medical encyclopedia to discover more. It was pretty bizarre stuff.
But she understood it. Sort of. Maybe more than she wanted to
understand. She had explained it as best she could to Em.
But Em didn't believe a word of it and, evidently, promptly forgot about
it.
"Just like in the movie Saturday," Charlotte reminded her. "If things
get real bad and he goes berserk, kick him between the legs."
"Oh, yeah," Em said dubiously, "kick him in his tickles."
"Testicles."
"It was tickles."
"It was testicles," Charlotte insisted firmly.
Emily shrugged. "Whatever."
Mrs. Delorio walked into the family room, drying her hands on a yellow
kitchen towel. She was wearing an apron over her skirt and blouse.
She smelled of onions, which she had been chopping, she'd been starting
to prepare dinner when they'd arrived. "Are you girls ready for more
Pepsi?"
"No, ma'am," Charlotte said, "we're fine, thank you. Enjoying the show.
"It's a great show," Emily said.
"One of our favorites," Charlotte said.
Emily said, "It's about a boy with tickles and everyone keeps kicking
them."
Charlotte almost thumped the little twerp on the head.
Frowning with confusion, Mrs. Delorio glanced back and forth from the
television screen to Emily. "Tickles?"
"Pickles," Charlotte said, making a lame effort at covering.
The doorbell rang before Em could do more damage.
Mrs. Delorio said, "I'll bet that's your folks," and hurried out of the
family room.
"Peabrain," Charlotte said to her sister.
Emily looked smug. "You're just mad because I showed it was all a lie.
She never heard of boys having tickles."
"Sheesh!"
"So there," Emily said.
"Twerp."
"Snerp."
"That's not even a word."
"It is if I want it to be."
The doorbell rang and rang as if someone was leaning on it.
Vic peered through the fish-eye lens at the man on the front stoop.
It was Marty Stillwater.
He opened the door, stepping back so his neighbor could enter.
"My God, Marty, it looked like a police convention over there. What was
that all about?"
Marty stared at him intensely for a moment, especially at the gun in his
right hand, then seemed to make some decision and blinked.
Wet from the rain, his skin looked glazed and as unnaturally white as
the face of a porcelain figurine. He seemed shrunken, shriveled, like a
man recovering from a serious illness.
"Are you all right, is Paige all right?" Kathy asked, entering the hall
behind Vic.
Hesitantly, Marty stepped across the threshold and stopped just inside
the foyer, not entering quite far enough to allow Vic to close the door.
"What," Vic asked, "you're worried about dripping on the floor?
You know Kathy thinks I'm a hopeless mess, she's had everything in the
house Scotchgarded! Come in, come in."
Without entering farther, Marty looked past Vic into the living room,
then up toward the head of the stairs. He was wearing a black raincoat
buttoned to the neck, and it was too large for him, which was part of
the reason he seemed shrunken.
Just when Vic thought the man was stricken mute, Marty said, "Where're
the kids?"
"They're okay," Vic assured him, "they're safe."
"I need them," Marty said. His voice was no longer raspy, as it had
been earlier, but wooden. "I need them."
"Well, for God's sake, old buddy, can't you at least come in long enough
to tell us what--"
"I need them now," Marty said, "they're mine."
Not a wooden voice, after all, Vic Delorio realized, but tightly
controlled, as if Marty was biting back anger or terror or some other
strong emotion, afraid of losing his grip on himself. He trembled a
little. Some of that rain on his face might have been sweat.
Coming forward along the hall, Kathy said, "Marty, what's wrong?"
Vic had been about to ask the same question. Marty Stillwater was
usually such an easy-going guy, relaxed, quick to smile, but now he was
stiff, awkward. Whatever he'd been through tonight, it had left deep
marks on him.
Before Marty could respond, Charlotte and Emily appeared at the end of
the hall, where it opened on the family room. They must have slipped
into their raincoats the minute they heard their father's voice.
They were buttoning up as they came.
Charlotte's voice wavered as she said, "Daddy?"
At the sight of his daughters, Marty's eyes flooded with tears.
When Charlotte spoke to him, he took another step inside, so Vic could
close the door.
