Dean R. Koontz
Dragon Tears
Dedication
This book is for some special people who live too far away — Ed and Carol Gorman — with the wish that our modern world really
PART ONE
This Old Honkytonk of Fools
You know a dream is like a river
Ever changing as it flows.
And a dreamer’s just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what’s behind you
And never knowing what’s in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores.
Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things good and all the wrong
Will come right to you: it’s fate.
Hear the music, dance if you can.
Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkytonk of fools.
ONE
1
Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch.
For breakfast, sitting at his kitchen table, he ate toasted English muffins with lemon marmalade and drank strong black Jamaican coffee. A pinch of cinnamon gave the brew a pleasantly spicy taste.
The kitchen window provided a view of the greenbelt that wound through Los Cabos, a sprawling condominium development in Irvine. As president of the homeowners’ association, Harry drove the gardeners hard and rigorously monitored their work, ensuring that the trees, shrubs, and grass were as neatly trimmed as a landscape in a fairy tale, as if maintained by platoons of gardening elves with hundreds of tiny shears.
As a child, he had enjoyed fairy tales even more than children usually did. In the worlds of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, springtime hills were always flawlessly green, velvet-smooth. Order prevailed. Villains invariably met with justice, and the virtuous were rewarded — though sometimes only after hideous suffering. Hansel and Gretel didn’t die in the witch’s oven; the crone herself was roasted alive therein. Instead of stealing the queen’s newborn daughter, Rumpelstiltskin was foiled and, in his rage, tore himself apart.
In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen’s daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society’s intolerance for bad-tempered, evil- minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane.
Harry swallowed the last of his coffee, and sighed. Like a lot of people, he longed to live in a better world.
Before going to work, he washed the dishes and utensils, dried them, and put them away. He loathed coming home to mess and clutter.
At the foyer mirror by the front door, he paused to adjust the knot in his tie. He slipped into a navy-blue blazer and checked to be sure the weapon in his shoulder holster made no telltale bulge.
As on every workday for the past six months, he avoided traffic-packed freeways, following the same surface streets to the Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Special Projects Center in Laguna Niguel, a route that he had mapped out to minimize travel time. He had arrived at the office as early as 8:15 and as late as 8:28, but he had never been tardy.
That Tuesday when he parked his Honda in the shadowed lot on the west side of the two-story building, the car clock showed 8:21. His wristwatch confirmed the time. Indeed, all of the clocks in Harry’s condominium and the one on the desk in his office would be displaying 8:21. He synchronized all of his clocks twice a week.
Standing beside the car, he drew deep, relaxing breaths. Rain had fallen overnight, scrubbing the air clean. The March sunshine gave the morning a glow as golden as the flesh of a ripe peach.
To meet Laguna Niguel architectural standards, the Special Projects Center was a two-story Mediterranean-style building with a columned promenade. Surrounded by lush azaleas and tall melaleucas with lacy branches, it bore no resemblance to most police facilities. Some of the cops who worked out of Special Projects thought it looked too effete, but Harry liked it.
The institutional decor of the interior had little in common with the picturesque exterior. Blue vinyl-tile floors. Pale-gray walls. Acoustic ceilings. However, its air of orderliness and efficiency was comforting.
Even at that early hour, people were on the move through the lobby and hallways, mostly men with the solid physique and self-confident attitude that marked career cops. Only a few were in uniform. Special Projects drew on plainclothes homicide detectives and undercover operatives from federal, state, county, and city agencies to facilitate criminal investigations spread over numerous jurisdictions. Special Projects teams — sometimes whole task forces — dealt with youth-gang killings, serial murders, pattern rapists, and large-scale narcotics activities.
Harry shared a second-floor office with Connie Gulliver. His half of the room was softened by a small palm, Chinese evergreens, and the leafy trailers of a pothos. Her half had no plants. On his desk were only a blotter, pen
