Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

In the soft and livid chest, the hole was small but ragged, wet-and strange in some way that I didn't immediately grasp and that I didn't want to contemplate further.

The nausea crawling the walls of my stomach slithered faster, faster. I felt as if I were four years old again, with a dangerously virulent case of the flu, feverish and weak, staring down the barrel of my own mortality.

Because I had enough of a mess to clean up without reenacting Elvis's historic last spew, I clenched my teeth, repressed my gorge, and finished buttoning the shirt.

Although I surely know more than the average citizen about how to read the condition of a corpse, I am not a specialist in forensic medicine. I couldn't accurately determine, to the half hour, the exact time of Robertson's death.

Logic put it between 5:30 and 7:45. During that period, I had searched his Camp's End house and explored the black room, had driven Elvis to the chief's barbecue and subsequently to the Baptist church, and had cruised alone to Little Ozzie's house.

Chief Porter and his guests could verify my whereabouts for part of that time, but no court would look favorably on the claim that the ghost of Elvis could provide me with an alibi for another portion of it.

The extent of my vulnerability became clearer by the moment, and I knew that time was running out. When a knock at the door eventually came, it would most likely be the police, sent here by an anonymous tip.

A SENSE OF URGENCY BORDERING ON PANIC GAVE ME new strength. With much grunting and the invention of a few colorful obscenities, I hauled Robertson out of the bathtub and flopped him onto the sheet that I'd spread on the bathroom floor,

Remarkably little blood had spilled in the tub. I cranked on the shower and washed the stains off the porcelain with steaming-hot water.

I'd never be able to take a bath here again. I would either have to go unwashed for the rest of my life or find a new place to live.

When I turned out Robertson's pants pockets, I found a wad of cash in each: twenty crisp hundred-dollar bills in the left pocket, twenty-three in the right. Clearly he hadn't been killed for money.

I returned those bankrolls to his pockets.

His billfold contained more cash. I stuffed that money in one of his pockets, as well, but kept the wallet with the hope that it might contain a clue to his murderous intentions when I had time to examine its remaining contents.

The corpse gurgled alarmingly as I wrapped it in the sheet. Bubbles of phlegm or blood popped in its throat, disturbingly like a belch.

I twisted the ends shut at the head and feet, and tied them as securely as possible with the white laces that I stripped out of a spare pair of shoes.

This package looked like an enormous doobie. I don't do drugs, not even pot, but that's what it looked like, anyway.

Or maybe a cocoon. A giant larva or pupa inside, changing into something new. I didn't want to dwell on what that might be.

Using a plastic shopping bag from a bookstore as a suitcase, I packed a change of clothes, shampoo, toothbrush, toothpaste, electric razor, cell phone, flashlight, scissors, a package of foil-wrapped moist towelettes-and a roll of antacids, which I was going to need to get through the rest of the night.

I dragged the body out of the bathroom, across my dark room, to the larger of the two south-facing windows. If I had lived in an ordinary apartment house, with neighbors below, the tenants' committee would have met first thing in the morning to draft a new rule forbidding corpse-hauling after 10:00 p.m.

The body weighed far too much for me to carry it. Tumbling it down the outside stairs would have been a noisy proposition-and a memorable spectacle if someone happened to be passing in the street at an inopportune moment.

A half-size dinette table and two chairs stood in front of the window. I moved them aside, raised the lower sash, removed the bug screen, and leaned out to be sure I correctly remembered that the backyard could not be seen from neighboring houses.

A board fence and mature cottonwood trees provided privacy. If a narrow line of sight between branches gave neighbors a sliver of a view, the moonlight alone didn't brighten the scene enough to lend credibility to their testimony in a courtroom.

I muscled the sheet-wrapped cadaver off the floor, into the open window. I shoved him out feetfirst because though he was inarguably dead, I felt squeamish about dropping him on his head. Halfway out the window, the sheet hung up on a protruding nail head, but with determination, I maneuvered him far enough to let gravity take over.

The drop from the windowsill to the ground measured twelve or thirteen feet. Not far. Yet the impact produced a brutal, sickening sound that seemed instantly identifiable as a dead body plummeting to hard earth from a height.

No dogs barked. No one said, Did you hear something, Maude ? No one said, Yes, Clem, I heard Odd Thomas drop a corpse out his window . Pico Mundo slept on.

Using paper towels to avoid leaving fingerprints, I plucked the pistol off the carpet. I added the gun to the contents of the plastic shopping bag.

In the bathroom once more, I checked to be sure that I hadn't missed anything obvious during the cleanup. Later I would need to do a more thorough job than I had time for now; vacuum for incriminating hairs and fibers, wipe every surface to eliminate Bob Robertson's prints__

I wouldn't be helping the killer get away with the crime. By all indications, he was a cool professional who would have been too smart and too self-aware to have left fingerprints or any other evidence of his presence.

When I consulted my wristwatch, what I saw surprised me. One-thirty-eight a.m. The night had seemed to be racing toward dawn. I'd thought it must be two-thirty or later.

Nonetheless, time was running out for me. My watch was digital, but I could hear my opportunity for action tick-tick-ticking away.

After turning off the bathroom light, I went to the front window once more, cracked the blind, and studied the street. If anyone was standing vigil, I still couldn't spot him.

Carrying the shopping bag, I went outside and locked the front door behind me. Descending the steps, I felt as intently watched as a Miss America contestant during the swimsuit competition.

Although pretty much certain that no eyes were on me, I balanced a load of guilt that made me self-conscious. I nervously scanned the night, looking everywhere but at the steps in front of me; it's proof of miracles that I didn't fall and break my neck and leave a second body for the police to puzzle over.

You might wonder what I had to feel guilty about, considering that I hadn't killed Bob Robertson.

Well, I never need a good reason to embrace guilt. Sometimes I feel responsible for train wrecks in Georgia, terrorist bombs in distant cities, tornadoes in Kansas__

A part of me believes that if I worked more aggressively to explore my gift and to develop it, instead of merely coping with it on a day-by-day basis, I might be able to assist in the apprehension of more criminals and spare more lives from both bad men and brutal nature, even in places far removed from Pico Mundo. I know this is not the case. I know that to pursue much greater involvement with the supernatural would be to lose touch with reality, to spiral down into a genteel madness, whereafter I would be no good to anyone. Yet that chastising part of me weighs my character from time to time and judges me inadequate.

I understand why I am such an easy mark for guilt. The origins lie with my mother and her guns.

Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it. The Chamber of Unreasonable Guilt is part of my mental architecture, and I doubt that I will ever be able to renovate that particular room in this strange castle that is me.