Читать книгу The Husband - Dean Koontz - Страница 9

4

Detective Taggart sported an island tan to match his Hawaiian shirt. By contrast with his bronze face, his teeth were as white as an arctic landscape.

“I’m sorry for all this inconvenience, Mr. Rafferty. But I have just a couple more questions, and then you’re free to go.”

Mitch could have replied with a shrug, a nod. But he thought that silence might seem peculiar, that a man with nothing to hide would be forthcoming.

Following an unfortunate hesitation long enough to suggest calculation, he said, “I’m not complaining, Lieutenant. It could just as easily have been me who was shot. I’m thankful to be alive.”

The detective strove for a casual demeanor, but he had eyes like those of a predatory bird, hawk-sharp and eagle-bold. “Why do you say that?”

“Well, if it was a random shooting…”

“We don’t know that it was,” said Taggart. “In fact, the evidence points to cold calculation. One shot, perfectly placed.”

“Can’t a crazy with a gun be a skilled shooter?”

“Absolutely. But crazies usually want to rack up as big a score as possible. A psychopath with a rifle would have popped you, too. This guy knew exactly who he wanted to shoot.”

Irrationally, Mitch felt some responsibility for the death. This murder had been committed to ensure that he would take the kidnapper seriously and would not seek police assistance.

Perhaps the detective had caught the scent of this unearned but persistent guilt.

Glancing toward the cadaver across the street, around which the CSI team still worked, Mitch said, “Who’s the victim?”

“We don’t know yet. No ID on him. No wallet. Don’t you think that’s peculiar?”

“Going out just to walk the dog, you don’t need a wallet.”

“It’s a habit with the average guy,” Taggart said. “Even if he’s washing the car in the driveway, he has his wallet.”

“How will you identify him?”

“There’s no license on the dog’s collar. But that’s almost a show-quality golden, so she might have a microchip ID implant. As soon as we get a scanner, we’ll check.”

Having been moved to this side of the street, tied to a mailbox post, the golden retriever rested in shade, graciously receiving the attention of a steady procession of admirers.

Taggart smiled. “Goldens are the best. Had one as a kid. Loved that dog.”

His attention returned to Mitch. His smile remained in place, but the quality of it changed. “Those questions I mentioned. Were you in the military, Mr. Rafferty?”

“Military? No. I was a mower jockey for another company, took some horticulture classes, and set up my own business a year out of high school.”

“I figured you might be ex-military, the way gunfire didn’t faze you.”

“Oh, it fazed me,” Mitch assured him.

Taggart’s direct gaze was intended to intimidate.

As if Mitch’s eyes were clear lenses through which his thoughts were revealed like microbes under a microscope, he felt compelled to avoid the detective’s stare, but sensed that he dared not.

“You hear a rifle,” Taggart said, “see a man shot, yet you hurry across the street, into the line of fire.”

“I didn’t know he was dead. Might’ve been something I could do for him.”

“That’s commendable. Most people would scramble for cover.”

“Hey, I’m no hero. My instincts just shoved aside my common sense.”

“Maybe that’s what a hero is—someone who instinctively does the right thing.”

Mitch dared to look away from Taggart, hoping that his evasion, in this context, would be interpreted as humility. “I was stupid, Lieutenant, not brave. I didn’t stop to think I might be in danger.”

“What—you thought he’d been shot accidentally?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know. I didn’t think anything. I didn’t think, I just reacted.”

“But you really didn’t feel like you were in danger?”

“No.”

“You didn’t realize it even when you saw his head wound?”

“Maybe a little. Mostly I was sickened.”

The questions came too fast. Mitch felt off balance. He might unwittingly reveal that he knew why the dogwalker had been killed.

With a buzz of busy wings, the bumblebee returned. It had no interest in Taggart, but hovered near Mitch’s face, as if bearing witness to his testimony.

“You saw the head wound,” Taggart continued, “but you still didn’t scramble for cover.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I guess I figured if somebody hadn’t shot me by then, they weren’t going to shoot me.”

“So you still didn’t feel in danger.”

“No.”

Flipping open his small spiral-bound notebook, Taggart said, “You told the 911 operator that you were dead.”

Surprised, Mitch met the detective’s eyes again. “That I was dead?”

Taggart quoted from the notebook: “‘A man’s been shot. I’m dead. I mean, he’s dead. He’s been shot, and he’s dead.’”

“Is that what I said?”

“I’ve heard the recording. You were breathless. You sounded flat-out terrified.”

Mitch had forgotten that 911 calls were recorded. “I guess I was more scared than I remember.”

“Evidently, you did recognize a danger to yourself, but still you didn’t take cover.”