The kids ran past Kathy, and Marty dropped to his knees on the foyer
floor, and the kids just about flew into his arms hard enough to knock
him over. As the three of them hugged one another, the girls talked at
once, "Daddy, are you okay? We were so scared. Are you okay? I love
you, Daddy. You were all yucky bloody. I told her it wasn't your
blood. Was it a burglar, was it Mrs. Sanchez, did she go berserk, did
the mailman go berserk, who went berserk, are you all right, is Mommy
all right, is it over now, why do nice people just suddenly go berserk
anyway?" All three were chattering at once, in fact, because Marty kept
talking through all of their questions, "My Charlotte, my Emily, my
kids, I love you, I love you so much, I won't let them steal you away
again, never again." He kissed their cheeks, their foreheads, hugged
them fiercely, smoothed their hair with his shaky hands, and in general
made over them as if he hadn't seen them in years.
Kathy was smiling and at the same time crying quietly, daubing at her
eyes with a yellow dish towel.
Vic supposed the reunion was touching, but he wasn't as moved by it as
his wife was, partly because Marty looked and sounded peculiar to him,
not strange in the way he expected a man to be strange after fighting
off an intruder in his house if that was actually what had happened--but
just . . . well, just strange. Odd. The things Marty was saying were
slightly weird, "My Emily, Charlotte, mine, just as cute as in your
picture, mine, we'll be together, it's my destiny."
His tone of voice was also unusual, too shaky and urgent if the ordeal
was over, which the departure of the police surely indicated, but also
too forced. Dramatic. Overly dramatic. He wasn't speaking
spontaneously but seemed to be playing a stage role, struggling to
remember the right thing to say.
Everyone said creative people were strange, especially writers, and when
Vic first met Martin Stillwater, he expected the novelist to be
eccentric. But Marty had disappointed in that regard, he had been the
most normal, levelheaded neighbor anyone could hope to have.
Until now.
Getting to his feet, holding on to his daughters, Marty said, "We've got
to go." He turned toward the front door.
Vic said, "Wait a second, Marty, buddy, you can't just blow out of here
like that, with us so damned curious and all."
&n
bsp; Marty had let go of Charlotte only long enough to open the door.
He grabbed her hand again as the wind whistled into the foyer and
rattled the framed embroidery of bluebirds and spring flowers that hung
on the wall.
When the writer stepped outside without responding to Vic in any way,
Vic glanced at Kathy and saw her expression had changed.
Tears still glistened on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry, and she
looked puzzled.
So it isn't just me, he thought.
He went outside and saw that the writer was already off the stoop,
heading down the walk in the wind-tossed rain, holding the girls' hands.
The air was chilly. Frogs were singing, but their songs were unnatural,
cold and tinny, like the grinding-racheting of stripped gears in frozen
machinery. The sound of them made Vic want to go back inside, sit in
front of the fire, and drink a lot of hot coffee with brandy in it.
"Damn it, Marty, wait a minute!"
The writer turned, looked back, with the girls cuddling close to his
sides.
Vic said, "We're your friends, we want to help. Whatever's wrong, we
want to help."
"Nothing you can do, Victor' "Victor? Man, you know I hate
"Victor,"
nobody calls me that, not even my dear old gray-haired mother if she
knows what's good for her."
"Sorry . . . Vic. I'm just . . . I've got a lot on my mind."
With the girls in tow, he started down the walkway again.
A car was parked directly at the end of the walk. A new Buick.
It looked bejeweled in the rain. Engine running. Lights on. Nobody
inside.
Dashing off the stoop into the storm, which was no longer the cloudburst
it had been but still drenching, Vic caught up with them.
"This your car?"
"Yeah," Marty said.
"Since when?"
"Bought it today."
"Where's Paige?"
"We're going to meet her." Marty's face was as white as the skull
hidden beneath it. He was trembling visibly, and his eyes looked
strange in the glow of the street lamp. "Listen, Vic, the kids are
going to be soaked to the skin."
"I'm the one getting soaked," Vic said. "They've got raincoats.
Paige isn't over at the house?"
"She left already." Marty glanced worriedly at his house across the
street, where lights still glowed at both the first- and second-floor
windows. "We're going to meet her."
"You remember what you told me--"
"Vic, please"
"I almost forgot myself, what you told me, and then you were on your way
down the walk and I remembered."
"We've got to go, Vic.
"You told me not to give the kids to anyone if Paige wasn't with them.
Not anyone. You remember what you said?"
Marty carried two large suitcases downstairs, into the kitchen.
