Dean Koontz - (1973) Page 3

  Leland turned right when he went in, walked to the end of the counter, and sat on the curve where he could occasionally look out the windows beyond the booths and sec the thuds)ird down at flarry's.

  Because it was the last restaaraunt in the complex, and because the rush-hour rush had passed by two-thirty in the afternoon, Breen's was almost deserted. In a booth just inside the door, a middle-aged couple worked at hot roast beef sandwiches in mutual stony silence. An Ohio State Police lieutenant occupied the booth behind them, facing Leland. He was busy with a cheeseburger and French fries.

  In the booth at the far end of the room from Leland, a frowsy waitress with bleached hair smoked a cigarette and stared at the yellowed tile ceiling.

  The only other person in the place was the counter waitress, who came to see what Leland wanted. She was perhaps nineteen, a fresh and pretty blonde with eyes as blue as Leland's. Her uniform was off the rack of a discount house, but she had personalized it. The skirt was hemmed eight inches above her shapely knees. A small embroidered chipmunk capered on one skirt pocket, a rabbit on the other. She had replaced the uniform's original white buttons with red ones. On her left breast stood an embroidered bird, and on her right breast was her name in fancy script: lanet. And a cheerful greeting just below the name: Hi there! She had a sweet smile, a curiously charming way of cocking her head, an almost Mickey Mouse cuteness-and she was obviously an easy lay.

  "Seen the menu?" she asked. Her voice was at once throaty and childlike.

  "Coffee and a cheeseburger," Leland said.

  "French fries too? They're already made."

  "Well, okay," he said.

  She wrote it down, then winked at him. "Back in a jiff. He watched her walk up the service aisle behind the counte r. Her trim legs scissored prettily. Her tight uniform clung to the welldelineated halves of her round ass. Suddenly, though the transformation was impossible, she was nude. To his eye, her clothes vanished in an instant. He saw all of her long legs, the divided globe of her behind, the exquisite line of her slim back . . .

  He looked guiltily down at the counter top as he felt his loins tighten, and he was abruptly confused, disoriented. in that instant he could not even say where he was.

  Janet came back with the coffee and put it in front of him.

  "Cream?"

  "Yes, please."

  She reached under the counter and came up with a two-inch-high cardboard container shaped like a milk bottle. She laid out his silverware, inspected her work, and approved. instead of leaving him to his coffee, however, she leaned her elbows ()n the counter, propped her chin in her hands, gave him a saucy grin.

  "where are you moving to?" she asked.

  Leland frowned. "How did you know I'm moving? "

  "Saw you pull in. Saw the Automover. You moving around here someplace?"

  "No," he said, pouring cream into his coffee. "California."

  "Oh, wow!" she said. "Great! Palm trees, sunshine, surfing . .

  ."

  "Yeah," he said, wishing she would go away.

  "I'd love to learn to surf," she said. "I like the sea. Summers, I take two weeks in Atlantic City, lay around on the beach and get real brown. I tan well. I have this very skimpy bikini that browns me all over." She laughed with false modesty. "Well . . .

  Almost all over. They don't approve of bikinis that small in Atlantic City."

  Leland looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup.

  She met his eyes and held them until he looked down again.

  "Burg and fries!" the cook called from the serving window which connected the restaurant to the kitchen.

  "Yours," she said quietly. She went and got the food, put it down before him. "Anything else? "

  "No," he said.

  She leaned against the counter again, talking while he ate. She worked hard at her ingenuousness. She giggled, did a lot of blinking and practiced blushing. He decided she was five years older than he had first thought.

  "Could I have another cup of coffee?" he asked at last, just to be rid of her for a few moments.

  "Sure," she said, picking up his empty cup and walking back toward the tall chrome brewer.

  Watching her, Leland felt an odd vibration pass through him-and then he was seeing her without her clothes, just as he had before. He was not just imagining what she would look like when she was nude. He actually saw her as clearly as he saw the normal features of the diner around her. Her long legs and round buttocks were taut as she stood on her toes to check the filter in the top of the huge pot. When she turned, her breasts swayed, nipples swelling even as he watched.

  Closing his eyes, Leland tried desperately to erase the vision.

  Opening them, he saw that it remained. And second by second, the longer it remained, the stranger he felt.

  He closed his hand around the knife she had given him. He lifted the knife and held it before his face and looked at the bright serrated edge. Then the blade softened, diffused, as he looked beyond it to the nude girl walking slowly toward him, walking toward him as if through syrup, her bare breasts moving sensuously with each step . . . He thought of putting the knife between her ribs, deep between them, then twisting it back and forth until she stopped screaming and gave him a rictus of welcome . . .

  Then, when she was almost up to him, the overfilled coffee cup balanced carefully in both her slim hands, Leland realized that someone was watching him. He turned slightly on his stool and looked at the middle-aged couple in the booth by the door. The man had a mouthful of food, but he was not chewing it. Cheeks bulging, he was watching Leland, watching the tight expression on Leland's face and the knife held up like a torch in the engineer's big right hand. In the second booth, the policeman had also stopped eating to watch Leland. He was frowning, as if he didn't quite know what to make of the knife.

