Dean Koontz: Whispers

Joshua stared at the sky ahead.

At last, he said, "When she came back from Mrs. Yancy's whorehouse, her problem was to pass off the twins as the one child she'd talked about, thereby salvaging the Mary Gunther lie. But she could have accomplished that by locking up one of the brothers, making him a house son, while the other twin was the only one allowed to go out of the house. That would have been quicker, easier, simpler, safer."

"But we all know Clemenza's Law," Hilary said.

"Right," Joshua said. "Clemenza's Law: Damned few people ever do anything the quickest, easiest, simplest, and safest way."

"Besides," Hilary said, "Maybe Katherine just didn't have the heart to keep one of the boys locked up forever while the other one was permitted to lead at least a little bit of a normal life. After all the suffering she'd been through, maybe there was a limit to the amount of suffering she could force her children to endure."

"It seems to me she made them endure a whole hell of a lot!" Joshua said. "She drove them mad!"

"Inadvertently, yes," Hilary said. "She didn't intend to drive them mad. She thought she was doing what was best for them, but her own state of mind didn't make it possible for her to know what was best."

Joshua sighed wearily. "It's a wild theory you've got."

"Not so wild," Tony said. "It fits the known facts."

Joshua nodded. "And I guess I believe it, too. At least most of it. I just wish all of the villains in this piece were thoroughly vile and despicable. It seems wrong, somehow, to feel so much sympathy for them."

***

After they landed in Napa, under rapidly graying skies, they went straight to the county sheriff's office and told Peter Laurenski everything. At first, he gaped at them as if they had lost their minds, but gradually his disbelief turned into reluctant, astonished acceptance. That was a pattern of reactions, a transformation of emotions that Hilary expected they would all witness a few hundred times in the days ahead.

Laurenski telephoned the Los Angeles Police Department. He discovered that the FBI already had contacted the LAPD in regard to the San Francisco bank fraud case involving a look-alike for Bruno Frye, now believed at large in the LAPD's jurisdiction. Laurenski's news, of course, was that the suspect was not merely a look-alike, but the genuine article--even though another genuine article was dead and buried in the Napa County Memorial Park. He informed the LAPD that he had reason to believe the two Brunos had taken turns killing women and had been involved in a series of murders in the northern half of the state over the past five years, although he could not yet provide hard evidence or name specific homicides. The evidence was thus far circumstantial: a grisly but logical interpretation of the safe-deposit box letter in light of recent discoveries about Leo and Katherine and the twins; the fact that both of the twins had made attempts on Hilary's life; the fact that one of the twins had covered for the other last week when Hilary had first been attacked, which indicated complicity in at least attempted murder; and finally the conviction, shared by Hilary and Tony and Joshua, that Bruno's hatred for his mother was so powerful and maniacal that he would not hesitate to slaughter any woman who he imagined was his mother come back to life in a new body.

While Hilary and Joshua shared the railback bench that served as an office couch, and while they drank coffee provided by Laurenski's secretary, Tony took the phone at Laurenski's request and spoke with two of his own superiors in L.A. His support for Laurenski and the corroboration of facts that he provided were apparently effective, for the call concluded with a promise that L.A. authorities would take immediate action at their end. Operating under the assumption that the psychopath would be keeping a watch on Hilary's home, the LAPD agreed to establish around-the-clock surveillance on the Westwood house.

With the cooperation of the Los Angeles police assured, the sheriff quickly composed a bulletin, outlining the basic facts of the case, for distribution to all law enforcement agencies in Northern California. The bulletin doubled as an official request for information on any unsolved murders of young, attractive, brown-eyed brunettes, in jurisdictions beyond Laurenski's, during the past five years--and especially any murders involving decapitation, mutilation, or evidence of blood fetishism.

As Hilary watched the sheriff issuing orders to clerks and deputies, and as she thought about the events of the past twenty-four hours, she had the feeling that everything was moving too fast, like a whirlwind, and that this wind--filled with surprises and ugly secrets, just as a tornado is filled with swirling clods of uprooted earth and chunks of debris--was carrying her toward a precipice that she could not yet see, but over which she might be flung. She wished she could reach out with both hands and seize control of time itself, hold it back, slow it down, take a few days out to rest and to consider what she had learned, so that she would be able to follow the final few twists and turns of the Frye mystery with a clear head. She felt sure that continued haste was foolish, even deadly. But the wheels of the law, now engaged and rolling, could not be blocked. And time could not be reined in as if it were a runaway stallion.

She hoped there was no precipice ahead.

At 5:30, after Laurenski had gotten the law enforcement machinery moving, he and Joshua used the telephone to track down a judge. They found one, Judge Julian Harwey, who was fascinated by the Frye story. Harwey understood the necessity of retrieving the corpse and putting it through an extensive battery of tests for identification purposes. If the second Bruno Frye was apprehended, and if he somehow managed to pass a psychiatric examination, which was highly unlikely but not altogether impossible, then the prosecutor would need physical proof that there had been identical twins. Harwey was willing to sign an exhumation order, and by 6:30, the sheriff had that paper in hand.

"The workmen at the cemetery won't be able to open the grave in the dark," Laurenski said. "But I'll have them out there digging at the crack of dawn." He made a few more phone calls, one to the director of the Napa County Memorial Park where Frye was buried, another to the county coroner who could conduct the exhumation of the body as soon as it was delivered to him, and one to Avril Tannerton, the mortician, to arrange for him to transport the corpse to and from the coroner's pathology lab.

When Laurenski finally got off the telephone, Joshua said, "I imagine you'll want to search the Frye house."

"Absolutely," Laurenski said. "We want to find proof that more than one man was living there, if we can. And if Frye really had murdered other women, maybe we'll turn up some evidence. I think it would be a good idea to go through the house on the cliff, too."

"We can search the new house as soon as you like," Joshua said. "But there's no electricity in the old place. That one will have to wait until daylight."

"Okay," Laurenski said. "But I'd like to have a look at the vineyard house tonight."

"Now?" Joshua asked, getting up from the railback bench.

"None of us has had dinner," Laurenski said. Earlier. before they had told him even half of what they'd learned from Dr. Rudge and Rita Yancy, the sheriff had called his wife to tell her he wouldn't be home until very late. "Let's get a bite to eat at the coffee shop around the corner. Then we can head on out to Frye's place."

Before they left for the restaurant, Laurenski told the night receptionist where he would be and asked her to let him know immediately if word came in that the Los Angeles police had arrested the second Bruno Frye.

"It's not going to be that easy," Hilary said.