Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

Chase said, "Do you get many outsiders here?"

"A newspaper morgue is chiefly for the use of the staff. But we keep it open to the public without charge. We get maybe a dozen people a week."

"What are outsiders looking for here?"

"What are you looking for?" she asked.

He hesitated, then gave her the same story that he had first given Mrs. Onufer at the Metropolitan Bureau of Vital Statistics. "I'm gathering facts for a family history."

"That's what most outsiders come here for. Personally, I haven't the least bit of curiosity about dead relatives. I don't even like the living relatives very much."

He laughed, surprised to discover acidic humor in someone so gentle-looking and so soft-spoken. She was a study in contrasts. "No sense of pride in your lineage?"

"None," she said. "It's more mutt than thoroughbred."

"Nothing wrong with that."

"Go back far enough in my family tree," she said, "and I bet you'll find some ancestors hanging from the limbs by their necks."

"Descended from horse thieves, huh?"

"At best."

Chase was more at ease with her than he had been in the presence of any woman since Jules Verne, the underground operation in Nam. But when it came to small talk, he was long out of practice, and as much as he would have liked to make a stronger connection with her, he was unable to think of anything to say except: "Well… do I have to sign anything to use the files?"

"No. But I have to get everything for you, and you have to return it to me before you leave. What do you need?"

Chase had come there not to conduct research but only to ask about any outsiders who had used the morgue this past Tuesday, but no convenient cover story came to mind. He could not spin the same tale that he'd used with Mrs. Onufer, the lie about the nosy reporter — not here of all places.

Furthermore, though he had been prepared to make up any story that circumstances seemed to require, he discovered that he didn't want to lie to this woman. Her blue-gray eyes were direct, and in them he saw a forthrightness and honesty that he was compelled to respect.

On the other hand, if he told her the truth about Judge and the attempt on his life, and if she didn't believe him, he would feel like a prize ass. Oddly enough, although he had only just met her, he didn't want to embarrass himself in front of her.

Besides, one of the reporters working in the morgue might overhear too much. Then Chase's picture would be on the front page again. They might treat the story either straight or tongue-in-cheek (probably the latter, if they talked to the police), but either way the publicity would be an intolerable development.

"Sir?" Glenda said. "How can I help you? What editions would you like to see first?"

Before Chase could respond, a reporter at one of the microfilm machines looked up from his work. "Glenda, dear, could I have all the dailies between May fifteenth, 1952, and September that same year?"

"In a moment. This gentleman was first."

"That's okay," Chase said, grasping the opportunity. "I've got plenty of time."

"You sure?" she asked.

"Yeah. Get him what he needs."

"I'll be back in five minutes," she said.

As she walked the length of the small room and through the wide arch into the filing room, both Chase and the reporter watched her. She was tall but not awkward, moving with a feline grace that actually made her seem fragile.

When she had gone, the reporter said, "Thanks for waiting."

"Sure."

"I've got an eleven o'clock deadline on this piece, and I haven't even begun to get my sources together." He turned back to his viewer, so engrossed in his work that he apparently had not recognized Chase.

Chase returned to his Mustang, opened his notebook, and studied his list, but he had absolutely nothing to add to it, and he could not see any pertinent connections between the familiar eight items. He closed the book, started the car, and drove out into the traffic on John F. Kennedy Throughway.

Fifteen minutes later he was on the four-lane interstate beyond the city limits, doing a steady seventy miles an hour, wind whistling at the open windows and ruffling his hair. As he drove, he thought about Glenda Kleaver, and he hardly noticed the miles going by.

After high school, Chase had gone to State because it was just forty miles from home, so he could see his mom and dad more often, still get back to visit old friends from high school and to see a girl who had mattered to him then, before Vietnam changed everything.

Now, as he parked in front of the administration building, the campus seemed to be a strange place, as if he had not spent nearly four years in these classrooms, on these flagstone paths, under these canopies of willows and elms. This part of his life was all but lost to him because it was from the far side of the war. To recapture the mood and feeling of that time, to connect emotionally with these old haunts, he would have to cross through the river of war memories to the shores of the past — and that was a journey that he chose not to make.

In the Student Records Office, as the manager approached him, Chase decided that this time the simple truth would get the best response. "I'm curious to know who may have been here, asking about me, within the past week. I'm having some problems with a researcher who's… well, been more or less harassing me."

The manager was a small, pale, nervous man with a neatly clipped mustache. He ceaselessly picked up items around him, put them down, picked them up again: pencils, pens, a notepad, a pamphlet about the university's tuition schedules and scholarship programs. He said that his name was Franklin Brown and that he was pleased to meet such a distinguished alumnus. "But there must've been dozens of inquiries about you in recent months, Mr. Chase, ever since the Medal of Honor was announced."

"Do you have the names and addresses of everyone requesting records?"

"Oh, yes, of course. And as you may know, we provide those records only to prospective employers — and even then, only if you signed an automatic authorization when you graduated."

"This man may have passed himself off as a prospective employer. He's very convincing. Could you check your records and tell me who might have stopped in last Tuesday?"

"He could have requested the records by mail. Most of the inquiries we receive are by mail. Few people actually come in."

"No. He didn't have time to do it by mail."

"Just a moment then," Brown said. He brought a ledger to the counter and thumbed through it. "There was just the one gentleman that day."

"Who was he?"

As he read it, Brown showed the entry to Chase. "Eric Blentz, Gateway Mall Tavern. It's in the city."

"I know exactly where it's at," Chase said.

Picking up a fountain pen, twisting it in his fingers, putting it down again, Brown asked, "Is he legitimate? Is he someone you're seeking a position with?"

"No. It's probably this reporter I mentioned, and he just made up the name Blentz. Do you remember what he looked like?"

"Certainly," Brown said. "Nearly your height, though not robust at all, very thin, in fact, and with a stoop to his shoulders."

"How old?"

"Thirty-eight, forty."

"His face? Do you remember that?"

"Very ascetic features," Brown said. "Very quick eyes. He kept looking from one of my girls here to the other, then at me, as if he didn't trust us. His cheeks were drawn, an unhealthy complexion. A large thin nose, so thin the nostrils were very elliptical."

"Hair?"

"Blond. He was quite sharp with me, impatient, self-important. Dressed very neatly, a high polish to his shoes. I don't think there was a hair out of place on his head. And when I asked for his name and business address, he took the pen right out of my hand, turned the ledger around, and wrote it down himself because, as he said, everyone always spelled his name wrong, and he wanted it right this time."