The Vision by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

Mrs. Barnable. What about the blood?”
    “Those pipes run through a hole in the ceiling. The hole’s a tiny bit bigger than it needs to be. Just a quarter of an inch of space all the way around the pipe. During the night, blood dripped out of that hole. The pipes are streaked with it, and there’s a large sticky spot on my floor.”
    “You’re sure it’s blood? It might be rusty water or—”
    “Now you’re treating me as if I’m a child, Sergeant Erdman.”
    “Sorry.”
    “I know blood when I see it. And what I wondered—I wondered if maybe your people should take a look upstairs.”
    * * *
    Patrolmen Stambaugh and Pollini found the door to the apartment ajar. It was spotted with fingerprints that were cast in dried blood.
    “Think he’s still in there?” Stambaugh asked.
    “Never can tell. Back me up.”
    Pollini went inside with his gun drawn and Stambaugh followed.
    The living room was inexpensively but pleasantly furnished with wicker and rattan. On the white walls were colorful framed prints of palm trees and native villages and bare-breasted, nut-brown girls in striped sarongs.
    The first body was in the kitchen. A young woman in black and green pajamas. On the floor. On her back. Long yellow hair streaked with clotted red bands spread around her like a fan. She had been stabbed—and kicked in the face more than once.
    “Christ,” Stambaugh said.
    “Something, huh?”
    “Don’t you feel sick?”
    “Seen it before.”
    Pollini pointed to several items on the counter by the sink—a paper plate, two slices of bread, a jar of mustard, a tomato, a package of cheese.
    “Important?” Stambaugh asked.
    “She woke up during the night. Maybe she was an insomniac. She was making a snack when he came in. Doesn’t look like she put up a fight. He either surprised her, or she knew and trusted him.”
    “Should we be talking like this?”
    “Why not?”
    Stambaugh gestured toward the rooms that they hadn’t yet investigated.
    “The killer? He’s long gone.”
    Stambaugh greatly admired his partner. He was eight years younger than Pollini. He’d been a cop only six months, while the older man had been on the force for seven years. In his view, Pollini had everything that a great lawman required—intelligence, courage, and street wisdom.
    Most important of all, Pollini was able to do his job without letting it touch him. He didn’t flinch at the sight of shattered bodies, not even when he encountered the most pathetic victim of all—the battered child. Pollini was nothing less than a rock.
    Although he tried to imitate his mentor, Stambaugh usually got sick to his stomach in the midst of too much spilled blood.
    “Come on,” Pollini said.
    He led Stambaugh back through the hall to the spare bath, where the harsh light glared on blood-splashed porcelain and on the hideously stained white vanity top.
    “There was a struggle this time,” Stambaugh said.
    “But not much of one. It was over in seconds.”
    Another young woman, wearing only panties, was curled fetally in a corner of the bathroom. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the breasts and stomach, back and buttocks. There were between fifty and a hundred wounds.
    Her blood had pooled around the pipes that came up from Alice Barnable’s first-floor apartment.
    “Funny,” Pollini said.
    “Funny
?
”
Stambaugh had never seen such slaughter. He could not comprehend the violent mind behind it.
    “Funny that he didn’t rape either of them.”
    “Is that what he should have done?”
    “His kind does, ninety percent of the time.”
    Across the hall the spare bedroom contained two unmade beds but no bodies.
    In the master suite they found a nude redhead on the bed nearest the door. Her throat had been cut.
    “No struggle at all,” Pollini said. “He caught her while she was sleeping. Doesn’t look like he raped this one either.”
    Stambaugh nodded. He was unable to speak.
    Both women in the master bedroom appeared to be Catholics who