He was likewise inconsolable, having lost no less than she did and in some ways more, as Rebecca had been and always would be the one great love of his life. He knew that if either he or Jolie were to find a way forward, they would have to find it together or not at all. Their circumstance was unique in that the loved ones they had lost were still alive but no longer who they had once been—and were forever beyond redemption.
He had shaved his head and begun to grow a beard, which was coming in more white than not, though he’d had no white in his hair. A change in appearance, however, did nothing to lift him from this low point or give him hope of a future.
That Wednesday afternoon, Luther found Jolie at the railing of a fenced meadow, watching horses graze and gambol. He leaned against the railing beside her and said nothing, for he couldn’t think of anything that he hadn’t already said. Whether rational or not, to some extent Jolie blamed their loss on him. If he wasn’t a sheriff, he wouldn’t have gotten mixed up in all this craziness. If he hadn’t put duty before family, he wouldn’t have gone off to Iron Furnace, Kentucky. If, if, if, if, if…
He blamed her not at all for her hostility. Indeed, though he knew it wasn’t rational, he blamed himself. Yes, had he stayed in Minnesota and done nothing, Rebecca and Twyla might not now be among the living dead. But he also remembered the arrogant man from the Department of Justice, Booth Hendrickson. The powerful people behind this nightmare would sooner rather than later have seen him as a loose end and would have scheduled him and his family for injections. They were at a time in history that allowed no conscientious objectors, when every man, woman, and child was either a combatant or a victim.
The sky was wide and blue, the air warm, the horses spirited, the dear girl silent in her grief, unwilling to acknowledge her father’s presence for almost half an hour before, at last, she reached out and put one hand on his arm.
33
* * *
When Jane woke in bed, the digital clock on the nightstand read 5:40 P.M. Her two suitcases and tote stood unopened by the closet door. Dr. Walkins had moved her car to his garage and brought the bags upstairs.
She threw back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. In the crook of her right arm, a Band-Aid covered the point at which he’d given her an injection. She peeled it off and saw a small spot of blood on the gauze. The needle prick was hardly visible.
The wound in her side ached, though not badly. Because it was covered with a wide strip of waterproof tape, she couldn’t count the number of stitches.
Her double-carry rig lay on the dresser, both pistols still in the holsters.
She opened one of the suitcases and took out fresh clothes and laid them on the bed.
Dr. Walkins had said he would prepare dinner for two at seven o’clock.
She went into the adjacent bathroom, longing for a hot shower.
At the mirror, she regarded her reflection for a minute before she said, “Play Manchurian with me.”
After another minute, she turned on the hot water in the shower and with pleasure breathed in the rising cloud of steam.
34
* * *
A salad of fresh tomatoes and lettuce with shaved Parmesan. A pot of spaghetti sauce on the cooktop, frozen meatballs thawed and simmering in the Ragu. Store-bought garlic bread toasting under the broiler. A pound of Barilla pasta churning in a pot of bubbling water.
Porter Walkins was not one of those aging bachelors who developed a passion for cooking. Aside from salad, if he couldn’t find it in a can or jar, or in a supermarket freezer, it would never find its way into his diet.
As simple as the meal might be, she found it delicious, as no doubt any condemned man spared from execution by the governor’s midnight commutation would find his first meal, after his last meal, tasty.
Earlier in the month, after the events at Bertold Shenneck’s ranch in Napa Valley, Porter Walkins had treated Dougal Trahern and Jane without being told in detail the truth of why she was wanted by the FBI and every other law-enforcement agency of any consequence. Now, over wine and then over dinner, when she explained it to him, he asked intelligent and probing questions but didn’t find what she told him to any degree too fantastic for consideration.
From him she learned that Luther Tillman was now part of the Jane Hawk saga, a fixture in every cable-news broadcast. His wife and daughter Twyla, on returning to Minnesota from a short holiday, had found their house ransacked and the body of a Homeland Security agent, Huey Darnell, shot twice in the back of the head with a gun belonging to Tillman. Authorities said that Luther was in league with Jane regarding the sale of national-security secrets, though how a rural sheriff might have become associated with her was not clear. The other Tillman daughter, Jolie, was missing and believed to be in mortal danger. No mention had been made of Iron Furnace.
Porter evidently saw the sadness that settled on Jane at this news. “What mortal danger do they mean?”
“It’s not his daughter Jolie at risk,” she said. “She must be with him. The only way to read it is…his wife and his other daughter have been injected. They’ve been implanted. They’re gone.”
35
* * *
The recording made by the body camera that Jane had worn could be played on any computer. After dinner, Porter Walkins placed his laptop on the kitchen table, and they reviewed the last minutes of David James Michael’s life.
As evidence, the video was of less value than she expected. The high-definition visuals were superb. But nothing had been captured of what she and D.J. said. Instead of their voices, there were only the threaded oscillations of multiple electronic tones quite like the tinnitus that she’d been aware of now and then when she had been in his grand apartment.
