Death Dream (57 page)

CHAPTER 44

Susan gripped the wheel with both hands, staring straight ahead as she drove through the deepening shadows of evening. There were only a few other cars on the streets, the going-home rush was over.

She saw the turn-off that led to Pine Lake Gardens and drove past it without a second thought.
If Angie or Dan or anybody else phones home I'll get the call here in the car. I don't need to be home.

She headed for Kyle Muncrief's house.

The police had already checked there, she knew. But Susan wanted to see for herself, wanted to be doing something.
If I just go home and sit by the phone I'll go crazy
, she thought.

Maybe I should go to the hospital
, she thought.
Or at least phone and see if Dan's still there.
But she could not bring herself to touch the telephone. She glanced down at it, on the console between the front seats.

Ring, damn you! Ring and let it be Angie telling me she's all right.

The phone remained silent.

Susan turned onto the entry road for Muncrief's housing development. The Subaru's headlights picked out the sign, Fairway Estates, and the little stucco security post with the barrier gate blocking the road. She pulled to a stop.

The blue-uniformed security guard looked up from the television show she was watching, slid the glass door open and stuck her head out.

Susan fumbled in her purse and pulled out her red ParaReality security card.

"Susan Santorini to see Mr. Muncrief," she said to the guard.

The guard nodded and ducked back inside to check her computer screen. Then she came back outside.

"Mr. Muncrief isn't in," she said.

Susan had expected that. "I know. I work for him. He wanted me to drop off some computer programs that he's got to have tonight. Big meeting tomorrow and he's got to look over this stuff before it starts."

The guard looked puzzled more than suspicious. Susan waggled her ID card. "See?" she said, holding it out to her. "If he doesn't get these disks tonight I'm going to be in a peck of trouble."

"But he's not home."

"He told me to drop them into his mail slot."

"I can take them and hold them here," the guard said. "I'll leave a message on his phone."

Susan said, "He told me he wants them in his mail box by the time he gets home. If they're not there I could lose my job."

The guard looked at Susan, then at Philip sleeping in the right-hand seat. Then she smiled. "Well, you don't look much tike burglars. Okay, go on through."

"Thanks!"

The guard went back into her cubicle and her TV show. The barrier arm swung up, and Susan drove slowly down the dark tree-lined curving street.

I'm glad I'm not black
, she thought.
That's all they really worry about: blacks or anybody else who looks poor.

The big houses all looked pretty much alike, especially at night with nothing but the far-spaced street lamps lighting the curved roadway. But Susan recognized Muncrief's house from the staff party he had given weeks earlier. Besides, all the other houses were lit within; Muncrief's was totally dark.

Susan swung the station wagon onto the driveway. The headlights swept past a mailbox at the curb, dark gray with the house number painted in white on it and below that the name, Muncrief.

The house was not totally dark, after all.. There was a single dim light glowing faintly in the front foyer through the frosted panes lining either side of the double front doors. Susan braked to a stop in front of the garage doors. She looked down at Philip; the baby was sleeping peacefully.
Good.
She got out of the car quietly and went to the front door. She tried the doorknob. Locked. The garage was closed, but by crawling up on the warm hood of her Subaru she could peek through the window at the top of the garage door.

Totally dark inside. She could see nothing.

She walked around to the back. The screen door by the pool was also locked. There was no other way in, she saw.

Susan started back for the car. I ought to go home. I ought to try to find where Dan is; he must be frantic with worry about us by now. And get Phil into his bed.

The baby seemed to be sleeping soundly enough in his car seat, though. Susan opened the passenger-side door and unhooked Phil's car seat from the safety belt. She knew what she had to do. She took the baby out of the car and placed him, still in his plastic seat, gently on the grass of Muncrief's front lawn, well removed from the driveway.

Philip snoozed undisturbed as Susan gazed down at her son in the faint light of the tree-shaded street lamps. She thought he looked like an angel.

