What the Night Knows: A Novel Read online

  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 author’s 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.

  BANTAM BOOKS 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 murders—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—Fiction.

  I. Title.

  PS3561.O55W48 2011

  813'.54—dc22 2010033810

  www.bantamdell.com

  v3.1

  To Gerda,

  who has haunted my heart

  since the day we met

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  About the Author

  Death, the undiscovered country,

  From whose bourn no traveler returns …

  —SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

  1

  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 razor’s 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 Calvino’s 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 John’s 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 third—top—floor. 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.”

  “You’ll 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.

  “I’d keep him here forever. But it’s 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 John’s interest, Hanes said, “Double-paned. The inner pane is shatterproof. The outer is a two-way mirror. But you’ll be seeing Billy in the consultation r
oom.”

  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 visitor’s side covered the entire room. From the guard’s 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 you’re 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 patient’s 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 patient’s side of the room. He wore slippers, gray cotton pants with an elastic waistband, and a long-sleeved gray T-shirt.

  His face, as smooth as cream in a saucer, seemed to be as open and guileless as it was handsome. With pale skin and thick black hair, dressed all in gray, he resembled an Edward Steichen glamour portrait from the 1920s or ’30s.

  The only color he offered, the only color on his side of the glass, was the brilliant, limpid, burning blue of his eyes.

  Neither agitated nor lethargic from drugs, Billy crossed the room unhurriedly, with straight-shouldered confidence and an almost eerie grace. He looked at John, only at John, from the moment he entered the room until he stood before him, on the farther side of the glass partition.

  “You’re not a psychiatrist,” Billy said. His voice was clear, measured, and mellifluous. He had sung in his church choir. “You’re a detective, aren’t you?”

  “Calvino. Homicide.”

  “I confessed days ago.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “The evidence proves I did it.”

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “To understand.”

  Less than a full smile, a suggestion of amusement shaped the boy’s expression. He was fourteen, the unrepentant murderer of his family, capable of unspeakable cruelty, yet the half-smile made him look neither smug nor evil, but instead wistful and appealing, as though he were recalling a trip to an amusement park or a fine day at the shore.

  “Understand?” Billy said. “You mean—what was my motive?”

  “You haven’t said why.”

  “The why is easy.”

  “Then why?”

  The boy said, “Ruin.”

  2

  THE WINDLESS DAY ABRUPTLY BECAME TURBULENT AND RATTLED raindrops like volleys of buckshot against the armored glass of the barred windows.

  That cold sound seemed to warm the boy’s blue gaze, and his eyes shone now as bright as pilot lights.

  “ ‘Ruin,’ ” John said. “What does that mean?”

  For a moment, Billy Lucas seemed to want to explain, but then he merely shrugged.

  “Will you talk to me?” John asked.

  “Did you bring me something?”

  “You mean a gift? No. Nothing.”

  “Next time, bring me something.”

  “What would you like?”

  “They won’t let me have anything sharp or anything hard and heavy. Paperback books would be okay.”

  The boy had been an honor student, in his junior year of high school, having skipped two grades.

  “What kind of books?” John asked.

  “Whatever. I read everything and rewrite it in my mind to make it what I want. In my version, every book ends with everyone dead.”

  Previously silent, the storm sky found its voice. Billy looked at the ceiling and smiled, as if the thunder spoke specifically to him. Head tilted back, he closed his eyes and stood that way even after the rumble faded.

  “Did you plan the murders or was it on impulse?”

  Rolling his head from side to side as though he were a blind musician enraptured by music, the boy said, “Oh, Johnny, I planned to kill them long, long ago.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Longer than you would believe, Johnny. Long, long ago.”

  “Which of them did you kill first?”

  “What does it matter if they’re all dead?”

  “It matters to me,” John Calvino said.

  Pulses of lightning brightened the windows, and fat beads of rain quivered down the panes, leaving a tracery of arteries that throbbed on the glass with each bright palpitation.

  “I killed my mother first, in her wheelchair in the kitchen. She was getting a carton of milk from the refrigerator. She dropped it when the knife went in.”

