Dean Koontz - Strange Highways

"I heard of this woman once," he said rather enigmatically, leaning in the open truck window, "who lost her only daughter to cancer, and she was so crushed by grief that she had to change her entire life, move on to totally new horizons. She couldn't bear to look at her own husband any more, even though he loved her, because they shared the experience of their daughter, you see, and every time she looked at him… well, she saw her little daughter again, and was reminded again of the girl's suffering. See, that shared experience, that shared tragedy, was like a trap their relationship just couldn't escape. So… divorce, a new city, new state… that was the only solution for her, drastic as it was. But you seem to've handled grief better than that, Mrs. Lassiter. I know how hard it must've been for you these past couple years, but maybe you can take some heart in the fact that, for certain people who don't have your strength, life can be harder."

At ten minutes past eleven that night, two thirds of the way across the yard from the barn to the ruined house, they scraped off another couple of feet from the top of the tunnel and found the three dead rats. They put the bodies side by side on the barn floor, next to the other five that had been shot.

Ben Parnell came to the truck. "I thought maybe you'd want to see them — that we've got all eight of them, I mean."

"I would," she said. "Yes. I'll feel safer."

Meg and Tommy got out of the truck.

"Yeah," the boy said, "I want to see them. They thought they trapped us, but it was the other way around." He looked at Meg. "As long as we've got each other, we can get out of any scrape, huh?"

"Bet on it," she said.

Parnell scooped up the weary boy in his arms to carry him to the barn.

As the raw wind nipped at Meg, she jammed her hands into her, coat pockets. She was relieved. At least for the moment, not all of the burden was hers.

Looking over his shoulder, Tommy said, "You and me, Mom."

"Bet on it," she repeated. And she smiled. She felt as if the door, to a cage, of which she'd been only dimly aware, had opened now, giving them access to a new freedom.

I WAS SLEEPING OFF HALF A BOTTLE OF GOOD SCOTCH AND A BLONDE named Sylvia, who hadn't been so bad herself. But no one can sneak up on me, no matter how bushed I am. You have to be a light sleeper to last long in this business. I heard the thump near the foot of my bed, and I was reaching under the pillow for my Colt.38 in the next instant.

If I hadn't been out celebrating the successful conclusion of a case, the blinds and drapes wouldn't have been drawn. But I had been, and they were, so I didn't see anything.

I thought I heard footsteps in the hallway to the living room, but I couldn't be sure. I slid out of bed, stared intently around the room. Brown gloom, no intruder. I padded into the hall, looked both ways. No one.

In the front room, I distinctly heard the rod of the police-special lock pull out of its floor groove. The door opened, closed, and footsteps pounded in the outside hall, then down the apartment-house steps.

I ran into the living room and almost into the corridor before I remembered I was in my skivvies. It's not a building where anyone would care — or maybe even notice — a guy in his briefs, but I like to think I have higher standards than some of the weird creeps I call neighbors.

Turning on the lights, I saw that the police lock had been disengaged. I slid the bolt back in place.

I carefully searched the apartment from the john to the linen closet. There weren't any bombs or other dirty work, at least as far as I could see. I checked the bedroom twice, since that was where I first heard him, but it was clean.

I brewed some coffee. The first sip was so bad that I poured half the mug in the sink, wondering if the old plumbing could take it, and then laced what was left with some good brandy. Better. My kind of breakfast.

So there I stood in my shorts on the cold kitchen floor, warming my gut with liquor and wondering who had broken in and why.

Then I had a bad thought. When the intruder left, he'd pulled the rod of the special lock out of its nest in the floor. Which meant he'd entered the apartment through a window or that, when he'd first come through the door, he had replaced the police rod. The last idea was stupid. No dude is going to make it hard for himself to get out if the job goes sour.

I went around checking all the windows. They were locked as always. I even checked the bathroom window, though it has no lock, is barred, and is set in a blank wall eight floors above the street. No one had come in any of the windows.

I slapped my head a few times, as if I might knock some smarts into myself and figure this out. No smarter, I decided to take a shower and get on with the day.

It must have been hallucinations. I'd never had what the two-hundred-dollar-an-hour shrinks call postcoital depression. Maybe this was what it was supposed to be like. After all, no one walks into your apartment after achieving the near impossible of silently throwing a police lock, then sneaks into your bedroom, just to look you over and leave. And none of my enemies would send a killer who would chicken out after he got that far.

I finished the shower at four-thirty and did my exercises until five. Then I showered again — cold, this time — toweled hard enough to raise blisters, combed my mop into a semblance of order, and dressed.

By five-thirty, I was sliding into a booth down at the Ace-Spot, and Dorothy, the waitress, was plopping a Scotch and water in front of me before the smell of the place was properly in my nose.

"What'll it be, Jake?" she asked. She has a voice like glass dropped into a porcelain basin.

I ordered steak and eggs with a double helping of french fries, then topped it off with a question: "Anybody been asking around about me, Dory?"

She wrote half the question down on the order pad before she realized that I had stopped ordering. Dory was supposed to have been a fine-looking street girl in her day, but no one ever said she had many smarts.

"Not me," she said. "I'll ask Benny."

Benny was the bartender. He was smarter than Dory. Some days, he was capable of winning a debate with a carrot.

I don't know why I tend to hang around with so many chumps, saps, and blockheads. Maybe it makes me feel superior. A guy who's dumb enough to be trying to make a living as an old-fashioned shamus in the late twentieth century, in the age of computers and space-age eavesdropping equipment and drug thugs who'd kill their grandmothers for a nickel — hell, he needs some reason to feel good about himself.

When Dory came back, she brought a negative from Benny, plus the food. I took it down in large bites, thinking about the stranger who had walked through the wall into my bedroom.

After two more big Scotches, I went home to look the place over again.

Just as I reached my apartment door and thrust the key toward the lock, this dude opened it from the inside and started coming out.

"Hold it right there, creepo," I said, leveling my.38 on his big belly. I pushed him back into the living room, closed the door behind us, and turned on the light.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"What do I want? Look, buster, these are my digs, see? I live here. And the last time I looked, you didn't."

He was dressed like something out of a Bogart film, and I might have laughed except that I was angry enough to chew up a little bunny rabbit and spit out good-luck charms. He had a huge hat pulled down over half his face. The overcoat might have been tailored for Siamese twins. It hung to his knees, and after that there were wide, sloppy trousers and big — I mean BIG — stuffy tennis shoes. The tennis shoes didn't fit Bogart, but the air of mystery was there.