Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

by Mr. Murder(Lit)

  circumstances, but he knocked anyway, waited several seconds, and

  knocked again, louder.

  No one answered.

  The door was unlocked. He opened it.

  Enough yellow light from the parking-lot lamps filtered through the

  windshield to illuminate the cockpit of the motorhome. Oslett could see

  that no immediate threat loomed.

  He stepped up onto the door sill, leaned in, and looked back through the

  Road King, which tunneled away into a swarming darkness as deep as the

  chambers of ancient catacombs.

  Be at peace, Alfie," he said softly.

  That spoken command should have resulted in an immediate ritual

  response, as in a litany, I am at peace, Father.

  "Be at peace, Alfie," Oslett repeated less hopefully.

  Silence.

  Although Oslett was neither Alfie's father nor a man of the cloth, and

  therefore in no way could lay a legitimate claim to the honorific, his

  heart nevertheless would have been gladdened if he had heard the

  whispered and obedient reply, I am at peace, Father. Those five simple

  words, in an answering murmur, would have meant that all was essentially

  well, that Alfie's deviation from his instructions was less a rebellion

  than a temporary confusion of purpose, and that the killing spree on

  which he had embarked was something that could be forgiven and put

  behind them.

  Though he knew it was useless, Oslett tried a third time, speaking

  louder than before, "Be at peace, Alfie."

  When nothing in the darkness answered him, he switched on the flashlight

  and climbed into the Road King.

  He couldn't help but think what a waste and humiliation it would be if

  he got himself shot to death in a strange motorhome along an interstate

  in the Oklahoma vastness at the tender age of thirty-two. Such a bright

  young man of such singular promise (the mourners would say), with two

  degrees--one from Princeton, one from Harvard--and an enviable pedigree.

  Moving out of the cockpit as Clocker entered behind him, Oslett swept

  the beam of the flashlight left and right. Shadows billowed and flapped

  like black capes, ebony wings, lost souls.

  Only a few members of his family--fewer still among that circle of

  Manhattan artists, writers, and critics who were his friends--would know

  in what line of duty he had perished. The rest would find the details

  of his demise baffling, bizarre, possibly sordid, and they would gossip

  with the feverishness of birds tearing at carrion.

  The flashlight revealed Formica-sheathed cabinets. A stove top.

  A stainless-steel sink.

  The mystery surrounding his peculiar death would ensure that myths would

  grow like coral reefs, incorporating every color of scandal and vile

  supposition, but leaving his memory with precious little tint of

  respect. Respect was one of the few things that mattered to Drew

  Oslett. He had demanded respect since he was only a boy. It was his

  birthright, not merely a pleasing accoutrement of the family name but a

  tribute that must be paid to all of the family's history and

  accomplishments embodied in him.

  "Be at peace, Alfie," he said nervously.

  A hand, as white as marble and as solid-looking, had been waiting for

  the flashlight beam to find it. The alabaster fingers trailed on the

  carpet beside the padded booth of a dining nook. Higher up, the

  white-haired body of a man slumped over the bloodstained table.

  Paige got up from the dining-room table, went to the nearest window,

  tilted the shutter slats to make wider gaps, and stared out at the

  gradually fading storm. She was looking into the backyard, where there

  were no lights. She could see nothing clearly except the tracks of rain

  on the other side of the glass, which seemed like gobs of spit, maybe

  because she wanted to spit at Lowbock, right in his face.

  She had more hostility in her than did Marty, not just toward the

  detective but toward the world. All her adult life, she had been

  struggling to resolve the conflicts of childhood that were the source of

  her anger. She had made considerable progress. But in the face of

  provocation like this, she felt the resentments and bitterness of her

  childhood rising anew, and her directionless anger found a focus in

  Lowbock, making it difficult for her to keep her temper in check.

  Conscious avoidance facing the window, keeping the detective out of

  sight--was a proven technique for maintaining self-control. Counselor,

  supposed to reduce anger as well.

  She hoped it worked better for her clients than it worked for her,

  because she was still seething.

  At the table with the detective, Marty seemed determined to be

  reasonable and cooperative. Being Marty, he would cling as long as

  possible to the hope that Lowbock's mysterious antagonism could be

  assuaged. Angry as he might be himself--and he was angrier than she had

  ever seen him--he still had tremendous faith in the power of good

  intentions and words, especially words, to restore and maintain harmony

  under any circumstances.

  To Lowbock, Marty said, "It had to be him drank the beers."

  "Him?" Lowbock asked.

