Dean Koontz - The Darkest Evening Of The Year

His client had provided a list of items related to Amy Redwing’s other life that she might not have destroyed when she shed her past, changed her name, and relocated to southern California. Photographs were at the top of that list.

The box contained primarily snapshots and the digital-camera memory cards from which some of them had been printed. The most recent were almost nine years old.

Vern sat on the edge of Redwing’s bed and patiently pored through numerous envelopes of photos to see if they contained any pornographic material. His client hadn’t asked him to conduct such a meticulous inspection; but Amy Redwing happened to be an attractive woman, and Vern happened to be curious.

Unfortunately, not one picture proved to be erotic or even exotic. He had never seen a more mundane collection of snapshots.

Although he didn’t know Redwing’s story, to Vern it seemed that her current life and her former one had been equally boring.

In Vern’s other life, as Von Longwood, he tooled around on a radically customized motorcycle, a real hog, and he was a master of tae kwon do with the costumes to prove it, and in general he lived large. He didn’t understand why anyone would want another life that was as drab as the first.

In this life, Redwing even looked similar to how she had looked in her prior life. Her hair was long now, short then; she had done some things with makeup then that she didn’t do now; she had dressed more stylishly in those days. That was the extent of her makeover.

She had remained a brunette even though she might have looked hotter as a blonde. And judging by what evidence Vern possessed, she hadn’t undergone breast enlargement, which maybe she should have.

Whereas Vernon Lesley stood five eight, Von Longwood towered an awesome six feet six. Vern slouched through life with round shoulders and a potbelly, but Von had biceps to rival those of Schwarzenegger when he had been a great action-movie star instead of a governor.

Von had tattoos, an earring with a tiny skull dangling from it, a muscular chest instead of man boobs, and wings . They were huge, soft, feathery wings, but so strong, and when Von wanted to fly, no one could keep him grounded.

Vernon Lesley’s other life unfolded in Second Life, the Internet site that offered a vivid virtual world populated by avatars like Von Longwood.

Some people mocked this kind of role-playing, but they were ignorant. Virtual worlds were more imaginative than the real world, more exotic, more colorful, yet they were becoming more convincingly detailed by the week. They were the future.

Vern had more fun in his other life than in this one, more and better friends, and more memorable experiences. He was freer as Von Longwood than he could ever be as Vernon Lesley. He had never been creative in his first life, but in his second, he had designed and built a nightclub, and he had even bought an island that he intended to populate with fantastic creatures of his own invention.

Any of that, any moment of it, beat sitting in a stranger’s bedroom, poring through boxes of boring photographs, hoping to find a nude shot.

From an inner pocket of his sport coat, he withdrew a white plastic trash bag and unfolded it. He put all the photos in the bag, and then he returned the empty shoe boxes to the back of the closet, leaving them exactly where he had discovered them.

As far as he could tell, the only significant difference between Redwing’s two lives was the addition of dogs to this one. He saw no mutts in the photographs.

In one of her nightstands, he found a SIG P245 pistol loaded with +P.45 ACPs. This struck him as a perfectly manageable weapon for a woman who did not have the balance benefit of surgically enlarged breasts. He returned the gun to the drawer.

He was not surprised to find a loaded pistol. These days, if Vern had been a woman living alone, he would have slept with a shotgun.

From the bedroom, he proceeded to her study. Eventually he discovered a manila envelope taped to the underside of a desk drawer.

Carefully, he peeled off the Scotch tape with which the envelope had been sealed, pried up the clasp. His expired hope of discovering some homemade pornography had been resuscitated.

Instead, he found documents related to the woman’s name change. Well, this was the real world, so you shouldn’t expect many thrills.

She had also been Amy in her previous life, but she had swapped the surname Cogland for Redwing . Of this, Vern approved. Redwing was a cool name, even good enough for a Second Life avatar.

She had received a new Social Security card under this name, a passport, and a Connecticut driver’s license, which she had no doubt used to obtain a California license after moving across country.

Accompanying the documents was a copy of a judge’s order sealing the court’s actions and removing them from public record.

Intrigued, Vern read the legal documents more closely than he had the first time. He suspected that the name Cogland ought to ring a whole tabernacle’s worth of bells, but it didn’t.

If Redwing had been in the news during her Cogland life, Vern might not have read or heard about her. He had never been interested in the news.

Before Second Life, he’d spent most of his leisure time playing in on-line game groups of the Dungeons and Dragons variety. He had slain a vast menagerie of monsters, and no dungeon had held him long.

Vern put all of these papers in the white trash bag with the photographs and the digital-camera memory cards.

Occasionally, Redwing might reach under the desk drawer and feel the envelope to confirm that the hidden material remained where she had put it.

Vern took several sheets of paper from her computer printer. He folded them and inserted them in the envelope to approximate the feel of the original documents.

With the brass clasp, he secured the flap. From the dispenser on her desk, he pulled a length of tape and sealed the flap just as it had been, and then he taped the envelope under the drawer, where he had found it.

He was left with only the lengths of old tape. He wadded them in a ball and dropped them in the white trash bag.

Although Vernon had searched the half bath off the kitchen, he had not yet explored the full bath that adjoined her bedroom. He had been concerned that, in a moment of reckless bravado, he would be tempted to leave his traditional signature.

He was a professional, he had a job to finish, and he needed the money for his island of fantastic creatures.

In her bathroom, the lid of the toilet stood open, exposing the seat and the bowl. At once he put it down.

He took the lid off the tank. Sometimes people sealed things in a plastic bag and submerged it in the toilet tank. Not Redwing.

If he squinted when he looked in the mirror above the sink, he could see Von Longwood. Vern smiled and said, “Lookin’ good, dude.”

Shortly before nine o’clock, Thursday morning, Brian heard his three employees coming to work in the offices below his apartment.

Earlier he had left a voice mail for Gretchen, his assistant, asking her to reschedule his Thursday appointments to the following week. He told her that inspiration had seized him, that he would be drawing in his apartment, and that he should not be interrupted.

Inspiration had more than seized him. A singularly persistent muse-insistent, incandescent-had overwhelmed him, filled him with a quiet excitement, and he labored in a state of enchantment.

Supposedly true tales of the supernatural had never struck him as credible; yet Brian now sensed that he was channeling a talent greater than his own. If what he felt was true, then the presence working through him must be benign, for he had seldom in his life felt this happy.