Nameless - Season Two 03 - Kaleidoscope by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz [Koontz, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 57996591
Publisher: Amazon Original Stories
Published: 2021-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

8

A hundred and ten miles from Wichita, on a plain as flat as a table, the big white house with forest-green shutters, encircled on three sides by a generous veranda, doesn’t look like a place where violence is likely to occur. The architecture is of a higher quality than most farmhouses, and the place is impeccably maintained.

When Nameless, prepared for whatever, arrives in a rented Ford Explorer at ten o’clock in the morning, two vehicles are parked in the circular driveway: a white Cadillac Escalade and a Lexus sedan. This is a prosperous operation, but it has the air of a gentleman’s farm that wouldn’t need to turn a profit to satisfy its owner.

The criminals targeted on this mission are not murderers, as they have always been in other cases. They are merely amoral, greedy sleazeballs. Their victims aren’t people; their crimes are against Nature and her most innocent children. They will be forced to face the truth of their pitiless, cruel actions, but the consequence will be public outrage, shaming, economic ruin, and perhaps a little jail time—instead of death.

For a family farm—rather than a corporate one—the property is large, over nine hundred acres of prairie with an artesian well that provides a wealth of free water. Sunflowers are the primary crop; they’re grown not for their colorful blooms but for their seeds, under contract with a thriving company that owns four hundred grocery stores emphasizing organically grown “natural” foods. At the moment, the fields are plowed under and lie barren until spring.

Several acres at the remote end of the farm are set aside for another business that returns an annual million-dollar profit.

Lucius Benthon, client of Carter Halley-Foster, answers the doorbell. He’s thirty-eight, tall, handsome, with a smile that less discerning people no doubt find charming and that any crocodile would admire. Benthon is dressed as a country squire: beige corduroy pants tucked into tooled-leather boots, a pale-yellow cable-stitch sweater, and a camel-hair sport coat.

Nameless finds it hard to believe that this guy has ever driven a tractor or operated a harvester. Three years earlier, he inherited the farm from a childless uncle; and he might have sold it if not for the cash flow from the business that is discreetly tucked away behind the sunflower fields.

“You must be Mr. Thornton,” he says, as though he hasn’t already received photos taken by hidden cameras in his attorney’s office.

“Yes, sir. Sean Thornton.” Nameless shakes hands and says, “Please call me Sean.”

He is welcomed into the house, where he is introduced to Angus Burr, who manages the operation at the end of the farm most distant from the house. Burr is an avuncular man with white hair and blue eyes and a warm smile, perfect casting for a TV show about a caring country veterinarian.

Indicating the three-piece Dior Homme suit that Nameless wears, Lucius Benthon says, “You’re not geared up for the Kansas plains in winter, Sean.”

Nameless feigns embarrassment. “Stupid of me, I know. I was in Miami on other family business—”

“The Ching family.

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