Dragon Tears
“Irresistible.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“A great story…the most ambitious
of Dean Koontz’s books.”
—
Columbus Dispatch
“Showcases an exceptional ability
to mix humor, fear, and hope into
a first-rate literary experience.”
—
The San Diego Union-Tribune
Harry Lyon was a rational man, a cop who refused to let his job harden his soul. His partner urged him to surrender to the chaos of life. But Harry believed in order and reason. Then one fateful day, he was forced to shoot a man—and a homeless stranger with bloodshot eyes uttered the haunting words that challenged Harry Lyon’s sanity…
“Ticktock, ticktock. You’ll be dead in sixteen hours…Dead by dawn…Dead by dawn…Dead by dawn…”
D
RAGON
T
EARS
A choice of The Literary Guild
®
,
The Doubleday Book Club, and The Mystery Guild
®
Praise for
Dragon Tears
“The take-a-deep-breath ending alone is worth the price of the ticket.”
—
People
“Koontz’s newest and best thriller to date…
Dragon Tears
is Dean Koontz’s literary blueprint for combining a razor-sharp, nonstop, suspenseful story with characters drawn from a keen understanding of human nature. But most of all, it showcases an exceptional ability to mix humor, fear, and hope into a first-rate literary experience.”
—
The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Engrossing and fast-paced.”
—
San Antonio Express-News
“The darkest and most ambitious of Dean Koontz’s novels…contains many of the elements that make his books so readable—a great story, sympathetic characters, and enough suspense to keep the pages flying.”
—
Detroit News
“The wild storyline asserts a spine-shivering reality. It’s magical realism for [the] ‘new dark ages.’”
—
London Sunday Mail
“Gripping…well-written, exciting.”
—
Boston Sunday Herald
“
Dragon Tears
is a poignant study of a civilization in decline and a passionate plea for people to take responsibility for their own lives. An incredibly fast read and almost impossible to put down.”
—
Flint Journal
“A superb blend of action and illusion. Koontz’s prose is as smooth as a knife through butter and his storytelling ability never wavers.”
—
Calgary Sun
“Koontz’s gift is that he makes his monsters seem ‘realer,’ and he makes the characters who fight [them] as normal as anyone you’d meet on a street.”
—
Orlando Sentinel
“Steamrolls across the pages.”
—
Locus
“Koontz hooks you from the opening sentence…until he reels you in during the final, frantic pages. He hasn’t come close to losing his magic touch.”
—
Orange County Register
“Excellent storytelling. Sharply drawn, intuitive characterizations…deft and skillful insights into human and animal behavior.”
—
Lansing State Journal
“An electrifying terrorfest in which Koontz, inking his silkiest writing yet, takes on the serial-killer novel and makes it his own. Hooks us at once and never lets go…a vise-tight tale.”
—
Kirkus Reviews
“Koontz is a master at building suspense…with a keen sense of timing. Descriptions are precise and evocative. Characters are sharply drawn.”
—
Lexington Herald-Leader
“Another Koontz page-turner guaranteed to thrill and chill.”
—
Idaho Statesman
“An author who knows how to tell a story with pace, wit, and brevity.”
—
The Dark Side
“A page-turning, no-holds-barred treat. [The dog] Woofer is nothing short of a wonder.”
—
Anniston Star
“Koontz romps playfully and skillfully through this grownup enchantment.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“
Dragon Tears
breathes fire on every page…a dynamite opening sentence…a satisfying world, one that has made Koontz such a success as a storyteller.”
—
Phoenix Gazette
Berkley titles by Dean Koontz
THE EYES OF DARKNESS
THE KEY TO MIDNIGHT
MR. MURDER
THE FUNHOUSE
DRAGON TEARS
SHADOWFIRES
HIDEAWAY
COLD FIRE
THE HOUSE OF THUNDER
THE VOICE OF THE NIGHT
THE BAD PLACE
THE SERVANTS OF TWILIGHT
MIDNIGHT
LIGHTNING
THE MASK
WATCHERS
TWILIGHT EYES
STRANGERS
DEMON SEED
PHANTOMS
WHISPERS
NIGHT CHILLS
DARKFALL
SHATTERED
THE VISION
THE FACE OF FEAR
Dragon Tears
Dean Koontz
BERKLEY BOOKS, NEW YORK
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges permission to quote lyrics from “The River,” by Garth Brooks and Victoria Shaw, copyright © 1989, Major Bob Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP), Mid-Summer Music Co., Inc. (ASCAP), and Gary Morris Music. International copyright secured. Made in the USA. All rights reserved.
