Dean Koontz - Lost Souls

When Deucalion phoned with a task for Erika, she was relieved to discover that Jocko, more than she, possessed the skills and the temperament for the job. Aware that she was something of a computer hacker, Deucalion gave her the make, model, and license-plate number of a truck that interested him and asked if she might find a way into the Department of Motor Vehicles’ records to discover the owner of the vehicle and his address.

Erika disliked the Internet more than she liked it, because something about it seemed less informational than disinformational, potentially totalitarian. She hacked systems only if they were hate sites or dangerous utopian groups, and she hacked them only to mess with their data and cause them headaches.

Jocko, on the other hand, was a firewall-busting, code-breaking, backdoor-building, antiviral-thwarting, data-drilling maniac, a cyber cowboy riding a virtual horse almost anywhere he wanted. He was much smarter than he sometimes seemed to be, but his greatest advantage as a hacker was less his intelligence than his singular ability to obsess combined with his wildly enthusiastic nature, combined with his unconventional patterns of thought, combined with his ability to stay awake for months at a time if he wished to do so, combined with the stunning dexterity of his bizarre hands and more bizarre feet-he could keyboard with both and simultaneously-combined with his fierce and adorable determination to make his adopted mother proud of him.

After speaking with Deucalion, Erika stepped out of the living room, into the hallway, from which Jocko had disappeared into the kitchen on his endless loop of worry-mongering and unsparing self-denunciation. She could hear him stomping around the dinette table, his feet slap-slap-slapping, and after a moment he appeared at the doorway, shaking a fist in his face as if threatening to punch himself.

He was not wearing one of his fourteen funny hats with little bells. This was not a time for happy headgear. This was a time for hair shirts, except that Jocko didn’t own any hair shirts, and Erika refused to make one for him no matter how earnestly he begged her to buy a bolt of haircloth and get to work at her sewing machine.

Approaching Erika, he sneered at himself, jeered and mocked and scoffed and taunted himself, pointed at himself scornfully, wagged a finger at himself, progressing slowly because with every second step, he stomped on one foot with the other, accompanying the stomp with a declaration of contempt: “You deserve it!” and “So there!” and “Ninnyhammer!”

When at last Jocko reached her and tried to go around her, she sidestepped to block his way and said, “Deucalion called. He has an urgent task that he will entrust to no one but you.”

Jocko glanced left, right, over his shoulder, and then at Erika once more. “You who?” he asked.

“You, little one.”

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“Me, Jocko, me?”

“That’s right.”

Such a look of wonder came over his face that it would have shattered a mirror if he had been standing before one. Then bright wonder was clouded by suspicion.

He said, “Which Deucalion?”

“I know of only one.”

Jocko cocked his head and narrowed his eyes, studying her for evidence of deception.

He said, “Tall guy, big feet, huge hands, tattooed face, and sometimes weird light throbs through his eyes?”

“Yes. That’s the one.”

“He has something for Jocko to do? An important something? That is so special. So lovely. So sweet. To be needed. But of course Jocko will fail.”

Erika handed him a page from a notepad, on which she had written the make, model, and license number of the truck. “He wants you to hack into the DMV computer and find out the name and address of the person who owns this vehicle.”

Jocko stared at the page from the notepad as if it were an object worthy of veneration. His peculiar tongue slowly licked the flaps that served as his lips.

“Today is the day,” he whispered.

“You only need to seize it, sweetie.”

“Today Jocko becomes a member of the team. A comrade. Commando. Warrior. One of the good guys.”

“Go for it,” Erika urged.

He snatched the paper from her hand, spun away from her, cried out-“Banzai!”-and scampered along the hallway to the study, where the computer waited.

Having missed breakfast because of the murderous Chang, having missed lunch because of the need to teleport to Montana and gear up for a monster hunt, having had only coffee and a cookie at Erika’s place, with Mary Margaret’s incomparably delicious apple dumplings now a thousand air miles away, Carson and Michael decided that the first order of business, after checking in to Falls Inn, would be an early dinner.

Still in their California clothes, but too self-conscious to stroll into a restaurant in storm suits and ski boots, they walked two blocks, shivering, to the Andy Andrews Café. Copper ceiling, pine-paneled walls, red-and-white checkered tablecloths: The place was clean and cozy, a haven in a madhouse world.

As New Orleans police officers, then as homicide detectives, and subsequently as private investigators, they had always done their best work when well fed. Indeed, in Carson ’s mind-and in Michael’s, too-cop work and good eats were inextricably linked. You couldn’t bust bad guys with high style and aplomb if you didn’t eat great food with gusto. Conversely, if you weren’t busting bad guys-if, say, you spent the week doing paperwork or giving depositions or, God forbid, on vacation-even the most exquisite culinary creations seemed to have less flavor than usual.

Before they were seated at their table, she knew that the Andy Andrews Café was aces. The aromatic air and the mouthwatering look of the comfort food on the other diners’ plates made her stomach flutter and her knees go weak.

They ordered a bottle of superb California cabernet sauvignon; because whatever Victor the clone might be up to, he wasn’t likely to detonate a nuclear device at the intersection of Cody Street and Beartooth Avenue later this evening or commit an equivalent atrocity requiring them to be abstinent and ready. Assuming the clone was as drunk with pride and as given to vainglory as his cloner had been, his experiments would be fraught with setbacks, resulting in the perpetual revision of his schedule for world domination.

“I kind of like Rainbow Falls,” Michael said.

“It’s quaint,” she agreed.

Indicating two different couples, he said, “We could have worn our storm suits.”

Referring to a few other customers, she said, “Or cowboy hats.”

“They don’t seem to go in for the goth look around here.”

“Or motorcycle-gang chic.”

“There’s definitely less nostril jewelry.”

“I don’t have a problem with that,” she said.

“If we lived here, Scout could grow up to be a rodeo cowgirl.”

“Fine with me, as long as there’s a way she can transition from that to the presidency.”

“Her campaign slogan could be, ‘No bull ever threw me, and I won’t throw any bull.’”

“Now if the country can just survive until she’s old enough to run for office.”

They ordered the same thing: homemade meat loaf with green chiles and cheese sauce, which came with a glistening mound of paper-thin home fries, baked corn, pepper slaw, cornbread, and enough whipped butter to grease an eighteen-wheeler.

Everything was so delicious that neither of them spoke for a minute or two, until Michael said, “Do you remember-on the menu, do they give the name and number of a cardiologist?”