Ashley Bell: A Novel by Dean Koontz Page B

golden retriever appeared at the side of a man in a hoodie. The guy kept his head lowered as if to prevent the camera from capturing his face. He pushed open a door on the left and followed the dog through it.
    “Mr. Hoodie just went into your room,” said Chubb Coy. He fast-forwarded the video. “Then he comes out three minutes later, at four-oh-five. There he is. He and the dog leave how they came, by the elevator.”
    “Just like I told you,” Bibi said to Mira Hernandez.
    The nurse shook her head. “Wait.”
    Turning away from the laptop, face-to-face with Bibi, Mr. Coy said, “Here’s the problem. At that time of night, we’re locked up except for the main lobby entrance and through the ER receiving area. There’s no video of that guy or his dog using one of those, either coming or going.”
    “Some other door that was supposed to be locked must have been open,” Bibi suggested.
    “Not a chance. We run a tight operation. Here’s another thing—it so happens the camera in the elevator he used goes on the blink at three-fifty, ten minutes before he sashays on scene, so there’s no video of him and the dog in the elevator, either coming up or going down. The camera in the ground-floor elevator alcove
is
working, but it never shows Mr. Hoodie either boarding the cab or getting out of it later.”
    Bibi looked at the laptop screen, where video from the previous night showed the corridor after the mysterious visitor’s departure. “I don’t understand.”
    “Me neither,” Chubb Coy said. “It’s stupid to think he and the dog boarded the elevator mid-floor, coming through the hatch in the ceiling of the cab. No way, José. So did you recognize the guy?”
    Bibi met the security chief’s eyes. They were gray flecked with blue, a steely contrast to the round amiable face in which they were set. “Recognize him from the video? But he didn’t show his face.”
    “From his posture, his walk, the dog?”
    “No. I didn’t recognize him.”
    “Whatever he was up to,” Chubb Coy said, “it wasn’t good.”
    “Well, I don’t know, but somehow I’m cured.”
    “The doctors confirmed that?”
    “Dr. Chandra is meeting with me this afternoon.”
    “I hope you had a miracle, I really do,” Coy said, although he clearly had his doubts. “But, see, I was a real cop before this. I’ve known a bunch of bad guys. People that act like Mr. Hoodie…you can bet the rent money, they’ve got sinister intentions.”

Bibi did not remember turning away from the presence in the attic, but the next thing she knew, she was descending the ladder to the floor of the walk-in closet. At the bottom, when she looked up, she saw that the lights had been extinguished in the high room.
    Panic had not seized her. She was in the grip of something else, perhaps shock, that rendered her half numb to all sensation. Her mind wasn’t spinning at the moment; instead each smallest impression and sentiment twitched to the next as if a pair of lever-wrench pliers in her brain were ratcheting them along in a futile attempt to restore her usual flow of thoughts.
    She hesitated at the foot of the ladder, breath held, expecting someone to come into view above, uplit by the closet light. But when no one appeared, she gave the lowest segment of the ladder the hard push required to start it folding back into the ceiling. The ladder drew the trap door shut behind it, and the pull rope swayed back and forth like a pendulum.
    She did not remember passing through the bedroom or the living room, but she became aware of being in the kitchen, standing at the dinette table, staring at the white vase. It had been empty when she entered the apartment. Now it contained three fresh scarlet roses.
    As she descended the stairs from the balcony, thick fog flowed behind her and billowed around her as if it were the train of a magnificent white dress. In the courtyard, she could barely see the bricks underfoot, and the bungalow seemed to drift like a ghost