Dean Koontz - (1973) Page 4

  'Woo Three When they had been back on the road for fifteen minutes after their lunch break and still the rented Chevrolet van had not appeared in the rear-view mirror, Doyle stopped watching for it.

  He had been shaken when the van pulled behind them again after their breakfast stop near Harrisburg, but of course that had been merely coincidence. It had trailed them across all of Pennsylvania and through a sliver of West Virginia, then into Ohio-but that was because it happened to be going west on the same Interstate they were using.

  The driver of the van, whoever he was, had chosen his route from a map, just as Doyle had; there was nothing sinister in the other man's mind when he outlined " his trip. belatedly Alex realized that he could have relieved his own mind at any time during the morning just by pulling to the side of the road and letting the van go past. He could have waited for it to build up a fifteen-minute lead and could have dispensed immediately with the whole crazy idea that they were being pursued. Well, it did not matter much now. The van was gone, way out ahead of them somewhere.

  "He back there?" Colin asked. "No."

  "Shucks."

  "Shucks?

  "I'd really like to know what he was up to," Colin said. "Now I guess we'll never find out."

  Alex smiled. "I guess we never will."

  Compared to Pennsylvania, Ohio was almost a plains state. Vistas of open green land stretched out on both sides of the highway, marred only by an occasional shabby town, neat farm, or oddly isolated and routinely filthy factory. The sameness of it, stretching away into the distance under an equally bland blue sky, bored and depressed them.

  The car seemed to crawl at a quarter of its real speed.

  When they had been on the road only twenty minutes, Colin began to twist and squirm uncomfortably. "This seatbelt isn't made right," he told Doyle.

  "Oh? / "I think they made it too tight."

  "It can't be too tight. It's adjustable."

  "I don't know Colin tested it with both hands.

  "You aren't getting out of it with excuses as contrived as that one."

  Colin looked at the open fields, at a herd of fat cows grazing on a hill above a white-and-red barn. "I didn't know there were so many cows in the world. Ever since we left home I've seen cows everywhere I look. If I see one more cow, I think I might puke."

  "No you won't," Alex said. "I'd make you clean it up."

  "Is the rest of the country going to be like this?" Colin asked, indicating the mundane landscape with one slim, upturned hand.

  "You know it isn't," Doyle said patiently. "You'll see the Mississippi River, the deserts, the Rocky Mountains . . . You've taken enough imaginary trips around the world to know it far better than I do."

  Colin quit tugging at his seatbelt when he saw he was not getting anywhere with Doyle. "By the time we find these interesting places, my brain will be all rotten inside. If I watch too much of this nothing, I'll turn into a zombie. You know what a zombie's like?"

  He made a face like a zombie for Doyle's benefit: mouth agap e, flesh slack, eyes open wide but taking in nothing.

  While he liked Colin and was amused by him, Doyle was also disturbed. He knew that the boy's persistent campaign to be let out of his belt was as much a test of Doyle's talent for discipline as it was an expression of real discomfort. Before Alex had married Courtney, the boy obeyed his sister's suitor as he might his own father. And even when the honeymooners came home to tie up their affairs in Philadelphia, Colin had behaved. But now that he was alone with Doyle and out of his sister's sight, he was testing their new relationship.

  If he could get away with anything, he would. In that respect, he was the same as all other boys his age.

  "Look," Alex said, "when you talk to Courtney on the phone tonight, I don't want you complaining about your seatbelt and the scenery. She and I both thought this trip would be good for you. I might as well tell you that we also thought it would let you and me get used to each other, throw us together and smooth out any wrinkles.

  Now, I won't have you complaining and groaning when we call her from Indianapolis. She's out in San Francisco getting people to put down the carpet, install the drapes, deliver the furniture . . . She has enough on her mind without worrying about you."

  Colin thought about that as they rushed directly westward toward Columbus. "Okay, he said at last. "I surrender. You have nineteen years on me."

