ICEBOUND By Dean Koontz

“He often talks about his late wife. Colette. He still gets teary about it, shaky. When did she die?”

“Three years ago this month. Claude was on the ice, his first expedition in two and a half years, when she was murdered.”

“Murdered?”

“She’d flown from Paris to London to a holiday. She was in England just three days. The IRA had planted a bomb in a restaurant where she went for lunch. She was one of the eight killed in the blast.”

“Good God!”

“They caught one of the men involved. He’s still in prison.”

Pete said, “And Claude took it very hard.”

“Oh, yes. Colette was great. You’d have liked her. She and Claude were as close as Rita and I.”

For a moment neither of them spoke.

At the top of the ridge, the wind moaned like a revenant trapped between this world and the next. Again, the ice reminded Harry of a graveyard. He shuddered.

Pete said, “If a man is deeply in love with a woman, and she’s taken from him, blown to pieces by a bomb—he might be twisted by the loss.”

“Not Claude. Broken, yes. Depressed, yes. But not twisted. He’s the kindest—“

“His wife was killed by Irishmen.”

“So?”

“Dougherty is Irish.”

“That’s a stretch, Pete. Irish-American, actually. And third generation.”

“You said one of these bombers was apprehended?”

“Yeah. They never nailed any of the others.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“No.”

“Was it Dougherty, anything like Dougherty?”

Harry grimaced and waved one hand dismissively. “Come on now, Pete. You’ve stretched it to the breaking point.”

The big man began to walk in place once more. “I guess I have. But you know… both Brian’s uncle and his father have been accused of playing favorites with their Irish-American constituencies at the expense of other groups. And some people say they sympathized with the IRA’s leftward tilt to the extent that for years they secretly funneled donations to them.”

“I’ve heard it all too. But it was never proved. Political slander, as far as we know. The actual fact is… we have four suspects, and none of them looks like a sure bet.”

“Correction.”

“What?”

“Six suspects.”

“Franze, George, Roger, Claude…”

“And me.”

“I’ve ruled you out.”

“Not at all.”

“Now pull the other leg.”

“I’m serious,” Pete said.

“After the conversation we’ve just had, I know you can’t—“

“Is there a law that says a psychopathic killer can’t be a good actor?”

Harry stared at him, trying to read his expression. Suddenly the malevolence in Johnson’s face didn’t seem to be entirely a trick played by the peculiar backwash of light. “You’re making me edgy, Pete.”

“Good.”

“I know you told me the truth, you’re not they guy. But what you’re saying is that I mustn’t trust anyone, not even for a moment, not even if I think I know him like a brother.”

“Precisely. And it goes for both of us. That’s why the sixth name on the list of suspects is yours.”

“What? Me!”

“You were at the third blasting shaft with the rest of us.”

“But I’m the one who found him when we went back.”

“And you were the one who assigned search areas. You could have given yourself the right one, so you’d make sure he was dead before you ‘found’ him. Then Breskin stumbled on you before you had a chance to deal Brian the coup de grâce.”

Harry gaped at him.

“And if you’re twisted enough,” Pete said, “you might not even realize there’s a killer inside you.”

“You don’t really think I’m capable of murder?”

“It’s a chance in a million. But I’ve seen people win on much longer odds.”

Although he knew that Pete was giving him a taste of his own medicine, letting him know what it was like to be treated as a suspect, Harry felt a tension ache return to his neck and shoulders. “You know what’s wrong with you Californians?”

“Yeah. We make you Bostonians feel inferior, because we’re so self-aware and mellow, but you’re so repressed and uptight.”

“Actually, I’d been thinking that all the earthquakes and fires and mudslides and riots and serial killers out there have made you paranoid.”