Dean Koontz - Lost Souls

When the policemen were gone, Mr. Lyss turned to his cellmate. Nummy smiled, but Mr. Lyss did not.

The old man’s face was squinched and angry-or maybe that was just his usual look, a condition not a choice. Nummy had never seen him looking any other way. His short hair was standing out in all directions, the way cartoon animals’ fur and feathers stood out in all directions when they got an electric shock. His bared teeth were like lumps of charcoal after all the black has been burned out of them. His lips were so thin, his mouth looked like a slash.

“What the blazing hell did he mean, we’re livestock?” Mr. Lyss demanded.

Nummy said, “I don’t know that there word.”

“What word? Livestock? You live in Montana and you don’t know livestock? Why’re you jerking my chain?”

Nummy said what was only true: “You don’t have no chain, sir.”

Looming over Nummy, bony fists clenched, Mr. Lyss said, “You being smart with me, boy?”

“No, sir. I’m not smart, I’m blessed.”

Mr. Lyss stared hard at him. After a while, Nummy looked down at the floor. When he raised his eyes again, the old man was still staring at him.

At last, Mr. Lyss said, “You’re some kind of dummy.”

“Is there more kinds than one?”

“There’s a million kinds. There’s the kind who’re dumb about money. There’s others dumb about women. Some are so dumb they spend their whole lives with their heads up their butt.”

“Up whose butt, sir?”

“Up their own butt, whose butt do you think?”

“Can’t be done,” said Nummy. “Not your own head up your own.”

“It’s possible,” Mr. Lyss insisted.

“Even it could be possible, why would they?”

“Because they’re morons,” Mr. Lyss said. “It’s what they do.”

Still doubtful, Nummy said, “They must be way dumber than me.”

“Lots of people are dumber than you because they don’t realize they’re dumb. You realize it. That’s something, anyways.”

“I know my limits,” Nummy said.

“You’re a lucky man.”

“Yes, sir. That’s why they say what they say.”

Mr. Lyss scowled. “What do you mean, what do they say?”

“Dumb luck. They call it that ’cause it happens to dumb people. But it’s never luck, it’s God. God looks out for folks like me.”

“He does, huh? How do you know?”

“Grandmama told me, and Grandmama she never lied.”

“Everybody lies, boy.”

“I don’t,” said Nummy.

“Only because you’re too dumb to lie.”

“You said lots of people is dumber than me, so then lots of people don’t lie.”

Mr. Lyss spat on the floor. “I don’t like you, boy.”

“I’m sorry, sir. I like you-a little.”

“Right there’s a lie. You don’t like me at all.”

“No. I do. I really do. The littlest bit.”

Mr. Lyss’s right eye became larger than his left, as it would have if he put a magnifying glass to it, and he leaned forward as if studying a strange bug. “What’s to like about me?”

“You’re not boring, sir. You’re dangerous excitable, and that’s not good. But you’re what Grandmama called colorful. With no colorful people, the world would be dull as vanilla pudding.”

The instant the cold muzzle of the pistol pressed against the warm nape of her neck, Carson froze. Through clenched teeth, she called Chang a name that, back in the day, would have gotten her thrown off the New Orleans PD for gender, racial, and cultural insensitivity.

He called her a name that was a female anatomical term no doctor ever used, at least not in his professional capacity, and whispered, “Who are you?”

Before she could reply, the killer gasped in shock, as if a cold steel muzzle had been pressed to the warm nape of his neck, and from behind him, Michael said, “We’re cops. Drop the gun.”

Chang was silent, perhaps contemplating the mysteries and the synchronicities of a universe that suddenly seemed less random and more morally ordered than he had thought.

Then he said, “You’re not cops.” To Carson, he said, “You move a muscle, bitch, I’ll blow your brains out.”

The dark bay lapped gently at the hull of the boat, and Carson blinked beads of condensed fog from her eyelashes as she tried without success to blink images of Scout from her mind’s eye.

“Who are you?” Chang demanded again.

“Private investigators,” Michael said. “Plus I’m her husband. I’ve got more at stake here than you do. Think about it.”

“Husband,” Chang said, “you drop your gun.”

“Get real,” Michael said.

“You won’t shoot me,” Chang said.

“What else can I do?”

“You shoot me, I’ll shoot her.”

“Maybe you’ll be dead too fast to shoot.”

“Even dead, I’ll squeeze the trigger reflexively.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Michael said.

“Or your shot will pass through me, kill her, too.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” Michael said.

“There could be another way,” Carson said.

Michael said, “I don’t see one, honey.”

“Let’s not be hasty, sweetheart.”

“At least there’s all that life insurance,” Michael said.

“They won’t pay it, dear.”

Chang said, “Don’t talk to each other. You talk to me.”

“All right,” Carson said. “Chang, explain to Michael that the insurance company won’t pay off with you and me dead-and only him alive. It’s just too suspicious.”

“Chang,” said Michael, “tell her that if you shoot her first and then I shoot you, the ballistic evidence will require the insurance company to pay off.”

“Shut up, shut up!” Chang commanded. “You’re making me very nervous.”

“Chang, you’re not a calming influence yourself,” Carson said.

Chang slid the muzzle of his pistol up from the nape of her neck to the back of her skull and dug it into her scalp. “With Beckmann dead, I have nothing to lose.”

Because she was at the front of the death line, Carson had no one to whose skull she could hold the muzzle of her pistol.

“We could make a deal,” Michael said.

“You have a gun to my head!” Chang complained bitterly.

It seemed to Carson that the killer was so obsessed with the weapon pressed to his head that he had all but forgotten that, like Michael, she was armed.

“Yes, I do,” said Michael, “I have a gun to your head, so I’ve got a negotiating advantage, but you’ve got some cards to play, too.”

Carson ’s right arm hung at her side. She turned her hand and directed her pistol toward the deck immediately behind her.

“You have no reason to trust me, and I have no reason to trust you,” said Chang with what sounded like a perilous degree of despair.

“You have every reason to trust us,” said Michael. “We’re nice people.”

As Carson squeezed off a shot, she dropped toward her knees, intending to fling herself flat on the deck.

Chang screamed in pain and fired a round the instant he was hit.

Maybe Carson didn’t really feel the bullet sizzle across her scalp, but there was muzzle flash, the smell of burnt hair.

She sprawled facedown, rolled on her back, sat up with the pistol in a two-hand grip, saw Chang flat and Michael on top of him with a knee in his back.

“My foot, my foot,” Chang screamed, and Carson said urgently, “Michael, is my hair on fire?” and Michael said, “No, his piece is on the deck, find it!”

Carson found the weapon-“Got it”-and Michael said he needed to vomit, which he had never done in his years as a cop, so Carson knelt beside Chang and put her pistol to his head, which she greatly enjoyed. Chang kept screaming about his wounded foot, and Michael leaned over the railing and spewed into the bay. In the distance a siren rose, and when Michael had purged his stomach, he announced that he had called 911 from the quay, and then he asked Carson if she needed to vomit, and she said she didn’t, but she was wrong, and she vomited on Chang.