The Eyes of Darkness by Dean Koontz

Posted by admin_akashic on Aug 7th, 2022 in Prophecy, Stories

WILLIS BRUCKSTER STUDIED HIS KENO TICKET, carefully comparing it to the winning numbers beginning to flash onto the electronic board that hung from the casino ceiling. He tried to appear intently interested in the outcome of this game, but in fact he didn’t care. The marked ticket in his hand was worthless; he hadn’t taken it to the betting window, hadn’t wagered any money on it. He was using keno as a cover.

He didn’t want to attract the attention of the omnipresent casino security men, and the easiest way to escape their notice was to appear to be the least threatening hick in the huge room. With that in mind, Bruckster wore a cheap green polyester leisure suit, black loafers, and white socks. He was carrying two books of the discount coupons that casinos use to pull slot-machine players into the house, and he wore a camera on a strap around his neck. Furthermore, keno was a game that didn’t have any appeal for either smart gamblers or cheaters, the two types of customers who most interested the security men. Willis Bruckster was so sure he appeared dull and ordinary that he wouldn’t have been surprised if a guard had looked at him and yawned.

He was determined not to fail on this assignment. It was a career maker—or breaker. The Network badly wanted to eliminate everyone who might press for the exhumation of Danny Evans’s body, and the agents targeted against Elliot Stryker and Christina Evans had thus far failed to carry out their orders to terminate the pair. Their ineptitude gave Willis Bruckster a chance to shine. If he made a clean hit here, in the crowded casino, he would be assured of a promotion.

Bruckster stood at the head of the escalator that led from the lower shopping arcade to the casino level of Bally’s Hotel. During their periodic breaks from the gaming tables, nursing stiff necks and sore shoulders and leaden arms, the weary dealers retired to a combination lounge and locker room at the bottom—and to the right—of the escalator. A group had gone down a while ago and would be returning for their last stand at the tables before a whole new staff came on duty with the shift change. Bruckster was waiting for one of those dealers: Michael Evans.

He hadn’t expected to find the man at work. He had thought Evans might be keeping a vigil at the demolished house, while the firemen sifted through the still-smoldering debris, searching for the remains of the woman they thought might be buried there. But when Bruckster had come into the hotel thirty minutes ago, Evans had been chatting with the players at his blackjack table, cracking jokes, and grinning as if nothing of any importance had happened in his life lately.

Perhaps Evans didn’t know about the explosion at his former house. Or maybe he did know and just didn’t give a damn about his ex-wife. It might have been a bitter divorce. Bruckster hadn’t been able to get close to Evans when the dealer left the blackjack pit at the beginning of the break. Consequently, he’d stationed himself here, at the head of the escalator, and had pretended to be interested in the keno board. He was confident that he would nail Evans when the man returned from the dealer’s lounge in the next few minutes.

The last of the keno numbers flashed onto the board. Willis Bruckster stared at them, then crumpled his game card with obvious disappointment and disgust, as if he had lost a few hard-earned dollars.

He glanced down the escalator. Dealers in black trousers, white shirts, and string ties were ascending.

Bruckster sidled away from the escalator and unfolded his keno card. He compared it once more with the numbers on the electronic board, as if he were praying that he had made a mistake the first time.

Michael Evans was the seventh dealer off the escalator. He was a handsome, easygoing guy who ambled rather than walked. He stopped to have a word with a strikingly pretty cocktail waitress, and she smiled at him. The other dealers streamed by, and when Evans finally turned away from the waitress, he was the last in the procession as it moved toward the blackjack pits,

Bruckster fell in beside and slightly behind his target as they pressed through the teeming mob that jammed the enormous casino. He reached into a pocket of his leisure suit and took out a tiny aerosol can that was only slightly larger than one of those spray-style breath fresheners, small enough to be concealed in Bruckster’s hand.

They came to a standstill at a cluster of laughing people. No one in the jolly group seemed to realize that he was obstructing the main aisle. Bruckster took advantage of the pause to tap his quarry on the shoulder.

Evans turned, and Bruckster said, “I think maybe you dropped this back there.” “Huh?”

Bruckster held his hand eighteen inches below Michael Evans’s eyes, so that the dealer was forced to glance down to see what was being shown to him.

The fine spray, propelled with tremendous pressure, caught him squarely in the face, across the nose and lips, penetrating swiftly and deeply into the nostrils. Perfect.

Evans reacted as anyone would. He gasped in surprise as he realized he was being squirted.

The gasp drew the deadly mist up his nose, where the active poison—a particularly fast- acting neurotoxin—was instantaneously absorbed through the sinus membranes. In two seconds it was in his bloodstream, and the first seizure hit his heart.

Evans’s surprised expression turned to shock. Then a wild, twisted expression of agony wrenched his face as brutal pain slammed through him. He gagged, and a ribbon of foamy saliva unraveled from the corner of his mouth, down his chin. His eyes rolled back in his head, and he fell.

As Bruckster pocketed the miniature aerosol device, he said, “We have a sick man here.” Heads turned toward him.

“Give the man room,” Bruckster said. “For God’s sake, someone get a doctor!”

No one could have seen the murder. It had been committed in a sheltered space within the crowd, hidden by the killer’s and the victim’s bodies. Even if someone had been monitoring that area from an overhead camera, there would not have been much for him to see.

Willis Bruckster quickly knelt at Michael Evans’s side and took his pulse as if he expected to find one. There was no heartbeat whatsoever, not even a faint lub-dub.

A thin film of moisture covered the victim’s nose and lips and chin, but this was only the harmless medium in which the toxin had been suspended. The active poison itself had already penetrated the victim’s body, done its work, and begun to break down into a series of naturally occurring chemicals that would raise no alarms when the coroner later studied the results of the usual battery of forensic tests. In a few seconds the medium