The Husband - Dean Koontz

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      “It’s worse when it’s a woman.”

      Mitch did not know what to make of that statement. Perhaps it was a simple truth of a homicide detective’s experience—or a threat.

      “A woman or a child,” Taggart said.

      “I wouldn’t want your job.”

      “No. You wouldn’t.” Turning away, the detective said, “I’ll be seeing you, Mr. Rafferty.”

      “Seeing me?”

      Glancing back, Taggart said, “You and I—we’ll both be witnesses in a courtroom someday.”

      “Seems like a tough case to solve.”

      “‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground,’ Mr. Rafferty,” said the detective, apparently quoting someone. “‘Blood crieth unto me from the ground.’”

      Mitch watched Taggart walk away.

      Then he looked at the grass under his feet.

      The progress of the sun had put the palm-frond shadows behind him. He stood in light, but was not warmed by it.

       5

      The dashboard clock was digital, as was Mitch’s wristwatch, but he could hear time ticking nonetheless, as rapid as the click-click-click of the pointer snapping against the marker pegs on a spinning wheel of fortune.

      He wanted to race directly home from the crime scene. Logic argued that Holly would have been snatched at the house. They would not have grabbed her on the way to work, not on a public street.

      They might unintentionally have left something behind that would suggest their identity. More likely, they would have left a message for him, further instructions.

      As usual, Mitch had begun the day by picking up Iggy at his apartment in Santa Ana. Now he had to return him.

      Driving north from the fabled and wealthy Orange County coastal neighborhoods where they worked, toward their humbler communities, Mitch switched from the crowded freeway to surface streets, but encountered traffic there, as well.

      Iggy wanted to talk about the murder and the police. Mitch had to pretend to be as naively excited by the novelty of the experience as Iggy was, when in fact his mind remained occupied with thoughts of Holly and with worry about what might come next.

      Fortunately, as usual, Iggy’s conversation soon began to loop and turn and tangle like a ball of yarn unraveled by a kitten.

      Appearing to be engaged in this rambling discourse required less of Mitch than when the subject had been the dead dogwalker.

      “My cousin Louis had a friend named Booger,” Iggy said. “The same thing happened to him, shot while walking a dog, except it wasn’t a rifle and it wasn’t a dog.”

      “Booger?” Mitch wondered.

      “Booker,” Iggy corrected. “B-o-o-k-e-r. He had a cat he called Hairball. He was walking Hairball, and he got shot.”

      “People walk cats?”

      “The way it was—Hairball is cozy in a travel cage, and Booker is carrying him to a vet’s office.”

      Mitch repeatedly checked the rearview and side mirrors. A black Cadillac SUV had departed the freeway in their wake. Block after block, it remained behind them.

      “So Booker wasn’t actually walking the cat,” Mitch said.

      “He was walking with the cat, and this like twelve-year-old brat, this faucet-nosed little dismo, shot Booker with a paint-ball gun.”

      “So he wasn’t killed.”

      “He wasn’t quashed, no, and it was a cat instead of a dog, but Booker was totally blue.”

      “Blue?”

      “Blue hair, blue face. He was fully pissed.”

      The Cadillac SUV reliably remained two or three vehicles behind them. Perhaps the driver hoped Mitch wouldn’t notice him.

      “So Booker’s all blue. What happened to the kid?” Mitch asked.

      “Booker was gonna break the little dismo’s hand off, but the kid shot him in the crotch and ran. Hey, Mitch, did you know there’s a town in Pennsylvania named Blue Balls?”

      “I didn’t know.”

      “It’s in Amish country. There’s another town nearby called Intercourse.”

      “How about that.”

      “Maybe those Amish aren’t as square as Cheez-Its, after all.”

      Mitch accelerated to cross an intersection before the traffic light phased to red. Behind him, the black SUV changed lanes, sped up, and made it through on the yellow.

      “Did you ever eat an Amish shoofly pie?” Iggy asked.

      “No. Never did.”

      “It’s full-on rich, sweeter than six Gidget movies. Like eating molasses. Treacherous, dude.”

      The Cadillac dropped back, returned to Mitch’s lane. Three vehicles separated them once more.

      Iggy said, “Earl Potter lost a leg eating shoofly pie.”

      “Earl Potter?”

      “Tim Potter’s dad. He was diabetic, but he didn’t know it, and he totally destroyed like a bucket of sweets every day. Did you ever eat a Quakertown pie?”

      “What about Earl’s leg?” Mitch asked.

      “Unreal, bro. One day his foot’s numb, he can’t walk right. Turns out he’s got almost no circulation down there ’cause of radical diabetes. They sawed his left leg off above the knee.”

      “While he was eating shoofly pie.”

      “No. He realized he had to give up sweets.”

      “Good for him.”

      “So the day before surgery, he had his last dessert, and he chose a whole shoofly pie with like a cow’s worth of whipped cream. Did you ever see that stylin’ Amish movie with Harrison Ford and the girl with the great knockers?”

      By way of Hairball, Blue Balls, Intercourse, shoofly pie, and Harrison Ford, they arrived at Iggy’s apartment building.

      Mitch stopped at the curb, and the black SUV went past without slowing. The side windows were tinted, so he couldn’t see the driver or any passengers.

      Opening his door, before getting out of the truck, Iggy said, “You okay, boss?”

      “I’m okay.”

      “You look stomped.”

      “I saw a guy shot to death,” Mitch reminded him.

      “Yeah. Wasn’t that radical? I guess I know who’s gonna rule the bar at Rolling Thunder tonight. Maybe you should stop in.”

      “Don’t save a stool for me.”

      The Cadillac SUV dwindled westward. The afternoon sun wrapped the suspicious vehicle in glister and glare. It shimmered and seemed to vanish into the solar maw.

      Iggy got out of the truck, looked back in at Mitch, and pulled a sad face. “Ball and chain.”

      “Wind beneath my wings.”

      “Whoa. That’s goob talk.”

      “Go waste yourself.”

      “I do intend to get mildly polluted,” Iggy assured him. “Dr. Ig prescribes at least a six-pack of cerveza for you. Tell Mrs. Mitch I think she’s an uber wahine.”

      Iggy

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