Fear Nothing by Dean Koontz Page A

outside.
    Lewis Stevenson and his conspirator broke off their urgent conversation at once. From this distance, I wasn’t able to discern whether Manuel knew the bald man, but he appeared to address only the chief.
    I couldn’t believe that Manuel—good son of Rosalina, mourning widower of Carmelita, loving father of Toby—would be a part of any business that involved murder and grave-robbing. We can never know many of the people in our lives, not truly
know
them, regardless of how deeply we believe that we see into them. Most of them are murky ponds, containing infinite layers of suspended particles, stirred by strange currents in their greatest depths. But I was willing to bet my life that Manuel’s clear-water heart concealed no capacity for treachery.
    I wasn’t willing to bet
his
life, however, and if I called out to him to search the back of the white van with me, to impound the vehicle for an exhaustive forensics workup, I might be signing his death warrant as well as mine. In fact, I was sure of it.
    Abruptly Stevenson and the bald man turned from Manuel to survey the parking lot. I knew then that he had told them about my telephone call.
    I dropped into a crouch and shrank deeper into the gloom between the van and the water-department truck.
    At the back of the van, I tried to read the license plate. Although usually I am plagued by too much light, this time I was hampered by too little.
    Frantically, I traced the seven numbers and letters with my fingertips. I wasn’t able to memorize them by braille reading, however, at least not quickly enough to avoid discovery.
    I knew that the bald man, if not Stevenson, was coming to the van. Was already on the move. The bald man, the butcher, the trader in bodies, the thief of eyes.
    Staying low, I retraced the route by which I had come through the ranks of parked trucks and cars, returning to the alley and then scurrying onward, using rows of trash cans as cover, all but crawling to a Dumpster and past it, to a corner and around, into the other alleyway, out of sight of the municipal building, rising to my full height now, running once more, as fleet as the cat, gliding like an owl, a creature of the night, wondering if I would find safe shelter before dawn or would still be afoot in the open to curl and blacken under the hot rising sun.

10
    I assumed that I could safely go home but that I might be foolish to linger there too long. I wouldn’t be overdue at the police station for another two minutes, and they would wait for me at least ten minutes past the appointed time before Chief Stevenson realized that I must have seen him with the man who had stolen my father’s body.
    Even then, they might not come to the house in search of me. I was still not a serious threat to them—and not likely to become one. I had no proof of anything I’d seen.
    Nevertheless, they seemed inclined to take extreme measures to prevent the exposure of their inscrutable conspiracy. They might be loath to leave even the smallest of loose ends—which meant a knot in my neck.
    I expected to find Orson in the foyer when I unlocked the front door and stepped inside, but he was not waiting for me. I called his name, but he didn’t appear; and if he had been approaching through the gloom, I would have heard his big paws thumping on the floor.
    He was probably in one of his dour moods. For the most part, he is good-humored, playful, and companionable, with enough energy in his tail to sweep all the streets in Moonlight Bay. From time to time, however, the world weighs heavily on him, and then he lies as limp as a rug, sad eyes open but fixed on some doggy memory or on some doggy vision beyond this world, making no sound other than an occasional attenuated sigh.
    More rarely, I have found Orson in a state of what seems to be bleakest dejection. This ought to be a condition too profound for any dog to wear, although it fits him well.
    He once sat before a mirrored closet door in my bedroom,