  Alex glanced at the boy, who gave him a shy under-the-eyebrows look, and laughed quietly. "We'll get along. I always thought we would."

  "Tell me one thing," the boy said.

  ,what's that?"

  "You have nineteen years on me. And-six on Courtney? "

  "That's right."

  "Do you make the rules and regulations for Courtney, too?"

  "Nobody makes rules and regulations for Courtney," Doyle said.

  Colin folded his skinny arms over his chest and nodded smugly.

  "That's sure the truth. I'm glad you understand her. I wouldn't give this marriage six months if you thought you could tell Courtney to wear her seatbelt."

  On both sides, flat fields spread out. Cows grazed. Scattered puffs of clouds drifted lazily across the open sky.

  After a while Colin said, "I'll bet you half a buck I can estimate how many cars will t pass us going east in the next five minutes and come within ten of the real number."

  "Half a buck?" Alex asked. "You're on."

  The dashboard clock ticked off the five minutes as they counted the eastbound cars, announcing each one aloud. Colin was only three off his estimate.

  "Double or nothing?" the boy asked.

  "What have I got to lose?" Alex asked, grinning, his confidence in the trip and himself and the boy now all restored.

  They played the game again. Colin's estimate was only four cars off, and he won another fifty cents. "Double or nothing?" he asked again, rubbing his long-fingered hands together.

  "I don't think so," Alex said suspiciously. "How'd you manage that?"

  "Easy. I counted them to myself for half an hour until I saw what an average five minutes brought. Then I asked you if you wanted to bet."

  "Maybe we ought to take a detour down to Las Vegas," Alex said.

  "I'll just tag along with you in the casinos and do what you tell me."

  Colin was so pleased by the compliment that he could not think of anything to say. He hugged himself and dropped his head, then looked out the side window and smiled toothily at his own vague reflection in the glass.

  Although the boy was not aware of it, Doyle could see that reflection when he took a quick look at Colin to see why he had become silent so suddenly. Understanding, he grinned himself and relaxed against the seat, the last bit of tension draining out of him.

  He saw that he had not fallen in love with one person, but with two.

  He loved this skinny, overly intellectual boy almost as much as he loved Courtney. it was the sort of realization that could make a man forget the uncertainty and shallow, disquieting fear of the morning.

  When he originally mapped the trip and called ahead from Philly to make reservations, and again when he mailed the roomdeposit check four days ago, Doyle had told the people at the Lazy Time Motel that he and Colin would arrive between seven and eight o'clock Monday evening. At seven-thirty, precisely in the middle of his estimate, he drove into the motel's lot, just east of Indianapolis, and parked by the office Their rooms were reserved ahead for the entire trip. Doyle did not want to drive six hundred miles only to spend half the night looking for a vacancy.

  He shut off the headlights, then the car. The silence was eerie.

  Gradually the traffic sounds from the Interstate came to him, forlorn cries on the early-night air. "How's this for a schedule?" he asked Colin. "A hot shower, a good supper. Then we call Courtney-and hit the sack for eight hours."

  "Sure," Colin said. "But could we eat first? " The request was an unusual one for him. He was as light an eater as Doyle had been at his age. When they had stop
ped for lunch today, Colin nibbled at one piece of chicken, ate some cole slaw, a dish of sherbet, drank a Coke-then proclaimed himself "stuffed."

  "Well," Doyle said, "we're not so grubby they'll refuse to let us in the restaurant. But I want to get our rooms first." He opened his door and let the chill but muggy night air into the car. "You wait here for me."

  "Sure," Colin said. "If I can get out of this seatbelt now."

  Alex smiled, unfastened his own belt. "I really scared you, did I?"

  Colin gave him a lopsided smile. "If you want to look at it that way."

  "Okay, okay," Doyle said. "Take off your seatbelt, Colin me boy."

