Dean Koontz - The Darkest Evening Of The Year

“Some are bed-and-breakfast inns.”

“Yeah. They renovate the caretaker’s house. Some even offer a room or two in the lighthouse itself.”

This lighthouse had stood on a rocky promontory in Connecticut. She had been twenty when she moved there, twenty-four when she left.

She did not explain what brought her to that place or mention whether she had been there alone or with others.

Brian seemed to sense that questions would inhibit her and that the wrong question, asked too soon, would halt her altogether.

She spoke of the rugged shore and the thrilling seascapes, of the spectacular views from the lantern room at the top of the tower, and of the charming details of the lightkeeper’s house.

She dwelt at length on the beauty of the lighthouse itself, the walnut paneling of the round vestibule, the ornate fretwork of the circular iron staircase. At the summit, in the lantern room, waited the marvelous Fresnel lens, oval in shape, with integrated series of prismatic rings at bottom and top, which reflected the rays of a one-thousand-watt halogen bulb to the center of the lens, amplifying them. Thus concentrated, the light was beamed outward, across the dark Atlantic.

They arrived at the restaurant in Monterey as she finished telling him that, in the early nineteenth century, Fresnel lenses were so heavy, the only way to turn them-and make the beam sweep the coast-was to float them in pools of mercury. Extremely dense, mercury will support great weight and reduce friction to a minimum.

Mercury is highly toxic. Gradually, mercury flotation was phased out in favor of clockworks and counterweights, which were subsequently replaced by electric motors.

Before then, however, some lightkeepers were driven insane by mercury poisoning.

Billy Pilgrim flew as the lone passenger in a chartered Learjet from Santa Barbara to Monterey.

The steward wore black slacks, a white coat, a white shirt, and a black bowtie. He had a British accent.

Airborne at ten o’clock, Billy was served a late breakfast of strawberries in clotted cream, a lobster omelet, and toasted brioche with raisin butter.

He’d left his suitcase of clothes at the hotel in Santa Barbara because, sometime in the evening, when everyone who needed to be dead was dead, he intended to resume his vacation as Tyrone Slothrop.

He had brought the second suitcase containing the guns. The first was a Glock 18 with thirty-three rounds in its magazine. The second was a disassembled sniper rifle.

Before leaving Santa Barbara, he had taken the tabloid newspaper for gun aficionados out of the suitcase and had left it on the living-room coffee table. He was not concerned that the publication would once more transform itself into Brian McCarthy’s drawings of the dog. That had been a hallucination born of weariness. Billy was rested and past all that. He merely wanted to save the paper for reading later in the week. Nothing more. Just that. He felt fine.

The steward brought him an array of glossy magazines, and when he opened one, the first thing he saw was an advertisement for high-end men’s suits. In the double-page spread, three well-tailored young men were walking three golden retrievers.

Billy closed the magazine and put it aside. The photo had meant nothing. Coincidence.

Suspecting that the same two-page spread might appear in many publications, Billy did not leaf through the front matter of the next magazine, but opened it to the middle, where he was more likely to encounter editorial content than advertising. The story in front of him concerned a dog-loving celebrity and her three golden retrievers.

In the opening photograph, all three dogs were looking directly into the camera, and something in their eyes suggested to Billy that months ago, when the photo shoot occurred, the dogs had known that he, Billy Pilgrim, would many weeks later be looking at them as he was looking at them now, in a state of agitation. The three dogs were grinning, but he saw no laughter in their eyes, quite the opposite.

Billy dropped the magazine and went at once into the bathroom. He didn’t throw up. He felt good about not throwing up. Not throwing up indicated that he had pretty much regained control of his nerves.

He looked in the mirror, saw that sweat beaded his brow, and blotted his face with a towel. After that, he looked good. He wasn’t pale, but he pinched his cheeks anyway, to get more color in them. He looked fine. He hadn’t wept a single tear. He winked at himself.

In Monterey, when Brian McCarthy and Amy Redwing arrived, Billy had the restaurant under surveillance from a rental car parked across the street.

He knew that she rescued goldens and owned them. But he had not expected her to bring one with her on a trip like this. They didn’t know their ultimate destination. They didn’t know how far they were going or where they might be staying, or what situation they would find on the other end. Taking the dog with them made no sense. It made no sense. He couldn’t see any way it made sense.

The restaurant didn’t accept dogs, so they locked the golden in the Expedition with the windows cracked. The SUV was parked at the curb. They went inside, and after a minute, Billy saw them in one of the windows. They had taken a table from which they could watch over the dog.

Billy telephoned Harrow to report that the pair had arrived in Monterey.

“Do they have a shadow?”

“If they’re suspicious and they came with backup, it’s way discreet. I’d bet my ass, no, they’re alone. Except they brought a golden retriever.”

Harrow surprised him by saying, “Kill it.”

To be sure he made no mistake, Billy said, “Kill the dog?”

“Kill it good. Kill it hard. That’s what she wants.”

“Who wants?”

“Vanessa. Kill the dog. But not until they get here. They’re flying on good feelings, coming to get his precious child. We want to keep them in a ‘What-me-worry?’ mood.”

Harrow hung up.

Billy watched the golden watching McCarthy and Redwing in the restaurant window. They occasionally looked up to check on the dog.

The Glock 18 featured a selector switch on the slide with which he could convert it from a semiautomatic to a full automatic that cycled at thirteen hundred rounds per minute. When the time came, he could pump twenty bullets into the dog in like one second. That seemed to qualify as kill-it-good-kill-it-hard.

The dog was watching Billy.

It had been intently focused on the restaurant window where McCarthy and Redwing were eating lunch, but it had turned around.

From across the street, Billy stared right back at it.

The dog seemed to have lost all interest in its owners. It appeared to be fascinated with Billy.

Not in the least intimidated, Billy narrowed his eyes to pull the golden retriever into even clearer focus.

The dog raised its nose to the two-inch gap at the top of the open window. It was getting Billy’s scent.

At once, Billy started the rental car. He drove back to the airport. He had a schedule to keep. He needed to get moving. Nothing more. Just that. He felt fine.

In the restaurant, Amy did not return to the subject of the lighthouse. Brian sensed that she didn’t want to talk about that period of her life within earshot of anyone but him.

He realized that she must be leading to some disclosure that she was loath to make, to that ringbolt in the past to which he had long suspected she was tethered.

His own revelation surely had helped her. For ten years, he had failed the child whom he had fathered. Whatever Amy had done was not likely to have burdened her with the weight of guilt that Brian felt he had earned.