physical damage from the accident or from be…. dead. I’m healthy,
I’m okay.”
“Oh, God, I hope so.”
“I’m just fine.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I really think so, I really do.” He wondered how he could lie to
her so smoothly. Maybe because the lie was not meant to hurt or harm,
merely to soothe her so she could get some sleep.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too.”
In a couple of minutes- shortly before midnight, according to the
digital clock at the bedside-she was asleep, snoring softly.
Hatch was unable to sleep, worrying about what he might learn of his
future-or lack of it-tomorrow. He suspected that Dr. Nyebern would be
gray-faced and grim, bearing somber news of some meaningful shadow
detected in one lobe of Hatch’s brain or another, a patch of dead cells,
lesion, cyst, or tumor. Something deadly. Inoperable. And certain to
get worse.
His confidence had been increasing slowly ever since he had gotten past
the events of Thursday night and Friday morning, when he had dreamed of
the blonde’s murder and, later, had followed the trail of the killer to
the Route 133 off-ramp from the San Diego Freeway. The weekend had been
uneventful. The day just past, enlivened and uplifted by Regina’s
arrival, had been delightful. Then he had seen the newspaper piece
about Cooper, and had lost control.
He hadn’t told Lindsey about the stranger’s reflection that he had seen
in the den mirror. This time he was unable to pretend that he might
have been sleepwalking, half awake, half dreaming He had been wide
awake, which meant the image in the mirror was an hallucination of one
kind or another. A healthy, undamaged brain didn’t hallucinate. He
hadn’t shared that terror with her because he knew, with the receipt of
the test results tomorrow, there would be fear enough to go around.
Unable to sleep, he began to think about the newspaper story again, even
though he didn’t want to chew on it any more. He tried to direct his
thoughts away from William Cooper, but he returned to the subject the
way he might have obsessively probed at a sore tooth with his tongue.
It almost seemed as if he were being forced to think about the truck
driver, as if a giant mental magnet was pulling his attention inexorably
in that direction. Soon, to his dismay, anger rose in him again. Worse,
almost at once, the anger exploded into fury and a hunger for violence
so intense that he had to fist his hands at his sides and clench his
teeth and struggle to keep from letting loose a primal cry of rage.
From the banks of mailboxes in the breezeway at the main entrance to the
garden apartments, Vassago learned that William Cooper was in apartment
twenty-eight. He followed the breezeway into the courtyard, which was
lined with palms and ficuses and ferns and too many landscape lights to
please him, and he climbed an exterior staircase to the covered balcony
that served the second-floor units of the two-story complex.
No one was in sight. Palm Court was silent, peaceful.
Though it was a few minutes past midnight, lights were on in the Cooper
apartment. Vassago could hear a television turned low.
The window to the right of the door was covered with Levolor blinds.
The slats were not tightly closed. Vassago could see a kitchen
illuminated only by the low-wattage bulb in the range hood.
To the left of the door a larger window looked onto the balcony and
courtyard from the apartment living room. The drapes were not drawn all
the way shut. Through the gap, a man could be seen slumped in a big
recliner with his feet up in front of the television. this head was
tilted to one side, his face toward the window, and he appeared to be
asleep. A glass containing an inch of golden liquid stood beside a
half-empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s on a small table next to the
recliner.
A bag of cheese puffs had been knocked off the table, and some of the
bright orange contents had scattered across the bile-green carpet.