Winter Moon by Dean Koontz Read Free Book Online Page B

blankets around him, then turned the sound up on the television once more.
    Elmer Fudd trying to terminate Bugs Bunny. Cwazy wabbit. Boom-boom, bang-bang, whapitta-whapittawhap, thud, clunk, hoo-ha, around and around in perpetual pursuit.
    In the kitchen, Heather hugged Mae Hong and whispered, “Don’t let him watch any regular channels, where he might see a news brief.”
    Mae nodded. “If he gets tired of cartoons, we’ll play games.”
    “Those bastards on the TV news, they always have to show you the blood, get the ratings. I don’t want him seeing his father’s blood on the ground.”

    The storm washed all the color out of the day. The sky was as charry as burned-out ruins, and from a distance of even half a block, the palm trees looked black. Wind-driven rain, gray as iron nails, hammered every surface, and gutters overflowed with filthy water.
    Louie Silverman was in uniform, driving a squad car, so he used the emergency beacons and siren to clear the surface streets ahead of them, staying off the freeways.
    Sitting in the shotgun seat beside Louie, hands clasped between her thighs, shoulders hunched, shivering, Heather said, “Okay, it’s just us now, Toby can’t overhear, so tell me straight.”
    “It’s bad. Left leg, lower right abdomen, upper right side of the chest. The perp was armed with a Micro Uzi, nine-millimeter ammunition, so they weren’t light rounds. Jack was unconscious when we hit the scene, paramedics couldn’t bring him around.”
    “And Luther’s dead.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Luther always seemed…”
    “Like a rock.”
    “Yeah. Always going to be there. Like a mountain.”
    They rode in silence for a block.
    Then she asked, “How many others?”
    “Three. One of the station owners, mechanic, pump jockey. But because of Jack, the other owner, Mrs. Arkadian, she’s alive.”
    They were still a mile or so from the hospital when a Pontiac ahead of them refused to pull over to let the black-and-white pass. It had oversize tires, a jacked-up front end, and air scoops front and back. Louie waited for a break in oncoming traffic, then crossed the solid yellow line to get around the car. Passing the Pontiac, Heather saw four angry-looking young men in it, hair slicked back and tied behind, affecting a modern version of the gangster look, faces hard with hostility and defiance.
    “Jack’s going to make it, Heather.”
    The wet black streets glimmered with serpentine patterns of frost-cold light, reflections of the headlights of oncoming traffic.
    “He’s tough,” Louie said.
    “We all are,” she said.

    Jack was still in surgery at Westside General Hospital when Heather arrived at a quarter past ten. The woman at the information desk supplied the surgeon’s name—Dr. Emil Procnow—and suggested waiting in the visitors’ lounge outside the intensive care unit rather than in the main lobby.
    Theories of the psychological effects of color were at work in the lounge. The walls were lemon yellow, and the padded vinyl seats and backrests of the gray tubular-steel chairs were bright orange—as if any intensity of worry, fear, or grief could be dramatically relieved by a sufficiently cheerful decor.
    Heather wasn’t alone in that circus-hued room. Besides Louie, three cops were present—two in uniform, one in street clothes—all of whom she knew. They hugged her, said Jack was going to make it, offered to get her coffee, and in general tried to keep her spirits up. They were the first of a stream of friends and fellow officers from the Department who would participate in the vigil because Jack was well liked but also because, in an increasingly violent society where respect for the law wasn’t cool in some circles, cops found it more necessary than ever to take care of their own.
    In spite of the well-meaning and welcome company, the wait was excruciating. Heather seemed no less alone than if she had been by herself.
    Bathed in an abundance of harsh fluorescent light, the yellow