Susan hoped that the noise of the car's engine wouldn't wake the baby. But even if it did, it couldn't be helped. She started up the engine. Glancing at the car seat over on the grass, she saw that Phil was still sleeping peacefully. This is crazy, she thought. But she put the Subaru in reverse anyway and backed down almost to the street without turning on the headlights. Susan braked the car to a stop, then revved the engine.

This is really crazy, she told herself again as she pulled on her seat belt and tightened it hard against her chest. Crazy or not, she thought, here goes. She slammed the car forward straight into the garage door. The crash sounded enormous. The air bag exploded in her face, but still she could hear each individual part of the crash: breaking wood, metal shrieking against metal, tinkling glass.

The air bag engulfed her as she jolted against the seat belt, both her feet jammed against the brake pedal. For a moment she thought the air bag would suffocate her, but then it started to sag and deflate. Susan sat there, jaw hanging open, the front end of her wagon rammed into Muncrief's dark garage, the garage door bashed to pieces.

She turned off the engine. Susan pushed her door open; it banged against something that toppled to the concrete floor with a dull thud. She made her way out of the dark garage, ducking under a dangling chunk of the door. "Now we're in," she said to Philip as she picked up his car seat. The baby stirred but did not wake up. "Good boy," Susan said. She carried her baby into the battered garage.

She did not hear any alarms going off, but she thought that maybe the neighbors had heard the crash and would come out to see what had happened. Or phone the security guard at the gate. Maybe they would call the police. Whatever. She knew she only had a few minutes.

The garage connected directly with Muncrief's kitchen. The ceiling panel lights went on automatically as soon as she entered the room. Susan could see the pool and patio inside, where the party had been.

She went straight toward the bedrooms, lugging the car seat. Each room lit itself as soon as their body heat tripped dim sensors in the doorways. Nothing. There were two bedrooms, both of them empty. The beds were neatly made, undisturbed. She put Philip's car seat down and yanked open the closet doors, then started checking out all the closets in the other rooms and the attic crawlspace, anywhere that he might have hidden Angie.

Every moment she expected the police to come screaming up to the house. But outside it was as quiet as before.

I guess he didn't set his security alarm, Susan told herself. And none of the neighbors is curious enough about the crash to come and look, or phone the security guard. Maybe they didn't even hear the crash; the houses are pretty well separated.

Still, she felt harried. There was a dim overhead light in attic crawl space. The area was totally bare, not even cardboard box up there.

She came down and swung the ladder back into the ceiling. Then she noticed a smaller room, down the hall from the bedrooms. A mini-office, with Muncrief's home computer in it. She sat herself at the desk and booted up the machine. No time to even start going through his files. But Susan found Muncrief's communications program and set up his modem to answer her when she phoned. I'll be able to check out all his files from home. There might be something in them and it'll be better than sitting around doing nothing but waiting.

She heard Phil squawk. Not crying: just a complaining noise that said he was awake and unhappy. Turning off the display screen of Muncrief's computer, she went back to the bedroom. The baby was squirming unhappily. Probably wet, Susan thought. The baby's things were in the wagon.

Forcing herself to stay calm, Susan changed Phil's diaper in the darkness of the shattered garage, then tucked him back into his car seat and buckled it securely to the passenger chair beside her. The air bags hung limply from the steering column. If she weren't wired so tight she would have giggled; the air bags looked like giant used condoms.

Grimly she backed the Subaru down Muncrief's driveway. No time to look at the damage to the front end, but she could see a nasty gouge in the teal blue of the hood.

My beautiful new wagon; what have I done to you? The car seemed to drive all right. No shimmies or rattles. One headlight was out, though.

Susan drove with exaggerated care toward the development's exit, trying to remember if there was a barrier gate on that side of the security shack or not.

There was, but it swung up automatically, she saw to her immense relief. If the guard saw the bashed-in hood with only one headlight working she would want to hold them there while she checked out what they had done. But she was bent over her television show and only glanced at the Subaru as Susan drove past.

I wonder if she took the license plate number when we came in
, Susan asked herself. Then she remembered.
What difference? What does it matter? Muncrief has taken Angie! And where is Dan? Where in the hell is my husband?