  When he got out of the car and stretched his legs, he saw that the Lazy Time Motel was just what the tour-guide book said it was: clean, pleasant, but inexpensive. It was built as a large L, with the neon-framed office at the junction of the two wings. Forty or fifty doors, all alike and spaced as evenly as the slats in a fence, were set into undistinguished red-brick walls. A concrete promenade fronted both wings and was covered by a corrugated aluminum awning supported by black wrought-iron posts every ten feet. A soda machine stood just outside the office door, humming and clinking to itself.

  The office was small, but the walls were bright yellow, the tile floor clean and polished. Doyle crossed to the counter and struck the bell for service.

  "Just a minute!" a woman called from behind a bamboo-curtained doorway at the end of the work area on the business side of the counter.

  Beside the counter was a rack of magazines and paperback books. A sign above the rack read: TONIGHT, WHY NOT READ YOURSELF TO SLEEP?

  While Doyle waited for the clerk, he looked at the books, though he would not need anything to make him sleepy after all day on the road.

  "Sorry to make you wait," she said, shouldering through the bamboo curtain. "I was-" Halfway from the curtain to the counter, she got a look at Doyle, and she stopped talking. She stared at him the same way Chet, at the service station, had stared. "Yes?" Her voice was decidedly cool.

  "You've got reservations for Doyle," Alex said. Now he was doubly glad he had made reservations. He was fairly sure she would have turned him away, even if he could see there was not a car in front of every room and even if the neon vacancy sign was lighted.

  "Doyle?" she asked.

  "Doyle."

  She came the rest of the way to the counter, brightened as she reached for the file cards by the registry book. "Oh, the father and son from Philadelphia!"

  "That's right," Doyle said, trying to smile.

  She was in her middle fifties, an attractive woman despite the extra twenty pounds she carried. She wore her hair in a 1950's bouffant, her broad forehead revealed, spit curls at her ears. Her knit dress clung to a full if matronly bosom. The lines of a girdle showed at hips and waist.

  "That was one of our seventeen-dollar rooms," she said.

  "Yes." She took the file card from the green metal box, looked closely at it, then flipped open the registration book. She carefully completed a third-of-a-page form, then turned the book around and held out the pen. "If you'll sign here . . . Oh," she said as he reached for the pen, "maybe your father should sign. The room is reserved in his name."

  Doyle looked at her uncomprehendingly until he realized she had more in common with Chet than he had first thought.

  "I am the father. I'm Alex Doyle."

  She frowned. When she tilted her head, the bouffant seemed about to slide right down over her face in one well-sprayed piece. "But it says here-"

  "My boy's eleven." He took the pen and scribbled his signature on the form.

  she looked at the freshly inked name as if it were an ugly spot on her new slipcovers. Any minute now she would run for the solvent and scrub the nasty thing away.

  "Which room have we got?" Alex asked, prodding her along against her will.

  She took in his hair and clothes again. He was not accustomed to such frank disapproval in cities like Philly and San Francisco, and he resented her manner.

  "Well," she said, "you must be aware that you pay-"

  "in advance," he finished for her. "Yes, silly of me not to think of it." He counted twelve dollars onto the registration book. "I sent in a five-dollar deposit, you may recall."

  "But there's tax," she said.

  "How much?"

  When she told him, he paid from the loose change in the pocket of his wrinkled dark gray jeans.

  She counted the money into the cash drawer even though she had seen him count it himself a minute ago.

  Reluctantly she took a key from the pegboard and gave it to him. "Room 37," she said, staring at the key as if it were diamond jewelry she was commi tting to his care. "That's way down the long wing."

  "Thank you," he said, hoping to avoid a scene. He walked back across the clean, well-lighted room toward the door.

  "The Lazy Time has very nice rooms," she said as he reached the door.

  He looked back. "I'm sure it does."

  "We like to keep them that way," she said.

  He nodded grimly and got the hell out of there.

