Hell's Gate by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

likely to be two Victor L. Salsburys in a city this size-both artists. Besides, you recognized me out there.”
        “There is a resemblance,” he said. “We found some pictures at the Salsbury residence. You match pretty well.”
        “Did the corpse?”
        “Somewhat. It was, you have to realize… decomposed.”
        “Why did you link the corpse to the name Salsbury?”
        “Your landlady-” He flushed. “ His landlady, a Mrs.-”
        “Pritchard,” Victor said, startling himself that he knew it.
        Clinton was startled too. “Yes. She reported that you had gone out for an evening and had been gone ten days. You were four days overdue on your rent. She was afraid something had happened. She reported you missing.”
        “Identification on the body?” Victor asked.
        “None. Except a note pinned to its shirt. It was inside a plastic window from a wallet and didn't get too wet.”
        “The note said-?”
        “'I'm creative, but they won't let me be. V.'”
        “Not even signed with a full name?”
        “No. But it fits. Victor Salsbury was a commercial artist trying to work creatively but unable to build a reputation.”
        “But I am Salsbury, and I left home for ten days with a batch of work which I sold in New York.”
        Detective Clinton leaned forward in his chair. “But the dental charts matched,” he said. “There had never been a record of Salsbury's fingerprints, but he had had regular dental care.”
        “Dr. Broderick,” Victor said.
        Clinton looked even more unsettled. “We checked Broderick's records with x-rays of the corpse. Perfect match, almost.”
        “Almost?”
        “Dental records never tell everything. His childhood dentist was someone other than Broderick. In compiling his records of Salsbury's teeth, Broderick could easily have overlooked something which showed up in more thorough crime-lab x-rays.”
        “I assure you I am Victor Salsbury.”
        Clinton shook his head, determined. “It would be extremely coincidental to find two people whose dental records matched that closely. They are almost as distinctive as fingerprints. The corpse was Salsbury.”
        Victor gathered courage, cleared his throat. “X-ray my teeth right now. Compare them with the others.”
        Clinton was reluctant, but there was little else he could do. This Salsbury looked like the Salsbury, had the same memories (although strangely second-hand), the same abilities. He had probably just finished twenty-foot stacks of forms and reports closing out the case, but the case would not die yet.
        They went to the labs where a gray-haired man named Maurie took the x-rays, compared them. This Victor Salsbury's dental charts were almost a duplicate of Dr. Broderick's files.
        Upstairs, Clinton shook Victor's hand, looking very depressed at the prospect of re-opening the investigation, and said, “Sorry to cause you all this trouble, Mr. Sals-bury. But the resemblance was amazing in so many ways. I wonder who in the hell he'll turn out to be?”
        Victor shook Clinton's hand and left the station. He could have told the detective who the corpse was, even though the man would never discover it on his own. The corpse, most definitely, was Victor Salsbury.
        
        For a while, he sat in the car, wondering if his secret masters, whoever had hypno-programmed him to kill Harold Jacobi, had also killed the real Victor Salsbury to solidify his cover. But that seemed illogical, for there was the fact of the suicide note and the overdose of barbituates Salsbury had taken before throwing himself in the river in his melodramatic method of ending it all. Somehow, Victor's masters had known that would happen, had known the real Salsbury's death would be unclear enough to allow for the imposition of an imposter.
        But how did they know? They must have known far in advance of the suicide, for they had fed the