Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

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Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Page 27

by Mr. Murder(Lit)


  danger, me, their father, because of what I do for a living."

  Vic looks baffled. "You write books."

  "Vic, you know what an obsessive fan is?"

  Vic's eyes widen, then narrow as a gust of wind flings raindrops in his

  face. "Like that woman and Michael J. Fox a few years ago."

  "That's it, that's right, like Michael J. Fox." The girls are both in

  the car. He slams the door. "Only it's a guy bothering us, not some

  crazy woman, and tonight he goes too far, breaks in the house, he's

  violent, I had to hurt him. Me. You imagine me having to hurt any

  body, Vic? Now I'm afraid he'll be back, and I've got to get the girls

  away from here."

  "My God," Vic says, totally suckered by the tale.

  "Now that's all I have time to tell you, Vic, more than I have time to

  tell you, so you just . . . you just . . . you go back inside there

  before you catch your death of pneumonia. I'll call you in a few days,

  I'll tell you the rest."

  Vic hesitates. "If we can do anything to help--"

  "Go on now, go on, I appreciate what you've done already, but the only

  thing more you can do to help is get out of this rain.

  Look at you, you're drenched, for heaven's sake. Go get out of this

  rain, so I don't have to worry about you comin' down with pneumonia on

  account of me."

  Joining Marty at the back of the BMW, where he had dropped the bags,

  Paige put down the third suitcase and the Mossberg. When he unlocked

  and raised the trunk lid, she saw the three boxes inside.

  "What're those?"

  He said, "Stuff we might need."

  "Like what?"

  "I'll explain later." He heaved the suitcases into the trunk.

  When only two of the three would fit, she said, "The stuff I've packed

  is all bare necessities. At least one box has to go."

  "No. I'll put the smallest suitcase in the back seat, on the floor,

  under Emily's feet. Her feet don't reach the floor anyway."

  Halfway to the house, Vic looks back toward the Buick.

  Still playing Jimmy Stewart, "Go on, Vic, go on now. There's Kathy on

  the stoop, gonna catch her death, too, if you don't get inside, the both

  of you."

  He turns away, rounds the back of the Buick, and only looks at the house

  again when he reaches the driver's door.

  Vic is on the stoop with Kathy, too far away now to prevent his escape,

  with or without a gun.

  He waves at the Delorios, and they wave back. He gets into the Buick,

  behind the steering wheel, the oversize raincoat bunching up around him.

  He pulls the door shut.

  Across the street, in his own house, lights are aglow upstairs and down.

  The imposter is in there with Paige. His beautiful Paige. He can't do

  anything about that, not yet, not without a gun.

  When he turns to look into the back seat, he sees that Charlotte and

  Emily have already buckled themselves into the safety harnesses.

  They are good girls. And so cute in their yellow raincoats and matching

  vinyl hats. Even in their picture, they are not this cute.

  They both start talking, Charlotte first, "Where're we going, Daddy,

  where'd we get this car?"

  Emily says, "Where's Mommy?"

  Before he can answer them, they launch an unmerciful salvo of questions,

  "What happened, who'd you shoot, did you kill anybody?"

  "Was it Mrs. Sanchez?"

  "Did she go berserk like Hannibal the Cannibal, Daddy, was she really

  whacko?" Charlotte asked.

  Peering through the passenger-side window, he sees the De lorios go into

  their house together and close the front door.

  Emily says, "Daddy, is it true?"

  "Yeah, Daddy, is it true, what you told Mr. Delorio, like with Michael

  J. Fox, is it true? He's cute."

  "Just be quiet," he tells them impatiently. He shifts the Buick into

  gear, tramps the accelerator. The car bucks in place because he's

  forgotten to release the handbrake, which he does, but then the car

  jolts forward and stalls.

  "Why isn't Mom with you?" Emily asks.

  Charlotte's excitement is growing, and the sound of her voice is making

  him dizzy, "Boy, you had blood all over your shirt, you sure must've

  shot somebody, it was really disgusting, maximum gross."

  The craving for food is intense. His hands are shaking so badly that

  the keys jangle noisily when he tries to restart the engine.

