Face of Fear by Dean Koontz Page A

doorway.
    The men were sitting at a small table in front of three television screens. They weren’t watching the monitors. They were playing two-handed pinochle.
    The older of the two was in his fifties. Heavy. Grayhaired. He had a prizefighter’s lumpy face. The name “Neely” was stitched on his left shirt pocket. He was slow. He looked up at Bollinger, failed to react as he should have to the gun, and said without fear, “What’s this?”
    The other guard was in his thirties. Trim. Ascetic face. Pale hands. As he turned to see what had caught Neely’s attention, Bollinger saw “Faulkner” stitched on his shirt.
    He shot Faulkner first.
    Reaching with both hands for his ruined throat, too late to stop the life from gushing out of him, Faulkner toppled backward in his chair.
    “Hey!” Fat Neely was finally on his feet. His holster was snapped shut. He grappled with it.
    Bollinger shot him twice.
    Neely did an ungraceful pirouette, fell on the table, collapsed it, and went to the floor in a flutter of pinochle cards.
    Bollinger checked their pulses.
    They were dead.
    When he left the room, he closed the door.
    At the front of the big lobby, he locked the last revolving door and put the keys into his pocket.
    He went to the lectern, sat on the stool. He took the box of bullets from his left coat pocket and replenished the pistol’s magazine.
    He looked at his watch. 8:10. He was right on schedule.

17
    “That was good pizza,” Graham said.
    “Good wine, too. Have another glass.”
    “I’ve had enough.”
    “Just a little one.”
    “No. I’ve got to work.”
    “Dammit.”
    “You knew that when you came.”
    “I was trying to get you drunk.”
    “On one bottle of wine?”
    “And then seduce you.”
    “Tomorrow night,” he said.
    “I’ll be blind with desire by then.”
    “Doesn’t matter. Love is a Braille experience.”
    She winced.
    He got up, came around the table, kissed her cheek. “Did you bring a book to read?”
    “A Nero Wolfe mystery.”
    “Then read.”
    “Can I look at you from time to time?”
    “What’s to look at?”
    “Why do men buy Playboy magazine?” she asked.
    “I won’t be working in the nude.”
    “You don’t have to be.”
    “Pretty dull.”
    “You’re even sexy with your clothes on.”
    “Okay,” he said, smiling. “Look but don’t talk.”
    “Can I drool?”
    “Drool if you must.”
    He was pleased with the flattery, and she was delighted by his reaction. She felt that she was gradually chipping away at his inferiority complex, peeling it layer by layer.

18
    The building engineer for the night shift was a stocky, fair-skinned blond in his late forties. He was wearing gray slacks and a gray-white-blue checkered shirt. He was smoking a pipe.
    When Bollinger came down the steps from the lobby corridor, the gun in his right hand, the engineer said, “Who the hell are you?” He spoke with a slight German accent.
    “Sie sind Herr Schiller, nicht wahr?” Bollinger asked. His grandfather and grandmother had been German-Americans; he had learned the language when he was young and had never forgotten it.
    Surprised to hear German spoken, worried about the gun but confused by Bollinger’s smile, Schiller said, “Ja, ich bin’s.”
    “Es freut mich sehr Sie kennenzulernen. ”
    Schiller took the pipe from his mouth. He licked his lips nervously. “Die Pistole?”
    “Fur den Mord, ” Bollinger said. He squeezed off two shots.
     
Upstairs, on the lobby floor, Bollinger opened the door directly across the hall from the guards’ room. He switched on the lights.
    The narrow room was lined with telephone and power company equipment. The ceiling and walls were unfinished concrete. Two bright red fire extinguishers were hung where they could be reached quickly.
    He went to the far side of the room, to a pair of yard-square metal cabinets that were fixed to the wall. The lid of each cabinet bore the insignia of the telephone company. Although the destruction