  Leland put the knife down and slid off the stool just as the waitress arrived with the coffee. He fumbled for his wallet and threw two dollars on the counter.

  "You aren't leaving, are you"' she asked. Her voice was faraway and so icy that it made Leland shiver.

  He did not answer her. He walked quickly to the door and went outside. The day seemed fiercely bright as he hurried to the van.

  Sitting behind the wheel of the Chevrolet, he heard his heart pounding relentlessly against the walls of his chest. He drew breath in great racking sobs and shuddered like a cold, wet dog.

  Though she was not in sight now, and though he held his eyes tightly shut, Leland could see the young waitress: her supple body, long bare legs, widely spaced breasts . . . He could see himself leaning into her with the blade, her fair skin parting, could see himself clambering over the counter and taking her right there on the floor. No one would have stopped him, because he would have kept the knife. Everyone would have been afraid. Even the cop. He could have pressed the waitress down on the dirty tiles behind the counter, could have ravaged her as often as he wanted . . .

  He thought about the knife and the blood that would have been and about the girl's breasts and the feel of her body moving against him, and he saw the stunned looks the others in the diner would have given him if he had actually done it. And, gradually, the mood left him. His heart grew quiet. His breath came less raggedly than it had.

  He raised his head and unexpectedly caught sight of himself in the wide rear-view mirror fixed beside the driver's window. He looked into his own eyes, and for a moment he knew where he was and what he was doing. Suddenly lucid, he realized why he was following the Thunderbird, what he intended to do to the people inside of it. And he knew it was all wrong. He was sick, confused, disoriented.

  Looking away from his own eyes, sickened by what he saw in them, he discovered that the cop had come out of the diner and was walking toward the van. Irrationally, he was certain the trooper knew everything. The trooper somehow knew all that Leland would have liked to do to the girl and all that he would do to the pair in the Thunderbird. The trooper knew.

  Leland started the van.<
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  The trooper called to him.

  Unable to hear what the man said, certain that he did not want to hear it, Leland put the van in gear and tramped the accelerator.

  The cop shouted again.

  The truck jerked, stewed sideways, kicking up loose gravel.

  Leland eased up on the gas and settled the machine. He drove out of the lot and picked up speed going through the clutter of motels and service stations.

  He was breathing hard again. He was whimpering.

  At the east end of the complex, he took the entrance ramp to Interstate 70 much faster than he should have. He did not check the traffic, but drove unheedingly onto the throughway. Fortunately, both westbound lanes were deserted.

  Though in the back of his mind Leland knew that these roads were well patrolled and even monitored by radar, he let the needle on the speedometer climb and climb. When it hit close to a hundred, the van trembled slightly and fell into its maximum pace like a thoroughbred into the proper trot.

  in the cargo space, the furniture rattled and banged against the walls. A table lamp fell with a crash of broken glass.

  Leland looked in the mirror. The cop either had not started after him or had not started quickly enough. The road back there was empty.

  Nevertheless, he held the van at a hundred miles an hour. The road roared beneath him. The flat land spun past like rapidly changed stage settings. And little by little the panic died in him. He gradually lost the feeling that everyone was watching him, that everyone's hand was against him, that he was transparent, and that he was being relentlessly pursued by forces connected with but not really identified by that state policeman. As he barreled westward, he quickly became a part of his machine once more. He guided it with a safe and measured touch. When he had gone seven or eight miles, he let the speed fall back to the legal limit; and even though only minutes had passed since he left the diner, he could not recall what had made him panic in the first place . . .

  However, he suddenly did remember Doyle and Colin. The Thunderbird was somewhere behind him, to the east. Perhaps it was still parked in the shadow of that enormous sign at Harry's Fine Food.

  Even if it were on the road again, Doyle and the kid were miles to the rear, out of sight. Leland did not like that at all.

  He let his speed drop even further. As he began to realize that now they were following him, his ever-present fear took on a familiar edge. The gray road seemed like a tunnel now, a trap with one exit and no way to turn back.

  Then ahead, another rest area loomed on the right, shielded from the highway by a double row of pines. Leland braked and drove in there, went up a slight incline. He parked on the square graveled plateau, facing the highway so that he could watch the traffic between the thick brown trunks of the trees.

  All he had to do now was wait and watch the road. When the Thunderbird passed, he could fall in behind it, catch up to it in two or three minutes. He was enormously relieved.

  The trooper was getting out of the patrol car even before George Leland realized that he had driven into the rest area. Leland had been watching the highway beyond the pines for a full five minutes, and he must have been somewhat mesmerized by the bright sunshine and the spurts of westbound traffic. One moment he thought he was alone-and the next moment he was aware of the Ohio State Police patrol car angled in beside the van. Half in the shadows cast by the pines and half in the slanting sunlight, it looked unreal. The dome light was flashing, though the siren had not been used. The trooper who got out was in his early thirties, sober and hard-jawed. He was the same man who had been taking his lunch in Breen's, the one who had called to Leland outside the little diner.

  Leland remembered some of the reasons for his previous panic.

