Free One Door From Heaven by Dean Koontz Page A

calligraphy. "Mr. Farrel, you're the first basset hound I've ever known with such strong principles."
        "Well, maybe I've padded your bill to make up for not keeping that ten thousand," he said, though he had done nothing of the sort, and though he knew that she was not for an instant disposed to take seriously his suggestion of dishonesty.
        He was dismayed by his inability to accept her compliment with grace, and he wondered-though not with any analytic passion- why he felt obliged to slander himself.
        Shaking her head, gentle amusement still written on her face, she returned her attention to the checkbook.
        From the woman's demeanor and a quality of mystery in her smile, Noah suspected that she understood him better than he knew himself. This suspicion didn't inspire contemplation, and he busied himself switching off the TV and closing the doors on the entertainment center while she finished writing the check.
        While Noah watched her from the doorway, Constance Tavenall left the presidential suite, carrying the congressman's doom in the Neiman Marcus bag. The weight of her husband's betrayals didn't pull the lady's plumb-bob spine even one millimeter out of true. Like a sylph she had come; and after she turned the corner at the far end of the hallway, disappearing into the elevator alcove, the path that she had followed seemed to be charged with some supernatural energy, as the aura of an elemental spirit might linger after its visitation.
        While the red and then the purple dust of twilight settled, Noah remained in the three-bedroom suite, roaming room to room, gazing out a series of windows at the millions of points of light that blossomed across the peopled plains and hills, the shimmering dazzle of an electric garden. Although some loved this place as though it were Eden re-created, everything here was inferior to the original Garden in all ways but one: If you counted snakes an asset, then not merely a single serpent lurked within this foliage, but a wealth of vipers, all schooled in the knowledge of darkness, well practiced in deception.
        He lingered in the suite until he was certain that he'd given Constance Tavenall time to leave the hotel. In case one of the congressman's minions coiled in a car outside, waiting to follow the woman, Noah must avoid being seen.
        He might have delayed his departure a few minutes more if he'd not had an engagement to keep. Visiting hours at the Haven of the Lonesome and the Long Forgotten were drawing toward a close, and a damaged angel waited there for him.

Chapter 7
        
        SO HER BROTHER was on Mars, her hapless mother was on dope, and her stepfather was on a murderous rampage. Leilani's eccentric tales were acceptable conversation over dinner in an asylum; but in spite of how looney life could sometimes be here in Casa Geneva, and though the relentless August heat withered common sense and wilted reason, Micky decided that they were setting a new standard for irrationality in this trailer where genteel daffiness and screwball self-delusion had heretofore been the closest they had come to madness.
        "So who did your stepfather kill?" she asked nevertheless, playing Leilani's curious game if for no reason other than it was more amusing than talking about a miserable day of job-hunting.
        "Yes, dear, who did he whack?" Aunt Gen asked with bright-eyed interest. Perhaps her occasional confusion of real-life experiences with the fantasies of the cinema had prepared her to relate to the girl's Hitchcockian-Spielbergian biography with less skepticism than the narrative aroused in Micky.
        Without hesitation, Leilani said, "Four elderly women, three elderly men, a thirty-year-old mother of two, a rich gay-nightclub owner in San Francisco, a seventeen-year-old high-school football star in Iowa-and a six-year-old boy in a wheelchair not far from here, in a town called Tustin."
        The