Free The Moonlit Mind (Novella): A Tale of Suspense by Dean Koontz Page A

the four sixes yet, one after the other?”
    “Not yet.”
    She shakes her head. “You’re a strange one, boy.”
    Smiling, he says, “Not just me.”
    With the small bankroll and the eight gold coins that she had when she fled from that house of murder, Amity lived many months on the streets. She dressed tough, acted tough, and over time she
became
tough.…
    In that year, she learns many things, one of which is how to fabricate a life. Any kind of dope is available, and fake but high-quality ID is no more difficult to score than pot or coke. She has no interest in drugs, but she is determined to make Amity Onawa as real as Daisy Jean Sims once was.
    In time the police conclude that the missing Daisy must be dead, and she is dead to Amity, as well. Dwelling on memories of her former life is too painful to endure—and dangerous. Her psychic moment with the scissors sometimes recurs in dreams, and she remainsconvinced that any contact with relatives or even old friends will be the death of her
and
them.
    After six months of sleeping in a bedroll—in parks, in church basements, under bridges—she uses a bogus but convincing driver’s license and Social Security card to rent a tiny studio apartment with a half-kitchen and a minuscule bath. She needs to shower every day and to wear fresh clothes if she is to find a job and keep it.
    In the current topsy-turvy world, jobs are scarce; and if you know how to game the system, the dole pays better than work. Most street types she’s met are grifters, and their favorite mark is one program or another of the Department of Health and Human Services, from which they finesse more than a single income stream.
    Amity, however, is a wide-awake girl. She knows that dependency is another word for slavery. Besides, in the long run, counting on Uncle Sam to see you through is like expecting to find sure footing across a sea of quicksand.
    On her first job, she spends three hours a day cleaning and chopping vegetables in a joint serving pretty good Mediterranean food, followed by three hours of busing lunch-hour tables. Soon she is promoted. She makes and plates salads and performs a host of other culinary chores.
    When she applies for an opening at Eleanor’s in Broderick’s Department Store, she is hired at once. She is only fifteen, but her ID says that she’s six months short of her eighteenth birthday. After her time on the streets, she has an air of been-there, and she can look anyone in the eye longer than they can meet her stare.
    In time she comes to see that Broderick’s potentially offers more than a job. It can be also a home, and more than a home, a haven.
    Each employee has a personal locker with a combination dial in either the men’s or women’s change room on the ground floor. Here she keeps her purse and, in cold and inclement weather, her coat, scarf, gloves, rubber boots. Many keep their bag lunches in their lockers, but as a benefit of being on the staff of Eleanor’s, Amity receives her lunch free in the kitchen at the end of the noon rush.
    Over several days, Amity brings a complete array of toiletries to stash in her locker. A hair dryer. A few T-shirts and sweaters. Two pairs of jeans. Socks, underwear. She keeps everything folded and out of sight in a couple of carryalls, so that when she opens her locker in front of others, it doesn’t look like a closet.
    Each day, at the end of her shift, she appears to leave, but she in fact deceives. She knows scores of places in this immense building where she can hide until Broderick’s closes for the night and the last departing guard has set the perimeter alarm.
    The first-arriving employees—stockroom guys, guards, cleaning crew, and some front-office types—clock in at 7:30 A.M. to prepare for a 10:00 opening. But for the ten previous hours, Amity has the department store to herself. Ten hours of blissful solitude and security. On Sundays and holidays, of course, this magnificent temple to disposable income