Incubi

pit of loss. Did Jack feel the same way now? Was that why he’d rushed to find Veronica? Or had she really been tricked by murderers?

She admitted the odds were just too wild. But the name, she reminded herself. The word. Khoronos.

Craig frowned when some man with banged hair swaggered in. He wore boots up to his knees, and a black T-shirt with an abstract picture on it. “Veronica Polk,” the shirt read. “The Pickman Gallery.”

“Thanks for the nickel tip the other night, Stewie,” Craig said. “The door’s that way.”

The guy shoved out a ten. “Just get me a drink.”

Faye approached him. “Are you Stewie, Jack’s friend?”

Stewie laughed. “Let’s just say an acquaintance. Friend seems a bit of an overstatement.”

“And you’re also Veronica’s agent?”

Stewie peered at her. “That’s right. She disappeared last week. Jack was supposed to find her, but it figures he never came through.”

“Yesterday he found out where Khoronos lives,” Faye stated.

Stewie’s eyes spread over his drink. “How…”

“He’s on his way there now.”

Suddenly Stewie was frantic. “What do you know about it?”

“Everything,” Faye said.

After that, she said a lot more.

* * *

“Goddamn!” Jack yelled. He was parked off the shoulder, motor running. The minute he’d gotten what he thought was the right grid, he got lost. The TI-DM kept spitting out the wrong frames.

Every county police vehicle now was fitted with a data monitor, a simple LCD system that was uplinked to the county mainframe. It sported a small screen and keyboard, and was manufactured by Texas Instruments. With it, an officer could run an MVA or warrant check without having to wait for dispatcher processing. An officer could also run any street address in the county and bring up the proper map grid on the screen. But so far Jack had punched up the address and locate-command three times and had gotten three different grids.

“Piece of shit!” he yelled, and smacked the wheel. He entered the address again and got another wrong frame. If the computer was down, the screen would say so. It could also be what they called a “bad lay”—some aspect of the terrain obstructing the radio relay — but that only happened in the snow or during a thunderstorm. Tonight, though, the sky was crystal clear.

It goddamn figures, he thought. There were some high forest belts up this way, and some mountains. Maybe the signal was bouncing. He drove up to higher ground, then punched up the address again. The screen flashed another wrong grid. Again, he felt thwarted, that fate or bad luck or something was deliberately standing in his way. At this rate, I’ll have to sequence the entire grid system frame by frame, he thought, wanting to be sick. Khoronos’ address must be on a pipestem that was not on the paper map. But it would have to be on the computer; the geographic survey was upgraded every day. So where the hell was it?

One more time, he decided. This time he got a notorious relay malfunction called a “slide”; the screen flashed an entire grid block—twelve different frames in a few seconds. “Motherless piece of shit!” he yelled. He wanted to punch the screen or rip the whole system out and leave it in the street.

He lit a Camel and let his anger beat down. Then he glanced at the last grid frame.

Bingo. The screen logged the road he was on right now. The pipestem to Khoronos’ lot sat just a hundred feet before him.

This is it.

He idled up. Here the residences sat back off the road. Long driveways led deep into the woods, and a mailbox marked each drive. Jack aimed his remote spot onto each one, checking the addresses. He could’ve laughed: Khoronos’ address was skipped. I do not believe this shit. He backed up to the last marked drive and pulled in. As suspected, the driveway proceeded past the address on the mailbox.

“Dead End,” a sign read.

“Uh-huh,” he muttered.

He pulled past the sign, turned off the motor and the lights, and got out. By the trunk light he checked his Smith snub. The shotgun was loaded, five rounds of no. 4 buck. He slung it over his shoulder. Then he loaded six.455s into the big Webley.

He gently closed the trunk.

He tried to visualize himself. A suspended cop standing in the dark in some guy’s driveway in the middle of the night with a riot gun slung across his back.

What am I doing?

It was not too late to be reasonable. He could get back into the car, drive home, and proceed with this in a proper and professional manner.

Sure I could, he realized. But I’m not gonna, so let’s go.

Jack began to walk up the dark road.

* * *

He didn’t know if he was looking at a house or some architect’s idea of a bad joke. Frank Lloyd Wright would shit in his grave if he could see this, he thought. Khoronos’ house looked like a futuristic castle: bright white, shutterless with gunslit windows, and configured of odd angles and lines. It stood out against the moon. The structure bothered him somehow, the trapezoidal tangents, the incongruence of its shape. Perhaps it was his imagination, but the more Jack stared at the structure’s bizarre geometry, the more he saw the shades of the same occult glyphs left on the walls of three murdered women.

He skirted around the side. Most of the windows were dark. Before the house stood a squat four-car garage. The doors were locked but there were windows in the panels. He quickly whipped out his mini-Maglite and shined it in.

More coincidence, or was this it?

First, there was no doubt that this was the right place. In the furthest bay he saw an orange Mercedes 450SL — Ginny’s car. Next were two more vehicles: a white panel van and a long black luxury sedan, a Lincoln or a Cadillac.

Stewie had said the two guys had picked up Veronica’s painting in a white van. Craig had seen a big black sedan pulling into the Undercroft the night Susan Lynn was murdered.

Again, he faltered. Neither Stewie nor Craig had gotten tag numbers or even partials, but he doubted that mattered. The decryption of Khoronos’ name, plus the white van and the black sedan spotted by witnesses, was probably enough to get a search warrant that would wash in court.

But that would take a day, he thought. And I don’t have a day.

A high fence surrounded the backyard, beyond which stood the forest. The fence was painted glossy black. He couldn’t see between the gaps. He saw no motion or pressure sensors on the fence.

As stealthily as he could, then, he climbed over.

Now he was standing in wavering, lazy light. A large outdoor pool filled the backyard; its submerged lights were on, which vacillated upon the rear of the house. Jack froze, tried to blend in with the fence as his eyes scanned the pool and the yard. He was alone.

No time like the present for illegal entry. He was getting to be an expert at it these days. It was nice to know that even if he did get kicked off the force, he’d be able to burgle houses for a living. He checked every window along the lower level. More darkness. Next were a pair of French doors, any burglar’s dream. He checked the lock on the knob, one of the better Qwik-Sets, but before he slipped out his pickcase, he turned the knob. Some security, he thought. The door was unlocked.

Then he did the next logical thing: he entered the house.