Dean Koontz's Frankenstein 4-Book Bundle by Dean Koontz Page A

vastness and chaos of the world itself if ever he steps beyond these walls.
    Yet he persists in studying the three-dimensional maps, for he is motivated by intense desire. His desire is to find happiness of the kind that he believes he has seen in the smile of Arnie O’Connor.
    In the virtual reality of New Orleans on his computer screen, one street leads to another. Every intersection offers choices. Every block is lined with businesses, residences. Each of them is a choice.
    In the real world, a maze of streets might lead him a hundred or a thousand miles. In that journey, he would be confronted with tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of
choices.
    The enormity of this challenge overwhelms him once more, and he retreats in a panic to a corner, his back to his room. He cannot move forward. Nothing confronts him except the junction of two walls.
    His only choices are to stay facing the corner or turn to the larger room. As long as he doesn’t turn, his fear subsides. Here he is safe. Here is order: the simple geometry of two walls meeting.
    In time he is somewhat calmed by this pinched vista, but to be fully calmed, he needs his crosswords. In an armchair, Randal Six sits with another collection of puzzles.
    He likes crosswords because there are not multiple right choices for each square; only
one
choice will result in the correct solution. All is predestined.
    Cross YULETIDE with CHRISTMAS , cross CHRISTMAS with MYRRH …. Eventually every square will be filled; all words will be complete and will intersect correctly. The predestined solution will have been achieved. Order. Stasis. Peace.
    As he fills the squares with letters, a startling thought occurs to Randal. Perhaps he and the selfish Arnie O’Connor are
predestined
to meet.
    If he, Randal Six, is predestined to come face to face with the other boy and to take the precious secret of happiness from him, what seems now like a long harrowing journey to the O’Connor house will prove to be as simple as crossing this small room.
    He cannot stop working the crossword, for he desperately needs the temporary peace that its completion will bring him. Nevertheless, as he reads the clues and inks the letters in the empty squares, he considers the possibility that finding happiness by relieving Arnie O’Connor of it might prove to be not a dream but a
destiny.

CHAPTER 27
    DRIVING AWAY FROM the medical examiner’s office, into a world transformed by what they had just learned, Carson said, “Two hearts? Strange new organs? Designer freaks?”
    â€œI’m wondering,” Michael said, “if I missed a class at the police academy.”
    â€œDid Jack smell sober to you?”
    â€œUnfortunately, yeah. Maybe he’s nuts.”
    â€œHe’s not nuts.”
    â€œPeople who were perfectly sane on Tuesday sometimes go nuts on Wednesday.”
    â€œWhat people?” she asked.
    â€œI don’t know. Stalin.”
    â€œStalin was not perfectly sane on Tuesday. Besides, he wasn’t insane, he was evil.”
    â€œJack Rogers isn’t evil,” Michael said. “If he’s not drunk, insane, or evil, I guess we’re going to have to believe him.”
    â€œYou think somehow Luke might be hoaxing old Jack?”
    â€œLuke ‘been-interested-in-viscera-since-I-was-a-kid’? First of all, it would be a way elaborate hoax. Second, Jack is smarter than Luke. Third, Luke—he’s got about as much sense of humor as a graveyard rat.”
    A disguise of clouds transformed the full moon into a crescent. The pale flush of streetlamps on glossy magnolia leaves produced an illusion of ice, of a northern climate in balmy New Orleans.
    â€œNothing is what it seems,” Carson said.
    â€œIs that just an observation,” Michael asked, “or should I worry about being washed away by a flood of philosophy?”
    â€œMy father wasn’t a corrupt cop.”
    â€œWhatever you say. You