Читать книгу Odd Thomas Series Books 1-5 - Dean Koontz, Dean Koontz - Страница 41

FOR A MOMENT I EXPECTED FUNGUS MAN to blink, to grin, to grab me and drag me into the tub with him, to savage me with those teeth that had served him so well during his gluttony at the counter in the Pico Mundo Grille.

His unexpected death left me with no immediate monster, with my plan derailed and my purpose in doubt. I had assumed that he was the maniacal gunman who shot the murdered people in my recurring dream, not merely another victim. With Robertson dead, this labyrinth had no Minotaur for me to track down and slay.

He had been shot once in the chest at such close range that the muzzle of the gun might have been pressed against him. His shirt bore the gray-brown flare of a scorch mark.

Because the heart had stopped functioning in an instant, little blood had escaped the body.

Again I retreated from the bathroom.

I almost pulled the door shut. Then I had the strange notion that behind the closed door, in spite of his torn heart, Robertson would rise quietly from the tub and stand in wait, taking me by surprise when I returned.

He was stone dead, and I knew that he was dead, and yet such irrational worries tied knots in my nerves.

Leaving the bathroom door open, I stepped to the kitchen sink and washed my hands. After drying them on paper towels, I almost washed them again.

Although I had touched only Robertson’s clothes, I imagined that my hands smelled of death.

Lifting the receiver from the wall phone, I unintentionally rattled it against the cradle, almost dropped it. My hands were shaking.

I listened to the dial tone.

I knew Chief Porter’s number. I didn’t need to look it up.

Finally I racked the phone again without entering a single digit on the keypad.

Circumstances had altered my cozy relationship with the chief. A dead man awaited discovery in my apartment. The gun that had killed him was here, as well.

Earlier I had reported an unsettling encounter with the victim at St. Bartholomew’s. And the chief knew that I had illegally entered Robertson’s house on Tuesday afternoon and had thereby given the man reason to confront me.

If this pistol was registered to Robertson, the most obvious assumption on the part of the police would be that he had come here to demand to know what I’d been doing in his house and perhaps to threaten me. They would assume that we had argued, that the argument had led to a struggle, and that I had shot him with his own gun in self-defense.

They wouldn’t charge me with murder or with manslaughter. They probably wouldn’t even take me into custody for questioning.

If the pistol wasn’t registered to Robertson, however, I’d be as stuck as a rat on a glue-board trap.

Wyatt Porter knew me too well to believe that I could kill a man in cold blood, when my life was not at risk. As the chief, he set the policies for the department and made important procedural decisions, but he wasn’t the only cop on the force. Others would not be so quick to declare me innocent under questionable circumstances, and if for no reason but appearances, the chief might have to park me in a cell for a day, until he could find a way to resolve matters in my favor.

In jail, I would be safe from whatever bloody catastrophe might be descending on Pico Mundo, but I would be in no position to use my gift to prevent the tragedy. I couldn’t escort Viola Peabody and her daughters from their house to the safer refuge of her sister’s home. I couldn’t find a way to induce the Takuda family to change their Wednesday plans.

I had hoped to follow the bodachs to the site of the impending crime as Wednesday morning gave way to afternoon, when this event seemed destined to occur. Those malevolent spirits would gather in advance of the bloodshed, perhaps giving me enough time to change the fates of all those who were unwittingly approaching their deaths at that as yet unknown place.

Odysseus in chains, however, cannot lead the way back to Ithaca.

I include this literary allusion solely because I know Little Ozzie will be amused that I would have the audacity to compare myself to that great hero of the Trojan War.

“Give the narrative a lighter tone than you think it deserves, dear boy, lighter than you think that you can bear to give it,” he instructed before I began to write, “because you won’t find the truth of life in morbidity, only in hope.”

My promise to obey this instruction has become more difficult to fulfill as my story progresses relentlessly toward the hour of the gun. The light recedes from me, and the darkness gathers. To please my massive, six-fingered muse, I must resort to tricks like the Odysseus bit.

Having determined that I couldn’t turn to Chief Porter for help in these circumstances, I switched off all the lights except the one in the bathroom. I couldn’t bear to be entirely in the dark with the corpse, for I sensed that, even though dead, he still had surprises in store for me.

In the gloom, I quickly found my way through the cluttered room with as much confidence as if I had been born sightless and raised here since birth. At one of the front windows, I twisted the control rod to open the Levolor.

To the right, I could see the moonlit stairs framed in slices by the slats of the blind. No one was ascending toward my door.

Directly ahead lay the street, but because of the intervening oaks, I didn’t have an unobstructed view. Nevertheless, between the branches I could see enough of Marigold Lane to be certain that no suspicious vehicles had parked at the curb since my arrival.

Judging by the evidence, I wasn’t under observation, but I felt certain that whoever had whacked Bob Robertson would be back. When they knew that I had come home and discovered the cadaver, they would either pop me, too, and make the double murder look like murder-suicide, or more likely place an anonymous call to the police and land me in the cell that I was determined to avoid.

I knew a set-up when I saw one.