Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

suspected that he was going to overcome another of Father’s key restrictions on the New Race. Jonathan believed that he would soon reproduce.

      Therefore, he needed to wrap up business with Pribeaux, pin all the killings to date on him, and prepare for what glory might be coming.

      He intended to conduct only a single additional dissection, markedly more elaborate than the previous ones. He would dispose of this final subject in such a way that when her body was found long after the fact, she also might be linked to Roy Pribeaux.

      As Pribeaux lay paralyzed and unconscious on the kitchen floor, Jonathan Harker produced a comb from his shirt pocket. He had bought it earlier in the day but had not used it himself.

      He drew it through the killer’s thick hair. Several loose strands had tangled in the plastic teeth.

      He put the comb and these hairs in an envelope that he brought for this purpose. Evidence.

      Pribeaux had regained consciousness. “Who … who are you?”

      “Do you want to die?” Jonathan asked.

      Tears swelled in Pribeaux’s eyes. “No. Please, no.”

      “You want to live even if you’ll be paralyzed for life?”

      “Yes. Yes, please. I have plenty of money I can receive the finest care and rehabilitation. Help me dispose of … of what’s in the freezers, everything incriminating, let me live, and I’ll make you rich.”

      The New Race was not motivated by money. Jonathan pretended otherwise. “I know the depth of your resources. Maybe we can strike a bargain, after all.”

      “Yes, we can, I know we can,” Pribeaux said weakly but eagerly.

      “But right now,” Jonathan said, “I want you to be quiet. I’ve got work to do, and I don’t want to have to listen to your whining. If you stay quiet, we’ll bargain later. If you speak once, just once, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”

      When Pribeaux tried to nod, he couldn’t.

      “All right,” said Jonathan. “We’re on the same page.”

      Pribeaux bled from his shattered wrist, but slowly and steadily rather than in arterial spurts.

      With a new eyedropper that he had purchased in the same drugstore where he’d bought the comb, Jonathan suctioned blood from the puddle on the floor. He transferred a few ccs at a time to a little glass bottle that he had also brought with him.

      Pribeaux’s eyes followed his every move. They were moist with self-pity, bright with curiosity, wide with terror.

      When he had filled the small bottle, Jonathan screwed a cap on it and stowed it in a jacket pocket. He wrapped the bloody eyedropper in a handkerchief and pocketed that, as well.

      Quickly he searched the kitchen drawers until he found a white plastic garbage bag and rubber bands.

      He slid the bag over Pribeaux’s damaged left arm and fixed it tightly above the elbow with two rubber bands. This would make it possible to move the man without leaving a blood trail.

      Effortlessly, Jonathan lifted Pribeaux and put him on the floor near the dinette set, out of the way.

      He cleaned the blood from the white ceramic tiles. Fortunately, Pribeaux had sealed the grout so effectively that the blood did not penetrate.

      When he was certain that not one drop or smear of blood remained and that no other evidence of violence could be found in the kitchen, he bagged the paper towels and other cleanup supplies in another garbage bag, knotted the neck of it, and secured it to his belt.

      At the desk in the living room, he switched on the computer. He chose a program from the menu and typed a few lines that with great thought he had earlier composed.

      Leaving the computer on, Jonathan went to the front door, opened it, and stepped onto the roomy landing at the head of the stairs that served Pribeaux’s loft. He stood listening for a moment.

      The businesses on the first floor had closed hours ago. Pribeaux didn’t seem to have friends or visitors. Deep stillness pooled in the building.

      In the apartment again, Jonathan lifted Pribeaux and carried him in his arms as though he were a child, out to the landing.

      In addition to stairs, the apartment was served by the freight elevator that was original to the building. With an elbow, Jonathan pressed the call button.

      Pribeaux’s eyes searched Jonathan’s face, desperately trying to read his intent.

      Aboard the elevator, still carrying the paralyzed man, Jonathan pressed the number 3 on the control panel.

      On the flat roof of the former warehouse were storage structures that required elevator service.

      When Pribeaux realized they were going to the roof, his pale face paled further, and the terror in his eyes grew frenetic. He knew now that there would be no bargain made to save his life.

      “You can still feel pain in your face, in your neck,” Jonathan warned him. “I will cause you the most horrific pain you can imagine, in the process of blinding you. Do you understand?”

      Pribeaux blinked rapidly, opened his mouth, but dared not speak a word even of submission.

      “Excruciating pain,” Jonathan promised. “But if you remain silent and cause me no problem, your death will be quick.”

      The elevator arrived at the top of the building.

      Only orange light of an early moon illuminated the roof, but Jonathan could see well. He carried the killer to the three-foot-high safety parapet.

      Pribeaux had begun to weep, but not so loud as to earn him the unendurable pain that he had been promised. He sounded like a small child, lost and full of misery.

      The cobblestone alleyway behind the warehouse lay forty feet below, deserted at this hour.

      Jonathan dropped Pribeaux off the roof. The killer screamed but not loud or long.

      In desperate physical condition before he had been dropped, Roy Pribeaux had no chance whatsoever of surviving the fall. The sound of him hitting the pavement was a lesson in the fragility of the human skeleton.

      Jonathan left the elevator at the roof and took the stairs to the ground floor. He walked to his car, which he had parked three blocks away.

      En route, he tossed the garbage bag full of bloody paper towels in a convenient Dumpster.

      In the car, he used a cell phone that just hours ago he had taken off a drug dealer whom he rousted near the Quarter. He called 911, disguised his voice, and pretended to be a junkie who, shooting up in an alley, saw a man jump from a warehouse roof.

      Call completed, he tossed the phone out of the car window.

      He was still wearing the latex gloves. He stripped them off as he drove.

       CHAPTER 56

      THE ELEVATOR IS like a three-dimensional crossword-puzzle box, descending to the basement of the Hands of Mercy.

      Randal Six had turned left in the second-floor hallway, entering the elevator on his fourth step; therefore, the letter that this box contains – and from which he must proceed when he reaches the lower level – is t.

      When the doors open, he says, “Toward,” and steps o-w-a-r-d into the corridor.

      A life of greater mobility is proving easier to achieve than he had expected. He is not yet ready to drive a car in the Indianapolis 500, and he may not even be ready for a slow walk in the world beyond these walls, but he’s making progress.

      Years ago, Father had conducted some of his most revolutionary