Whether or not Taggart could read anything of Mitch’s thoughts, the pages of the detective’s own mind were closed, his eyes a warm but enigmatic blue.

“‘I’m dead,’” the detective quoted again.

“A slip of the tongue. In the confusion, the panic.”

Taggart looked at the dog again, and again he smiled. In a voice softer than it had been previously, he said, “Is there anything more I should have asked you? Anything you would like to say?”

In memory, Mitch heard Holly’s cry of pain.

Kidnappers always threaten to kill their hostage if the cops are brought in. To win, you don’t have to play the game by their rules.

The police would contact the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The FBI had extensive experience in kidnapping cases.

Because Mitch had no way to raise two million, the police would at first doubt his story. When the kidnapper called again, however, they would be convinced.

What if the second call didn’t come? What if, knowing that Mitch had gone to the police, the kidnapper fulfilled his threat, mutilated Holly, killed her, and never called again?

Then they might think that Mitch had concocted the kidnapping to cover the fact that Holly was already dead, that he himself had killed her. The husband is always the primary suspect.

If he lost her, nothing else would matter. Nothing ever. No power could heal the wound that she would leave in his life.

But to be suspected of harming her—that would be hot shrapnel in the wound, ever burning, forever lacerating.

Closing the notebook and returning it to a hip pocket, shifting his attention from the dog to Mitch, Taggart asked again, “Anything, Mr. Rafferty?”

At some point during the questioning, the bumblebee had flown away. Only now, Mitch realized that the buzzing had stopped.

If he kept the secret of Holly’s abduction, he would stand alone against her kidnappers.

He was no good alone. He had been raised with three sisters and a brother, all born within a seven-year period. They had been one another’s confidants, confessors, counsels, and defenders.

A year after high school, he moved out of his parents’ house, into a shared apartment. Later, he had gotten his own place, where he felt isolated. He had worked sixty hours a week, and longer, just to avoid being alone in his rooms.

He had felt complete once more, fulfilled, connected, only when Holly had come into his world. I was a cold word; we had a warmer sound. Us rang sweeter on the ear than me.

Lieutenant Taggart’s eyes seemed less forbidding than they had been heretofore.

Mitch said, “Well…”

The detective licked his lips.

The air was warm, humidity low. Mitch’s lips felt dry, too.

Nevertheless, the quick pink passage of Taggart’s tongue seemed reptilian, and suggested that he was mentally savoring the taste of pending prey.

Only paranoia allowed the twisted thought that a homicide detective might be allied with Holly’s abductors. This private moment between witness and investigator in fact might be the ultimate test of Mitch’s willingness to follow the kidnapper’s instructions.

All the flags of fear, both rational and irrational, were raised high in his mind. This parade of rampant dreads and dark suspicions did not facilitate clear thinking.

He was half convinced that if he told Taggart the truth, the detective would grimace and say We’ll have to kill her now, Mr. Rafferty. We can’t trust you anymore. But we’ll let you choose what we cut off first—her fingers or her ears.

As earlier, when he’d been standing over the dead man, Mitch felt watched, not just by Taggart and the tea-drinking neighbors, but by some presence unseen. Watched, analyzed.

“No, Lieutenant,” he said. “There’s nothing more.”

The detective retrieved a pair of sunglasses from his shirt pocket and put them on.

In the mirrored lenses, Mitch almost didn’t recognize the twin reflections of his face. The distorting curve made him look old.

“I gave you my card,” Taggart reminded him.

“Yes, sir. I have it.”

“Call me if you remember anything that seems important.”

The smooth, characterless sheen of the sunglasses was like the gaze of an insect: emotionless, eager, voracious.

Taggart said, “You seem nervous, Mr. Rafferty.”

Raising his hands to reveal how they trembled, Mitch said, “Not nervous, Lieutenant. Shaken. Badly shaken.”

Taggart licked his lips once more.

Mitch said, “I’ve never seen a man murdered before.”

“You don’t get used to it,” the detective said.

Lowering his hands, Mitch said, “I guess not.”

“It’s worse when it’s a woman.”

Mitch did not know what to make of that statement. Perhaps it was a simple truth of a homicide detective’s experience—or a threat.

“A woman or a child,” Taggart said.

“I wouldn’t want your job.”

“No. You wouldn’t.” Turning away, the detective said, “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Rafferty.”

“Seeing me?”

Glancing back, Taggart said, “You and I—we’ll both be witnesses in a courtroom someday.”

“Seems like a tough case to solve.”

“‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground,’ Mr. Rafferty,” said the detective, apparently quoting someone. “‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”

Mitch watched Taggart walk away.

Then he looked at the grass under his feet.

The progress of the sun had put the palm-frond shadows behind him. He stood in light, but was not warmed by it.