Free Darkfall by Dean Koontz Page A

Rebecca would come into the open more often. Perhaps, someday, if he had enough patience, the other Rebecca might even replace the ice maiden altogether.
    As usual, however, the change in her was short-lived. She turned away from the window and said, “Better go talk with the M.E. and see what he’s found.”
    “Yeah,” Jack said. “And let’s try to stay glum-faced from now on, Chandler. Let’s show them we really do have the proper respect for death.”
    She smiled at him, but it was only a vague smile now.
    She left the room.
    He followed.
    II
    As Nayva Rooney stepped into the hall, she closed the door to the kids’ bedroom behind her, so that the rat-or whatever it was-couldn’t scurry back in there.
    She searched for the intruder in Jack Dawson’s bedroom, found nothing, and closed the door on that one, too.
    She carefully inspected the kitchen, even looked in cupboards. No rat. There were two doors in the kitchen; one led to the hall, the other to the dining alcove. She closed them both, sealing the critter out of that room, as well.
    Now, it simply had to be hiding in the dining alcove or the living room.
    But it wasn’t.
    Nayva looked everywhere. She couldn’t find it.
    Several times she stopped searching just so she could hold her breath and listen. Listen… Not a sound.
    Throughout the search, in all the rooms, she hadn’t merely looked for the elusive little beast itself but also for a hole in a partition or in the baseboard, a breach big enough to admit a largish rat. She discovered nothing of that sort.
    At last, she stood in the archway between the living room and the hall. Every lamp and ceiling light was blazing. She looked around, frowning, baffled.
    Where had it gone? It still had to be here-didn’t it?
    Yes. She was sure of it. The thing was still here.
    She had the eerie feeling that she was being watched.
    III
    The assistant medical examiner on the case was Ira Goldbloom, who looked more Swedish than Jewish. He was tall, fair-skinned, with hair so blond it was almost white; his eyes were blue with a lot of gray speckled through them.
    Jack and Rebecca found him on the second floor, in the master bedroom. He had completed his examination of the bodyguard’s corpse in the kitchen, had taken a look at Vince Vastagliano, and was getting several instruments out of his black leather case.
    “For a man with a weak stomach,” he said, “I’m in the wrong line of work.”
    Jack saw that Goldbloom did appear paler than usual.
    Rebecca said, “We figure these two are connected with the Charlie Novello homicide on Sunday and the Coleson murder yesterday. Can you make the link for us?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Only maybe?”
    “Well, yeah, there’s a chance we can tie them together,” Goldbloom said. “The number of wounds… the mutilation factor… there are several similarities. But let’s wait for the autopsy report.”
    Jack was surprised. “But what about the wounds? Don’t they establish a link?”
    “The number, yes. Not the type. Have you looked at these wounds?”
    “At a glance,” Jack said, “they appear to be bites of some kind. Rat bites, we thought.”
    “But we figured they were just obscuring the real wounds, the stab wounds,” Rebecca said.
    Jack said, “Obviously, the rats came along after the men were already dead. Right?”
    “Wrong,” Goldbloom said. “So far as I can tell from a preliminary examination, there aren’t any stab wounds in either victim. Maybe tissue bisections will reveal wounds of that nature underneath some of the bites, but I doubt it. Vastagliano and his bodyguard were savagely bitten. They bled to death from those bites. The bodyguard suffered at least three torn arteries, major vessels: the external carotid, the left brachial, and the femoral artery in the left thigh. Vastagliano looks like he was chewed up even worse.”
    Jack said, “But rats aren’t that aggressive, damnit. You just don’t get attacked by packs of rats in your own