Dean Koontz - Odd Hours

Shackett must have opened the back door and accidentally let them inside. But if he had done so, why hadn’t he cried out in alarm when they surged around him or why hadn’t he fired a shot to spook them into retreat?

If I had navigated correctly through the joined rooms, the door ahead of me should open onto the short hall of the T, the entrance corridor. Indeed, it did.

Although it was not a noble thought, I hoped that the coyotes had torn the chief of police to pieces when they had come through the back door. Not having heard the beasts snarling and not having heard the chief screaming, I assumed my fond hope would not be fulfilled.

As soon as I entered the short hall, I turned left and rushed to the enclosed flagstone walkway between the annex and the church. I slammed the door behind me and kept moving, but when I glanced back, I saw that the latch had not caught, that the door had rebounded, and that it still stood open.

I was in the Hall of What Would Jesus Do, where I ran past a child’s drawing that I had not noticed during my previous passage: Jesus in a helicopter, rescuing livestock from a veal farm.

When I reached the entrance to the narthex, I looked back and saw coyotes leaping through the annex door into the enclosed walkway, tails lashing with the delight of natural-born gourmands when they saw me.

I took time to close the narthex door between me and the pack, and to make certain that the latch engaged.

The front entrance to the church remained locked. I returned along the main aisle of the nave, hurrying toward the chancel railing over which I had fled such a short while ago.

Because the coyotes couldn’t have gotten into the Sunday-school annex on their own and because the chief hadn’t cried out in terror or in the agony of a bitten man, I considered the possibility that he had let them inside to assist in the search for me.

That made no sense. Even coyotes that were something more than only what they appeared to be were nonetheless coyotes, and evil police chiefs were still human beings. Predatory wild animals and people did not form multispecies gangs for their mutual enrichment, not even in California.

I must be overlooking something. This wouldn’t be the first time.

As I threw open the chancel railing and entered the sanctuary, even in my haste I was smug enough to congratulate myself on my quick thinking and fast action. When, in a moment, I departed the church by the sacristy door, the slavering coyotes would be roaming through the annex, confused and distracted, and I would have a clear track to the Mercedes parked in the street.

In the sacristy, I crunched across the glass from the window that I had broken to gain entrance. Evidently, Hoss Shackett had been nearby at the time, had heard the noise, and had followed me into the church through the same window.

Why he had been in the immediate neighborhood, I did not know and did not need to know. Curiosity + cats = road kill. All that mattered was getting to the Mercedes and splitting before the chief saw what vehicle I was driving.

I unlocked the sacristy door and went out into the fog, through which I could see many lights at the previously dark rectory, on the farther side of the courtyard that was populated by bloodcurdling devotional statuary.

Perhaps Reverend Charles Moran had been awakened by a poor parishioner who had no more dried peat moss or briquettes of dung to burn in her potbellied stove, nor any more porridge to feed the six orphaned nieces with whom she shared her one-room shanty out by the pauper’s graveyard, and now he was preparing to rush off to bring her a selection of Lean Cuisine entrées and a case of Perrier.

Whatever he was up to, I assured myself that it was none of my business, but then as I headed toward the street, I had a change of heart at the sight of yellow-eyed legions of coyotes appearing out of the fog as they rounded the corner of the bell tower. As I could not return to the church and as the minister’s residence offered the nearest haven, I decided to ask if Reverend Moran needed a companion on his mission of mercy.

Maybe the coyotes, too, were badly frightened by the unorthodox sculpture and put off their stride, or maybe I found resources that I had never before tapped. Instead of trying to keep up with me, those cousins of wolves decided to outflank me, angling toward the front of the rectory with the intention of being there with bibs on when I arrived.

Still a member of the smartest if also most ignorant species on the planet, I changed course for the back of the house, which I hoped to reach before they realized what I had done.

They continued to lope through the night in silence, which was not characteristic of their kind. Usually, in the hunt, they issued ululant howls, eerie songs of death, that chilled the blood.

Springing up the back-porch steps, I sensed that the silent predators had gotten wise to my trick and were in fierce competition to be the first to rip out the seat of my jeans.

Certain that I had no time to knock and present myself properly, I tried the door and blew out a gust of breath when it proved to be unlocked.

INSIDE THE RECTORY, AS I ENGAGED THE LOCK, I hoped the coyotes didn’t have a key. I noted with relief, there was no pet door.

Tidy, cheerful, the kitchen contained nothing that identified it as that of a clergyman.

On the refrigerator were a collection of decorative magnets that featured uplifting though not spiritual messages. One declared EVERY DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, which seemed to me to be an excuse to remain infantile.

I did not know what to do next.

Nothing unusual about that.

Hoss Shackett might have been on his way to see Reverend Moran when he heard me break the sacristy window. He could show up here at any time.

Currently more deranged than usual, alarmed, desperate, the chief might even have decided that, after all, he had to kill the minister, who had witnessed my arrest.

Considering all that had happened since I had been taken into custody and how totally the chief’s plans had fallen apart, killing Reverend Moran no longer made any sense, if it ever had. But that was the way of a sociopath like the chief: He could pass for normal year after year-until suddenly he no longer could.

Intending to locate the minister and warn him, I left the kitchen-and heard people talking. I prowled swiftly room by room until I arrived at the half-open door of a study, off the entrance foyer, where I stopped when I recognized Charles Moran’s voice.

“The Lord is with us, Melanie.”

A woman laughed tenderly. She had the kind of musical voice that on certain words trembled toward bird song. “Charlie, dear, the Lord is at all times with us. Here.”

“I don’t know that I should.”

“Jesus himself imbibed, Charlie.”

They clinked glasses, and after a hesitation, I pushed open the door and entered the study.

Reverend Moran stood beside the desk, wearing chinos, a tan turtleneck, and a sports jacket. He looked up from his drink, his eyes widening. “Todd.”

“I’m not here to harm you,” I assured him.

The woman with him was attractive but with a hairstyle twenty years behind the times.

“Mrs. Moran?” I asked, and she nodded, and I said, “Don’t be afraid.”

To my surprise, Reverend Moran drew a pistol from under his jacket, and to my greater surprise, he shot his wife dead.

He turned the pistol on me. In answer to my astonishment, he said, “She poured the first drink. She’d have suggested I pour a second.”

I noticed the brand name on the bottle: Lord Calvert.

The Lord is with us, Melanie.

Charlie, dear, the Lord is at all times with us.