Whispers by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page A

plush and eye-dazzlingly textured, she had some difficulty telling from a distance if there was any blood soaked into it. Quite clearly, there was not an enormous sticky pool like the one she had expected to find. If the shot had hit him in the chest, the blood might be trapped under him. The bullet might even have taken him squarely in the forehead, bringing instant death and abrupt cessation of heartbeat; in which case, there would be only a few drops of blood.
    She watched him for a minute, two minutes. She could not detect any movement, not even the subtle rise and fall of his breathing.
    Dead?
    Slowly, timidly, she approached him.
    “Mr. Frye?”
    She didn’t intend to get too close. She wasn’t going to endanger herself, but she wanted a better look at him. She kept the gun trained on him, ready to put another round into him if he moved.
    “Mr. Frye?”
    No response.
    Funny that she should keep calling him “Mr. Frye.” After what had happened tonight, after what he had tried to do to her, she was still being formal and polite. Maybe because he was dead. In death, the very worst man in town is accorded hushed respect even by those who know that he was a liar and a scoundrel all his life. Because every one of us must die, belittling a dead man is in a way like belittling ourselves. Besides, if you speak badly about the dead, you somehow feel that you are mocking that great and final mystery—and perhaps inviting the gods to punish you for your effrontery.
    Hilary waited and watched as another minute dragged past.
    “You know what, Mr. Frye? I think I won’t take any chances with you. I think I’ll just put another bullet in you right now. Yeah. Fire a round right in the back of your head.”
    Of course, she wasn’t able to do that. She wasn’t violent by nature. She had fired the gun on a shooting range once, shortly after she bought it, but she had never killed a living thing larger than the cockroaches in that Chicago apartment. She had found the will to shoot at Bruno Frye only because he had been an immediate threat and she had been pumped full of adrenaline. Hysteria and a primitive survival instinct had made her briefly capable of violence. But now that Frye was on the floor, quiet and motionless, no more menacing than a pile of dirty rags, she could not easily bring herself to pull the trigger. She couldn’t just stand there and watch as she blew the brains out of a corpse. Even the thought of it turned her stomach. But the threat of doing it was a good test of his condition. If he was faking, the possibility of her shooting pointblank at his skull ought to make him give up his act.
    “Right in the head, you bastard,” she said, and she fired a round into the ceiling.
    He didn’t flinch.
    She sighed and lowered the pistol.
    Dead. He was dead.
    She had killed a man.
    Dreading the coming ordeal with police and reporters, she edged around the outstretched arm and headed for the hall door.
    Suddenly, he was not dead any more.
    Suddenly, he was very much alive and moving.
    He anticipated her. He’d known exactly how she was trying to trick him. He’d seen through the ruse, and he’d had nerves of steel. He hadn’t even flinched!
    Now he used the arm under him to push up and forward, striking at Hilary as if he were a snake, and with his left hand he seized her ankle and brought her down, screaming and flailing, and they rolled over, a tangle of arms and legs, then over again, and his teeth were at her throat, and he was snarling like a dog, and she had the crazy fear that he was going to bite her and tear open her jugular vein and suck out all of her blood, but then she got a hand between them, got her palm under his chin and levered his head away from her neck as they rolled one last time, and then they came up against the wall with jarring impact and stopped, dizzy, gasping, and he was like a great beast on her, so rough, so heavy, crushing her, leering down at her, his hideous cold eyes so