Dean Koontz - Odd Thomas

When I reached the bottom of the steps without anyone rushing forward to shout J'accuse !, I started around the side of the garage- then stopped, struck by the sight of the nearby house and the thought of Rosalia Sanchez.

I intended to use her Chevy, which she herself seldom drives, to move Robertson's body, then return the vehicle to the garage without her being the wiser. I didn't need a key. As a high-school student, I may not have paid as much attention in math class as would have been advisable, but long ago I had learned to hot-wire a car.

My sudden concern about Rosalia had nothing to do with the possibility of her seeing me at this nefarious bit of work, and everything to do with her safety

If another man, with murder on his mind, had gone with Robertson into my apartment between 5:30 and 7:45, they'd done so in daylight. Bright Mojave daylight.

I suspected that the two men had arrived as conspirators and that Robertson thought they were engaged on a bit of nasty business aimed at me. Perhaps he believed they were going to lie in wait for me. He must have been surprised when his companion drew a gun on him.

Once Robertson was dead and I'd been set up for murder, the killer would not have hung around to try on my underwear and sample the leftovers in my refrigerator. He would have left quickly, also in daylight.

Surely he had worried that someone in the nearby house might have seen him entering with his victim or departing alone.

Unwilling to risk a witness, he might have knocked on Rosalia's back door after he had dealt with Robertson. A gentle widow, living alone, would have been an easy kill.

In fact, if he were a thorough and cautious man, he probably would have visited her before bringing Bob Robertson here. He would have used the same pistol in both instances, framing me for two murders.

Judging by the swiftness and boldness with which he had acted to eliminate a compromised associate, this unknown man was thorough, cautious, and much more.

Rosalia's house stood silent. No lights shone at any of her windows, only a ghostly face that was, in fact, merely the reflection of the westering moon.

I STARTED ACROSS THE DRIVEWAY TOWARD ROSALIA'S back porch before I realized that I had begun to move. After a few steps, I halted.

If she was dead, I could do nothing for her. And if Robertson's killer had visited her, he had surely not left her alive.

Until now I had thought of Robertson as a lone gunman, a mental and moral freak scheming toward his bloody moment in history, like so many of those infamous scum in his exquisitely maintained files.

He might have been exactly that at one time, but he had become that and more. He had met another who thrilled to the same fantasies of mindless slaughter, and together they had grown into a beast with two faces, two hateful hearts, and four busy hands to do the devil's work.

The clue had hung on the study wall in Robertson's house, but I had not understood it. Manson, McVeigh, and Atta. None of them had worked alone. They had conspired with others.

In the files were case histories of numerous serial killers and mass murderers who acted alone, but the three faces in his shrine were men who had found meaning in a brotherhood of evil.

My illegal visit to Robertson's residence in Camp's End had somehow become known to him. Maybe cameras were hidden in the house.

Sociopaths are frequently paranoids, as well. If he chose to do so, Robertson had financial resources large enough to equip his home with well-concealed, state-of-the-art videocams,

He must have told his murderous friend that I had prowled his rooms. His kill buddy might then have decided that he himself was at risk if his association with Robertson became known.

Or because of my nosing around, Robertson might have grown nervous about their plans for August 15. He might have wanted to postpone the slaughter that they had been prepared to commit.

Perhaps his psychotic friend had been too excited to accept a delay. Having for so long contemplated this delicious violence, he now had a hunger for it, a need .

I turned away from Rosalia's house.

If I went in there and discovered that she had been murdered as a consequence of my actions, I doubted that I would have the will to deal with Robertson's body. At the very thought of discovering her corpse- Odd Thomas, can you see me? Odd Thomas, am I still visible ?-I felt a loosening occur in the hinges of my reason, and I knew that I was at risk of coming apart emotionally if not psychologically.

Viola Peabody and her daughters were depending on me.

Unknown numbers of people currently destined to die in Pico Mundo before the next sunset might be saved if I could stay out of jail, if I could learn the place and the time of the planned atrocity.

As if magic suddenly overruled physics, the moonlight seemed to acquire weight. I felt the burden of that lunar radiance with every step that I took to the back of the garage, where the corpse waited in its white wrapping.

The rear door of the garage was unlocked. That interior darkness smelled of tire rubber, motor oil, old grease, and a raw-wood aroma baked from the exposed rafters by the summer heat. I set my shopping bag inside.

Grimly aware that the day had taken both a mental and a physical toll from me, I dragged the body across the threshold and dosed the door. Only then did I fumble for the light switch.

This detached garage contained two stalls, plus a home workshop where a third car might otherwise have been parked. Currently one stall was empty, and Rosalia's Chevy stood in the space nearest the house.

When I tried the car trunk, I found it locked.

The thought of loading the corpse in the rear seat and driving with it behind my back disturbed me.

In my twenty years, I have seen many strange things. One of the more bizarre was the ghost of President Lyndon Johnson disembarking from a Greyhound at the Pico Mundo bus terminal. He arrived from Portland, Oregon, by way of San Francisco and Sacramento, only to board at once an outbound Greyhound destined for Phoenix, Tucson, and points in Texas. Because he had died in a hospital, he wore pajamas, no slippers, and he looked forlorn. When he realized that I could see him, he glared angrily, then pulled down his pajamas and mooned me.

I have never seen a corpse restored to life, however, nor have I encountered any corpse animated by evil sorcery. Yet the thought of turning my back on Robertson's cadaver and chauffeuring it to a lonely corner of Pico Mundo filled me with dread.

On the other hand, I couldn't prop him, fully wrapped, on the front passenger's seat and drive around with what appeared to be a 250-pound doobie.

Getting the corpse into the back of the Chevy taxed both my strength and my stomach. In his cocoon, Robertson felt loose, soft… ripe .

Repeatedly, the vivid memory of the ragged, wet bullet hole in his chest rose in my mind: the flabby and livid flesh around it, the dark custardy ooze that had drooled from it. I had not peered closely at the wound, had quickly glanced away, yet that image kept rising like a dark sun in my mind.

By the time I loaded the corpse in the car and closed the back door, sweat streamed from me as though some giant had wrung me out like a washcloth. That's how I felt, too.

Outside, at two o'clock in the morning, the temperature had fallen to a brisk eighty-five. Here in the windowless garage, the climate was ten degrees more desperate.

Blinking the perspiration out of my eyes, I fumbled under the dashboard and found the wires that I needed. Shocking myself only once, I got the engine started.

Through all of this, the dead man on the backseat did not stir.