  Again the world appeared to close in on him. Darkness crept up at the corners of his vision, inward-spreading ink stains. He felt bottled up and vulnerable, an easy target for those who meant him harm. These days everyone seemed to be after him. He was always running.

  He rolled down his window as the cop approached.

  "You alone?" the lieutenant asked, stopping far enough from the van to be out of the way of the door if Leland should suddenly swing it open. He had one hand on the butt of his holstered revolver.

  "Alone?" Leland asked. ,Yes, sir. "Why didn't you stop when I called to you?"

  "Called to me?"

  "At the restaurant," the lieutenant said, his voice crisp and older than his smooth face.

  Leland looked perplexed. "I didn't see you.

  You called me?"

  "Twice. "

  "I'm sorry," Leland said. "I didn't hear." He frowned. "Did I do something wrong? I'm usually a careful driver."

  The trooper watched him carefully for a moment, searched his blue eyes, took in his sun-darkened face and neatly trimmed hair, then relaxed. He let his hand drop from the gun. He took the last few steps to the van. "It wasn't your driving," he said. "Just the same, I'd like to have a look at your license and the rental papers for the truck."

  "Sure," Leland said. "Always glad to cooperate."

  Moving as if he were reaching for his wallet, he took the .32-caliber pistol out of the tissue box on the seat beside him. In one fluid movement he raised it to the window and centered the barrel on the trooper's face and pulled the trigger. The single shot echoed in the copse of pines behind the van and slapped sharply across the highway out front.

  Leland sat and watched the traffic on the throughway for several minutes before he realized that he ought to conceal the corpse. Any minute someone could pull into the rest area, see the cop sprawled between the patrol car and the van, and run for help. These days everyone was on his tail. He had stayed alive this long only by keeping one step ahead of them. Now was no time to let his thinking get fuzzy.

  He pushed open the van door and got out.

  The trooper was lying face down in the gravel, dark blood pooled around his head. He looked much smaller now, almost like a child.

  During the past year, when he sensed the conspiracy working against him, Leland had wondered whether he would be able to kill to protect himself. He knew it would come to that. Kill or be killed.

  And until this moment he had not been sure which it would be. Now he could not understand why he had ever been in doubt.

  When it was kill or be killed, even a non-violent man could act to save himself.

  Expressionlessly Leland bent down and grabbed hold of the dead man's ankles, dragged him around to the open door of the squad car.

  The short-wave radio in there was sputtering noisily. Leland heaved the corpse inside, let it slump over the steering wheel. But that was no good. Even from a distance the man looked dead. Aware that he would have to completely conceal it, Leland pushed the body across the vinyl seat and climbed into the car after it.

  He touched the steering wheel, unaware he was leaving fingerprints.

  He touched the back of the vinyl seat.

  Oblivious to the thickening blood, he bent the dead man's ruined face down to his knees, then shoved the compacted hulk onto the floor in front of the passenger's seat.

  Inadvertently he touched the window on that side of the car, pressing all five fingers firmly to the glass.

  He had to force the corpse to slip halfway back into the cavity beneath the dashboard, but when he was done he was confident that no one would find the body unless they opened the door looking for it.

  Climbing out, he touched the bench of the vinyl seat.

  He touched the steering wheel again.

  He closed the door, fingers clasped around the chrome handle.

  It never occurred to him that he ought to take a rag and wipe down everything that he had touched. Already he had half forgotten the dead man crammed in the corner of the official car.

  He went back to the van and got in and closed the door. On the highway, traffic flashed by, casting off a golden shower of late-afternoon sunlight. For ten minutes or more Leland watched the road, waiting for the Thunderbird t
o pass.

  With his physical attention focused on so small an area, his thoughts drifted until they eventually settled on the young waitress who had served him at the diner, the girl with the rabbits and chipmunks on her uniform. Now he saw why she had confused and upset him. With her long natural-platinum hair and elfin features, she looked a little bit like Courtney. Not much, but some. Therefore she had precipitated his spell. He knew ' now, that he did not want to put his knife into her, had never wanted to put his knife into her. He did not want to make love to her, either. Indeed, he had no interest in that girl at all. He was strictly a one-woman man.

  He cared only for his lovely Courtney.

  As quickly as his thoughts passed from the waitress to Courtney, they flicked from Courtney to Doyle and the boy. Leland was shocked at the suddenly perceived possibility that the Thunderbird had passed while he was putting the dead trooper into the squad car. Perhaps they had gone by twenty minutes ago. They could be miles and miles out in front of him . . .

  What if Doyle changed his intended route?

  What if he did not follow the road that was marked on his map?

  Leland felt a hard lump of fear rise in his throat.

  if he lost Doyle and the kid, wouldn't he be losing Courtney? If he lost Courtney, lost his way to Courtney, hadn't he then lost everything?

  Droplets of sweat standing out on his broad forehead despite the air conditioning, he slipped the van in gear and backed out of there.

  The front wheels arced through the bloodied gravel. He shifted into drive and took the Chevrolet out of the rest area. The dome light on the squad car still went around and around, but Leland was not aware of that. There was no reality for him except the road ahead and the Thunderbird which must be even now escaping from him.