“The creepy sonofabitch had some way of triggering a masking system to screw with an audio recording,” Jane said. “Maybe there’s no point in hating a dead man, but I hate that arrogant shit more now than before he jumped.”
The doctor poured more wine. It wasn’t a cure for what ailed her, but it was welcome anyway.
36
* * *
The doctor’s spare bedroom had a TV, and Thursday morning Jane discovered that the suicide of David James Michael was big news, following the identification of his remains. She hadn’t expected to be connected to his death; and she was not. They had never publicly tied her to the death of Dr. Bertold Shenneck and his wife, either, because to do so would focus media attention on Shenneck Technology and Far Horizons. The fools who called themselves Arcadians did not want that attention, because the public might begin to wonder if all the talk of selling national-security secrets was a cover for the true reason why Jane was being so urgently sought.
She made the mistake of leaving the TV on too long, whereupon she saw an interview with her father, the famous pianist and not-yet-revealed wife murderer. He was canceling his current concert tour because his daughter’s infamy was drawing what he called “the wrong kind of audiences,” and because he did not think it right to profit from the misdeeds of “this deeply troubled woman.” More likely, he worried that before she was caught, she might avenge her mother and get him in the sights of a sniper’s rifle.
She napped in the late morning and early afternoon, while Porter Walkins treated patients. But by the time they shared another dinner in his kitchen, she had decided that she could not stay even one more night.
As they sat down to vegetable soup and cheese sandwiches, she said, “Shenneck’s dead, D. J. Michael’s dead. This whole thing was a two-headed serpent, and they were it. Or so I thought. By taking D.J. down the way they did, they think they’ve brought me to a blind alley, nowhere to go from here. But all they’ve done is show me this snake has more than two heads. The longer I stay out of the hunt, the less likely I am to track down the identity of the third one.”
After dinner, in Porter Walkins’s garage, when he had helped her load her luggage, as they were standing by the driver’s door of her Explorer, he said, “I??
?d be dismayed to hear one day that I did my best doctorin’ only for you to be shot again, mortally this time.”
“That would be a disappointment to me as well.”
She hugged him, and he held fast to her for a long moment.
When he let go of her, she glimpsed that melancholy in him that she had thought previously might be imagined.
He said, “If ever you find yourself hurt bad and too far from Santa Rosa for me to be of help, you call me anyway. I’ll either come to you wherever you are or, if I can, I’ll call in a favor from someone near you. Got that?”
“I do, yes.”
He frowned. “I mean it. Don’t just be saying yes to patronize me, daughter.” When he saw the word surprised her, he said, “I’m an old fool who was a young fool, too. At least I’ve been consistent. Never married, though I had some fine opportunities. Looked at the world going to hell and thought I never wanted to be responsible for bringing a child into it. Time goes by, and here I am, no child and no wife and no prospects that encourage me. But if I had led a different life, I think I would have done the best any man could just by bringing one like you into the world.”
She hadn’t often been left speechless, and perhaps never before had she been at such a moment when she knew no words that she spoke could do anything but diminish the power of what had just been said. She hugged him again, held him as fiercely as he held her.
And then she got behind the wheel of the Explorer, and he put up the garage door, and she drove away from there.
37
* * *
That Thursday night, when she reached the Golden Gate Bridge, no fog enshrouded that magnificent structure. The vast sea lay in blackness to the right, but for the lights of ships in transit from ports half a world away, and the lights of Berkeley and Oakland lay far to the east, beyond the storied bay, the illuminated hills like some fairyland. In that moment, Jane found it difficult to believe that there were those who despised the works of humanity and even humanity itself—not just the Arcadians but so many others—who in their misanthropy longed to undo all that had been built through the millennia of human struggle and striving, and even some who thought the world would be a better place if humankind had never existed.
If one such had been with her now, she might have said, Damn it, there is no world if there is not a human eye to see it, no world of any purpose or meaning, no world of more importance than is any barren planet now circling a burnt-out sun. The world can’t see itself and marvel at its wonders. The mystery of consciousness makes reality, and there is no reality without a fully conscious species to apprehend it. You think the world precious because you’re here to see it. We are the world and the world is us, and neither can be but a dream of no importance without the other.
And then again, she might say no such thing, for life seemed to be teaching her that she was not meant to move the world with words, that she was meant to act, to fight, as long as she remembered for what she was fighting.
She thought of Luther and Jolie, of Dougal Trahern, of Ancel and Clare, of Nadine and Leland Sacket; she thought of the children of Iron Furnace, of Bernie Riggowitz and the photo of Miriam that she now carried on her; she thought of Sandra Termindale and her daughters, Holly and Lauren, in their motor home; and she knew why she should keep going and why, in fact, there was no other option short of death.
Later, she pulled into a truck stop south of Salinas, the center of such rich farmland that the town called itself the “Salad Bowl of the World.” She parked in a far corner of that big roadside complex, away from most of its bright lights, so that she could see the stars. She got out of the Explorer. She used a disposable phone to call Jessica and Gavin Washington, guardians of her sweet child, to tell them that, having slept part of the day, she was driving all night to get there.
