Dean Koontz - Velocity

When he raised one hand and hesitantly explored the source, he found something stiff and wiry bristling from his forehead, an inch below the hairline. Although his touch was gentle, it triggered a spasm of sharper pain that made him cry out. Are you prepared for your first wound?

He left the exploration of the injury for later, until he could see the damage.

The wound would not be mortal. The freak had not intended to kill him, only to hurt him, perhaps to scar him.

Billy’s grudging respect for his adversary had grown to the point that he did not expect the man to make mistakes, at least not major ones. Billy sat up. Pain swelled across his brow, and again when he got to his feet.

He stood swaying, surveying the parking lot. His assailant was gone. High in the night, a cluster of moving stars, the running lights of a jet, growled westward. On this route, it was probably a military transport headed for a war zone. Another war zone different from the one down here. He opened the driver’s door of the Explorer.

Crumbled safety glass littered the seat. He plucked a Kleenex box from the console and used it to scrape the prickly debris off the upholstery. He searched for the note that had been taped over the ignition. Evidently the killer had taken it.

He found the dropped key under the brake pedal. From the floor in front of the passenger’s seat, he retrieved the revolver.

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He had been allowed to keep the gun for the game ahead. The freak didn’t fear it.

The substance with which Billy had been sprayed—chloroform or some other anesthetic—had a lingering effect. When he bent over, he grew dizzy. Behind the wheel, with the door closed, with the engine running, he worried that he might not be fit to drive.

He turned on the air conditioner, angled two vents at his face. As he assessed his transient dizziness, the interior lights went off automatically. Billy turned them on once more.

He tilted the rearview mirror to inspect his face. He looked like a painted devil: dark red, but the teeth bright; dark red, and the whites of the eyes unnaturally white.

When he adjusted the mirror again, he saw at once the source of his pain. Seeing did not immediately mean believing. He preferred to think that the residual dizziness from the anesthetic might be accompanied by hallucination. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths. He strove to clear the image in the mirror from his mind, and hoped that when he looked again he would not see the same.

Nothing had changed. Across his forehead, an inch below the hairline, three large fishhooks pierced his flesh.

The point and the barb of each hook protruded from the skin. The shank also protruded. The bend of each hook lay under the thin meat of his brow. He shuddered and looked away from the mirror.

There are days of doubt, more often lonely nights, when even the devout wonder if they are heirs to a greater kingdom than this earth and if they will know mercy—or if instead they are only animals like any other, with no inheritance except the wind and the dark.

This was such a night for Billy. He had known others like it. Always the doubt had receded. He told himself that it would recede again, though this time it was colder and seemed certain to leave a higher water mark. The freak had at first seemed to be a player to whom murder was a sport. The fishhooks in the forehead, however, had not been intended as merely a game move; and this was no game.

To the freak, these killings were something more than murder, but the something more was not a form of chess or the equivalent of poker. Homicide

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had symbolic meaning for him, and he pursued it with a purpose more serious than amusement. He had some mysterious goal beyond the killing itself, an aim for which he sought completion. Game was the wrong word, Billy needed to find the right one. Until he knew the correct word, he would never understand the killer, and would not find him.

With Kleenex, he gently swabbed the clotted blood from his eyebrows, wiped most of it off his lids and lashes.

The sight of the fishhooks had clarified his mind. He wasn’t dizzy anymore.

His wounds needed attention. He switched on the headlights and drove out of the church parking lot.

Whatever ultimate goal the freak might have, whatever symbolism he intended with the fishhooks, he must also have hoped to send Billy to a doctor. The physician would require an explanation of the hooks, and any response Billy made would complicate his predicament.

If he told the truth, he would tie himself to the murders of Giselle Winslow and Lanny Olsen. He would be the primary suspect.

Without the three notes, he could offer no evidence that the freak existed. The authorities would not regard the hooks as credible evidence, for they would wonder if this was a case of self-mutilation. A self-inflicted wound was a ploy that murderers sometimes used to cast themselves as victims and thereby to deflect suspicion.

He knew the cynicism with which some cops would look upon his dramatic, bizarre, but superficial wounds. He knew it precisely. Furthermore, Billy was a fresh-water angler. He fished for trout and bass. These substantial hooks were the size needed to land large bass if you were using live bait instead of lures. In his tackle box at home were hooks identical to those that now drew his blood.

He dared not go to a doctor. He’d have to be his own physician. At 3:30 in the morning, he had the rural roadways to himself. The night was still, but the SUV made its own wind, which blustered at the broken-out window. In the halogen headlights, flat vineyards, hillside vineyards, and wooded heights remained familiar to his eye but, mile by mile, became as alien to his heart as any foreign barrens.

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PART 2

ARE YOU PREPARED FOR YOUR SECOND WOUND?

Chapter 17

In February, after the extraction of a molar with roots fused to his jawbone, Billy had been given a prescription for a painkiller, Vicodin, by his periodontist. He had used only two of ten tablets.

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The pharmacy label specified that the medication should be taken with food. He had not eaten dinner, and he still had no appetite. He needed the medication to be effective. From the refrigerator, he got a baking dish of leftover homemade lasagna.

Although the punctures in his brow were plugged with clots and the bleeding had stopped, the pain continued unrelenting and made coherent thought increasingly difficult. He chose not to delay the few minutes necessary to zap the dish in the microwave. He put it cold on the kitchen table. A pink sticker on the pill bottle counseled against consuming alcoholic beverages while taking the painkiller. Screw that. He had no intention of driving a car or operating heavy machinery in the next several hours. He popped the tablet and forked lasagna into his mouth, washing everything down with Elephant beer, a Danish brew boasting a higher alcohol content than other beers.

As he ate, he thought about the dead schoolteacher, about Lanny sitting in the bedroom armchair, about what the killer might do next. Those lines of thought were not conducive to appetite or to digestion. The teacher and Lanny were beyond rescue, and there was no way to foretell the freak’s next move.

Instead, he thought about Barbara Mandel, mostly about Barbara as she had been, not as she was now in Whispering Pines. Inevitably, these reminiscences led forward to the moment, and he began to worry about what would happen to her if he died.

He remembered the small square envelope from her physician. He fished it out of his pocket and tore it open.

The name Dr. Jordan Ferrier was blind embossed on the face of the creamcolored note card. He had precise handwriting: Dear Billy, When you start timing your visits to Barbara in order to avoid me during my regular rounds, I know the time has come for our semiannual review of her condition. Please call my office to schedule an appointment.