Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

not his purpose this evening.

      He has found a site on which he can study maps of the city of New Orleans. Because this site also offers a city directory of all property owners, he has been able to learn the address of Detective Carson O’Connor, with whom the selfish Arnie resides.

      The number of blocks separating Randal from their house is daunting. So much distance, so many people, untold obstacles, so much disorder.

      Furthermore, this web site offers three-dimensional maps of the French Quarter, the Garden District, and several other historic areas of the city. Every time he makes use of these more elaborate guides, he is quickly overcome by attacks of agoraphobia.

      If he responds with such terror to the virtual reality of the cartoonlike dimensional maps, he will be paralyzed by the vastness and chaos of the world itself if ever he steps beyond these walls.

      Yet he persists in studying the three-dimensional maps, for he is motivated by intense desire. His desire is to find happiness of the kind that he believes he has seen in the smile of Arnie O’Connor.

      In the virtual reality of New Orleans on his computer screen, one street leads to another. Every intersection offers choices. Every block is lined with businesses, residences. Each of them is a choice.

      In the real world, a maze of streets might lead him a hundred or a thousand miles. In that journey, he would be confronted with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of choices.

      The enormity of this challenge overwhelms him once more, and he retreats in a panic to a corner, his back to his room. He cannot move forward. Nothing confronts him except the junction of two walls.

      His only choices are to stay facing the corner or turn to the larger room. As long as he doesn’t turn, his fear subsides. Here he is safe. Here is order: the simple geometry of two walls meeting.

      In time he is somewhat calmed by this pinched vista, but to be fully calmed, he needs his crosswords. In an armchair, Randal Six sits with another collection of puzzles.

      He likes crosswords because there are not multiple right choices for each square; only one choice will result in the correct solution. All is predestined.

      Cross YULETIDE with CHRISTMAS, cross CHRISTMAS with MYRRH.… Eventually every square will be filled; all words will be complete and will intersect correctly. The predestined solution will have been achieved. Order. Stasis. Peace.

      As he fills the squares with letters, a startling thought occurs to Randal. Perhaps he and the selfish Arnie O’Connor are predestined to meet.

      If he, Randal Six, is predestined to come face to face with the other boy and to take the precious secret of happiness from him, what seems now like a long harrowing journey to the O’Connor house will prove to be as simple as crossing this small room.

      He cannot stop working the crossword, for he desperately needs the temporary peace that its completion will bring him. Nevertheless, as he reads the clues and inks the letters in the empty squares, he considers the possibility that finding happiness by relieving Arnie O’Connor of it might prove to be not a dream but a destiny.

       CHAPTER 27

      DRIVING AWAY FROM the medical examiner’s office, into a world transformed by what they had just learned, Carson said, “Two hearts? Strange new organs? Designer freaks?”

      “I’m wondering,” Michael said, “if I missed a class at the police academy.”

      “Did Jack smell sober to you?”

      “Unfortunately, yeah. Maybe he’s nuts.”

      “He’s not nuts.”

      “People who were perfectly sane on Tuesday sometimes go nuts on Wednesday.”

      “What people?” she asked.

      “I don’t know. Stalin.”

      “Stalin was not perfectly sane on Tuesday. Besides, he wasn’t insane, he was evil.”

      “Jack Rogers isn’t evil,” Michael said. “If he’s not drunk, insane, or evil, I guess we’re going to have to believe him.”

      “You think somehow Luke might be hoaxing old Jack?”

      “Luke ‘been-interested-in-viscera-since-I-was-a-kid’? First of all, it would be a way elaborate hoax. Second, Jack is smarter than Luke. Third, Luke – he’s got about as much sense of humor as a graveyard rat.”

      A disguise of clouds transformed the full moon into a crescent. The pale flush of streetlamps on glossy magnolia leaves produced an illusion of ice, of a northern climate in balmy New Orleans.

      “Nothing is what it seems,” Carson said.

      “Is that just an observation,” Michael asked, “or should I worry about being washed away by a flood of philosophy?”

      “My father wasn’t a corrupt cop.”

      “Whatever you say. You knew him best.”

      “He never stole confiscated drugs out of the evidence lockup.”

      “The past is past,” Michael advised.

      Braking to a stop at a red traffic light, she said, “A man’s reputation shouldn’t have to be destroyed forever by lies. There ought to be a hope of justice, redemption.”

      Michael chose respectful silence.

      “Dad and Mom weren’t shot to death by some drug dealer who felt Dad was poaching on his territory. That’s all bullshit.”

      She hadn’t spoken aloud of these things in a long time. To do so was painful.

      “Dad had discovered something that powerful people preferred to keep secret. He shared it with Mom, which is why she was shot, too. I know he was troubled about something he had seen. I just don’t know what it was.”

      “Carson, we looked at the evidence in his case a hundred times,” Michael reminded her, “and we agreed it’s too airtight to be real. No file of evidence is ever braided that tight unless it’s concocted. In my book, it’s proof of a frame. But that’s the problem, too.”

      He was right. The evidence had been crafted not only with the intent of convicting her father post-mortem, but to leave no clue as to the identity of those who had crafted it. She had long sought the one loose thread that would unravel it, but no such thread could be found.

      As the traffic light turned green, Carson said, “We’re not far from my place. I’m sure Vicky’s got everything under control, but I feel like I ought to check on Arnie, if that’s okay.”

      “Sure. I could use some of Vicky’s bad coffee.”

       CHAPTER 28

      IN THE MASTER BEDROOM of the Helios estate, all was not well.

      What Victor wanted from sex exceeded mere pleasure. Furthermore, he did not merely want to be satisfied but fully expected to be. His expectation was in fact a demand.

      According to Victor’s philosophy, the world had no dimension but the material. The only rational response to the forces of nature and of human civilization was to attempt to dominate them rather than be humbled by them.

      There were serfs and there were masters. He himself would never wear a slave’s collar.

      If there was no spiritual side to life, then there could be no such thing as love except in the minds of fools; for love is a state of spirit, not of flesh. In his view, tenderness had no place in a sexual relationship.

      At its best, sex was a