Shadowfires Read Online Free PDF Page A
Author: Dean Koontz
side, with the muzzle pointed at the floor, and walked slowly through the shadowy house to the front door. She was filled with dread at the prospect of answering the bell; at the same time, she was irresistibly drawn to the door as if in a trance, as if compelled by the mesmeric voice of a hypnotist.
She paused at the stereo to switch it off. The ensuing silence had an ominous quality.
In the foyer, with her hand upon the knob, she hesitated as the bell rang again. The front door had no window, no sidelights. She had been meaning to have a fish-eye security lens installed, through which she would be able to study the person on the doorstep, and now she ardently wished that she had not procrastinated. She stared at the dark oak before her, as if she might miraculously acquire the power to see through it and clearly identify the caller beyond. She was trembling.
She did not know why she faced the prospect of a visitor with such unmitigated dread.
Well, perhaps that was not exactly true. Deep down—or even not so deep—she knew why she was afraid. But she was reluctant to admit the source of her fear, as if admission would transform a horrible possibility into a deadly reality.
The bell rang again.
3
JUST VANISHED
While listening to news on the radio during the drive home from his office in Tustin, Ben Shadway heard about Dr. Eric Leben’s sudden death. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Shocked, yes. But he wasn’t saddened, even though the world had lost a potentially great man. Leben had been brilliant, indisputably a genius, but he had also been arrogant, self-important, perhaps even dangerous.
Ben mostly felt relieved. He had been afraid that Eric, finally aware that he could never regain his wife, would harm her. The man hated to lose. There was a dark rage in him usually relieved by his obsessive commitment to his work, but it might have found expression in violence if he had felt deeply humiliated by Rachael’s rejection.
Ben kept a cellular phone in his car—a meticulously restored 1956 Thunderbird, white with blue interior—and he immediately called Rachael. She had her answering machine on, and she did not pick up the receiver when he identified himself.
At the traffic light at the corner of Seventeenth Street and Newport Avenue, he hesitated, then turned left instead of continuing on to his own house in Orange Park Acres. Rachael might not be home right now, but she would get there eventually, and she might need support. He headed for her place in Placentia.
The June sun dappled the Thunderbird’s windshield and made bright rippling patterns when he passed through the inconstant shadows of overhanging trees. He switched off the news and put on a Glenn Miller tape. Speeding through the California sun, with “String of Pearls” filling the car, he found it hard to believe that anyone could die on such a golden day.
By his own system of personality classification, Benjamin Lee Shadway was primarily a past-focused man. He liked old movies better than new ones. De Niro, Streep, Gere, Field, Travolta, and Penn were of less interest to him than Bogart, Bacall, Gable, Lombard, Tracy, Hepburn, Cary Grant, William Powell, Myrna Loy. His favorite books were from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s: hard-boiled stuff by Chandler and Hammett and James M. Cain, and the early Nero Wolfe novels. His music of choice was from the swing era: Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, the incomparable Benny Goodman.
For relaxation, he built working models of locomotives from kits, and he collected all kinds of railroad memorabilia. There are no hobbies so reeking with nostalgia or more suited to a past-focused person than those dealing with trains.
He was not focused entirely on the past. At twenty-four, he had obtained a real-estate license, and by the time he was thirty-one, he had established his own brokerage. Now, at thirty-seven, he had six offices with thirty agents working under him. Part
She paused at the stereo to switch it off. The ensuing silence had an ominous quality.
In the foyer, with her hand upon the knob, she hesitated as the bell rang again. The front door had no window, no sidelights. She had been meaning to have a fish-eye security lens installed, through which she would be able to study the person on the doorstep, and now she ardently wished that she had not procrastinated. She stared at the dark oak before her, as if she might miraculously acquire the power to see through it and clearly identify the caller beyond. She was trembling.
She did not know why she faced the prospect of a visitor with such unmitigated dread.
Well, perhaps that was not exactly true. Deep down—or even not so deep—she knew why she was afraid. But she was reluctant to admit the source of her fear, as if admission would transform a horrible possibility into a deadly reality.
The bell rang again.
3
JUST VANISHED
While listening to news on the radio during the drive home from his office in Tustin, Ben Shadway heard about Dr. Eric Leben’s sudden death. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Shocked, yes. But he wasn’t saddened, even though the world had lost a potentially great man. Leben had been brilliant, indisputably a genius, but he had also been arrogant, self-important, perhaps even dangerous.
Ben mostly felt relieved. He had been afraid that Eric, finally aware that he could never regain his wife, would harm her. The man hated to lose. There was a dark rage in him usually relieved by his obsessive commitment to his work, but it might have found expression in violence if he had felt deeply humiliated by Rachael’s rejection.
Ben kept a cellular phone in his car—a meticulously restored 1956 Thunderbird, white with blue interior—and he immediately called Rachael. She had her answering machine on, and she did not pick up the receiver when he identified himself.
At the traffic light at the corner of Seventeenth Street and Newport Avenue, he hesitated, then turned left instead of continuing on to his own house in Orange Park Acres. Rachael might not be home right now, but she would get there eventually, and she might need support. He headed for her place in Placentia.
The June sun dappled the Thunderbird’s windshield and made bright rippling patterns when he passed through the inconstant shadows of overhanging trees. He switched off the news and put on a Glenn Miller tape. Speeding through the California sun, with “String of Pearls” filling the car, he found it hard to believe that anyone could die on such a golden day.
By his own system of personality classification, Benjamin Lee Shadway was primarily a past-focused man. He liked old movies better than new ones. De Niro, Streep, Gere, Field, Travolta, and Penn were of less interest to him than Bogart, Bacall, Gable, Lombard, Tracy, Hepburn, Cary Grant, William Powell, Myrna Loy. His favorite books were from the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s: hard-boiled stuff by Chandler and Hammett and James M. Cain, and the early Nero Wolfe novels. His music of choice was from the swing era: Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, Harry James, Duke Ellington, Glenn Miller, the incomparable Benny Goodman.
For relaxation, he built working models of locomotives from kits, and he collected all kinds of railroad memorabilia. There are no hobbies so reeking with nostalgia or more suited to a past-focused person than those dealing with trains.
He was not focused entirely on the past. At twenty-four, he had obtained a real-estate license, and by the time he was thirty-one, he had established his own brokerage. Now, at thirty-seven, he had six offices with thirty agents working under him. Part