  "The look-alike. He must've been in the house a couple of hours while I

  was out."

  "So the intruder drank the three Coronas?"

  "I emptied the trash last night, Sunday night, so I know they aren't

  empties left from the weekend."

  "This guy, he broke into your house because . . . how did he say it

  exactly?"

  "He said he needed his life."

  "Needed his life?"

  "Yes. He asked me why I'd stolen his life, who was I."

  "So he breaks in here," Lowbock said, "agitated, talking crazy,

  well-armed . . . but while he's waiting for you to come home, he

  decides to kick back and have three bottles of Corona."

  Without turning away from the window, Paige said, "My husband didn't

  have those beers, Lieutenant. He's not a drunk."

  Marty said, "I'd certainly be willing to take a Breathalyzer test, if

  you'd like. If I drank that many beers, one after another, my blood

  alcohol level would show it."

  "Well," Lowbock said, "if we were going to do that, we should have

  tested you first thing. But it's not necessary, Mr. Stillwater. I'm

  certainly not saying you were intoxicated, that you imagined the whole

  thing under the influence."

  "Then what are you saying?" Paige demanded.

  "Sometimes," Lowbock observed, "people drink to give themselves the

  courage to face a difficult task."

  Marty sighed. "Maybe I'm dense, Lieutenant. I know there's an

  unpleasant implication in what you just said, but I can't for the life

  of me figure out what I'm supposed to infer from it."

  "Did I say I meant for you to infer anything?"

  "Would you just please stop being cryptic and tell us why you're

  treating me like this, like a suspect instead of a victim?"

  Lowbock was silent.

  Marty pressed the issue, "I know this situation is incredible, this

  dead-ringer business, but if you'd just bluntly tell me the reasons

  you're so skeptical, I'm sure I could eliminate
your doubts. At least I

  could try."

  Lowbock was unresponsive for so long that Paige almost turned from the

  window to have a look at him, wondering if his expression would reveal

  something about the meaning of his silence.

  Finally he said, "We live in a litigious world, Mr. Stillwater.

  If a cop makes the slightest mistake handling a delicate situation, the

  department gets sued and sometimes the officer's career gets flushed

  away. It happens to good men."

  "What've lawsuits got to do with this? I'm not going to sue anyone,

  Lieutenant."

  "Say a guy catches a call about an armed robbery in progress, so he

  answers it, does his duty, finds himself in real jeopardy, getting shot

  at, blows away the perp in self-defense. And what happens next?"

  "I guess you'll tell me."

  "Next thing you know, the perp's family and the ACLU are after the

  department about excessive violence, want a financial settlement.

  They want the officer dismissed, even put the poor sucker on trial,

  accuse him of being a fascist."

  Marty said, "It stinks. I agree with you. These days it seems like the

  world's been turned upside-down but--"

  "If the same cop doesn't respond with force, and some bystander gets

  hurt 'cause the perp wasn't blown away at the first opportunity, the

  department gets sued for negligence by the victim's family, and the same

  activists come down on our necks like a ton of bricks, but for different

  reasons. People say the cop didn't pull the trigger fast enough because

  he's insensitive to the minority group the victim was a part of,

  would've been quicker if the victim was white, or they say he's

  incompetent, or he's a coward."

  "I wouldn't want your job. I know how difficult it is," Marty

  commiserated. "But no cop has shot or failed to shoot anyone here, and

  I don't see what this has to do with our situation."

  "A cop can get in as much trouble making accusations as he can shooting

  perps," Lowbock said.

  "So your point is, you're skeptical of my story, but you won't say why

  until you've got absolute proof it's bullshit."

  "He won't even admit to being skeptical," Paige said sourly.

  "He won't take any position, one way or the other, because taking a

  position means taking a risk."

  Marty said, "But, Lieutenant, how are we going to get done with this,

  how am I going to be able to convince you all of this happened just as I

  said it did, if you won't tell me why you doubt it?"

  "Mr. Stillwater, I haven't said that I doubt you."

  "Jesus," Paige said.

  "All I ask," Lowbock said, "is that you do your best to answer my

  questions."

  "And all we ask," Paige said, still keeping her back to the man, "is

  that you find the lunatic who tried to kill Marty."

  "This look-alike." Lowbock spoke the word flatly, without any

  inflection whatsoever, which seemed more sarcastic than if he had said

  it with a heavy sneer.

  "Yes," Paige hissed, "this look-alike."

