Watchers by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online

leaving.
     
     
    She did not feel safe until his van was out of sight.
     
     
    Actually, even then, she did not feel safe.
     

     

2
     
     
    After murdering Dr. Davis Weatherby, Vince Nasco had driven his gray Ford van to a service station on Pacific Coast Highway. In the public phone booth, he deposited coins and called a Los Angeles number that he had long ago committed to memory.
     
     
    A man answered by repeating the number Vince had dialed. It was one of the usual three voices that responded to calls, the soft one with a deep timbre. Often, there was another man with a hard sharp voice that grated on Vince.
     
     
    Infrequently, a woman answered; she had a sexy voice, throaty and yet girlish. Vince had never seen her, but he had often tried to imagine what she looked like.
     
     
    Now, when the soft-spoken man finished reciting the number, Vince said, “It’s done. I really appreciate your calling me, and I’m always available if you have another job.” He was confident that the guy on the other end of the line would recognize his voice, too.
     
     
    “I’m delighted to hear all went well. We’ve the highest regard for your workmanship. Now remember this,” the contact said. He recited a seven-digit telephone number.
     
     
    Surprised, Vince repeated it.
     
     
    The contact said, “It’s one of the public phones at Fashion Island. In the open-air promenade near Robinson’s Department Store. Can you be there in fifteen minutes?”
     
     
    “Sure,” Vince said. “Ten.”
     
     
    “I’ll call in fifteen with the details.”
     
     
    Vince hung up and walked back to the van, whistling. Being sent to another public telephone to receive “the details” could mean only one thing: they had a job for him already, two in one day!
     

     

3
     
     
    Later, after the cake was baked and iced, Nora retreated to her bedroom at the southwest corner of the second floor.
     
     
    When Violet Devon had been alive, this had been Nora’s sanctuary in spite of the lack of a lock on the door. Like all the rooms in the large house, it had been crammed with heavy furniture, as if the place served as a warehouse instead of a home. It had been dreary in all other details as well. Nevertheless, when finished with her chores, or when dismissed after one of her aunt’s interminable lectures, Nora had fled to her bedroom, where she escaped into books or vivid daydreams.
     
     
    Violet inevitably checked on her niece without warning, creeping soundlessly along the hall, suddenly throwing open the unlockable door, entering with the hope of catching Nora in a forbidden pastime or practice. These unannounced inspections had been frequent during Nora’s childhood and adolescence, dwindling in number thereafter, though they had continued through the final weeks of Violet Devon’s life, when Nora had been a grown woman of twenty-nine. Because Violet had favored dark dresses, had worn her hair in a tight bun, and had gone without a trace of makeup on her pale, sharp-featured face, she had often looked less like a woman than like a man, a stern monk in coarse penitential robes, prowling the corridors of a bleak medieval retreat to police the behavior of fellow monastics.
     
     
    If caught daydreaming or napping, Nora was severely reprimanded and punished with onerous chores. Her aunt did not condone laziness.
     
     
    Books were permitted—if Violet had first approved of them—because, for one thing, books were educational. Besides, as Violet often said, “Plain, homely women like you and me will never lead a glamorous life, never go to exotic places. So books have a special value to us. We can experience most everything vicariously, through books. This isn’t bad. Living through books is even better than having friends and knowing . . . men.”
     
     
    With the assistance of a pliable family doctor, Violet had kept Nora out of public school on the pretense of poor health. She had been educated at home, so books had