After she switched off the cellphone, she stood gazing at the stars, the light of uncountable suns around some of which orbited worlds unknowable, fourteen billion years of expansion from the big bang, the perimeter of the universe moving ever outward into a void the mind could not fully comprehend, all those trillions of stars so distant that none could ever be visited except in fantasy. Yet here she stood, one small life in all the immensity of the cosmos, one creature who thought and loved and needed to be loved, who could be destroyed but not defeated. She could die only because she was first alive, and therefore death, too, was a gift. She got back into the Explorer and drove south to her son, to her life and whatever it might bring.
This book is dedicated to Richard Heller: a rock in turbulent times, for almost thirty years my friend, attorney, and wise counsel, who knows that the most valuable gold comes on four feet.
BY DEAN KOONTZ
Ashley Bell • The City • Innocence • 77 Shadow Street • What the Night Knows • Breathless • Relentless • Your Heart Belongs to Me • The Darkest Evening of the Year • The Good Guy • The Husband • Velocity • Life Expectancy • The Taking • The Face • By the Light of the Moon • One Door Away From Heaven • From the Corner of His Eye False Memory • Seize the Night • Fear Nothing • Mr. Murder • Dragon Tears • Hideaway • Cold Fire • The Bad Place • Midnight • Lightning • Watchers • Strangers • Twilight Eyes • Darkfall • Phantoms • Whispers • The Mask • The Vision • The Face of Fear • Night Chills • Shattered • The Voice of the Night • The Servants of Twilight • The House of Thunder • The Key to Midnight • The Eyes of Darkness • Shadowfires • Winter Moon • The Door to December • Dark Rivers of the Heart • Icebound • Strange Highways • Intensity • Sole Survivor • Ticktock • The Funhouse • Demon Seed
JANE HAWK
The Silent Corner • The Whispering Room
ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas • Forever Odd • Brother Odd • Odd Hours • Odd Interlude • Odd Apocalypse • Deeply Odd • Saint Odd
FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son • City of Night • Dead and Alive • Lost Souls • The Dead Town
A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
About the Author
DEAN KOONTZ, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirits of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
deankoontz.com
Facebook.com/DeanKoontzOfficial
Twitter: @deankoontz
Correspondence for the author should be addressed to:
Dean Koontz
P.O. Box 9529
Newport Beach, California 92658
JANE HAWK’S THRILLING JOURNEY CONTINUES
in
THE CROOKED STAIRCASE
from
#1 New York Times bestselling author
Dean Koontz
COMING SOON FROM BANTAM BOOKS
Please turn the page for a special advance preview.
1
* * *
At seven o’clock on that night in March, during a thunderless but heavy rain pounding as loud as an orchestra of kettle drums, Sara Holdsteck finally left the offices of Paradise Real Estate, carrying her briefcase in her left hand, open purse slung over her left shoulder, right hand free for a cross-body draw of the gun in the purse. She boarded her Ford Explorer, threw back the dripping hood of her raincoat, and drove home by way of familiar suburban streets on which the foul weather settled a strangeness, an apocalyptic gloom that matched her mood. Not for the first time in the past two years, she felt as if somewhere ahead of her, reality itself must be eroding, washing away, so that she might come to the crumbling edge of a precipice with nothing beyond but a lightless, bottomless abyss. Silver needles of rain pleated the darkness with mystery and threat. Any vehicle that followed her more than three blocks elicited her suspicion.
The Springfield Armory Champion .45 ACP pistol was nestled in her open purse, which stood on her briefcase, within easy reach on the passenger seat. Originally she hadn’t wanted a weapon of such a high caliber, but she had eventual
ly realized that nothing smaller would so reliably stop an assailant. She had spent many hours on a shooting range, learning to control the recoil.
She once lived in a gated community with an around-the-clock security guard, in a paid-off twelve-thousand-square-foot residence with a view of the Pacific Ocean. Now she owned a house one-quarter that size, encumbered by a fat mortgage, in a neighborhood with no gate, no guard, no view. Starting with little money, by the age of forty she had built a modest fortune as a Southern California real-estate agent, broker, and canny investor—but most of it had been taken from her by the time she was forty-two.
At forty-four, though bitter, she was nonetheless grateful that she hadn’t been rendered penniless. Having clawed her way to the top once before, she’d been left with just enough assets to start the climb again. This time she would not make the mistake that had led to her ruin; she would not marry.
On the street where Sara lived, storm runoff overwhelmed the drains to form shallow lakes wherever the pavement swaled. Her Ford cast up wings of water in a false promise of magical flight. She slowed and swung into her driveway. Lights glowed in some windows, controlled by a smart-house program that, after nightfall and in her absence, created the illusion of occupancy and activity. She remoted the garage door and, while it rolled up on its tracks, put her open purse in her lap. She drove inside, the drumming of rain on the roof relenting as the welcome electronic shriek of the alarm system inspired a greater sense of safety than she had felt since setting out for work that morning.