Free Phantoms by Dean Koontz Page B

in bars and cocktail lounges, who cheats on his wife as a matter of habit (as did Kale, by all reports), who is impulsive, who is unreliable and always late for appointments (as was Kale), whose goals are either vague or unrealistic (“Fletcher Kale? He’s a dreamer.”), who frequently overdraws his checking account and lies about money, who is quick to borrow and slow to pay back, who exaggerates, who knows he’s going to be rich one day but who has no specific plan for acquiring that wealth, who never doubts or thinks about next year, who worries only about himself and only when it’s too late. There was such a man, such a type, and Fletcher Kale was a prime example of the animal in question.
    Bryce had seen others like him. Their eyes were always flat; you couldn’t see into their eyes at all. Their faces expressed Whatever emotion seemed required, although every expression was a shade too right . When they expressed concern for anyone but themselves, you could detect a bell-clear ring of insincerity. They were not burdened by remorse, morality, love, or empathy. Often, they led lives of acceptable destruction, ruining and embittering those who loved them, shattering the lives of friends who believed them and relied on them, betraying trusts, but never quite crossing the line into outright criminal behavior. Now and then, however, such a man went too far. And because he was the type who never did things by halves, he always went much, much too far.
    Danny Kale’s small, torn, bloody body lying in a heap.
    The grayness enveloping Bryce’s mind grew thicker, until it seemed like a cold, oily smoke. To Kale, he said, “You’ve told us that your wife was a heavy marijuana smoker for two and a half years.”
    “That’s right.”
    “At my direction, the coroner looked for a few things that wouldn’t ordinarily have interested him. Like the condition of Joanna’s lungs. She wasn’t a smoker at all, let alone a pothead. Lungs were clean.”
    “I said she smoked pot, not tobacco,” Kale said.
    “Marijuana smoke and ordinary tobacco smoke both damage the lungs,” Bryce said. “In Joanna’s case, there was no damage whatsoever.”
    “But I—”
    “Quiet,” Bob Robine advised his client. He pointed a long, slim finger at Bryce, waggled it, and said, “The important thing is—was there PCP in her blood or wasn’t there?”
    “There was,” Bryce said. “It was in her blood, but she didn’t smoke it. Joanna took the PCP orally. There was still a lot of it in her stomach.”
    Robine blinked in surprise but recovered quickly. “There you go,” he said. “She took it. Who cares how?”
    “In fact,” Bryce said, “there was more of it in her stomach than in her bloodstream.”
    Kale tried to look curious, concerned, and innocent—all at the same time; even his elastic features were strained by that expression.
    Scowling, Bob Robine said, “So there was more in her stomach than in her bloodstream. So what?”
    “Angel dust is highly absorbable. Taken orally, it doesn’t remain in the stomach for very long. Now, while Joanna had swallowed enough dope to freak out, there hadn’t been time for it to affect her. You see, she took the PCP with ice cream. Which coated her stomach and retarded the absorption of the drug. During the autopsy, the coroner found partially digested chocolate fudge ice cream. So there hadn’t been time for the PCP to cause hallucinations or to send her into a berserk rage.” Bryce paused, took a deep breath. “There was chocolate fudge ice cream in Danny’s stomach, too, but no PCP. When Mr. Kale told us he came home from work early on Thursday, he didn’t mention bringing an afternoon treat for the family. A half-gallon of chocolate fudge ice cream.”
    Fletcher Kale’s face had gone blank. At last, he seemed to have used up his collection of human expressions.
    Bryce said, “We found a partly empty container of ice cream in Kale’s freezer. Chocolate fudge. What I think