The Darkest Evening of the Year. Dean Koontz

said, “You smell like tequila.”

      “I think I’ve still got a slice of lime in my shoe.”

      “Climbing the table to jump him—that was reckless.”

      “Just trying to impress my date.”

      “It worked.”

      “I’d sure like to kiss you now,” he said.

      “As long as we don’t generate enough heat to bring the global-warming police down on us, go ahead.”

      He looked at the Expedition. “Everybody’s watching.”

      “After Carl, maybe they need to see people kissing.”

      He kissed her. She was good at it.

      “Even the dog’s watching,” he said.

      “She’s wondering—if I paid two thousand for her, how much did I pay for you.”

      “You can put a collar on me anytime.”

      “Let’s leave it at kisses for now.” She kissed him again before returning to the Expedition.

      After watching her drive away, he went upstairs. His apartment was spacious, with Santos-mahogany floors and butter-yellow walls.

      The minimalist contemporary furnishings and serene Japanese art suggested less a bachelor pad than a monk’s quarters. He had gutted, rebuilt, and furnished these rooms before he met Amy. He didn’t want to be either a bachelor or a monk anymore.

      After stripping out of his tequila-marinated clothes, he took a shower. Maybe the hot water would make him sleepy.

      Still feeling as alert and wide-eyed as an owl, he dressed in jeans and a Hawaiian shirt. At 2:56 a.m., he was awake for the day.

      With a mug of fresh-brewed coffee, he settled at the computer in his study. He needed to get work done before sleep deprivation melted the edge off his concentration.

      Two e-mails awaited him. The sender was pigkeeper.

      Vanessa. She hadn’t contacted him in over five months. He had begun to think he would never hear from her again.

      For a while, he stared at the screen, reluctant to let her into his life once more. If he never again read her messages, if he never answered them, he might be rid of her in time.

      Hope would be gone with her, however. Hope would be lost. The price of freezing Vanessa out of his life was too great.

      He opened the first e-mail.

      Piggy wants a puppy. How stupid is that? How can a piggy take care of a puppy when the puppy’s smarter? I’ve known houseplants smarter than Piggy.

      Brian closed his eyes. Too late. He had opened himself to her, and now she was alive again in the lighted rooms of his mind, not just in the dark corners of memory.

      How are you doing, Bry? Do you have cancer yet? You’re only thirty-four next week, but people die young of cancer all the time. It’s not too much to hope for.

      After printing a hard copy of her message, he filed the e-mail electronically under Vanessa.

      To avoid slopping coffee out of the mug, he held it with both hands. The brew tasted fine, but coffee was no longer all that he needed.

      From the sideboard in the dining room, he fetched a bottle of cognac. In the study once more, he added a generous portion of Rémy Martin to the mug.

      He was not much of a drinker. He kept the Rémy for visitors. The visitor tonight was unwelcome, and here in spirit only.

      For a while he wandered through the apartment, drinking coffee, waiting for the cognac to take the edge off his nerves.

      Amy was right: Carl Brockman was a pussy. The drunkard reeked of tequila, but even at a distance, Vanessa smelled of brimstone.

      When Brian felt ready, he returned to the computer and opened the second e-mail.

      Hey, Bry. Forgot to tell you a funny thing.

      Without reading further, he pressed the print key and then filed the e-mail under Vanessa.

      Silence pooled in the apartment, and not a sound ascended from the office below or from the dark depths of the street.

      He closed his eyes. But only genuine blindness would excuse him from the obligation to read the hard copy.

      Back in July, the pigster built sandcastles all day on the little beach we have in this new place, then wound up with a killer sunburn, looked like a baked ham. Old Piggy couldn’t sleep for days, cried half the night, started peeling and then itched herself raw. You might expect the smell of fried bacon, but there wasn’t.

      He was a swimmer on the surface of the past, an abyss of memory under him.

      Piggy is pink and smooth again, but there’s a mole on her neck that seems to be changing. Maybe the sunburn made some melanoma. I will keep you informed.

      He put this second printout with the first. Later he would read both again, searching for clues in addition to “the little beach.”

      In the kitchen, Brian poured the contents of the mug down the drain. He no longer needed coffee and no longer wanted cognac.

      Guilt is a tireless horse. Grief ages into sorrow, and sorrow is an enduring rider.

      He opened the refrigerator, but then closed it. He could no more eat than sleep.

      Returning to the study and working on one of his current custom-home projects had no appeal. Architecture might be frozen music, as Goethe once said, but right now he was deaf to it.

      From a kitchen drawer, he extracted a large tablet of art paper and a set of drawing pencils. He had stashed these things in every room of the apartment.

      He sat at the dinette table and began to sketch a concept for the building that Amy hoped he would design for her: a place for dogs, a haven where no hand would ever be raised against them, where every affection wanted would be given.

      She owned a piece of land on which hilltop oaks spread against the sky, long shadows lengthening down sloped meadows in the early morning, retracting toward the crest as the day ripened toward noon. She had a vision for it that inspired him.

      Nevertheless, after a while, Brian found himself turning from sketch to portrait, from a haven for dogs to the animal itself. He had a gift for portraiture, but never before had he drawn a dog.

      As his pencils whispered across the paper, an uncanny feeling overcame him, and a strange thing happened.

Chapter 4

      After dropping Brian at his place, Amy Redwing called Lottie Augustine, her neighbor, and explained that she was bringing in three rescues who were not dogs and who needed shelter.

      Lottie served in the volunteer army that did the work of Golden Heart, the organization Amy founded. A few times in the past, she’d risen after midnight to help in an emergency, always with good cheer.

      Having been a widow for a decade and a half, having retired from a nursing career, Lottie found as much meaning in tending to the dogs as she had found in being a good wife and a caring nurse.

      The drive from Brian’s place to Lottie’s house was stressed by silence: little Theresa asleep in the backseat, her brother slumped and brooding beside her, Janet in the passenger seat but looking lost and studying the deserted streets as if these were not just unknown neighborhoods but were the precincts of a foreign country.

      In the company of other people, Amy had little tolerance for quiet. Enduring mutual silences, she sometimes felt as though the other person might ask a terrible question, the answer to which, if she spoke it, would shatter her as surely