Shattered by Dean Koontz Page B

received no other answer.
        Resignedly Coffey went to Pulham's cruiser, bent and stared into the passenger's window. With the sun down, the car was full of shadows.
        He opened the door. The interior light came on, weak and insufficient because the dome flasher had nearly drained the battery. Still, dim as it was, it illuminated the blackening blood and the body jammed rudely into the space before the front seat.
        “Bastards,” Coffey said quietly. “Bastards, bastards, bastards.” His voice rose with each repetition. “Cop killers,” he told the onrushing darkness. “We'll get the sons of bitches.”
        
        Their room at the Lazy Time Motel was large and comfortable. The walls were an off-white color, the ceiling a couple of feet higher than it would be in any motel built since the end of the fifties. The furniture was heavy and utilitarian, though not spartan by any means. The two easy chairs were well padded and upholstered, and the desk, if surfaced with plastic, gave plenty of knee room and working space. The two double beds were firm, the sheets crisp and redolent of soap and softener. The scarred mahogany nightstand between the beds held a Gideon Bible and a telephone.
        Doyle and Colin sat on separate beds, facing each other across the narrow walk space between them. By mutual agreement, Colin was the first to talk to his sister. He held the receiver in both hands. His thick eyeglasses had slipped down his nose and now rested precariously on the very tip of it, though the boy did not seem to notice. “We were followed all the way from Philadelphia! “ he told Courtney as soon as she came on the line.
        Alex grimaced.
        “A man in a Chevrolet van,” Colin said. “No. We couldn't get a look at him. He was much too smart for that.” He told her all about their imaginary FBI man. When he tired of that, he told her how he had won a dollar from Doyle. He listened to her for a moment, laughed. “I tried, but he wouldn't make any more bets.”
        Listening to the boy's half of the conversation, Doyle was momentarily jealous of the warm, intimate relationship between Courtney and Colin. They were entirely at ease with each other, and neither one needed to pretend-or disguise-his love. Then the envy passed as Doyle realized his own relationship with Courtney was much the same-and that he and the boy would soon be as close as they both were to the woman.
        “She says I'm costing you too much,” Colin said, passing the receiver to Doyle.
        He took it. “Courtney?”
        “Hi, darling.” Her voice was rich and full. She might have been beside him instead of at the other end of twenty-five hundred miles of telephone wire.
        “Are you okay?”
        “Lonely,” she said.
        “Not for long. How's the house coming?”
        “The carpets are all down.”
        “No hassles?”
        “Not until the bill arrives,” she said.
        “Painters?”
        “Been and gone.”
        “Then you just have the furniture deliveries to worry about,” he said.
        “I can't wait for our bedroom suite to get here.”
        “Every bride's greatest concern,” he said.
        “That's not what I mean, sexist. It's just that this damn sleeping bag gives me a backache.”
        He laughed.
        “And,” she said, “have you ever tried camping out in the middle of an empty, lushly carpeted twenty-by-twenty master bedroom? It's eerie.”
        “Maybe we should have all flown out,” Alex said. “Maybe a furnitureless house would be easier to endure if you had company.”
        “No,” she said. “I'm okay. I just like to gripe. How are you and Colin getting along?”
        “Famously,” he said, watching Colin as the boy pushed his glasses up on his pug nose.
        “What about this guy following you in the Automover?” she asked.
        “It's nothing.”
        “One of Colin's games?”
        “That's all, he assured