Twenty minutes later, Rebus knocked on the door of the bungalow on Liberton Brae. Ella King answered, then stared stonily at the small entourage outside.
“My husband’s changed his mind,” she blurted out. “It was the drugs he was taking. They got him hallucinating.”
“Fine, then,” Rebus said, holding up his hands as if in surrender. “But could we come in a minute?”
She didn’t seem at all sure, but Rebus was already barging past her, stalking down the hall toward the living room, Grace and Clarke right behind him. James King was seated in a large armchair, horse-racing on the television. He was dressed in slacks and a polo shirt, a newspaper on his lap and a mug of tea by his side.
“You’ve heard the news?” he boomed. “They’re calling it a miracle, for want of any better explanation. And has Ella explained about the drugs? I must have been rambling, the time I talked to you.”
“Is that a fact, sir? Well, is there any chance you could ramble your way to the front door? There’s an old friend of yours waiting to see you.”
King’s face creased in confusion, but Rebus was gesturing for him to get up, and get up he did, shuffling toward the front door.
Norman Potting stood on the path outside, hands resting against the handles of Ollie Starr’s wheelchair.
“James King,” Rebus said, “meet Oliver Starr.”
“But we’ve never met. I… I don’t know him. What’s this all about?”
“You know me, all right,” Starr snarled, his whole body writhing as if a current were passing through it. “Your bread knife’s still in an evidence locker in Brighton. Did your mum never ask you what happened to it?”
Grace watched King’s face. It was as if the man had been slapped.
“What’s going on?” his wife asked, voice trembling.
“A man did die that day,” Clarke explained. “But not the man your husband attacked. When he saw it reported, he jumped to conclusions.”
“Is this the man who stabbed you, Mr. Starr?” Grace asked.
“I’d know him anywhere,” Ollie Starr replied, eyes burning into King’s.
“You old fool,” Ella King yelped at her husband. “I told you to leave it alone, take it to the grave with you. Why did you have to bring it all up?”
“James Ronald King,” Grace was intoning, “I have a warrant issued for your arrest. I’m arresting you on suspicion of the attempted murder of Oliver Starr. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defense if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence. Is that clear?”
“I’m in remission,” King gasped. “The rest of my life ahead of me…”
“Had a good life so far, have you?” Starr snarled. “Better than mine, at any rate. All the years I’ve spent in a bloody wheelchair! No wife, no kids!”
“You can’t do this,” Ella King was pleading. “He’s a very sick man.” Her hand was gripping her husband’s arm.
Rebus shook his head. “He’s not ill, Mrs. King. We heard it from his own mouth.”
“But he is sick,” Potting interjected. “Takes a sick mind to shove a knife so deep into someone it breaks their spine.”
“So far in the past, though,” Ella King persisted. “Everything’s different now.”
“Not so different,” Rebus replied, looking toward Clarke and Grace. “Besides which, I’d say we got here just in the nick of time.”
Roy Grace nodded his agreement.
Different cities, different cultures, different generations, even, but he knew he shared one thing above all else with John Rebus — pleasure in each and every result.
R. L. STINE
VS
DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child created their character, FBI agent A. X. L. Pendergast, almost by accident. Lincoln was an editor at St. Martin’s Press and had just edited Doug’s first nonfiction book, Dinosaurs in the Attic, a history of the American Museum of Natural History. After that experience, the two decided to write a thriller set in a museum. Doug wrote the first few chapters — involving the investigation of a double murder — and sent them to Lincoln for his opinion. Lincoln read the pages and had one objection. He felt the two cops on the investigation were essentially identical. So he suggested they fold both into the same character (who became Lieutenant Vincent D’Agosta). But then he added, “We need a new kind of detective for the second investigator. A person who’s unusual — and who’ll be like a fish out of water in New York City.”
Doug, already irritated at this criticism of his prose, responded sarcastically, “Yeah, right. You mean, like an albino FBI agent from New Orleans?”
Silence passed for a few moments between them.
Then Lincoln said, “I think that could work.”
Over the next fifteen minutes Special Agent Pendergast was formed, like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.
And the rest, they say, is history.
Over the course of many books Agent Pendergast has faced some unusual adversaries, including cannibalistic serial killers, arsonists, a murderous surgeon, a mutant assassin, and even his own mad-genius brother. But never has he confronted an adversary like Slappy the Ventriloquist Dummy.
Slappy is one of R. L. Stine’s creepiest creations. Bob is one of the best-selling authors of all time, with over 400 million books sold around the world. He is the creator of the amazing Goosebumps series of novels. Millions of kids began reading thanks to Bob’s imagination. Within the Goosebumps series Bob introduced Slappy, through such memorable tales as Night of the Living Dummy, Bride of the Living Dummy, and Son of Slappy. Carved from coffin wood, when brought to life by a certain spoken phrase, Slappy is sarcastic, rude, sadistic, and threatening, with a raspy voice and enormous physical strength. He usually seeks to enslave the luckless child who brought him back to life. He’s so popular that he’s the model for an actual ventriloquist’s dummy sold by many retailers to this day.
Bob tells the story of how Slappy was inspired by a 1945 anthology film called Dead of Night. One segment of the movie told the story of a terrifying and murderous ventriloquist’s dummy that eventually took possession of his owner’s mind. Bob saw the film when he was young and it scared the daylights out of him. Interestingly, as a child, Bob owned a Jerry Mahoney dummy of his own. Eventually, he became fascinated by the idea that something so human-looking and seemingly harmless could turn so completely evil.
The idea of pairing the elegant, urbane FBI agent Pendergast against an evil dummy seemed so incongruous — so impossible — that Doug, Lincoln, and Bob were immediately captivated by the challenge. The result is a psychological thriller where both the dummy and Agent Pendergast play against form, assuming roles that familiar readers may find strange and unsettling.
One thing is certain — this story is not intended for children.
Gaslighted
THERE WAS A TAP-TAPPING sound. That was all. Was it a clock? No: it was too loud, too irregular. Was it the creaking of an old house? The ticking of a radiator?
The man listened to the sound. Gradually he became aware of certain things — or rather, the absence of things. The absence of light. Of sensation. Of a name.
That was unusual, was it not? He was a man with no name. He had no memory. He was a tabula rasa, an empty vessel. And yet he sensed that he knew many things. This was a paradox.