The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

slipping secretly into Broderick’s to stay the night. But with only Denny Plummer to avoid, he can rely on the dog’s keen sense of smell to locate the assistant manager and evade him.
    A third of the huge garage contains a fleet of Broderick’s delivery vans in various sizes. In another third, crates of new merchandise stacked on pallets wait to be opened. The final third is unused.
    In better economic times, the fleet of trucks numbered twice what it does now, the new merchandise was piled higher, and every inch of this space was needed. In those golden days, a night shift of stock boys replenished the store’s racks and shelves. In the current doldrums, no night shift is necessary. All restocking occurs during store hours. After closing time, one person remains in Broderick’s: the Phantom.
    Harley leads Crispin on a serpentine route among the trucks and crates, to the service stairs, which lead up to a distribution room from which new merchandise is wheeled on carts to far points of the department store. A freight elevator is also available, but for the boy, the stairs are safer.
    At this hour, the distribution room on the ground floor is deserted. With the shipping-and-receiving crew gone for the day, this space is dark except for a single light above the wide door that leads to the ground floor of the store.
    Among the many carts and unopened cartons are numerous places where a boy and his dog can hunker down and hide. They shelter here until 9:32, when every speaker in the public-address system echoes with the machine voice of the security package, sternly announcing,
“Perimeter control armed.”
    This means that the last employee, a guard, has left by the door through which Crispin earlier entered from the alleyway. He has set the alarm for the night. Every exterior door and window is wired, and if any is breached, the police will be summoned.
    In better days, Broderick’s maintained a four-man team of guards during the night. They were pink-slipped years previously. Without night watchmen, the store management for a while considered updating their security with motion detectors, but in the end that was another expense they could not justify in this new downsized America.
    Until the store reopens on Monday morning, Crispin and Harley can go anywhere in its four sales floors without triggering an alarm. When Broderick’s is closed, the only security cameras that continue to record are those covering doors and operable windows, so no one will know that they were here.
    In spite of high electricity costs, aisle lights are left on all night on the ground floor. The police stop by a few times each shift to peer through the display windows, to be certain that the alarm hasn’t been thwarted and that no bad guys are running amok inside.
    Crispin unsnaps the leash from Harley’s collar, and they leave the distribution room. They take the public elevator to the fourth floor.
    Up here are three departments—kitchenware, home furnishings, and bedding—plus Eleanor’s, which is a restaurant named after the wife of the store’s founder. Eleanor’s is more than a coffee shop, less than a fine-dining establishment. Open six days a week, it is popular with the ladies’-luncheon crowd and with those who enjoy tea and pastries in the late afternoon. Dinner is not served—at least not with the knowledge of management.
    The restaurant is to the left of the public elevators. The pair of beveled-glass French doors, which should be closed and locked, stand open.
    Past the hostess station, the dining room is dimly lit by the ambient glow of the great city, which enters by tall, west-facing windows. Beyond the tables, in one of the booths, a few candles in red-glass vessels flicker pleasantly.
    Crispin is expected. With his disposable cell phone, he has called ahead to ask if he might be welcome for two nights. The phone comes with a limited number of minutes, but that is of no concern to him; the only number he ever calls