Frankenstein: The Complete 5-Book Collection. Dean Koontz

      The second ring could have been left by Father Duchaine’s glass. He might have moved it to where it stood now, leaving the ring. He hoped that Victor would consider that possibility.

      As Victor continued around the study, he said, “I’m curious. You’ve had some years of experience with your parishioners. Do you think they lie to their god?”

      Feeling as though he were walking a tightrope, the priest said, “No. No, they mean to keep the promises they make to Him. But they’re weak.”

      “Because they’re human. Human beings are weak, those of the Old Race. Which is one reason why my people will eventually destroy them, replace them.”

      Although Harker had slipped out of the study, he must have taken refuge somewhere.

      In the living room once more, when Victor didn’t return to the front hall but went instead toward the adjoining dining room, Father Duchaine followed nervously.

      The dining room proved to be deserted.

      Victor pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen, and Father Duchaine followed like a dog afraid that its hard master would find a cause for punishment.

      Harker had gone. In the kitchen, the door to the back porch stood open. The draft entering from the storm-dark twilight smelled faintly of the rain to come.

      “You shouldn’t leave your doors open,” Victor warned. “So many of God’s people have a criminal bent. They would burglarize even a priest’s home.”

      “Just before you rang the bell,” Father Duchaine said, amazed to hear himself lying so boldly, “I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air.”

      “Fresh air is of no special value to those of you I’ve made. You’re designed to thrive without exercise, on any diet, in fresh air and in foul.” He rapped his knuckles on Father Duchaine’s chest. “You are an exquisitely efficient organic machine.”

      “I’m grateful, sir, for all that I am.”

      From the kitchen to the hall, from the hall to the foyer, Victor said, “Patrick, do you understand why it’s important that my people infiltrate organized religion as well as every other aspect of human society?”

      The answer came to the priest not from thoughtful consideration but from programming: “Many years from now, when the time comes to liquidate those of the Old Race who remain, there must be nowhere they can turn for support or sanctuary.”

      “Not to the government,” Victor agreed, “because we will be the government. Not to the police or the military … or to the church.”

      Again as if by rote, Father Duchaine said, “We must avoid a destructive civil war.”

      “Exactly. Instead of civil war … a very civil extermination.” He opened the front door. “Patrick, if you ever felt in any way … incomplete … you would come to me, I assume.”

      Warily, the priest said, “Incomplete? What do you mean?”

      “Adrift. Confused about the meaning of your existence. Without purpose.”

      “Oh, no, sir. I know my purpose, and I’m dedicated to it.”

      Victor met Father Duchaine’s eyes for a long moment before he said, “Good. That’s good. Because there’s a special risk for those of you who serve in the clergy Religion can be seductive.”

      “Seductive? I don’t see how. It’s such nonsense. Irrational.”

      “All of that and worse,” Victor agreed. “And if there were an afterlife and a god, he would hate you for what you are. He would snuff you out and cast you into Hell.” He stepped onto the porch. “Good night, Patrick.”

      “Good night, sir.”

      After Father Duchaine closed the door, he stood in the foyer until his legs became so weak that he had to sit.

      He went to the stairs, sat on a riser. He clutched one hand with the other to quell the tremors in them.

      Gradually his hands changed position until he found them clasped in prayer.

      He realized that he had not locked the door. Before his maker could open it and catch him in this betrayal, he made fists of his hands and beat them against his thighs.

       CHAPTER 90

      STANDING AT THE folding table that served as Harker’s desk in the go-nuts room, Deucalion sorted through the stacks of books.

      “Anatomy. Cellular biology. Molecular biology. Morphology. This one’s psychotherapy. But all the rest … human biology.”

      “And why did he build this?” Carson asked, indicating the light box on the north wall, where X-rays of skulls, spines, rib cages, and limbs were displayed.

      Deucalion said, “He feels that something’s missing in him. He’s long been trying to understand what it is.”

      “So he studies pictures in anatomy books, and compares other people’s X-rays to his own …”

      “When he learned nothing from that,” Michael said, “he started opening real people and looking inside them.”

      “Except for Allwine, Harker chose people who seemed whole to him, who seemed to have what he lacked.”

      Michael said, “In the statement Jenna gave, she says Harker told her he wanted to see what she had inside that made her happier than he was.”

      “You mean, leaving out Pribeaux’s victims, Harker’s weren’t just selected at random?” Carson asked. “They were people he knew?”

      “People he knew,” Deucalion confirmed. “People he felt were happy, complete, self-assured.”

      “The bartender. The dry cleaner,” Michael said.

      “Harker most likely had drinks from time to time in that bar,” Deucalion said. “You’ll probably find the dry cleaner’s name in his checkbook. He knew those men, just like he knew Jenna Parker.”

      “And Alice’s looking glass?” Michael asked, pointing to the three-way mirror in the corner of the attic.

      “He stood there in the nude,” Deucalion said. “Studying his body for some … difference, deficiency … something that would reveal why he feels incomplete. But that would have been before he started to look … inside.”

      Carson returned to the books on the table, opening them one by one to pages that Harker had marked with Post-its, hoping to learn more from what, specifically, had interested him.

      “What will he do now?” Michael asked.

      “What he’s been doing,” Deucalion said.

      “But he’s on the run, in hiding. He doesn’t have time to plan one of his … dissections.”

      As Carson picked up the book on psychotherapy, Deucalion said, “He’s more desperate than ever. And when the desperation increases, so does the obsession.”

      One of the bookmarks was not a Post-it. Carson discovered an appointment card for Harker’s third session with Kathleen Burke, the appointment that he didn’t keep.

      She turned and looked at the mural of stapled images.

      Where they had peeled at the collage, the fourth layer had been revealed below the demons and devils. Freud, Jung. Psychiatrists …

      In memory, Carson heard Kathy as they had stood talking with her the previous night in front of this very building: But Harker and I seemed to have such … rapport.

      Reading her as he always could, Michael said, “Something?”

      “It’s