Free Winter Moon by Dean Koontz Page B

that word of Jack’s improved condition was already on the grapevine.
    More acutely than ever, she was aware of how completely she had come to think of herself as part of the police family rather than as an Angeleno or a Californian. It hadn’t always been that way. But it was difficult to maintain a spiritual allegiance to a city swimming in drugs and pornography, shattered by gang violence, steeped in Hollywood-style cynicism, and controlled by politicians as venal and demagogic as they were incompetent. Destructive social forces were fracturing the city—and the country—into clans, and even as she took comfort in her police family, she recognized the danger of descending into an us-against-them view of life.
    Alma was in the kitchen with her sister, Faye, and two other women, all of whom were busy at culinary tasks. Chopping vegetables, peeling fruit, grating cheese. Alma was rolling out pie dough on a marble slab, working at it vigorously. The kitchen was filled with the delicious aromas of cakes baking.
    When Heather touched Alma’s shoulder, the woman looked up from the pie dough, and her eyes were as blank as those of a mannequin. Then she blinked and wiped her flour-coated hands on her apron. “Heather, you didn’t have to come—you should’ve stayed with Jack.”
    They embraced, and Heather said, “I wish there was something I could do, Alma.”
    “So do I, girl. So do I.”
    As they leaned back from each other, Heather said, “What’s all this cooking?”
    “We’re going to have the funeral tomorrow afternoon. No delay. Get the hard part over with. A lot of family and friends will be by tomorrow after the services. Got to feed them.”
    “Others will do this for you.”
    “I’d rather help,” Alma said. “What else am I going to do? Sit and think? I sure don’t want to think. If I don’t stay busy, keep my mind occupied, then I’m just going to go stark raving crazy. You know what I mean?”
    Heather nodded. “Yes. I know.”
    “The word is,” Alma said, “Jack’s going to be in the hospital, then rehab, for maybe months, and you and Toby are going to be alone. Are you ready for that?”
    “We’ll see him every day. We’re in this together.”
    “That’s not what I mean.”
    “Well, I know it’s going to be lonely but—”
    “That’s not what I mean, either. Come on, I want to show you something.”
    Heather followed Alma into the master bedroom, and Alma closed the door. “Luther always worried about me being alone if anything happened to him, so he made sure I knew how to take care of myself.”
    Sitting on the vanity bench, Heather watched with amazement as Alma retrieved a variety of weapons from concealment.
    She got a pistol-grip shotgun from under the bed. “This is the best home-defense weapon you can get. Twelve-gauge. Powerful enough to knock down some creep high on PCP, thinks he’s Superman. You don’t have to be able to aim perfectly, just point it and pull the trigger, and the spread will get him.” She placed the shotgun on the beige chenille bedspread.
    From the back of a closet Alma fetched a heavy, wicked-looking rifle with a vented barrel, a scope, and a large magazine. “Heckler and Koch HK91 assault rifle,” she said. “You can’t buy these in California so easy any more.” She put it on the bed beside the shotgun.
    She opened a nightstand drawer and plucked out a formidable handgun. “Browning nine-millimeter semiautomatic. There’s one like it in the other nightstand.”
    Heather said, “My God, you’ve got an arsenal here.”
    “Just different guns for different uses.”
    Alma Bryson was five feet eight but by no means an Amazon. She was attractive, willowy, with delicate features, a swanlike neck, and wrists almost as thin and fragile as those of a ten-year-old girl. Her slender, graceful hands appeared incapable of controlling some of the heavy weaponry she possessed, but she was evidently proficient with all of it.
    Getting up from the