Dean Koontz - Night Chills

“Oh, Mark,” she said sadly, a bit breathlessly. A pain rose from deep inside of her, filled her chest. “Little Mark. You never ever hurt anyone. Not anyone. What they did to you. What an awful thing they did to you. Why?”

She stood up. Her knees felt weak.

Find the body, she thought.

No, she told herself.

You came here to find the body.

I’ve changed my mind. Find the body? No. No, that’s just… too much. Much too much. Finding him.. Mark.. with his skull cracked open. and his eyes rolled back in his head.

and dried blood all over his face. Too much. Even strong girls can’t deal with everything in life. Even strong girls have their limits, don’t they? This is mine. My limit. I can’t go looking. all through the house. just can’t.

Beginning to cry, beginning to shake, she picked up the bucket and left the house.

At 12:45 Salsbury carried his briefcase down from his room and went to the parlor.

Pauline Vicker was sitting in the largest of the three armchairs. She was a heavyset woman in her early sixties. Fluffy

gray hair. Ruddy complexion. Double chin. Merry eyes and a nearly constant smile. She had the archetypal grandmother’s face, the model for grandmothers’ faces in storybooks and movies. Her bare feet were propped up on a hassock. She was eating candies and watching a television soap opera.

From the doorway he said, “Mrs. Vicker.”

She glanced up, chewing a caramel. She had some trouble swallowing. Then: “Good afternoon, Mr. Deighton. If you’ve a complaint about your room or anything — do you think perhaps it could wait just a bit, a few minutes — not longer than that mind you — just until this show ends? It’s one of my favorite shows and—”

“I am the key,” he said impatiently.

“Oh,” she said, disappointed that she wasn’t going to be able to finish watching the program. “I am the lock.”

“Get up, Mrs. Vicker.”

She struggled out of the chair.

Fat old cow, he thought.

“What do you need?” she asked pleasantly.

“I’ll need this room for a while,” he said, walking to the desk which held her private telephone. “Don’t disturb me.”

“Am I to leave?”

“Yes. Now.”

She looked wistfully at the round maple table beside her armchair. “May I take my box of candy?”

“Yes, yes. Just get the hell out of here.”

Pleased, she snatched up the candy. “I’m as good as gone. As good as gone, Mr. Deighton. You take your time here. I won’t let anyone disturb you.”

“Mrs. Vicker.”

“Yes?”

“Go to the kitchen.”

“All right.”

“Eat your chocolates if you want.”

“I will.”

“Listen to your radio, and wait in the kitchen until I come to see you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Is that completely clear?”

“Certainly. Certainly. I’ll do just what you say. See if I don’t. I’ll go straight out to the kitchen and eat my chocolates and listen—”

“And close the door as you leave,” he said sharply. “Leave now, Mrs. Vicker.”

She shut the parlor door behind her.

At the desk Salsbury opened his briefcase. He took from it a set of screwdrivers and one of the infinity transmitters — a small black box with several wires trailing from it — that Dawson had purchased in Brussels.

Smart, he thought. Clever. Clever of me to bring the IF. Didn’t know why I was packing it at the time. A hunch. Just a hunch. And it’s paid off now. Clever. I’m on top of the situation. Right up there on top, in control. Full control.

Having carefully considered his options, algebraic even when he was so recently returned from the edge of panic, he had decided that it was time to hear what Paul Annendale was saying to the Edisons. There were a dozen miniature glass swans lined up across the top of the desk, each slightly different in size and shape and color from the one that preceded it. He brushed these figurines to the floor; they bounced on the carpet and clinked against one another. His mother had collected hand-blown figurines, although not swans. She favored glass dogs. By the hundreds. He crushed one of the swans under his heel and imagined that it was a glass dog. Curiously satisfied by this gesture, he connected the infinity transmitter to the telephone and dialed the number of the general store. Across the street no telephone rang at the Edison’s place. Nevertheless, every receiver in the store, as well as in the family’s living quarters above the store, opened to Salsbury’s ear.

What he heard in the first couple of minutes broke down the paper-thin wall of composure that he had managed to rebuild since the murder. Buddy Pellineri, in his own half-literate fashion, was telling Sam and Jenny and Paul about the two men who had come down from the reservoir on the morning of August sixth.

Rossner and Holbrook had been seen!

However, that was neither the only nor the worst piece of bad news. Before Buddy had reached the end of his story, before Edison and the others had finished questioning him, Annendale’s daughter arrived with the bucket full of bloody rags. The damned bucket! In his haste to clean up the kitchen and hide the corpse, he had shoved the bucket under the sink and then had completely forgotten about it. The boy’s body wasn’t all that well hidden — but at least it wasn’t in the room where the murder had occurred. The damned bloody rags. He had left evidence at the scene of the crime, virtually out in plain sight where any fool could have found it!

He could no longer afford to spend hours formulating his response to the events of the morning. If he was to contain the crisis and save the project, he would have to think faster and move faster than he had ever done before.

He stepped on another glass swan and snapped it to pieces.

1:10 P.M.

A PEAL OF THUNDER rumbled across the valley, and the wind seemed to gain considerable force in the wake of the noise.

Torn between a desire to believe Emma Thorp and a growing conviction that Rya was telling the truth, Paul Annendale climbed the steps to the stoop at the back of the Thorp house.

Putting a hand on his shoulder, pressing with fingers like talons, Sam said, “Wait.”

Paul turned. The wind mussed his hair, blew it into his eyes. “Wait for what?”

“This is breaking and entering.”

“The door’s open.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Sam said, letting go of him. “Besides, it’s open because Rya broke it open.”

Aware that Sam was trying to reason with him for his own good but nonetheless impatient, Paul said, “What in the hell am I supposed to do, Sam? Call the cops? Or maybe pull some strings, use my connections, put a call through to the chief of police, and have him investigate himself?”

“We could call the state police.”

“The body might not even be here.”

“If they could avoid it, they wouldn’t move a corpse in broad daylight.”

“Maybe there is no corpse, not here, not anywhere.”

“I hope to God you’re right.”

“Come on, Paul. Let’s call the state police.”

“You said they’d need as much as two hours to get here. If the body still is in this house — well, it most likely won’t be here two hours from now.”

“But this is all so improbable! Why on earth would Bob want to murder Mark?”

“You heard what Rya said. That sociologist ordered him to kill. That Albert Deighton.”

“She didn’t know it was Deighton,” Sam said.

“Sam, you’re the one who recognized him from her description .”

“Okay. Granted. But why would Emma go to a church luncheon and card game just after watching her husband kill a defenseless child? How could she? And how could a boy like Jeremy witness a brutal murder and then lie to you so smoothly?”