Read Online Shadowfires by Dean Koontz - Free Book Online Page B

standards. Staid in some ways. Hell, half the guys in California real estate wear white cords and pastel blazers when they go to work on a summer day like this, but I don't
feel comfortable in less than a three-piece suit and wing tips. I may
be the last guy in a real-estate office who even knows what a goddamn
vest is. So when someone like me sees the woman he cares about
in trouble, he has to help,
it's the only thing he can do, the plain old-fashioned thing, the right thing, and if she won't
let him help, then
that's pretty much a slap in the face, an affront to all his values, a rejection of what he is, and no matter how much he likes her, he's
got to walk, it's as simple as that.”
    She said, “I never heard you make a speech before.”
    “I never had to before.”
    Both touched and frustrated by his ultimatum, Rachael closed her
eyes and leaned back in the seat, unable to decide what to do. She
kept her hands on the steering wheel, gripping it tightly, for if she
let go, Benny would be sure to see how badly her hands were
shaking.
    He said, “Who are you afraid of, Rachael?”
    She didn't answer.
    He said, “You know what happened to his body, don't you?”
    “Maybe.”
    “You know who took it.”
    “Maybe.”
    “And you're afraid of them. Who are they, Rachael? For God's sake,
who would do something like that-and why?”
    She opened her eyes, put the car in gear, and pulled away from the
curb. “Okay, you can come along with me.”
    “To Eric's house, the office? What're we looking for?”
    “That,” she said, “I'm not prepared to tell you.”
    He was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Okay. All right. One
step at a time. I can live with that.”
    She drove north on Main Street to Katella Avenue, east on Katella
to the expensive community of Villa Park, into the hills toward her
dead
husband's estate. In the upper reaches of Villa Park, the big houses, many priced well over a million dollars, were less than half visible beyond screens of shrubbery and the gathered cloaks of night. Eric's
house, looming beyond a row of enormous Indian laurels, seemed darker
than any other, a cold place even on a June night, the many windows
like sheets of some strange obsidian that would not permit the
passage of light in either direction.

----
6 THE
TRUNK
    The long driveway, made of rust-red Mexican
paving tiles, curved past Eric Leben's enormous Spanish-modern house before finally turning out of sight to the garages in back. Rachael parked in front.
    Although Ben Shadway delighted in authentic Spanish buildings with
their multiplicity of arches and angles and deep-set leaded windows,
he was no fan of Spanish modern. The stark lines, smooth
surfaces, big plate-glass windows, and total lack of ornamentation
might seem stylish and satisfyingly clean to some, but he found such
architecture boring, without character, and perilously close to the
cheap-looking stucco boxes of so many southern California
neighborhoods.
    Nevertheless, as he got out of the car and followed Rachael down a
dark Mexican-tile walkway, across an unlighted veranda where yellow-
flowering succulents and bloom-laden white azaleas glowed palely in
enormous clay pots, to the front door of the house, Ben was impressed
by the place. It was massive-certainly ten thousand square feet of
living space-set on expansive, elaborately landscaped grounds. From
the property, there was a view of most of Orange County to the west,
a vast carpet of light stretching fifteen miles to the pitch-black
ocean; in daylight, in clear weather, one could probably see all the
way to Catalina. In spite of the spareness of the architecture, the
Leben house reeked of wealth. To Ben, the crickets singing in the
bushes even sounded different from those that chirruped in more
modest neighborhoods, less shrill and more melodious, as if their
minuscule brains encompassed awareness of-and respect for-their
surroundings.
    Ben had known that Eric Leben was a very rich