Koontz, Dean R. - The Bad Place Page 6

  turn his mind from them. He sensed that he had survived an encounter

  with something unnatural. Worse, he sensed that he knew what it was-and

  that his amnesia was self-induced by a deep desire to forget.

  After a while, even the memory of those preternatural events wasn't

  enough to keep him awake. The last thing that crossed his waking mind,

  as he slipped off on a tide of sleep, was that four-word phrase that had

  come to him when he had first awakened in the deserted alleyway:

  Fireflies in a windstorm....

  BY THE time they had cooperated with the police at the scene, made

  arrangements for their disabled vehicle and talked with the three

  corporate officers who showed at Decodyne, Bobby and Julie did not get

  home until shortly before dawn. They were dropped at their door by a

  police cruiser, and Bobby was glad to see the place.

  They lived on the east side of Orange, in a three-bedroom

  sort-of-ersatz-Spanish tract house, which they had bought new two years

  ago, largely for its investment potential. Even though the relative

  youth of the neighborhood was apparent the landscaping: and None of the

  shrubbery had reached full size the trees were still too immature to

  loom higher than the gutters on the houses.

  Bobby unlocked the door. Julie went in, and he followed The sound of

  their footsteps on the parquet floor of the foyer echoing hollowly off

  the bare walls of the adjacent and utter empty living room, was proof

  that they were not committed to the house for the long term. To save

  money toward the fulfillment of The Dream, they had left the living

  room, dining room, and two bedrooms unfurnished. They installed carpet

  and cheaper draperies. Not a penny had been spent on other

  improvements. This was merely a way station enroute to The Dream, so

  they saw no point in lavishing funds on dreams.

  The Dream. That was how they thought of it-with a capital d They kept

  their expenses as low as possible in order to fund The Dream. They

  didn't spend much on clothes or vacations, and they didn't buy fancy

  cars. With hard work and iron determination, they were building Dakota

  and Dakota Investigations into a major firm that could be sold for a

  large capital gain, so they plowed a lot of earnings back into the

  business to make it grow. For The Dream.

  At the back of the house, the kitchen and family room-and the small

  breakfast area that separated them-were furnished. This-and the master

  bedroom upstairs-was where they lived when at home.

  The kitchen had a Spanish-tile floor, beige counters, and dark oak

  cabinets. No money had been spent on decorative accessories, but the

  room had a cozy feeling because some necessities of a functioning

  kitchen were on display: a net bag filled with half a dozen onions,

  copper pots dangling from a ceiling rack, cooking utensils, bottles of

  spices. Three green tomatoes were ripening on the windowsill.

  Julie leaned against the counter, as if she could not stand another

  moment without support, and Bobby said, "You want a drink?"

  "Booze at dawn?"

  "I was thinking more of milk or juice."

  "No, thanks."

  "Hungry?"

  She shook her head. "I just want to fall into bed. I'm beat."

  He took her in his arms, held her close, cheek to cheek, with his face

  buried in her hair. Her arms tightened around him.

  They stood that way for a while, saying nothing, letting the residual

  fear evaporate in the gentle heat they generated between them.

  Fear and love were indivisible. If you allowed yourself to care, to

  love, you made yourself vulnerable, and vulnerability led to fear. He

  found meaning in life through his relationship with her, and if she

  died, meaning and purpose would die too.

  With Julie still in his arms, Bobby leaned back and studied her face.

  The smudges of dried blood had been wiped away. The skinned spot on her

  forehead was beginning to scab over with a thin yellow membrane.

  However, the imprint of their recent ordeal consisted of more than the

  abrasion on her forehead. With her tan complexion, she could never be

  said to look pale, even in moments of the most profound anxiety; a

  detectable grayness seeped into her face, however, at times like this,

  and at the moment her cinnamon-and-cream skin was underlaid with a shade

  of gray that made him think of headstone marble.

  "It's over," he assured her, "and we're okay."

  "It's not over in my dreams. Won't be for weeks."

  "A thing like tonight adds to the legend of Dakota and Dakota.

  "I don't want to be a legend. Legends are all dead."

  "We'll be living legends, and that'll bring in business. The more

  business we build, the sooner we can sell out, grab the Dream."

  He kissed her gently on each corner of her mouth

  "I have to call in, leave a long message on the agency machine so Clint

  will know how to handle everything when he goes to work."

  "Yeah. I don't want the phone to start ringing only a couple of hours

  after I hit the sheets.

  He kissed her again and went to the wall phone beside the refrigerator.

