Seize the Night by Dean Koontz

anybody does, I thought it wise to be prepared.
    I switched on my cell phone again and keyed in the number for the unlisted back line that went directly to the broadcasting booth at KBAY, the biggest radio station in Santa Rosita County, where Sasha Goodall was currently the disc jockey on the midnight-to-six airshift. She was also the general manager, but since the station had lost the military audience—and thus a portion of its ad revenue—with the closing of Fort Wyvern, she was not the only one of the surviving employees to have assumed double duty.
    The back line doesn’t ring in the booth but activates a flashing blue light on the wall opposite Sasha’s microphone. Evidently, she wasn’t doing on-air patter at the moment, because instead of leaving the call to the engineer, she herself picked it up: “Hey, Snowman.”
    I don’t have sole possession of the back-line number, and like many privacy-minded people, I directed the phone company to prevent my number from registering on caller ID; yet even when the call doesn’t come through her engineer, Sasha always knows if it’s me.
    “Are you spinning a tune?” I asked.
    “‘A Mess of Blues.’”
    “Elvis.”
    “Less than a minute to go.”
    “I know how you do that,” I said.
    “Do what?”
    “Say, ‘Hey, Snowman,’ before I speak a word.”
    “So how do I do it?”
    “Probably half the calls you ever answer directly on the back line are from me, so you always answer ‘Hey, Snowman.’”
    “Wrong.”
    “Right,” I insisted.
    “I never lie.”
    That was true.
    “Stay with me, baby,” she said, putting me on hold.
    While I waited for her to come back, I could hear her program over the phone line. She did a live public-service spot followed by a doughnut spot—recorded material at the front and back, with a live plug in the center—for a local car dealership.
    Her voice is husky yet silky, soft and smooth and inviting. She could sell me a time-share condominium in Hell, as long as it came with air-conditioning.
    I tried not to be entirely distracted by that voice as I listened with one ear for a creaking floorboard. Outside, the street remained deserted.
    To give herself a full five minutes with me, she set up back-to-back tracks. Sinatra’s “It Was a Very Good Year,” followed by Patsy Cline’s “I Fall to Pieces.”
    When she returned to me, I said, “Never heard such an eclectic program format before. Sinatra, Elvis, and Patsy?”
    “It’s a theme show tonight,” she said.
    “Theme?”
    “Haven’t you been listening?”
    “Busy. What theme?”
    “‘Night of the Living Dead,’” she said.
    “Stylin’.”
    “Thanks. What’s happening?”
    “Who’s your engineer this shift?”
    “Doogie.”
    Doogie Sassman is a panoramically tattooed Harley-Davidson fanatic who weighs more than three hundred pounds, twenty-five of which are accounted for by his untamed blond hair and lush silky beard. In spite of having a neck as wide as a pier caisson and a belly on which an entire family of sea gulls could gather to groom themselves, Doogie is a babe magnet who has dated some of the most beautiful women ever to walk the beaches between San Francisco and San Diego. Although he’s a good guy, with enough bearish charm to star in a Disney cartoon, Doogie’s solid success with stunningly gorgeous wahines—who are not normally won over by personality alone—is, Bobby says, one of the greatest mysteries of all time, right up there with what wiped out the dinosaurs and why tornadoes always zero in on trailer parks.
    I said, “Can you go canned for a couple of hours and let Doogie run the show from his control panel?”
    “You want a quickie?”
    “With you, I want a forever.”
    “Mr. Romance,” she said sarcastically but with secret delight.
    “We’ve got a friend needs hand-holding big time.”
    Sasha’s tone grew somber. “What now?”
    I couldn’t lay out the situation in plain words, because of the possibility that the