  Billy stopped rolling his head, but he continued to face the ceiling, eyes still closed. His mouth hung open. He raised his hands to his chest and slid them slowly down his torso.

  He appeared to be in the grip of a quiet ecstasy.

  When his hands reached his loins, they lingered, and then slid upward, drawing the T-shirt with them.

  “Dad was in the study, at his desk. I clubbed him from behind, twice on the head, then used the claw end of the hammer. It went through his skull and hooked so deep I couldn’t pull it loose.”

  Now Billy slipped the T-shirt over his head and down his arms, and he dropped it on the floor.

  His eyes remained closed, head tipped back. His hands languidly explored his bare abdomen, chest, shoulders, and arms. He seemed enravished by the texture of his skin, by the contours of his body.

  “Grandma was upstairs in her room, watching TV. Her dentures flew out when I punched her in the face. That made me laugh. I waited till she regained consciousness before I strangled her with a scarf.”

  He lowered his head, opened his eyes, and held his pale hands before his face to study them, as if reading the past, rather than the future, in the lines of his palms.

  “I went to the kitchen then. I was thirsty. I drank a beer and took the knife out of my mother.”

  John Calvino sat on the arm of a chair.

  He knew everything the boy told him, except the order of the killings, which Billy had not revealed to the case detectives. The medical examiner had provided a best-guess scenario based on crime-scene evidence, but John needed to know for sure how it had happened.

  Still studying his hands, Billy Lucas said, “My sister, Celine, was in her room, listening to bad music. I did her before I killed her. Did you know I did her?”

  “Yes.”

  Crossing his arms, slowly caressing his biceps, the boy met John’s eyes again.

  “Then I stabbed her precisely nine times, though I think the fourth one killed her. I just didn’t want to stop that soon.”

  Thunder rolled, torrents of rain beat upon the roof, and faint concussion waves seemed to flutter the air. John felt them shiver through the microscopic cochlear hairs deep in his ears, and he wondered if perhaps they had nothing to do with the storm.

  He saw challenge and mockery in the boy’s intense blue eyes. “Why did you say ‘precisely’?”

  “Because, Johnny, I didn’t stab her eight times, and I didn’t stab her ten. Precisely nine.”

  Billy moved so close to the glass partition that his nose almost touched it. His eyes were pools of threat and hatred, but they seemed
at the same time to be desolate wells in the lonely depths of which something had drowned.

  The detective and the boy regarded each other for a long time before John said, “Didn’t you ever love them?”

  “How could I love them when I hardly knew them?”

  “But you’ve known them all your life.”

  “I know you better than I knew them.”

  A dull but persistent disquiet had compelled John to come to the state hospital. This encounter had sharpened it.

  He rose from the arm of the chair.

  “You’re not going already?” Billy asked.

  “Do you have something more to tell me?”

  The boy chewed his lower lip.

  John waited until waiting seemed pointless, and then he started toward the door.

  “Wait. Please,” the boy said, his quivering voice different from what it had been before.

  Turning, John saw a face transformed by anguish and eyes bright with desperation.

  “Help me,” the boy said. “Only you can.”

  Returning to the glass partition, John said, “Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t do anything for you now. No one can.”

  “But you know. You know.”

  “What do you think I know?”

  For a moment more, Billy Lucas appeared to be a frightened child, unsettled and uncertain. But then triumph glittered in his eyes.

  His right hand slid down his flat abdomen and under the elastic waist of his gray cotton pants. He jerked down the pants with his left hand, and with his right directed his urine at the lower grille in the glass panel.

  As the stinking stream spattered through the steel grid, John danced backward, out of range. Never had urine smelled so rank or looked so dark, as yellow-brown as the juice of spoiled fruit.

  Aware that his target had safely retreated, Billy Lucas aimed higher, hosing the glass left to right, right to left. Seen through the foul and rippling flux, the boy’s facial features melted, and he seemed about to dematerialize, as if he had been only an apparition.

  John Calvino pressed the button on the intercom panel beside the door and said to Coleman Hanes, “I’m finished here.”

  To escape the sulfurous odor of the urine, he didn’t wait for the orderly but instead stepped into the hallway.