  As he was dialing the office number, Julie walk to the bathroom off the

  short hall that connected the kitchen to the laundry room. She closed

  the bathroom door just as the answering machine picked up:

  "Thank you for calling Dakota and Dakota. No one-"

  Clint Karaghiosis -whose Greek-American family had been fans of Clint

  Eastwood from the earliest days of his first television show, and had

  named their baby after him. "Rawhide"-was Bobby and Julie's right hand

  man at the office. He could be trusted to handle any problem. Bobby

  left a long message for him, summarizing the events at Decodyne and

  noting specific tasks that had to be done to wrap up the case.

  When he hung up, he stepped down into the adjoining family room,

  switched on the CD player, and put on a Benny Goodman disc. The first

  notes of "King Porter Stomp" brought the dead room to life.

  In the kitchen again, he got a quart can of eggnog from the

  refrigerator. They had bought it two weeks ago for their at-home, New

  Year's Eve celebration, but had not opened it after all, on the holiday.

  He opened it now and half-filled the water glasses.

  From the bathroom he heard Julie make a tortured sound she was finally

  throwing up. It was mostly just dry heaves because they had not eaten

  in eight or ten hours, but the spasm sounded violent. Throughout the

  night, Bobby had expected her to succumb to nausea, and he was surprised

  that she had retained control of herself this long.

  He retrieved a bottle of white rum from the bar cabinet in the family

  room and spiked each serving of eggnog with a double shot. He was

  gently stirring the drinks with a spoon to blend in the rum, when Julie

  returned, looking even grayer than before.

  When she saw what he was doing, she said, "I don't need that.

  "I know what you need. I'm psychic. I knew you'd toss your cookies

  after what happened tonight. Now I know you need this.

  " He stepped to the sink and rinsed off the spoon.

  "No, Bobby, really, I can't
drink that."

  The Goodman music didn't seem to be energizing her.

  "It'll settle your stomach. And if you don't drink it, you're not going

  to sleep."

  Taking her by the arm, crossing the breakfast area, and stepping down

  into the family room, he said, "You'll lie awake worrying about me,

  about Thomas"Thomas was her brother-"about the world and everyone in

  it." They sat on the sofa, and he did not turn on any lamps. The only

  light was what reached them from the kitchen.

  She drew her legs under her and turned slightly to face him. Her eyes

  shone with a soft, reflected light. She sipped the eggnog.

  The room was now filled with the strains of "One Sweet Letter From You,"

  one of Goodman's most beautiful thematic statements, with a vocal by

  Louise Tobin.

  They sat and listened for a while.

  Then Julie said, "I'm tough, Bobby, I really am."

  "I know you are."

  "I don't want you thinking I'm lame."

  "Never." :

  "It wasn't just the shooting that made me sick, or using the Toyota to,

  run that guy down, or even the thought of almost losing you-'

  "I know. It was what you had to do to Rasmussen."

  "He's a slimy little weasel-faced bastard, but even he doesn't deserve

  to be broken like that. What I did to him stank."

  "It was the only way to crack the case, because it wasn't nearly cracked

  till we'd found out who hired him."

  She drank more eggnog. She frowned down at the milky contents of her

  glass, as if the answer to some mystery could be found there.

  Following Tobin's vocal, Ziggy Elman came in with a trumpet solo,

  followed by Goodman's clarinet. The sounds made that boxy, tract-house

  room seem like the most romantic place in the world.

  "What I did... I did for The Dream. Giving Decodyne's Rasmussen's

  employer will please them. But breaking him somehow... It was worse

  than wasting a man in a fair gunfight."

  Bobby put one hand on her knee. It was a nice knee. All these years,

  he was still sometimes surprised by her slenderness and the delicacy of

  her bone structure, for he always thought of her as being strong for her

  size, solid, formidable.

  "If you hadn't put Rasmussen in that vise and squeezed I would've done

  it."

  "No, you wouldn't have. You're scrappy, Bobby, and you're smart and

  you're tough, but there're certain things you never do. This was one of

  them. Don't jive me just to make me feel good."

  "You're right," he said.

  "I couldn't have done it. But glad you did. Decodyne's very big time,

  and this could've put us back years if we'd flubbed it."

  "Is there anything we won't do for The Dream?"

  Bobby said, "Sure. We wouldn't torture small children with red-hot

  knives, and we wouldn't shove innocent old people down long flights of

  stairs, and we wouldn't club a basket of newborn puppies to death with

  an iron bar-at least without good reason."

  Her laughter lacked a full measure of humor.

