Free Face by Dean Koontz Page A

over the gate.
    “They came by Federal Express, so you know who sent them.”
    “No. The return addresses were fake. They were dropped off at different mom-and-pop mailbox shops that collect for FedEx and UPS. The sender paid cash.”
    “How much mail does Channing get a week?”
    “Maybe five thousand pieces. But almost all of it is sent to the studio where it’s known he has offices. A publicity firm reviews it and responds. His home address isn’t a secret, but it’s not widely known, either.”
    In the envelope were high-resolution computer printouts of six digital photographs taken in Ethan’s study, the first of which showed a small jar standing on a white cloth. Beside the jar lay the lid. Spread across the cloth were what had been the contents of the jar: twenty-two beetles with black-spotted orange shells.
    “Ladybugs?” Hazard asked.
    “The entomological name is
Hippodamia convergens,
of the family Coccinellidae. Not that I think it matters, but I looked it up.”
    Hazard’s shrewd expression spoke clearly enough without words, but he said, “You’re stumped worse than a quadruple amputee.”
    “This guy thinks I’m Batman, he’s the Riddler.”
    “Why twenty-two bugs? Is the number significant?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “They alive when you received them?” Hazard asked.
    “All dead. Whether they were alive when he sent them, I don’t know, but they looked like they’d been dead for a while. The shells were intact, but the more delicate bug parts were withered, crumbly.”
    In the second photo, a collection of different, spirally coiled, light brown shells were canted at angles in a gray pile of sludge that had been emptied from a black box onto a sheet of waxed paper.
    “Ten dead snails,” Ethan said. “Well, actually, two were alive but feeble when I opened the box.”
    “That’s a fragrance Chanel won’t be bottling.”
    Hazard paused to fork up some seafood tagine.
    The third photo was of a small, clear-glass, screw-top jar. The label had been removed, but the lid indicated that the container had once held pickle relish.
    Because the photograph wasn’t clear enough to reveal the murky contents of the jar, Ethan said, “Floating in formaldehyde were these ten pieces of translucent tissue with a pale pinkish tint. Tubelike structures. Hard to describe. Like tiny exotic jellyfish.”
    “You took ’em to a lab?”
    “Yeah. When they gave me the analysis, they also gave me a weird look. What I had in the jar were foreskins.”
    Hazard’s jaws locked in midchew, as if the seafood tagine had hardened like a dental mold.
    “Ten foreskins from grown men, not infants,” Ethan amplified.
    After chewing mechanically, not with his former relish, and after swallowing with a grimace, Hazard said, “Ouch. How many grown men get themselves circumcised?”
    “They’re not standing in line for it,” Ethan agreed.

CHAPTER 9
    C ORKY LAPUTA THRIVED IN THE RAIN.
    He wore a long shiny yellow slicker and a droopy yellow rain hat. He was as bright as a dandelion.
    The slicker had many inside pockets, deep and weatherproof.
    In his tall black rubber boots, two layers of socks kept his feet pleasantly warm.
    He yearned for thunder.
    He ached for lightning.
    Storms in southern California, usually lacking crash and flash, were too quiet for his taste.
    He liked the wind, however. Hissing, hooting, a champion of disorder, it lent a sting to the rain and promised chaos.
    Ficus and pine trees shivered, shuddered. Palm fronds clicked and clattered.
    Stripped leaves whirled in ragged green conjurations, short-lived demons that blew down into gutters.
    Eventually, clogging drain grills, the leaves would be the cause of flooded streets, stalled cars, delayed ambulances, and many small but welcome miseries.
    Here in the blustery, dripping midday, Corky walked a charming residential neighborhood in Studio City. Sowing disorder.
    He didn’t live here. He never would.
    This was a working-class neighborhood,