Dean Koontz - Night Chills

“Another team of men will relieve you in six hours,” Salsbury said. “At eight o’clock this evening.” He jammed his handkerchief back into his pocket. “One other thing. When you leave this room, you will forget that you ever met me. You’ll forget that I was here. You’ll remember everything I’ve said to you prior to what I’m saying to you now, every previous exchange of this conversation we’ve just had — but you’ll think that Bob Thorp gave you your instructions. Is that perfectly clear?”

“Yes.”

“Perfectly.”

“Then get moving.”

The two men went out of the room, forgetting him the moment they set foot in the corridor.

A fiercely white pulse of lightning washed over the town, and a crack of thunder followed, rattling the windows.

“Close those blinds,” Salsbury said irritably.

Thorp did as he was told.

Salsbury sat down behind the desk.

When he had drawn the Venetian blinds, Bob Thorp returned to the desk and stood in front of it.

Salsbury looked up at him and said, “Bob, I want to seal this burg up tight. Real tight.” He made a fist with his right hand by way of example. “I want to make damned sure that no one can get out of town. Is there anything else that I should block in addition to the highway?”

Scratching his beetled brow, Thorp said, “You need two more men at the east end of the valley. One to watch the river. He should be armed with a rifle so he can pick off anyone in a boat if he has to do that. The other man should be stationed in the trees between the river and the highway. Give him a shotgun and tell him to stop anyone who tries to sneak out through the woods.”

“The man at the river — he’d have to be an expert with a rifle, wouldn’t he?” Salsbury asked.

“You wouldn’t need a master rifleman. But he would have to be a fairly good shot.”

“Okay. We’ll use one of your deputies for that. They’re all good with a rifle, aren’t they?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Good enough for this?”

“No doubt about it.”

“Anything else?”

Thorp thought about the situation for almost a minute. Finally he said, “There’s a series of old logging roads that lead up into the mountains and eventually hook up with a second series of roads that come from the lumber operations around Bexford. A lot of that route has been abandoned. None of it’s paved. A few sections may be graveled if they haven’t been washed out this summer, but mostly it’s just dirt. Narrow. Full of weeds. But I guess if a man was determined enough, he could drive out that way.”

“Then we’ll block it,” Salsbury said, getting up from the chair. He paced nervously to the windows and back to the desk. “This town is mine. Mine. And it’ll stay that way. I’m going

to keep my hands on every man, woman, and child here until I’ve solved this problem.”

The situation had gotten incredibly far out of hand. He would have to call Dawson. Sooner or later. Probably sooner. Couldn’t be avoided. But before he placed that call, he wanted to be certain that he had done everything that he could possibly do without Leonard’s help, without Klinger’s help. Show them he was decisive. Clever. A good man to have around. His efficiency might impress the general. And that Christ-kissing bastard. Impress them enough to compensate for his having caused the crisis in the first place. That was very important. Very important. Right now the trick was to survive his partners’ wrath.

2:30 P.M.

The air in Sam’s library was stale and humid.

Rain drummed on the outside window, and hundreds of tiny beads of dew formed on the inside.

Still numb from the discovery of his son’s body, Paul sat in one of the easy chairs, his hands on the arms of the chair and his fingertips pressed like claws into the upholstery.

Sam stood by one of the bookcases, pulling volumes of collected psychology essays from the stacks and leafing through them.

On the wide window ledge, an antique mantel clock ticked hollowly, monotonously.

Jenny came into the room from the ball, letting the door stand open behind her. She knelt on the floor beside Paul’s chair and put her hand over his.

“How’s Rya?” he asked.

Before they had gone to the Thorp house to search for the body, Sam had given the girl a sedative.

“Sleeping soundly,” Jenny said. “She’ll be out for at least two more hours.”

“Here!” Sam said excitedly.

They looked up, startled.

He came to them, holding up a book of essays. “His picture. The one who calls himself Deighton.”

Paul stood up to have a better look at it.

“No wonder Rya and I couldn’t find any of his articles,” Sam said. “We were looking through tables of contents for something written by Albert Deighton. But that’s not his name. His real name’s Ogden Salsbury.”

“I’ve seen him,” Paul said. “He was in Ultman’s Cafe the day that waitress drove the meat fork through her hand. In fact she waited on him.”

Rising to her feet, Jenny said, “You think that was connected with the rest of this, with the story Buddy Pellineri told us— with what they did to Mark?” Her voice faltered slightly on those last few words, and her eyes grew shiny. But she bit her lip and held back the tears.

“Yes,” Paul said, wondering again at his own inability to weep. He ached. God, he was full of pain! But the tears would not come. “It must be connected. Somehow.” To Sam he said, “Salsbury wrote this article?”

“According to the introductory blurb, it was the last piece he ever published — more than twelve years ago.”

“But he’s not dead.”

“Unfortunately.”

“Then why the last?”

“Seems he was quite a controversial figure. Praised and damned but mostly damned. And he got tired of the controversy. He dropped out of his lecture tours and gave up his writing so that he’d have more time to dedicate to his research.”

“What’s the article about?”

Sam read the title. “‘Total Behavioral Modification through Subliminal Perception.’” And the subtitle: “‘Mind Control from the Inside Out.’”

“What does all of that mean?”

“Do you want me to read it aloud?”

Paul looked at his watch.

“It wouldn’t hurt if we knew the enemy before we went into Bexford to see the state police,” Jenny said.

“She’s right,” Sam said.

Paul nodded. “Go ahead. Read it.”

2:40 P.M.

Friday afternoon H. Leonard Dawson was in the study of his Greenwich, Connecticut, house, reading a long letter on lavender paper from his wife. Julia was one-third of the way through a three-week trip to the Holy Land, and day by day she was discovering that it was less and less like she had imagined and hoped it would be. The best hotels were all owned by Arabs and Jews, she said; therefore, she felt unclean every time she went to bed. There were plenty of rooms in the inns, she said, but she would almost have preferred to sleep in the stables. That morning (as she wrote the letter) her chauffeur had driven her to Golgotha, that most sweetly sacred of places; and she had read to herself from the Bible as the car wended its way to that shrine of both sorrow and everlasting joy. But even Golgotha had been spoiled for her. Upon arriving there, she found that the holy hill was literally swarming with sweaty Southern Negro Baptists. Southern Negro Baptists, of all people. Furthermore.

The white telephone rang. Its soft, throaty burrrr-burrrrburrrr was instantly recognizable.

The white phone was the most private line in the house. Only Ogden and Ernst knew the number.

He put down the letter, waited until the telephone had rung a second time, picked up the receiver. “Hello?”