  "Listen," he said, "you're a good person. You've got a good heart, and

  nothing you did to Rasmussen blackens it at all.

  "I hope you're right. It's a hard world sometimes."

  "Another drink will soften it a little."

  "You know the calories in these? I'll be fat as a hippo

  "Hippos are cute," he said, taking her glass and heading back toward the

  kitchen to pour another drink. "I love POS."

  "You won't want to make love to one."

  "Sure. More to hold, more to love."

  "You'll be crushed."

  "Well, of course, I'll always insist on taking the top."

  CANDY WAS going to kill. He stood in the dark living room of a

  stranger's house, shaking with need. Blood. He needed blood.

  Candy was going to kill, and there was nothing he could do to stop

  himself. Not even thinking of his mother could shame him into

  controlling his hunger.

  His given name was James, but his mother-an unselfish soul, exceedingly

  kind, brimming with love, a saint-always said he was her little candy

  boy. Never James. Never Jim or Jimmy. She'd said he was sweeter than

  anything on earth, and "little candy boy" eventually had become "candy

  boy," and by the time he was six the sobriquet had been shortened and

  capitalized, and he had become Candy for good. Now, at twenty-nine,

  that was the only name to which he would answer.

  Many people thought murder was a sin. He knew otherwise. Some were

  born with a taste for blood. God had made them what they were and

  expected them to kill chosen victims. It was all part of His mysterious

  plan.

  The only sin was to kill when God and your mother did not approve of the

  victim, which was exactly what he was about to do. He was ashamed. But

  he was also in need.

  He listened to the house. Silence. Like unearthly and dusky beasts,

  the shadowy forms of the living-room furniture huddled around him.

  Breathing hard, trembling, Candy moved into the dining room, kitchen,

  family room, then slowly along the hallway that led to the front of the

  house. He made no sound that would have alerted anyone asleep upstairs.

  He seemed to glide rather than walk, as if he were a specter instead of

  a real man.

  He paused at the foot of the stairs and made one last feeble attempt to

  overcome his murderous compulsion. Failing he shuddered and let out his

  pent-up breath. He began to climb toward the second floor, where the

  family was probably sleeping.

  His mother would understand and forgive him.

  She had taught him that killing was good and moral only when necessary,

  only when it benefited the family.

  She had been terribly angry with him on those occasions when he had

  killed out of sheer compulsion, with no good reason. She had no need to

  punish him physically for his errant ways, because her displeasure gave

  him more agony than any punishment she could have devised. For days at

  a time she refused to speak to him, and that silent treatment caused his

  cheeks to swell with pain, so it seemed as if his heart would spasm

  cease to beat. She looked straight through him, too, as if he no longer

  existed.

  When the other children spoke of him, she said, "Oh, you mean your late

  brother, Candy, your poor brother. Well, remember him if you want, but

  only to yourselves, not to me, never to me, because I don't want to

  remember him, not that bad seed. He was no good, that no good at all,

  wouldn't listen to his mother, not him, he thought he knew better. Just

  the sound of his name makes me feel sick, revolts me, so don't mention

  him in my hearing."

  Candy had been temporarily banished to the world of the dead for having

  misbehaved, no place was set for him at the table, and he had to stand

  in a corner, watching the others eat, as if he was a visiting spirit.

  She would not favor him with either a frown or a smile, and she would

  not stroke his hair or touch his face with her warm soft hands, and she

  would not let him cuddle against her or put his weary head upon her

  breast, and at night he had to find his way into a troubled sleep

  without being g
uided there by either her bedtime stories or sweet

  lullabies. In that total banishment he learned moor Hell than he ever

  hoped to know.

  But she would understand why Candy could not help himself tonight, and

  she'd forgive him. Sooner or later she always forgave him because her

  love for him was like the love of God for all His children: perfect,

  rich with forbearance mercy. When she deemed that Candy had suffered

  enough, she always had looked at him again, smiled for him, opened arms

  wide. In her new acceptance of him, he had experienced as much of

  Heaven as he needed to know.

  She was in Heaven now, herself. Seven long years! God, how he missed

  her. But she was watching him even now. She would know he had lost

  control tonight, and she would be disappointed in him.

  He climbed the stairs, rushing up two risers at a time, staying close to

  the wall, where the steps were less likely to squeak. He was a big man

  but graceful and light on his feet, and if some of the stair treads were

  loose or tired with age, they did not creak under him.

  In the upstairs hall he paused, listening.

  Nothing.

  A dim night-light was part of the overhead smoke alarm. The glow was