Dan's chest was tightening as if someone was knotting rawhide thongs across his lungs. The oddly smiling man kept the speedometer near eighty as he roared along the left lane of the highway, passing everything in sight. Dan felt trapped, panicked. This is a nightmare, he told himself. A crazy wild nightmare.

And then he realized what was going on.

"This is a simulation," he said aloud. "Jace, you sonofabitch, terminate the program."

The balding little man shot him a quizzical look from behind the driver's wheel.

"Goddammit, Jace, this is a helluva thing to do," Dan shouted. "Come on, terminate the program and let me out of this."

"Who are you talking to?" the driver asked, his pasty smile replaced by an anxious frown.

"You're not real," Dan told him. "None of this is real. Come on, Jace, end this program."

"I don't know what you're talking about, friend, but this is real, believe me."

Dan stared at him. How the hell can I tell the difference? He lifted his hands to his face; he could not feel a helmet or gloves. But then I wouldn't, not if Jace has programmed it with as much detail as the baseball sim.

"It won't do you any good to act crazy, you know," said the balding man.

Is this reality or a simulation? Am I still in the VR chamber? Was the hospital real? Sue's phone call—

"Somebody's kidnapped my daughter," he said. "Somebody's really kidnapped her!"

"Wasn't us."

"Who the hell are you? What do you want? I don't have any money—"

Peterson shook his head the barest fraction of an inch.

"Money's not a factor. They just want to talk to you, ask you about your work."

"Who?"

No answer. Just that pasted-on grin as he stared straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel.

"Let me find my daughter first. After I get her back—"

"No way," said Peterson. "My friends want to talk to you now. My job is to deliver you to them."

The highway was blurring past, big semi rigs with their glaring lights, a pickup truck packed with beer-drinking kids. Not a cop in sight when you need one. It's a simulation, Dan told himself. It's got to be. Who would kidnap Angie? Why?

Turning in his seat, Dan saw that the back of the car was filled with cameras and electronic gear. "Okay, Jace," he yelled, "if you want to play games we'll play games."

He leaned back and picked up one of the cameras.

"That's an expensive piece you've got there," Peterson said, glancing out of the corner of his eye.

"Yeah." Dan forced himself to take a deep, painful breath. His lungs were burning. If this is a sim then I can't get hurt. If it's not, if this is reality, then I've got to stop this clown and find Angie.

Dan smashed the camera against the windshield with every ounce of his strength. The glass starred but did not break and the camera slipped out of his hands.

"Are you crazy?" Peterson screeched.

Dan twisted in his seat and grabbed for a bigger black electronic box. He bashed that against the windshield.

Peterson pawed at him with one hand, ineffectually. The car swerved wildly across the highway. Holding the black box in both his hands Dan smashed it again and again at the windshield. It finally shattered into a blizzard of tiny frosted pieces as Peterson skidded off the highway and up onto the shoulder of the median strip, plowing heavily into the grassy uneven ground.

Dan's seat belt cut into him as Peterson braked the car to a bumping, lurching stop. He turned toward Dan with wide, frightened eyes as he fumbled with one hand for the gun kept beneath his seat.

Dan bashed him in his bald head with the electronics box once, twice. His eyes rolled up into his head and he collapsed onto the steering wheel, his scalp bleeding. The horn blared.

Tossing the black box through the shattered remains of the windshield, Dan yanked Peterson's unconscious body off the wheel. The horn stopped and the black box slid along the Cutlass's hood and off onto the grass of the median. Peterson's head was bloody, his eyes half-closed. But he was moaning. He was alive. Dan unbuckled both seat belts, leaned across him, opened the driver's door and pushed him out. Then he clambered over the console, slid behind the wheel and drove off, leaving him sprawled on the grass.

Christ, this isn't a sim, he said to himself. It's real. It must be real.

He did not head for the police station. Not even for home. He drove as fast as he dared, squinting into the night wind, straight to the ParaReality building. Jace will be there, he knew. Either there or at his bungalow.