The Face of Fear by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

rang.
    Startled, she rolled away from Graham.
    The phone was strident. Like the cry of a halidon, it echoed eerily in the room.
    She snatched up the receiver to stop the ringing before it woke him. “Hello?” she said softly.
    “Mr. Harris, please.”
    “Who’s calling?”
    “Ira Preduski.”
    “I’m sorry, but I—”
    “Detective Preduski.”
    “It’s four in the morning,” she said.
    “I apologize. Really. I’m sorry. Sincerely. If I’ve wakened you ... terrible of me. But, you see, he wanted me to call him immediately if we had any—major developments in the Butcher case.”
    “Just a minute.” She looked at Graham.
    He was awake, watching her.
    She said, “Preduski.”
    He took the receiver. “Harris speaking.”
    A minute later, when he was finished, she hung up for him. “They found number ten?”
    “Yeah.”
    “What’s her name?” Connie asked.
    “Edna. Edna Mowry.”

6
    The bedclothes were sodden with blood. The carpet at the right of the bed was marred by a dark stain like a Rorschach blot. Dried blood spotted the wall behind the brass headboard.
    Three police lab technicians were working in the room under the direction of the coroner. Two of them were on their hands and knees beside the bed. One man was dusting the nightstand for fingerprints, although he must have known that he would not find any. This was the work of the Butcher, and the Butcher always wore gloves. The coroner was plotting the trajectory of the blood on the wall in order to establish whether the killer was left-handed or right-handed.
    “Where’s the body?” Graham asked.
    “I’m sorry, but they took it to the morgue ten minutes ago,” Detective Preduski said, as if he felt responsible for some inexcusable breach of manners. Graham wondered if Preduski’s entire life was an apologia. The detective was quick to take the blame for everything—and to find fault with himself even when he behaved impeccably. He was a nondescript man with a pale complexion and watery brown eyes. In spite of his appearance and his apparent inferiority complex, he was a highly respected member of the Manhattan homicide detail. More than one of the detective’s associates had made it clear to Graham that he was working with the best, that Ira Preduski was the top man in the department. “I held the ambulance as long as I could. You took so much time to get here. Of course I woke you in the dead of night. I shouldn’t have done that. And then you probably had to call a cab and wait around for it. I’m so sorry. Now I’ve probably ruined everything for you. I should have tried to keep the body here just a bit longer. I knew you’d want to see it where it was found.”
    “That doesn’t matter,” Graham said. “In a sense, I’ve already had a firsthand look at her.”
    “Of course you have,” Preduski said. “I saw you on the Prine show earlier.”
    “Her eyes were green, weren’t they?”
    “Just as you said.”
    “She was found nude?”
    “Yes.”
    “Stabbed many times?”
    “Yes.”
    “With a particularly brutal wound in the throat?”
    “That’s right.”
    “He mutilated her, didn’t he?”
    “Yes.”
    “How?”
    “Awful thing,” Preduski said. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you. Nobody should have to hear it.” Preduski seemed about to wring his hands. “He cut a plug of flesh out of her stomach. It’s almost like a cork, with her navel in the center of it. Terrible.”
    Graham closed his eyes and shuddered. “This ... cork...” He was beginning to perspire. He felt ill. He wasn’t receiving a vision, just a strong sense of what had happened, a hunch that was difficult to ignore. “He put this cork... in her right hand and closed her fingers around it. That’s where you found it.”
    “Yes.”
    The coroner turned away from the blood-spattered wall and stared curiously at Graham.
    Don’t look at me that way, Graham thought. I don’t want to know these things.
    He would have been delighted if his