DRAGON TEARS
A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Nkui, Inc.
PRINTING HISTORY
G. P. Putnam’s Sons hardcover edition / January 1993
Berkley mass-market edition / October 1993
Copyright © 1993 by Nkui, Inc.
“Afterword” copyright © 2006 by Dean Koontz.
Cover design by Marc Cohen.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-4406-1944-1
BERKLEY
®
Berkley Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
BERKLEY is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
The “B” design is a trademark belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
35 34 33 32 31 30
If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”
This book is for some special people who live too far away—
Ed and Carol Gorman
—with the wish that our modern world really
had
shrunk to one small town, as the media philosophers insist it has. Then we could meet at the little cafe down on Main Street at Maple Avenue to have lunch, talk, and laugh.
Dragon Tears
Table of Contents
Part One: This Old Honkytonk of Fools
Part Two: Police Work and the Dog’s Life
Part Three: A Scary Little Cottage in the Woods
This Old Honkytonk
of Fools
You know a dream is like a river
Ever changing as it flows.
And a dreamer’s just a vessel
That must follow where it goes.
Trying to learn from what’s behind you
And never knowing what’s in store
Makes each day a constant battle
Just to stay between the shores.
—“The River”
Garth Brooks, Victoria Shaw
Rush headlong and hard at life
Or just sit at home and wait.
All things good and all the wrong
Will come right to you: it’s fate.
Hear the music, dance if you can.
Dress in rags or wear your jewels.
Drink your choice, nurse your fear
In this old honkytonk of fools.
—
The Book of Counted Sorrows
1
Tuesday was a fine California day, full of sunshine and promise, until Harry Lyon had to shoot someone at lunch.
For breakfast, sitting at his kitchen table, he ate toasted English muffins with lemon marmalade and drank strong black Jamaican coffee. A pinch of cinnamon gave the brew a pleasantly spicy taste.
The kitchen window provided a view of the greenbelt that wound through Los Cabos, a sprawling condominium development in Irvine. As president of the homeowners’ association, Harry drove the gardeners hard and rigorously monitored their work, ensuring that the trees, shrubs, and grass were as neatly trimmed as a landscape in a fairy tale, as if maintained by platoons of gardening elves with hundreds of tiny shears.
As a child, he had enjoyed fairy tales even more than children usually did. In the worlds of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, springtime hills were always flawlessly green, velvet-smooth. Order prevailed. Villains invariably met with justice, and the virtuous were rewarded—though sometimes only after hideous suffering. Hänsel and Gretel didn’t die in the witch’s oven;
the crone herself was roasted alive therein. Instead of stealing the queen’s newborn daughter, Rumpelstiltskin was foiled and, in his rage, tore himself apart.
In real life during the last decade of the twentieth century, Rumpelstiltskin would probably get the queen’s daughter. He would no doubt addict her to heroin, turn her out as a prostitute, confiscate her earnings, beat her for pleasure, hack her to pieces, and escape justice by claiming that society’s intolerance for bad-tempered, evil-minded trolls had driven him temporarily insane.
Harry swallowed the last of his coffee, and sighed. Like a lot of people, he longed to live in a better world.
Before going to work, he washed the dishes and utensils, dried them, and put them away. He loathed coming home to mess and clutter.
At the foyer mirror by the front door, he paused to adjust the knot in his tie. He slipped into a navy-blue blazer and checked to be sure the weapon in his shoulder holster made no telltale bulge.
As on every workday for the past six months, he avoided traffic-packed freeways, following the same surface streets to the Multi-Agency Law Enforcement Special Projects Center in Laguna Niguel, a route that he had mapped out to minimize travel time. He had arrived at the office as early as 8:15 and as late as 8:28, but he had never been tardy.
That Tuesday when he parked his Honda in the shadowed lot on the west side of the two-story building, the car clock showed 8:21. His wristwatch confirmed the time. Indeed, all of the clocks in Harry’s condominium and the one on the desk in his office would be displaying 8:21. He synchronized all of his clocks twice a week.
Standing beside the car, he drew deep, relaxing breaths. Rain had fallen overnight, scrubbing the air clean. The March sunshine gave the morning a glow as golden as the flesh of a ripe peach.
To meet Laguna Niguel architectural standards, the Special Projects Center was a two-story Mediterranean-style
building with a columned promenade. Surrounded by lush azaleas and tall melaleucas with lacy branches, it bore no resemblance to most police facilities. Some of the cops who worked out of Special Projects thought it looked too effete, but Harry liked it.