Dean Koontz - The Voice of the Night

“Of what? That Roy was an abused child? That he was maybe abused enough to grow up twisted? Yeah. Maybe it would convince them of that, all right. But it wouldn’t prove a thing. It wouldn’t prove that Roy killed those two boys or that he tried to wreck a train the other night or that he’s trying to kill me. We need more than this. We have to go through with the rest of the plan.”

“Tonight,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Weezy came home at five-thirty, and they had an early supper together. She brought stuff from the deli: sliced ham, sliced turkey breast, sliced cheese, macaroni salad, potato salad, big dill pickles, and wedges of cheesecake. There was a lot of food, but neither of them ate much; she was always watching her figure, conscious of every extra ounce, and Colin was simply too worried about the coming night to have much of an appetite.

“You going back to the gallery?” he asked.

“In about an hour.”

“Be home at nine?”

“‘Fraid not. We close at nine, sweep the floor, dust the furniture, and open again at ten.”

“What for?”

“We’ve having a private, invitation-only showing of a new artist.”

“At ten o‘clock at night?”

“It’s supposed to be an elegant after-dinner affair. Guests will have their choice of brandy or champagne. Sound swell to you?”

“I guess.”

She put a daub of mustard on her plate, rolled up a slice of ham, dipped the ham in the mustard, and nibbled daintily. “All of our best local customers are coming.”

“How late will it last?”

“Midnight or thereabouts.”

“Will you come home after that?”

“I expect so.”

He tasted the cheesecake.

“Don’t forget your curfew,” she said.

“I won’t.”

“You be home before dark.”

“You can trust me.”

“I hope so. For your sake, I hope so.”

“Call and check if you want.”

“I probably will.”

“I’ll be here,” he lied.

After she had showered and changed and left for the evening, he went into her room and took the pistol from the dresser drawer. He put it in a small cardboard box. He also put the tape recorder, two flashlights, and a squeeze bottle of ketchup in the box. He took a dish towel out of the linen closet and cut it in half, the long way. He put the two strips of cloth with the other things. He went out to the garage and fetched a coil of rope from the wall, where it had been hanging ever since they moved into the house, and he added that to the bundle.

He had some time to kill before he could set out for the Kingman house. He went to his room and tried to work on one of his monster models. He couldn’t do it. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

An hour before nightfall, he picked up the box that contained the pistol, the tape recorder, and the other items. He left the house and strapped the package to the carrier on his bicycle. He followed an indirect route to the abandoned Kingman house at the top of Hawk Drive, and he was certain he was not followed.

Heather was waiting just inside the front door of the ruined mansion. She stepped out of the shadows when Colin arrived. She was wearing short blue shorts and a long-sleeved white blouse, and she was beautiful.

He put the bicycle on its side, out of sight in the tall dry grass, and he carried the cardboard box inside.

The house was always a strange place, but perhaps even stranger than usual at twilight. The slanting copper sunlight streamed through a few broken, shutterless windows and gave the place a somewhat bloody look. Motes of dust spun lazily in the fading beams. In one comer a huge spider web gleamed like crystal. The shadows crept as if they were living things.

“I look terrible,” Heather said as soon as he joined her in the house.

“You look great. Terrific.”

“My shampoo didn’t work,” she said. “My hair came out all stringy.”

“Your hair is nice. Very nice. You couldn’t ask for prettier hair.”

“He’s not going to be interested in me,” she said, quite sure of that. “As soon as he sees that it’s me you’ve got here, he’ll just turn and walk out.”

“Don’t be silly. You’re perfect. Absolutely perfect.”

“Do you really think so?”

“I really do.” He gave her a warm, tender, lingering kiss. Her lips were soft, tremulous. “Come on,” he said gently. “We have to get the trap set.” He was involving her in an extremely dangerous situation, using her, manipulating her, not unlike Roy had manipulated him, and he hated himself for it. But he didn’t call it off while there was still time.

She followed him, and as he started up the stairs toward the second floor, she said, “Why not down here?”

He stopped, turned, looked down at her. “The shutters have fallen or been torn off almost all the windows on the first floor. If we staged it down there, the lights would be visible outside the house. We might attract someone. Other kids. They might interrupt us before we’ve gotten what we want out of Roy. Some of the rooms on the second floor still have all their shutters.”

“If something goes wrong,” she said, “it would be easier to get away from him if we were on the first floor.”

“Nothing’s going to go wrong,” he said. “Besides, we’ve got the gun. Remember?” He patted the box that he was carrying under his right arm.

He started up the steps again and was relieved to hear her following him.

The second-floor hall was gloomy, and the room he was interested in was dark except for threads of late-afternoon sun around the edges of the bolted shutters. He switched on one of the flashlights.

He had chosen a large bedroom just to the left of the head of the stairs. Ancient, yellowed wallpaper was peeling off the walls and hanging in long loops across the ceiling, like old bunting left over from a festive occasion a hundred years ago. The room was dusty and smelled vaguely of mildew, but it wasn’t littered with rubble as many of the other chambers were; there were only scattered pieces of lath and a few chunks of plaster and a couple of ribbons of wallpaper on the floor along the far wall.

He handed Heather the flashlight and put down the box. He picked up the second light, turned it on, and propped it against the wall so that the beam shone up at the ceiling and was reflected back down.

“It’s a spooky place,” Heather said.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Colin said.

He took the tape recorder out of the box and placed it on the floor, near the wall that was opposite the door. He gathered up some of the rubble and carefully arranged it over the small machine, letting only the head of the microphone in the open, and concealing even that in a shadowy little pocket of tangled wallpaper.

“Does it look natural?” he asked.

“I guess so.”

“Look at it closely.”

She did. “It’s okay. It doesn’t look arranged.”

“You can’t see the recorder at all?”

“No.”

He retrieved the second flashlight and shone it on the pile of trash, looking closely for a glint of metal or plastic, a reflection that would betray the trick.

“Okay,” he said at last, satisfied with his work. “I think it’ll fool him. He probably won’t even give it a second look.”

“Now what?” she asked.

“We’ve got to make you look like you’ve been roughed up a bit,” Colin said. “Roy won’t believe a word of it unless you look like you put up a struggle.” He took the squeeze bottle of ketchup out of the box.

“What’s that for?”

“Blood.”

“Are you serious?”

“I’ll admit it’s trite,” Colin said. “But it ought to be effective.”

He squeezed some of the ketchup onto his fingers, then artfully smeared it along her left temple, matting her golden hair with it.