Chase: Roman by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Out of Print
ISBN: 9783453108158
Publisher: HEYNE
Published: 1996-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

After high school Chase had gone to State because it was just over forty miles from home and, therefore, offered several advantages not to be had at more distant universities. For one thing, his mother was pleased that he could come home more often than at Christmas and spring holidays, though that was only a minor sales point to Chase. He was sold on State because it meant he could still use his father's completely equipped garage for an engine tune-up for his Dodge every month. He had inherited his love of automobiles from his father and would have experienced a deal of anxiety at being long away from proper mechanic facilities. (In the war, when all machines came to mean something totally different to Chase, he lose his enthusiasm for such tinkering.) Also, being so close to home, he could continue to maintain contact with the girls he had dated who were a year or two years behind him in high school. If he should find the girls at State too sophisticated to pay him much mind, he knew there were several still-willing young ladies at home, easily accessible, every weekend if he needed them that often. (In the war, Chase had been bleached of his male chauvinism, though that had been replaced with something far worse - with a complete lack of interest, a boredom so profound that even he was disturbed by it.)

Now, as he parked before the administration building, he felt like a stranger to the place, as if he had not spent nearly four years of his life in and about these buildings, on these flagstone paths and under the rich canopies of willows and elms. That part of his life had been divorced from this moment by the war, and to recapture the essence of those memories and moods would entail crossing again through the stream of the war to the shores of the past, an act he could not indulge in simply for the sake of sentimentality. He was a stranger to this place, then, and would remain so.

He found the Student Records Office where it had been for fifty-odd years, and he recognized most of the people who worked there, though he had never known any of their names. This time, when he was approached by the office manager, he decided that the simple truth was the best key to a proper response. He gave his name and sketchily explained his purpose.

‘I should have recognized you, but I didn't,’ the manager said. He was a small, pale, nervous man who wore a neatly clipped moustache and an old-fashioned, floppy-collared white dress shirt. He kept picking things up and putting them down to no end. His name was Brown, and he said he was pleased to meet such a distinguished alumnus. ‘But there have been dozens of requests for your files in recent months, ever since the medal was announced. You must have been contacted for a number of excellent jobs.’

Chase ignored the indirect question.

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