Winter Moon [067-037-5.0]
By: Dean R. Koontz
Synopsis:
The #1 bestselling author of Dragon Tears returns with a thriller. A
Hollywood director goes on a killing spree in the streets of L.A. while
an old caretaker on a lonely Montana ranch witnesses a chilling
vision.
Connecting both incidents is policeman Jack McGarvey, who is drawn into
a terrifying confrontation with something unearthly.
Ballantine Books;
ISBN: 0345386108
Copyright 1995
PART ONE.
The City of the Dying Dy.
Beaches, surfers, California girls. Wind scented with fabulous
dreams.
Bougainvillea, groves of oranges. Stars are born, everything gleams.
A weather change. Shadows fall. New scent upon the wind--decay.
Cocaine, Uzis, drive-by shootings. Death is a banker. Everyone
pays.
the Book of Counted Sorrows.
CHAPTER ONE.
Death was driving an emerald-green Lexus. It pulled off the street,
passed the four self-service pumps, and stopped in one of the two
full-service lanes.
Standing in front of the station, Jack McGarvey noticed the car but not
the driver. Even under a bruised and swollen sky that hid the sun, the
Lexus gleamed like a jewel, a sleek and lustrous machine. The windows
were darkly tinted, so he couldn't have seen the driver clearly even if
he had tried.
As a thirty-two-year-old cop with a wife, a child, and a big mortgage,
Jack had no prospects of buying an expensive luxury car, but he didn't
envy the owner of the Lexus. He often remembered his dad's admonition
that envy was mental theft. If you coveted another man's possessions,
Dad said, then you should be willing to take on his responsibilities,
heartaches, and troubles along with his money.
He stared at the car for a moment, admiring it as he might a priceless
painting at the Getty Museum or a first edition of a James M. Cain
novel in a pristine dust jacket--with no strong desire to possess it,
taking pleasure merely from the fact of its existence.
In a society that often seemed to be spinning toward anarchy, where
ugliness and decay made new inroads every day, his spirits were lifted
by any proof that the hands of men and women were capable of producing
things of beauty and quality. The Lexus, of course, was an import,
designed and manufactured on foreign shores, however, it was the entire
human species that seemed damned, not just his countrymen, and evidence
of standards and dedication was heartening regardless of where he found
it.
An attendant in a gray uniform hurried out of the office and approached
the gleaming car, and Jack gave his full attention, once more, to
Hassam Arkadian.
"My station is an island of cleanliness in a filthy sea, an eye of
sanity in a storm of madness," Arkadian said, speaking earnestly,
unaware of sounding melodramatic.
He was slender, about forty, with dark hair and a neatly trimmed
mustache. The creases in the legs of his gray cotton work pants were
knife-sharp, and his matching work shirt and jacket were immaculate.
"I had the aluminum siding and the brick treated with a new sealant,"
he said, indicating the facade of the service station with a sweep of
his arm. "Paint won't stick to it. Not even metallic paint. Wasn't
cheap. But now when these gang kids or crazy-stupid taggers come
around at night and spray their trash all over the walls, we scrub it
off, scrub it right off the next morning."
With his meticulous grooming, singular intensity, and quick slender
hands, Arkadian might have been a surgeon about to begin his workday in
an operating theater. He was, instead, the owner-operator of the
service station.
"Do you know," he said incredulously, "there are professors who have
written books on the value of graffiti? The value of graffiti? The
value?"
"They call it street art," said Luther Bryson, Jack's partner.
Arkadian gazed up disbelievingly at the towering black cop. "You think
what these punks do is art?"
"Hey, no, not me," Luther said.
At six three and two hundred ten pounds, he was three inches taller
than Jack and forty pounds heavier, with maybe eight inches and seventy
pounds on Arkadian. Though he was a good partner and a good man, his
granite face seemed incapable of the flexibility required for a
smile.
His deeply set eyes were unwaveringly forthright. My Malcolm X glare,
he called it. With or without his uniform, Luther Bryson could
intimidate anyone from the Pope to a purse snatcher.
He wasn't using the glare now, wasn't trying to intimidate Arkadian,
was in complete agreement with him. "Not me. I'm just saying that's
what the candy-ass crowd calls it. Street art."
The service-station owner said, "These are professors. Educated men
and women.
Doctors of art and literature. They have the benefit of an education
my parents couldn't afford to give me, but they're stupid. There's no
other word for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid." His expressive face
revealed the frustration and anger that Jack encountered with
increasing frequency in the City of Angels. "What fools do
universities produce these days?"
Arkadian had labored to make his operation special. Bracketing the
