Good Guy by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

with which the kitchen and garage had been combined, the space was cozy.
    He liked the entire bungalow, the clean simplicity of it. Anyone could live here, and you wouldn’t know who he really was.
    Sooner or later, it would come on the market. Acquiring the property of a person he had murdered would be too risky, but the thought pleased him.
    Krait washed his cup, his plate, his fork, the coffeepot, and the FDR mug that had been used by either Linda or her guest. He dried them and put them away. He rinsed the stainless-steel sink, then wiped it dry with paper towels.
    Just before he left, he went to the Ford, opened the driver’s door, stepped back just far enough to avoid being splashed, unzipped his pants and urinated in the vehicle. This didn’t please him, but it was necessary.

Eight
    P ete Santo lived in a modest stucco house with a shy dog named Zoey and a dead fish named Lucille.
    Handsomely stuffed and mounted, Lucille, a marlin, hung above the desk in the study.
    Pete wasn’t a fisherman. The marlin had come with the house when he bought it.
    He had named it after his ex-wife, who had divorced him when, after two years of marriage, she realized that she couldn’t change him. She wanted him to leave the police department, to become a real-estate agent, to dress with more style, and to have his scar fixed.
    The marriage collapsed when she bought him a pair of tasseled loafers. He wouldn’t wear them. She wouldn’t return them to the store. He wouldn’t allow them in his closet. She tried to put one of them down the garbage disposal. The Roto-Rooter bill was huge.
    Now, as sharp-toothed Lucille peered down at him with one glaring gimlet eye, Pete Santo stood at his desk, watching as the Department of Motor Vehicles home page appeared on the computer screen. “If you can’t tell
me
what it’s about, who could you tell?”
    Tim said, “Nobody. Not yet. Maybe in a day, two days, when things…clarify.”
    “What things?”
    “The unclarified things.”
    “Oh. That’s clear now. When the unclarified things clarify, then you can tell me.”
    “Maybe. Look, I know this might get your ass in a sling.”
    “That doesn’t matter.”
    “Of course it matters,” Tim said.
    “Don’t insult me. It doesn’t matter.” Pete sat at the computer. “If they bust me out of the department, I’ll be a real-estate agent.”
    He entered his name, badge number, and access code, whereupon the Department of Motor Vehicles records surrendered to him as a nubile maiden to a lover.
    Bashful Zoey, a black Lab, watched from behind an armchair, while Linda dropped to one knee and, with cooing sounds and declarations of adoration, tried to coax the dog into the open.
    Pete typed the license number that Tim had given him, and the DMV database revealed that the plates had been issued for a white Chevrolet registered not to any law-enforcement agency but to one Richard Lee Kravet.
    “You know him?” Pete asked.
    Tim shook his head. “Never heard of him. I thought the car would turn out to be a plainwrap department sedan.”
    Surprised, Pete said, “This guy you want to know about—he’s a cop? I’m scoping out a cop for you?”
    “If he’s a cop, he’s a bad cop.”
    “Look at me here, what I’m doing for you, using police power for a private inquiry.
I’m
a bad cop.”
    “This guy, if he’s a cop, he’s seriously bad. At worst, Petey, by comparison, you’re a naughty cop.”
    “Richard Lee Kravet. Don’t know him. If he has a shield, I don’t think it’s one of ours.”
    Pete worked for the Newport Beach Police Department, but he lived in an unincorporated part of the county, nearer to Irvine than to Newport Beach, because even pre-divorce, he couldn’t afford a house in the city that he served.
    “Can you get me this guy’s driver’s license?” Tim asked.
    “Yeah, why not, but when I’m a real-estate agent, I’m going to wear whatever shoes I want.”
    On her belly, Zoey had crawled halfway around