  She didn't doubt Marty's story, as wild as it was, and she knew that

  somehow the existence of the dead-ringer was tied to--and would

  ultimately explain--her husband's fugue, bizarre nightmare, and other

  recent problems.

  Now her fury at the detective faded as she began to accept that the

  police, for whatever reason, were not going to help them. Anger gave

  way to fear because she realized they were up against something

  exceedingly strange and were going to have to deal with it entirely on

  their own.

  Clocker returned from the front of the Road King to report that the keys

  were in the ignition in the ON position, but the fuel tank was evidently

  empty and the battery dead. The cabin lights could not be turned on.

  Worried that the flashlight beam, seen from outside, would look

  suspicious to anyone pulling into the rest area, Drew Oslett quickly

  examined the two cadavers in the cramped dining nook. Because the

  spilled blood was thoroughly dry and caked hard, he knew the man and

  woman had been dead more than just a few hours. However, although rigor

  mortis was still present in both bodies, they were no longer entirely

  stiff, the rigor evidently had peaked and had begun to fade, as it

  usually did between eighteen and thirty-six hours after death.

  The bodies had not begun to decompose noticeably as yet. The only bad

  smell came from their open mouths--the sour gases produced by the

  rotting food in their stomachs.

  "Best guesstimate--they've been dead since sometime yesterday

  afternoon," he told Clocker.

  The Road King had been sitting in the rest area for more than

  twenty-four hours, so at least one Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer must

  have seen it on two separate shifts. State law surely forbade using

  rest areas as campsites. No electrical connections, water supplies, or

  sewage-tank pump-outs were provided, which created a potential for

  health problems. Sometimes cops might be lenient with retirees afraid

  of driving in weather as inclement as the storm that had assaulted

  Oklahoma yesterday, the American Association of Retired People

  bumpersticker on the back of the motorhome might have gained these

  people some dispensation. But not even a sympathetic cop would let them

  park two nights. At any moment, a patrol car might pull into the rest

  area and a knock might come at the door.

  Averse to complicating their already serious problems by killing a

  highway patrolman, Oslett turned away from the dead couple and hastily

  proceeded with the search of the motorhome. He was no longer cautious

  out of fear that Alfie, dysfunctional and disobedient, would put a

  bullet in his head. Alfie was long gone from here.

  He found the discarded shoes on the kitchen counter. With a large

  serrated knife, Alfie had sawed at one of the heels until he had exposed

  the electronic circuitry and the attendant chain of tiny batteries.

  Staring at the Rockports and the pile of rubber shavings, Oslett was

  chilled by a premonition of disaster. "He never knew about the shoes.

  Why would he get it in his head to cut them open?"

  "Well, he knows what he knows," Clocker said.

  Oslett interpreted Clocker's statement to mean that part of Alfie's

  training included state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment and

  techniques. Consequently, though he was not told that he was "tagged,"

  he knew that a microminiature transponder could be made small enough to

  fit in the heel of a shoe and, upon receipt of a remote microwave

  activating signal, could draw sufficient power from a series of watch

  batteries to transmit a trackable signal for at least seven two edge of

  surveillance to his own situation and reach the logical conclusion that

  his controllers had made prudent provisions for locating and following

  him in the event he went renegade, even if they had been thoroughly

  convinced rebellion was not possible.

  Oslett dreaded reporting the bad news to the home office in New York.

  The organization didn't kill the bearer of bad tidings, especially not

  if his surname happened
to be Oslett. However, as Alfie's primary

  handler, he knew that some of the blame would stick to him even though

  the operative's rebellion was not his fault to any degree whatsoever.

  The error must be in Alfie's fundamental conditioning, damn it, not in

  his handling.

  Leaving Clocker in the kitchen to keep a lookout for unwanted visitors,

  Oslett quickly inspected the rest of the motorhome.

  He found nothing else of interest except a pile of discarded clothes on

  the floor of the main bedroom at the back of the vehicle.

  In the beam of the flashlight, he needed to disturb the garments only

  slightly with the toe of his shoe to see that they were what Alfie had

  been wearing when he had boarded the plane for Kansas City on Saturday

  morning.

  Oslett returned to the kitchen, where Clocker waited in the dark.

  He turned the flashlight on the dead pensioners one last time.

  "What a mess. Damn it, this didn't have to happen."

  Referring disdainfully to the murdered couple, Clocker said, "Who cares,

  for God's sake? They were nothing but a couple of fucking Klingons

  anyway."

  Oslett had been referring not to the victims but to the fact that Alfie

  was more than merely a renegade now, was an untraceable renegade, thus