

"Just for white guys. No blacks, Japs, Jews, or anybody else welcome, just white guys."

Chase waited as she sipped her drink.

"Bunch of guys who're willing to stand up for themselves, if it ever comes to that, guys who aren't going to let the nappy-heads or the Jew bankers or anybody else push them around and take what they have." She clearly approved of any such organization. Then she frowned. "Did I just screw up my chances?"

"Chances?"

"Are you maybe a Jew?"

"No."

"You don't look like a Jew."

"I'm not."

"Listen, even if you were a Jew, it wouldn't matter much to me. I find you real attractive. You know?"

"So the killer might be a white supremacist?"

"They're just guys who won't take any crap the way everyone else will. That's all. You have to admire that."

"This guy who dated your mother — did he tell you the name of this club?"

"The Aryan Alliance."

"You remember his name?"

"Vic. Victor. Don't remember his last name."

"Could you ask your mom for me?"

"Okay. When she gets home. Listen, you're absolutely sure you're not a Jew?"

"I'm sure."

"Because ever since I said it, you've been looking at me sort of funny."

As he might have looked at something pale and squirming that he'd discovered under an overturned rock.

He said, "Did you tell Wallace about this?"

"No, I just now thought of it. You loosened me up, and it just came back to me in a flash."

Chase imagined nothing more gratifying than establishing a body of information about Judge — working from this essential bit of data — and then presenting it to the detective.

"It may be helpful," he said.

She slid next to him with the oiled smoothness of a machine made for seduction, all sleek lines and golden tan. "Do you think so, Ben?"

He nodded, trying to decide how best to excuse himself without hurting her feelings. He had to keep on the good side of her until she got that name from her mother.

Her thigh was pressed against his. She put her drink down and turned to him, expecting to be embraced.

Chase stood abruptly. "I ought to be going. This has given me something concrete to consider, more than I had hoped for."

She rose too, remaining close to him. "It's early. Not even midnight. Mom won't be home for hours."

She smelled of soap, shampoo, a pleasant perfume. It was such a clean smell — but he knew now that she was corrupted in her heart.

He was fiercely aroused — and sickened by his arousal. This cheap, coldhearted, hate-filled girl reached him in a way that no woman had reached him in longer than a year, and he despised himself for wanting her so intensely. At that moment, of course, virtually any attractive woman might have affected him the same way. Perhaps the pent-up sexual energy of many lonely months had become too great to repress, and perhaps the reawakening of sexual desire was the result of being forced out of his self-imposed isolation. Once he admitted to a healthy survival instinct, once he decided not to stand still and be a target for Judge, he was able to admit to all the desires and needs that were the essence of life. Nevertheless, he despised himself.

"No," he said, edging away from her. "I have other people to see."

"At this hour?"

"One or two other people."

She pressed against him, pulled his face down to hers, and licked his lips. No kiss. Just the maddeningly quick flicking of her warm tongue — an exquisitely erotic promise.

"We've got the house for several hours yet," she said. "We don't even have to use the couch. I've got a great big white bed with a white canopy."

"You're something else," he said, meaning something other than what she thought he meant.

"You don't know the half of it," she said.

"But I can't. I really can't, because these people are waiting for me."

She was experienced enough to know when the moment for seduction had passed. She stepped back and smiled. "But I do want to thank you. For saving my life. That deserves a big reward."

"You don't owe me anything," he said.

"I do . Some other night, when you don't have plans?"

He kissed her, telling himself that he did so only to remain in her good graces. "Definitely some other night."

"Mmmmm. And we'll be good together."

She was all polish, fast and easy, no jagged edges to get hung up on.

He said, "If Detective Wallace questions you again, do you think you could sort of… forget about the ring"

"Sure. I don't like cops. They're the ones who put the guns to our heads, make us kiss the asses of the nappy-heads and the Jews and all of them. They're part of the problem. But why are you carrying on with this by yourself? I never did ask."

"Personal," he said. "For personal reasons."

At home again, he undressed and went directly to bed. The darkness was heavy and warm and, for the first time in longer than he could remember, comforting.