The Beretta 9mm Parabellum was stuffed under the waistband of his
chinos. It pressed uncomfortably against his belly. He wore a
reindeer-pattern wool sweater, which concealed the gun. His red
and-black ski jacket was unzipped, so he could reach the pistol easily,
just by dropping the bags.
Paige entered the kitchen behind him. She was carrying one suitcase and
the Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun.
"Don't open the outer door," Marty told her as he went through the small
connecting door between the kitchen and the dark garage.
He didn't want the two-bay door open while they loaded the car because
then it would become a point of vulnerability. As far as he knew, The
Other might have crept back when the cops had left, might be outside at
that very minute.
Following him into the garage, Paige switched on the overhead
fluorescent panels. The long bulbs flickered but didn't immediately
catch because the starters were bad. Shadows leaped and spun along the
walls, between the cars, in the open rafters.
Torturing his injured neck, Marty involuntarily turned his head sharply
toward each leaping phantom. None of them had a face at all, let alone
a face identical to his.
The fluorescent came on all the way. The hard white light, cold and
flat as a winter-morning sun, brought the shadow dancers to a sudden
halt.
He is within a few feet of the Buick, holding tightly to his kids'
hands, so close to getting away with them. His Charlotte. His Emily.
His future, his destiny, so close, so infuriatingly close.
But Vic won't let go. The guy is a leech. Follows them all the way
from the house, as if oblivious of the rain, continuously babbling,
asking questions, a nosy bastard.
So close to the car. The engine running, headlights on. Emily in one
hand, Charlotte in the other, and they love him, they really love him.
They were hugging and kissing him back there in the foyer, so happy to
see him, his little girls. They know their daddy, their real daddy.
If he can just get into the car, close the doors, and drive away,
they're his forever.
Maybe he can kill Vic, the nosy bastard. Then it would be so easy to
escape. But he's not sure he can pull it off.
"You told me not to give the kids to anyone if Paige wasn't with them,"
Vic says. "Not anyone. You remember what you said?"
He stares at Vic, not thinking about an answer as much as about wasting
the son of a bitch. But he's hungry again, shaky and weak in the knees,
starting to crave the candy bars on the front seat, sugar,
carbohydrates, more energy for the repairs he's still undergoing.
"Marty? You remember what you said?"
He has no gun, either, which wouldn't ordinarily be a problem.
He's been well-trained to kill with his hands. He might even have
enough strength to do so, in spite of his condition and the fact that
Vic appears to be tough enough to put up a fight.
"I thought it was strange," Vic says, "but you told me, you said not
even to give them to you unless Paige was with you."
The problem is that the bastard does have a gun. And he's suspicious.
Second by second, all hope of escape is crumbling, washing away in the
rain. The girls are still holding his hand. He's got a firm grip on
them, yes, but they're about to start slipping away, and he doesn't know
what to do. He gapes at Vic, mind spinning, as stuck for something to
say as he was stuck for something to write when he sat in his office
earlier in the day and tried to begin a new book.
Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.
Abruptly he realizes that to confront this problem and prevail, he needs
to act like a friend, the way friends treat each other and talk with
each other in the movies. That will allay all suspicion.
A river of movie memories rushes through his mind, and he flows with
them. "Vic, good heavens, Vic, did I . . . did I say that?" He
imagines he is Jimmy Stewart because everyone likes and trusts Jimmy
Stewart. "I don't know what I meant, must been outta my head with
worry. Gosh, it's just that . . . just that I've been so darned crazy
scared with all this stuff that's been happening, this crazy stuff."
"What has been happening, Marty?"
Fea
rful but still gracious, halting but sincere, Jimmy Stewart in a
Hitchcock film, "It's complicated, Vic, it's all . . . it's screwy,
unbelievable, I half don't believe it myself. It'd take an hour to tell
you, and I don't have an hour, don't have an hour, no sir, not now, I
sure don't.
My kids, these kids, they're in danger, Vic, and God help me if anything
happens to them. I wouldn't want to live."
He can see that his new manner is having the desired effect.
He hustles the kids the last few steps to the car, confident that the
neighbor isn't going to stop them.
But Vic follows, splashing through a puddle. "Can't you tell me
anything?"
Opening the back door of the Buick, ushering the girls inside, he turns
to Vic once more. "I'm ashamed to say this, but it's me put them in
Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Page 26
