The Good Guy by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Horror, Fiction
ISBN: 9780553589115
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 2003-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Nine

After speaking with Tim on the phone at half past midnight, to inform him about the call from Hitch Lombard, Pete Santo took a two-hour nap before continuing his on-line search for a clue to the hit man’s true identity.

Shy Zoey refused to jump on the bed and sleep at his feet. She curled up on her dog bed in the corner.

Her refusal to join him was a reliable predictor that he would have some heavy-duty dreams. Perhaps the capacity to enter a dream state might be preceded by a subtle change in body chemistry that a dog, with a sense of smell thousands of times more powerful than that of a human being, could detect. Or maybe she was psychic.

Half reclining against a pile of feather pillows, Pete said, “Come on. Come up.”

She raised her head. Her soulful brown eyes regarded him with what might have been disbelief. Or pity.

“No nightmares. I promise. Has your dad ever lied to you? I’m just taking a nap here.”

Zoey lowered her head, resting her chin between her fore-legs, and her pendulous upper lips—flews, they were called—bloomed over her paws, and she closed her eyes.

“My feet smell especially fine tonight,” he said. “You’d enjoy sleeping with your snout near my feet.”

She raised one eyebrow without opening her eyes. She licked her chops. She lowered the eyebrow. She yawned. She sighed. Invitation declined.

Familiar with rejection, Pete matched her sigh and then switched off the lamp.

He went instantly to sleep. He always did. Falling asleep was never a problem. Staying asleep was a bitch.

Of course, he dreamed. Dogs know.

Birds died in flight and fell, and the severed heads of babies sang a sweet and melancholy tune, while the woman pulled out her hair by the roots and made an offering of it because she had nothing else to give.

He woke at 2:48, gasping for light, and turned on the nightstand lamp.

From her bed, Zoey watched him with a sad expression.

He took a quick shower, dressed, and made a pot of coffee almost corrosive enough to test the brewer to destruction.

By 3:22, he had settled at his desk in the study, surfing the Web, drinking the ink-black blend, and eating his mother’s walnut brownies.

His mom was a bad cook. She was a worse baker. The brownies tasted all right, but they were hard enough to break teeth.

He ate them anyway. Proud of her imagined kitchen wizardry, she had given him a large plate heaped with the brownies. He couldn’t throw them away. She was his mother.

The danger of dreams having passed, Zoey squirmed into the knee space under the desk and slept on his feet. She didn’t beg for any of the brownies. A wise dog.

The call from Hitch Lombard had clearly been triggered by Pete’s attempt to match Kravet’s many aliases to the names of officers in various local, state, and national law-enforcement databases. This time he would stay away from such authorized-access-only resources, where evidently those names triggered embedded security alerts that tagged the inquirer as a potential troublemaker.

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