Last Light (Novella) by Dean Koontz Page A

pretty-boy feeb who imagined he was her guardian.
    One of the many things at which Rainer excelled was analysis. Of data. Of situations. Of people.
    He would have become the winningest chess player in history if he had been interested enough to learn the rules of the game. Chess looked boring. Too slow, no sex, no killing.
    * * *
    Pogo and Makani sat at the table in the gazebo to enjoy the sunset. The rope lighting under the encircling handrail and around the perimeter of the ceiling was hardly noticeable at the moment, but with nightfall, it would cast a warm glow over them, so that their location would be obvious.
    On the table stood two bottles of Corona. They had not drunk any beer, and they would not until this was over. The gazebo was a stage. The bottles were props. They intended that Rainer Sparks should interpret their demeanor as either reckless confidence or fatalistic indifference, though it was neither.
    Bob paced around the gazebo, pausing now and then to stick his snout between balusters and sample the thousands of scents that the sea and the city offered him. He was
not
a prop.
    Part of the day had been spent encouraging the Labrador to smell the threshold at the side door to the garage, by which Sparks had evidently gained entry, the alarm keypad outside the laundry room, which he had somehow overridden, the carpet of the guest bedroom, the blanket and sheets, and the clothes that Makani had been wearing when he had forced her facedown onto the bed and had lain atop her, pressing her into the smothering pillow. Initially, Bob wagged and capered and grinned, seeming to think that they were teaching him a new game, but soon he began to take the instruction seriously. He apparently found Sparks’s scent complex, disturbing, and endlessly fascinating.
    A spectacular sunset required scattered clouds to provide reflection, and the day’s end was furnished with a perfect mix.
    Feathery cirrus at the highest altitude. Cirrostratus farther down. And nearest the sea, a procession of puffy stratocumulus clouds, like unsheared sheep, wandered slowly northward.
    Not sure if they were yet under observation by the murderer, Makani pretended to take a sip of her beer and then said, “When this is over, we need to do something special for Bob.”
    “We’ll give him a special day,” Pogo said. “Start out cutting up a couple frankfurters in his morning kibble.”
    “A long walk in Corona del Mar, the Village. He loves all the smells there, the other dogs out walking.”
    “Some Frisbee at the dog park.”
    “Lunch at a restaurant that takes dogs on the patio.”
    “Go over to Muttropolis, buy some cool new toys.”
    “The dog beach. A long nap on a blanket, in the sun.”
    “Get him on the board. He’s more an inlander than a surf mongrel, but he’s game.”
    “Shut your face,” Makani said. “He’s no inlander. He’s born to thrash the waves.”
    “If you say so. I haven’t seen him channeling Kahuna yet.”
    The sinking sun phased from lemon-yellow to orange, and the lower clouds caught fire first, though soon the blaze laddered up to higher elevations.
    Makani said, “I’m afraid.”
    “Who wouldn’t be?”
    “You seem way cool.”
    Pogo said, “I’ve been thinking I might need an adult diaper.”
    * * *
    The heavens were as full of fire as Hell when Rainer parked three blocks from the Watkins house.
    He waited in the GL550, listening to music, as night crept in from the east and the sun went to its daily death and the bloody light drained down the sky to the horizon.
    Currently, he was sampling symphonic music. Wagner.
    His life was so eventful, so epic, that he felt it needed theme music. He was a demigod, and demigods didn’t stride through their days without a soundtrack.
    He had tried gangsta rap, but it didn’t seem important enough.
    Beethoven was too spiritual. Glenn Miller too ebullient.
    The movie soundtrack for
The Terminator
had possibilities, as did certain tunes from that old TV