Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

pressure.

      In the pantry once more, she needed a minute to find the hidden switch. The shelves full of canned food slid into place, closing off the entrance to Victor’s studio.

      She returned to the painting by van Huysum in the drawing room. So beautiful.

      To better thrill Victor sexually, she had been permitted shame. From shame had come humility. Now it seemed that from humility had perhaps come pity, and more than pity: mercy.

      As she wondered about her potential, Erika’s hope was reborn. Her feathered thing, perched in her heart if not her soul, was a phoenix, rising yet again from ashes.

       CHAPTER 74

      FROM THE SWIVELING BEACONS on the roofs of police cruisers and ambulances, unsynchronized flares of red and white and blue light painted a patriotic phantasmagoria across the face of the apartment building.

      Some in pajamas and robes, others dressed and primped for the news cameras, the neighbors gathered on the sidewalk. They gossiped, laughed, drank beer from paper cups, drank beer from cans, ate cold pizza, ate potato chips from the bag, took snapshots of the police and of one another. They seemed to regard the eruption of sudden violence and the presence of a serial killer in their midst as reason for celebration.

      At the open trunk of the department sedan, as Carson stowed the shotgun, Michael said, “How can he jump up and run away after a four-story face plant?”

      “It’s more than gumption.”

      “And how are we gonna write up this report without landing in a psych ward?”

      Slamming the trunk lid, Carson said, “We lie.”

      A Subaru Outback angled to the curb behind them, and Kathleen Burke got out. “Can you believe – Harker?”

      “He always seemed like such a sweetheart,” Michael said.

      “The moment I saw that suicide note on Roy Pribeaux’s computer,” Carson informed Kathy, “I didn’t believe that he wrote it. Yesterday, ragging Michael and me, Harker used the same phrase that ends Pribeaux’s note – ‘one level below Hell.’”

      Michael confirmed: “Harker told us that to catch this guy, we were going to have to go to a weirder place – one level below Hell.”

      Surprised, Kathy said, “You mean you think he did it on purpose, he wanted you to tumble to him?”

      “Maybe unconsciously,” Carson said, “but yeah, he did. He threw the pretty boy off the roof after setting him up to take the rap for both Pribeaux’s string of murders and those that Harker himself committed. But with those four words – ‘one level below Hell’ – he lit a fuse to destroy himself.”

      “Deep inside, they pretty much always want to be caught,” Kathy agreed. “But I wouldn’t expect Harker’s psychology to …”

      “To what?”

      She shrugged. “To work that way. I don’t know. I’m babbling. Man, all the time I’m profiling him, the bastard’s on my doorstep.”

      “Don’t beat yourself up,” Carson advised. “None of us suspected Harker till he all but pointed the finger at himself.”

      “But maybe I should have,” Kathy worried. “Remember the three nightclub murders six months ago?”

      “Boogie City,” Carson recalled.

      “Sounds like a place people go to pick their noses,” Michael said.

      “Harker and Frye were on that case,” Kathy said.

      Michael shrugged. “Sure. Harker shot the perp. It was an iffy shoot, but he was cleared.”

      “After a fatal OIS,” Kathy said, “he had six hours of mandatory counseling. He showed up at my office for two of the hours but then never came back.”

      “No offense, Dr. Burke,” Michael said, “but lots of us think mandatory counseling sucks. Just because Harker bailed doesn’t mean you should’ve figured he had severed heads in his refrigerator.”

      “Yeah, but I knew something was eating him, and I didn’t push him hard enough to finish the sessions.”

      The previous night, Carson had passed on the opportunity to tell Kathy the Spooky Time Theater story about monsters in New Orleans. Now there was no way to explain that she hadn’t any reason to feel conscious-stricken, that Harker’s psychology was not even human.

      Trying to make as light of the situation as possible, Carson said to Michael, “Is she doomed to Hell, or what?”

      “She reeks of brimstone.”

      Kathy managed a rueful smile. “Maybe sometimes I take myself too seriously” Her smile faltered. “But Harker and I seemed to have such … rapport.”

      A paramedic interrupted. “’Scuse me, detectives, but we’ve given Ms. Parker first aid, and she’s ready for you now.”

      “She doesn’t need to go to the hospital?” Carson asked.

      “No. Minor injuries. And that’s not a girl who traumatizes easy. She’s Mary Poppins with attitude.”

       CHAPTER 75

      JENNA PARKER, blithe spirit, lived in a collection of plush teddy bears, inspirational posters – EVERY DAY IS THE FIRST DAY OF YOUR LIFE, JUST SAY NO TO THE BLUES – and cute cookie jars.

      The ceramic cookie jars were for the most part confined to the kitchen. There were a clown jar, a polar-bear jar, a brown-bear jar, a Mother Hubbard jar, a Mickey Mouse jar, a Wookie jar. Jars in the form of a puppy, a kitten, a raccoon, a rabbit, a gingerbread house.

      Carson’s favorite was a jar in the shape of a tall stack of cookies.

      Apparently Jenna Parker didn’t spend much time cooking, for the jar collection occupied half the counter space. Doors had been taken off some of the cabinets, so that the shelves could serve as display space for more cookie jars.

      “Don’t you dare say anything,” Carson muttered to Michael as they entered the kitchen and were confronted by the aggressively cheerful ceramic figures.

      Pretending wide-eyed innocence, he said, “About what?”

      Jenna sat on a stool, wearing a pink jogging suit with a small appliqué of a running turtle on the left breast. She was nibbling a cookie.

      For a woman who had such a short time ago been naked, strapped to an autopsy table, and about to be dissected alive, Jenna seemed remarkably cheerful. “Hi, guys. Want a cookie?”

      “No thanks,” Carson said, and Michael managed to decline, as well, without shtick.

      Holding up one bandaged thumb like a child proudly displaying a boo-boo, Jenna said, “I mostly just tore off my thumbnail when I fell. Isn’t that great?”

      “Imagine how good you’d feel,” Michael said, “if you’d broken a leg.”

      Well, he had repressed himself for the better part of a minute.

      Jenna said, “I mean, considering I could’ve been sitting here with my heart cut out, what’s a thumbnail?”

      “A thumbnail is zip, zero, nada,” said Michael.

      “It’s a feather on the scale,” she said.

      “Dust in the balance,” he agreed.

      “It’s a shadow of nothing.”

       “De nada.”