Free Chase by Dean Koontz

that cupboard.’ He did not look at Chase; he seemed to be embarrassed both by
    Tuppinger's obvious spying and by his own inability to sympathize properly with another human being. He said, ‘You look thirty pounds underweight, son.’
    ‘Get out,’ Chase said. He did not want to shout and draw Mrs Fiedling's attention, but he could not think of any other way to make Wallace listen to him.
    Wallace was not ready to leave yet. He was searching for some way to make his departure seem more warranted, and he looked as if he might tell Chase how understaffed they were down at police headquarters. He avoided that cliché, though, and said, ‘No matter what happened to you over there, in Vietnam, you aren't going to forget about it with whisky. Don't drink so much.’ Before Chase, infuriated at the homespun psychoanalysis, could order him out again, Wallace left with Tuppinger at his heels.
    Chase slammed the door after them, went to the cupboard and poured himself a drink. He was alone again. But he was used to that.
     

Five
     
     
    Thursday evening at seven-thirty, having successfully evaded Mrs Fiedling on his way out of the house, Chase got in his Mustang and drove toward Kanackaway Ridge Road, aware and yet unaware of his destination. He drove well within the speed limits through Ashside and the outlying districts, but floored the accelerator at the bottom of the mountain road, taking the wide curves on the far outside, the white guardrails slipping past so quickly and so close on the right that they blurred into one continuous wall of pale planking, the cables between them like black scrawls on the phantom boards.
    On the top of the ridge highway, he parked at the same spot he had been on Monday night, shut off the motor and leaned back in his seat, listening to the soft wind. He realized at once that he should never have stopped, that he should have kept moving at all costs. As long as he was moving, he did not have to wonder what he was going to do next, for he could easily lose himself in the pace of his driving. Stopped, he was perplexed, frustrated.
    He opened the door and got out of the car, uncertain what he expected to find out here that would be of any help to him. A good hour or so of daylight remained in which to search the area where the Chevy had been parked. Even so, the police would have combed and recombed it far more thoroughly than he ever could. At least, out of the car, he could walk about, move, and therefore stop thinking unpleasant thoughts.
    He strolled along the park edge and then across to the row of brambles where the Chevy had sat. The sod was well tramped, littered with half-smoked cigarette butts, candy wrappers and balled-up pages from a reporter's note pad. He kicked at the debris, scanning the mashed grass, and he felt silly. He might just as well attempt to estimate the number of sightseers who had flocked to the murder scene as to try hunting for a clue in all this mess. The results would probably be more rewarding, if esoteric.
    Next, he walked to the railing at the cliff's edge and leaned against it, staring down the jumbled wall of rock at the tangled patch of brambles and locust trees below. When he raised his head, he could see the entire city spread along the valley, but especially the green copper plating of the courthouse dome.
    He was still looking at that corroded curve of metal when he heard a peculiar whining sound and felt the rail beneath his hands shiver. Looking to either side, seeing no one, he was about to dismiss it when he heard and felt the same thing again. This time, leaning over the precipice, he recognized the source: a bullet slapping the iron pipe and ricocheting away.
    With a quickness honed in combat, he whirled and fell back from the rail and the rim of the cliff. As he dropped to the ground, he evaluated the parkland nearby and chose the nearest decorative wall of brambles as the most likely point of safety. He rolled toward them and came up against the