Velocity: A Novel - Softcover

Koontz, Dean

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345533461 ISBN 13: 9780345533463

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
 
If you don’t take this note to the police . . . I will kill a lovely blond schoolteacher. . . . If you do . . . I will instead kill an elderly woman active in charity work. You have six hours to decide. The choice is yours.
 
The typewritten note under his windshield seems like just a sick joke. But in less than twenty-four hours, Billy Wiles, an ordinary, hardworking guy, is about to see his life take on the speed of a nightmare. Because a young blond schoolteacher is murdered—and now Billy has another note. And another deadline. This time he knows it’s no joke. He’s racing a killer faster than evil itself. And Billy must accept his terrifying challenge: The choice is yours.
 
Think fast. Fear never slows down. . . .

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dean Koontz, the author of many #1 New York Times bestsellers, lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Anna, and the enduring spirit of their golden, Trixie.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Part 1
The Choice is Yours

Chapter One

With draft beer and a smile, Ned Pearsall raised a toast to his deceased neighbor, Henry Friddle, whose death greatly pleased him.

Henry had been killed by a garden gnome. He had fallen off the roof of his two-story house, onto that cheerful-looking figure. The gnome was made of concrete. Henry wasn’t.

A broken neck, a cracked skull: Henry perished on impact.

This death-by-gnome had occurred four years previously. Ned Pearsall still toasted Henry’s passing at least once a week.

Now, from a stool near the curve of the polished mahogany bar, an out-of-towner, the only other customer, expressed curiosity at the enduring nature of Ned’s animosity.

“How bad a neighbor could the poor guy have been that you’re still so juiced about him?”

Ordinarily, Ned might have ignored the question. He had even less use for tourists than he did for pretzels.

The tavern offered free bowls of pretzels because they were cheap. Ned preferred to sustain his thirst with well-salted peanuts. To keep Ned tipping, Billy Wiles, tending bar, occasionally gave him a bag of Planters.

Most of the time Ned had to pay for his nuts. This rankled him either because he could not grasp the economic realities of tavern operation or because he enjoyed being rankled, probably the latter.

Although he had a head reminiscent of a squash ball and the heavy rounded shoulders of a sumo wrestler, Ned was an athletic man only if you thought barroom jabber and grudge-holding qualified as sports. In those events, he was an Olympian.

Regarding the late Henry Friddle, Ned could be as talkative with outsiders as with lifelong residents of Vineyard Hills. When, as now, the only other customer was a stranger, Ned found silence even less congenial than conversation with a “foreign devil.”

Billy himself had never been much of a talker, never one of those barkeeps who considered the bar a stage. He was a listener.

To the out-of-towner, Ned declared, “Henry Friddle was a pig.”

The stranger had hair as black as coal dust with traces of ash at the temples, gray eyes bright with dry amusement, and a softly resonant voice. “That’s a strong word—pig.”

“You know what the pervert was doing on his roof? He was trying to piss on my dining-room windows.”

Wiping the bar, Billy Wiles didn’t even glance at the tourist. He’d heard this story so often that he knew all the reactions to it.

“Friddle, the pig, figured the altitude would give his stream more distance,” Ned explained.

The stranger said, “What was he—an aeronautical engineer?”

“He was a college professor. He taught contemporary literature.”

“Maybe reading that stuff drove him to suicide,” the tourist said, which made him more interesting than Billy had first thought.

“No, no,” Ned said impatiently. “The fall was accidental.”

“Was he drunk?”

“Why would you think he was drunk?” Ned wondered.

The stranger shrugged. “He climbed on a roof to urinate on your windows.”

“He was a sick man,” Ned explained, plinking one finger against his empty glass to indicate the desire for another round.

Drawing Budweiser from the tap, Billy said, “Henry Friddle was consumed by vengeance.”

After silent communion with his brew, the tourist asked Ned Pearsall, “Vengeance? So you urinated on Friddle’s windows first?”

“It wasn’t the same thing at all,” Ned warned in a rough tone that advised the outsider to avoid being judgmental.

“Ned didn’t do it from his roof,” Billy said.

“That’s right. I walked up to his house, like a man, stood on his lawn, and aimed at his dining-room windows.”

“Henry and his wife were having dinner at the time,” Billy said.

Before the tourist might express revulsion at the timing of this assault, Ned said, “They were eating quail, for God’s sake.”

“You showered their windows because they were eating quail?”

Ned sputtered with exasperation. “No, of course not. Do I look insane to you?” He rolled his eyes at Billy.

Billy raised his eyebrows as though to say What do you expect of a tourist?

“I’m just trying to convey how pretentious they were,” Ned clarified, “always eating quail or snails, or Swiss chard.”

“Phony bastards,” the tourist said with such a light seasoning of mockery that Ned Pearsall didn’t detect it, although Billy did.

“Exactly,” Ned confirmed. “Henry Friddle drove a Jaguar, and his wife drove a car—you won’t believe this—a car made in Sweden.”

“Detroit was too common for them,” said the tourist.

“Exactly. How much of a snob do you have to be to bring a car all the way from Sweden?”

The tourist said, “I’ll wager they were wine connoisseurs.”

“Big time! Did you know them or something?”

“I just know the type. They had a lot of books.”

“You’ve got ’em nailed,” Ned declared. “They’d sit on the front porch, sniffing their wine, reading books.”

“Right out in public. Imagine that. But if you didn’t pee on their dining-room windows because they were snobs, why did you?”

“A thousand reasons,” Ned assured him. “The incident of the skunk. The incident of the lawn fertilizer. The dead petunias.”

“And the garden gnome,” Billy added as he rinsed glasses in the bar sink.

“The garden gnome was the last straw,” Ned agreed.

“I can understand being driven to aggressive urination by pink plastic flamingos,” said the tourist, “but, frankly, not by a gnome.”

Ned scowled, remembering the affront. “Ariadne gave it my face.”

“Ariadne who?”

“Henry Friddle’s wife. You ever heard a more pretentious name?”

“Well, the Friddle part brings it down to earth.”

“She was an art professor at the same college. She sculpted the gnome, created the mold, poured the concrete, painted it herself.”

“Having a sculpture modeled after you can be an honor.”

The beer foam on Ned’s upper lip gave him a rabid appearance as he protested: “It was a gnome, pal. A drunken gnome. The nose was as red as an apple. It was carrying a beer bottle in each hand.”

“And its fly was unzipped,” Billy added.

“Thanks so much for reminding me,” Ned grumbled. “Worse, hanging out of its pants was the head and neck of a dead goose.”

“How creative,” said the tourist.

“At first I didn’t know what the hell that meant—”

“Symbolism. Metaphor.”

“Yeah, yeah. I figured it out. Everybody who walked past their place saw it, and got a laugh at my expense.”

“Wouldn’t need to see the gnome for that,” said the tourist.

Misunderstanding, Ned agreed: “Right. Just hearing about it, people were laughing. So I busted up the gnome with a sledgehammer.”

“And they sued you.”

“Worse. They set out another gnome. Figuring I’d bust up the first, Ariadne had cast and painted a second.”

“I thought life was mellow here in the wine...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345533461
• ISBN 13: 9780345533463
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 480
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Buchpark GmbH; gpsr@buchpark.de; ; Krügerweg 1; Trebbin; Brandenburg; 14959; Deutschland