Dean Koontz - What the Night Knows

NOVELS BY DEAN KOONTZ

Breathless Relentless Your Heart Belongs to Me The Darkest Evening of the Year The Good Guy The Husband Velocity Life Expectancy The Taking The Face By the Light of the Moon One Door Away from Heaven From the Corner of His Eye False Memory Seize the Night Fear Nothing Mr. Murder Dragon Tears Hideaway Cold Fire The Bad Place Midnight Lightning Watchers Strangers Twilight Eyes Darkfall Phantoms Whispers The Mask The Vision The Face of Fear Night Chills Shattered The Voice of the Night The Servants of Twilight The House of Thunder The Key to Midnight The Eyes of Darkness Shadowfires Winter Moon The Door to December Dark Rivers of the Heart Icebound Strange Highways Intensity Sole Survivor Ticktock The Funhouse Demon Seed

ODD THOMAS
Odd Thomas Forever Odd Brother Odd Odd Hours

FRANKENSTEIN
Prodigal Son City of Night Dead and Alive Lost Souls

What the Night Knows is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2010 by Dean Koontz

All rights reserved.

Jacket art and design: Scott Biel

Published in the United States by Bantam Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

B ANTAM B OOKS and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Title page art from an original photograph by Joseph Hoban

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Koontz, Dean R. (Dean Ray)
What the night knows : a novel / Dean Koontz.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-553-90753-7
1. Serial murdersFiction. 2. MurderInvestigationFiction.
I. Title.
PS3561.O55W48 2011
813'.54dc22 2010033810

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

To Gerda,
who has haunted my heart
since the day we met

Death, the undiscovered country,
From whose bourn no traveler returns

SHAKESPEARE , Hamlet

WHAT YEAR THESE EVENTS TRANSPIRED IS OF NO CONSEQUENCE . Where they occurred is not important. The time is always, and the place is everywhere.

Suddenly at noon, six days after the murders, birds flew to trees and sheltered roosts. As if their wings had lanced the sky, the rain fell close behind their flight. The long afternoon was as dim and drowned as twilight in Atlantis.

The state hospital stood on a hill, silhouetted against a gray and sodden sky. The September light appeared to strop a razors edge along each skein of rain.

A procession of eighty-foot purple beeches separated the inbound and the outbound lanes of the approach road. Their limbs overhung the car and collected the rain to redistribute it in thick drizzles that rapped against the windshield.

The thump of the wipers matched the slow, heavy rhythm of John Calvinos heart. He did not play the radio. The only sounds were the engine, the windshield wipers, the rain, the swish of tires turning on wet pavement, and a memory of the screams of dying women.

Near the main entrance, he parked illegally under the portico. He propped the POLICE placard on the dashboard.

John was a homicide detective, but this car belonged to him, not to the department. The use of the placard while off duty might be a minor violation of the rules. But his conscience was encrusted with worse transgressions than the abuse of police prerogatives.

At the reception desk in the lobby sat a lean woman with close-cropped black hair. She smelled of the lunchtime cigarettes that had curbed her appetite. Her mouth was as severe as that of an iguana.

After glancing at Johns police ID and listening to his request, she used the intercom to call an escort for him. Pen pinched in her thin fingers, white knuckles as sharp as chiseled marble, she printed his name and badge number in the visitors register.

Hoping for gossip, she wanted to talk about Billy Lucas.

Instead, John went to the nearest window. He stared at the rain without seeing it.

A few minutes later, a massive orderly named Coleman Hanes escorted him to the thirdtopfloor. Hanes so filled the elevator that he seemed like a bull in a narrow stall, waiting for the door to the rodeo ring to be opened. His mahogany skin had a faint sheen, and by contrast his white uniform was radiant.

They talked about the unseasonable weather: the rain, the almost wintry cold two weeks before summer officially ended. They discussed neither murder nor insanity.

John did most of the talking. The orderly was self-possessed to the point of being phlegmatic.

The elevator opened to a vestibule. A pink-faced guard sat at a desk, reading a magazine.

Are you armed? he asked.

My service pistol.

Youll have to give it to me.

John removed the weapon from his shoulder rig, surrendered it.

On the desk stood a Crestron touch-screen panel. When the guard pressed an icon, the electronic lock released the door to his left.

Coleman Hanes led the way into what appeared to be an ordinary hospital corridor: gray-vinyl tile underfoot, pale-blue walls, white ceiling with fluorescent panels.

Will he eventually be moved to an open floor or will he be kept under this security permanently? John asked.

Id keep him here forever. But its up to the doctors.

Hanes wore a utility belt in the pouches of which were a small can of Mace, a Taser, plastic-strap handcuffs, and a walkie-talkie.

All the doors were closed. Each featured a lock-release keypad and a porthole.

Seeing Johns interest, Hanes said, Double-paned. The inner pane is shatterproof. The outer is a two-way mirror. But youll be seeing Billy in the consultation room.

This proved to be a twenty-foot-square chamber divided by a two-foot-high partition. From the top of this low wall to the ceiling were panels of thick armored glass in steel frames.

In each panel, near the sill and just above head height, two rectangular steel grilles allowed sound to pass clearly from one side of the glass to the other.

The nearer portion of the room was the smaller: twenty feet long, perhaps eight feet wide. Two armchairs were angled toward the glass, a small table between them.

The farther portion of the room contained one armchair and a long couch, allowing the patient either to sit or to lie down.

On this side of the glass, the chairs had wooden legs. The back and seat cushions were button-tufted.

Beyond the glass, the furniture featured padded, upholstered legs. The cushions were smooth-sewn, without buttons or upholstery tacks.

Ceiling-mounted cameras on the visitors side covered the entire room. From the guards station, Coleman Hanes could watch but not listen.

Before leaving, the orderly indicated an intercom panel in the wall beside the door. Call me when youre finished.

Alone, John stood beside an armchair, waiting.

The glass must have had a nonreflective coating. He could see only the faintest ghost of himself haunting that polished surface.

In the far wall, on the patients side of the room, two barred windows provided a view of slashing rain and dark clouds curdled like malignant flesh.

On the left, a door opened, and Billy Lucas entered the patients side of the room. He wore slippers, gray cotton pants with an elastic waistband, and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt.