The Husband. Dean Koontz
the sun and the dog, the air and the promise of the day, the beautiful houses behind deep lawns.
Mitch Rafferty could not afford a home in this neighborhood. He was satisfied just to be able to work here.
You could love great art but have no desire to live in a museum.
He noticed a damaged sprinkler head where lawn met sidewalk. He got his tools from the truck and knelt on the grass, taking a break from the impatiens.
His cell phone rang. He unclipped it from his belt, flipped it open. The time was displayed—11:43—but no caller’s number showed on the screen. He took the call anyway.
“Big Green,” he said, which was the name he’d given his two-man business nine years ago, though he no longer remembered why.
“Mitch, I love you,” Holly said.
“Hey, sweetie.”
“Whatever happens, I love you.”
She cried out in pain. A clatter and crash suggested a struggle.
Alarmed, Mitch rose to his feet. “Holly?”
Some guy said something, some guy who now had the phone. Mitch didn’t hear the words because he was focused on the background noise.
Holly squealed. He’d never heard such a sound from her, such fear.
“Sonofabitch,” she said, and was silenced by a sharp crack, as though she’d been slapped.
The stranger on the phone said, “You hear me, Rafferty?”
“Holly? Where’s Holly?”
Now the guy was talking away from the phone, not to Mitch: “Don’t be stupid. Stay on the floor.”
Another man spoke in the background, his words unclear.
The one with the phone said, “She gets up, punch her. You want to lose some teeth, honey?” She was with two men. One of them had hit her. Hit her.
Mitch couldn’t get his mind around the situation. Reality suddenly seemed as slippery as the narrative of a nightmare.
A meth-crazed iguana was more real than this.
Near the house, Iggy planted impatiens. Sweating, red from the sun, as solid as ever.
“That’s better, honey. That’s a good girl.”
Mitch couldn’t draw breath. A great weight pressed on his lungs. He tried to speak but couldn’t find his voice, didn’t know what to say. Here in bright sun, he felt casketed, buried alive.
“We have your wife,” said the guy on the phone.
Mitch heard himself ask, “Why?”
“Why do you think, asshole?”
Mitch didn’t know why. He didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to reason through to an answer because every possible answer would be a horror.
“I’m planting flowers.”
“What’s wrong with you, Rafferty?”
“That’s what I do. Plant flowers. Repair sprink lers.”
“Are you buzzed or something?”
“I’m just a gardener.”
“So we have your wife. You get her back for two million cash.”
Mitch knew it wasn’t a joke. If it were a joke, Holly would have to be in on it, but her sense of humor was not cruel.
“You’ve made a mistake.”
“You hear what I said? Two million.”
“Man, you aren’t listening. I’m a gardener.”
“We know.”
“I have like eleven thousand bucks in the bank.”
“We know.”
Brimming with fear and confusion, Mitch had no room for anger. Compelled to clarify, perhaps more for himself than for the caller, he said, “I just run a little two-man operation.”
“You’ve got until midnight Wednesday. Sixty hours. We’ll be in touch about the details.”
Mitch was sweating. “This is nuts. Where would I get two million bucks?”
“You’ll find a way.”
The stranger’s voice was hard, implacable. In a movie, Death might sound like this.
“It isn’t possible,” Mitch said.
“You want to hear her scream again?”
“No. Don’t.”
“Do you love her?”
“Yes.”
“Really love her?”
“She’s everything to me.”
How peculiar, that he should be sweating yet feel so cold.
“If she’s everything to you,” said the stranger, “then you’ll find a way.”
“There isn’t a way.”
“If you go to the cops, we’ll cut her fingers off one by one, and cauterize them as we go. We’ll cut her tongue out. And her eyes. Then we’ll leave her alone to die as fast or slow as she wants.”
The stranger spoke without menace, in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were not making a threat but were instead merely explaining the details of his business model.
Mitchell Rafferty had no experience of such men. He might as well have been talking to a visitor from the far end of the galaxy.
He could not speak because suddenly it seemed that he might so easily, unwittingly say the wrong thing and ensure Holly’s death sooner rather than later.
The kidnapper said, “Just so you’ll know we’re serious…”
After a silence, Mitch asked, “What?”
“See that guy across the street?”
Mitch turned and saw a single pedestrian, the man walking the slow dog. They had progressed half a block.
The sunny day had a porcelain glaze. Rifle fire shattered the stillness, and the dogwalker went down, shot in the head.
“Midnight Wednesday,” said the man on the phone. “We’re damn serious.”
The dog stood as if on point: one forepaw raised, tail extended but motionless, nose lifted to seek a scent.
In truth, the golden retriever had not spotted the shooter. It halted in midstep, startled by its master’s collapse, frozen by confusion.
Directly across the street from the dog, Mitch likewise stood paralyzed. The kidnapper terminated the call, but Mitch still held the cell phone to his ear.
Superstition promised that as long as the street remained still, as long as neither he nor the dog moved, the violence might be undone and time rewound, the bullet recalled to the barrel.
Reason trumped magical thinking. He crossed the street, first haltingly, then at a run. If the fallen man was wounded, something might be done to save him. As Mitch approached, the dog favored him with a single wag of its tail.
A glance at the victim dispelled any hope that first aid might sustain him until paramedics arrived. A significant portion of his skull was gone.
Having no familiarity with real violence, only with the edited-analyzed-excused-and-defanged variety provided by TV news, and with the cartoon violence in movies, Mitch was rendered