The Face of fear by Dean R.. Koontz
The Face of fear by Dean R.. Koontz
1977
part one
FRIDAY 12:01 A.M. 8:00 P.M.
Wary, not actually expecting trouble but prepared for it, he parked his
car across the street from the four-story brownstone apartment house.
When he switched off the engine, he heard a siren wail in the street
behind him.
They’re coming for me, he thought. Somehow they’ve found out I’m the
one.
He smiled. He wouldn’t let them put the handcuffs on him. He wouldn’t
go easily. That wasn’t his style.
Frank Bollinger was not easily frightened. In fact, he couldn’t
remember ever having been frightened. He knew how to take care of
himself. He had reached six feet when he was thirteen years old, and he
hadn’t quit growing until he was six-four. He had a thick neck, broad
shoulders and the biceps of a young weightlifter. At thirty-seven he
was in virtually the same good condition, at least outwardly, as he had
been when he was twenty-seven-or even seventeen.
Curiously enough, he never exercised. He had neither the time nor the
temperament for endless series of push-ups and sit-ups and running in
place. His size and his hard-packed muscles were nature’s gifts, simply
a matter of genetics. Although he had a voracious appetite and never
dieted, he was not girdled with rings of extra weight in the hips and
stomach, as were most men his age. His doctor had explained to him
that, because he suffered constantly from extreme nervous tension and
because he refused to take the drugs that would bring his condition
under control, he would most likely die young of hypertension. Strain,
anxiety, nervous tension-these were what kept the weight off him, said
the doctor. Wound tight, roaring inside like a perpetually accelerating
engine, he burned away the fat, regardless of how much he ate.
But Bollinger found that he could agree with only half of that
diagnosis. Nervous: no. Tension: yes. He was never nervous; that word
had no meaning for him. However, he was always tense. He strove for
tension, worked at building it, for he thought of it as a survival
factor. He was always watchful. Always aware. Always tense. Always
ready. Ready for anything. That was why there was nothing that he
feared: nothing on earth could surprise him.
As the siren grew louder, he glanced at the rear-view mirror. A bit
more than a block away, a revolving red light pulsed in the night.
He took the .38 revolver out of his shoulder holster. He put one hand
on the door and waited for the right moment to throw it open.
The squad car bore down on him-then swept past. It turned the corner
two blocks away.
They weren’t on his trail after all.
He felt slightly disappointed.
He put the gun away and studied the street. Six mercury vapor street
lamps-two at each end of the block and two in the middle-drenched the
pavement and the automobiles and the buildings in an eerie purple-white
light. The street was lined with three- and four-story townhouses, some
of them brownstones and some brick, most of them in good repair. There
didn’t seem to be anyone at any of the lighted windows. That was good;
he did not want to be seen. A few trees struggled for life at the edges
of the sidewalks, the scrawny plane trees and maples and birches that
were all that New York City could boast beyond the boundaries of its
public parks, all of them stunted trees, skeletal, their branches like
charred bones reaching for the midnight sky. A gentle but chilly
January wind pushed scraps of paper along the gutters; and when the wind
gusted, the branches of the trees rattled like children’s sticks on a
rail fence. The other parked cars looked like animals huddling against
the cold air; they were empty.
Both sidewalks were deserted for the length of the block.
He got out of the car, quickly crossed the street and went up the front
steps of the apartment house.
The foyer was clean and brightly lighted. The complex mosaic floor-a
garland of faded roses on a beige background-was highly polished, and