  Despite the fact that he had lost sight of the Thunderbird, George Leland began to calm down. For fifteen minutes he pushed the van along at top speed, desperately surveying the traffic ahead for a glimpse of the big car. But his natural empathy with machines acted as a sedative. The fear left him. He let the van slow down. With a growing confidence in his ability to catch up with the Thunderbird, he drove only a few miles an hour over the speed limit. Like a man in a light trance, he was aware only of the road and of the Chevy's engine revving at just the right pitch, and he was considerably quieted by these things For the first time all day Leland smiled.

  And he wished, for the first time in a long time, that he had someone to whom he could talk . . .

  "You look happy, George," she said, startling him.

  He glanced away from the road.

  She was sitting in the passenger's seat, only a couple of feet away from him. But how was that possible' "Courtney," he said, voice a dry whisper.

  "It's nice to see you so happy," she said.

  "You're usually so sober."

  He looked back at the road, confused.

  But his eyes were drawn to her magnetically an instant later. The sunlight pierced the windshield and passed through her as if she were a spirit. it touched her golden hair and skin, then kept right on going. He could see the door panel on the other side of her. He could see through her lovely face to the window behind her head and the countryside beyond the window-as if she were transparent. He could not understand. How could she be here? How could she know that he was following Doyle and the boy?

  A horn blared nearby.

  Leland looked up, surprised to find he had drifted out of the right lane and almost collided with a Pontiac trying to pass him. He wheeled hard right and brought the van back into line.

  "How have you been, George?" she asked.

  He looked at her, then quickly back at the highway. She was wearing the same outfit she had worn when he saw her last: clunky shoes, a short white skirt, fancy red blouse with long printed collar.

  When he followed her to the airport a week ago and watched her board the 707, he had been so excited by the way she looked in that trim little suit that he had wanted her more than he had ever wanted a woman before. He almost rushed up to her--but he had realized that she would think it was strange of him to be following her.

  "How have you been, George?" she asked again.

  She had been worried about his problems even before he recognized that he had any, even before he had seen that everything was going wrong. When she dissolved their two-year-old affair and would only talk to him on the telephone, she had still called him twice a month to see how he was getting along. Of course, she had stopped calling eventually. She had forgotten him completely.

  "Oh," he said, keeping his eyes on the road, "I'm fine."

  "You don't look fine." Her voice was faraway, hollow, onl
y slightly like her real voice. Yet there she was, sitting lieside him in broad daylight.

  "I'm doing very well," he assured her.

  "You've lost weight."

  "I needed to lose some."

  "Not that much, George."

  "It can't hurt."

  "And you have bags under your eyes."

  He took one hand from the wheel and touched the discolored, puffy flesh.

  "Haven't you been getting enough sleep?"

  she asked.

  He did not respond. He did not like this conversation. He hated her when she badgered him about his health and said his emotional problems with other people must come from a basic physical illness.

  Sure, the problems had come on suddenly. But he wasn't at fault. it was other people. Lately, everyone had it in for him.

  "George, have people been treating you better since we last talked?"

  He admired her long legs. They were not transparent now. The flesh was golden, firm, beautiful. "No, Courtney. I lost another job."

  Now that she had stopped nagging him about his health, he felt better. He wanted to tell her everything, no matter how embarrassing.

  She would understand. He would put his head in her lap and cry until he had no tears left. Then he would feel better . .

  .

  He would cry while she smoothed his hair, and when he sat up he would have as few problems as he had had more than two years ago, before this trouble had come along and everyone had gotten nasty with him.

  "Another job?" she asked. "How many jobs have you held these last two years?"

  "Six," he said.

  "What did you get fired for this time?"

  "I don't know," Leland said, genuine misery in his voice. "We were putting up an office building-two years of work. I was getting along with everyone. Then my boss, the chief engineer, started in on me."

  "Started in on you?" she asked, flat and faraway, barely audible above the buzz of the wide tires. "How?"

  He shifted uneasily behind the wheel. "You know, Courtney. Just like all the other times. He talked about me behind my back, set the other men against me. He countermanded my job assignments and encouraged Preston, the steel foreman, to-"