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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Dean Koontz
Read between
August 25 - September 14, 2021
Text copyright © 2019 by The Koontz Living Trust All rights reserved.
eISBN: 9781542016230
1
Valjean Jones is only fifty-eight years old, but she looks as if she’s been on Social Security since it was first instituted.
“I haven’t seen the bitch in twenty years,” Mrs. Jones reports. “You mean your daughter, Lucia?” “Who else we talkin’ about? You don’t seem too damn good at this, Mr.—what’d you say your name was?” “Shepherd Shaw.” It’s a special name, one she’s heard before, long ago. She should remember it, respond to it, but she doesn’t. “What insurance company you say you investigate for, Mr. Shaw?” The man who isn’t Shepherd Shaw, who is nameless, literally Nameless, tells another lie. “Nifelheim Casualty and Life. It’s owned by Lloyds of London.”
“There’s a ten-million-dollar life policy on her most recent spouse,” Nameless lies. Lucia is too smart to risk life insurance on a spouse. She marries them when they’re so rich that life insurance is superfluous. “We would make a generous settlement with anyone who could help us prove foul play.”
“You’re crazy if you pay the greedy, stingy bitch two cents. She killed him sure as she killed the first two.” Nameless sits forward on the sofa. “How do you know that?” “It was her heartfelt plan when she left here at sixteen.” “What plan?” “To marry herself a rich man, get herself to be the only one in his will, and then kill the shit out of him.”
“It’s also a moral issue, Mrs. Jones. If your daughter is killing men for money—” “Money is second,” the mother interrupts. “She kills them first ’cause she hates men the way the pope hates Satan, hates them all.” “How do you know this?” “Because I taught her good.” “You taught Lucia to hate men, all men? Why?”
“What happened to your husband, Mrs. Jones?” Without hesitation, she says, “Killed the sucker. Don’t harm me none to say it. That was thirty-two years ago. All I’m givin’ you is hearsay. Means nothin’ in court. Anyway, I carry a chicory root in one pocket at all times.” His puzzlement seems to exasperate her. “To ensure good luck, of course, and guard against the evil of men.” “How did you kill him?” She smiles. “With a hammer.” “How’d you get away with it?” “Claimed self-defense ’cause of how he beat me.” “He beat you?” Her smoked face twists in scorn. “Hell, no, not that wuss. We lived in a
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The decaying trailer park is set on a low rise overlooking the iron-gray Gulf of Mexico. Water views aren’t exclusively for the rich, and certainly not just for the virtuous.
2
However, the visitor is a pleasant-faced woman with a padded manila envelope. “Shepherd Shaw wants you to have this.” She hands it to Valjean. “Have a nice day.” She walks away.
The envelope contains another five thousand dollars in cash.
The visitor smiles. “No strings attached, Mrs. Jones. We all want you to have it, all of us at Nifelheim Casualty and Life.”
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“What about ghosts?” “Oh, she believes in them. She’ll go fifty miles out of her way to avoid driving past a graveyard. I hope my father comes back for her. If that old bastard decides to haunt the shit out of her, a thousand exorcists won’t be able to get rid of him.”
5
He keeps the .45 close at hand, because he’s seen a vision of Lucia Jones Stossel Roskin Rickenbah in which she eviscerates him with a knife.
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Then a realization brings a smile. There are more things in heaven and earth . . . than are dreamt of in your philosophy, and Nameless himself is one of them.