  Although the hunger won't be nearly as bad this time as previously,

  he'll be able to go only a few blocks before he'll be overwhelmed with a

  need for those candy bars.

  "Where's Mommy?"

  "He must've tried to shoot you first, did he try to shoot you first, did

  he have a knife, that would've been scary, a knife, what did he have,

  Daddy?"

  The starter grinds, the car chugs, but the engine won't turn over, as if

  he has flooded it.

  "Where's Mommy?"

  "Did you actually fight him with your bare hands, take a knife away from

  him or something, Daddy, how could you do that, do you know karate, do

  you?"

  "Where's Mommy? I want to know where Mommy is."

  Rain thumps off the car roof. Pongs off the hood. The flooded engine

  is maddeningly unresponsive, ruuurrrrr-ruuurrrrr-ruuurrrrr.

  Windshield wipers thudding, thudding. Back and forth. Back and forth.

  Pounding incessantly. Girlish voices in the back seat, increasingly

  shrill. Like the strident buzzing of bees. Buzz-buzz-buzz.

  Has to concentrate to keep his trembling hand firmly on the key.

  Sweaty, spastic fingers keep slipping off. Afraid of overcompensating,

  maybe snap the key off in the ignition. Ruuurrrrr-ruuurrrrr.

  Starving.

  Need to eat. Need to get away from here. Thump. Pong. Incessant

  pounding. Pain revives in his nearly healed wounds. Hurts to breathe.

  Damn engine. Ruuurrrrr. Won't start. Ruuurrrrr-ruuurrrrr.

  Daddy-Daddy Daddy-Daddy-Daddy, buzzzzzzzzzzzz.

  Frustration to anger, anger to hatred, hatred to violence.

  Violence sometimes soothes.

  Itching to hit something, anything, he turns in his seat, glares back at

  the girls, screams at them, "Shut up, shut, up, shut up!"

  They are stunned. As if he has never spoken to them like this before.

  The little one bites her lip, can't bear to look at him, turns her face

  to the side window.

  "Quiet, for Christ's sake, be quiet!"

  When he faces forward again and tries to start the car, the older girl

  bursts into tears as if she's a baby. Wipers thudding, starter

  grinding, engine wallowing, the steady thump of rain, and now her whiny

  weeping, so piercing, grating, just too much to bear. He screams

  wordlessly at her, loud enough to drown out her crying and all the other

  sounds for a moment. He considers climbing into the back seat with the

  damn shrieking little thing, make it stop, hit it, shake it, clamp one

  hand over its nose and mouth until it can't make a sound of any kind,

  until it finally stops crying, stops struggling, just stops, stops --and

  abruptly the engine chugs, turns over, purrs sweetly.

  "I'll be right back," Paige said as Marty put the suitcase on the floor

  behind the driver's seat of
the BMW.

  He looked up in time to see that she was heading into the house.

  "Wait, what're you doing?"

  "Got to turn off all the lights."

  "To hell with that. Don't go back in there."

  It was a moment from fiction, straight out of a novel or movie, and

  Marty recognized it as such. Having packed, having gotten as far as the

  car, that close to escaping unscathed, they would return to the house to

  complete an inessential task, confident of their safety, and somehow the

  psychopath would be in there, either because he had returned while they

  were in the garage or because he had successfully hidden in some

  cleverly concealed niche throughout the police search of the premises.

  They would move from room to room, switching off the lights, letting

  darkness spill through the house where upon the look-alike would

  materialize, a shadow out of shadows, wielding a large butcher's knife

  taken from the rack of implements in their own kitchen, slashing,

  stabbing, killing one or both of them.

  Marty knew real life was neither as extravagantly colorful as the most

  eventful fiction nor half as drab as the average academic novel--and

  less predictable than either. His fear of returning to the house to

  switch off the lights was irrational, the product of a too-fertile

  imagination and a novelist's predilection to anticipate drama,

  malevolence , and tragedy in every turn of human affairs, in every

  change of weather, plan, dream, hope, or roll of dice.

  Nevertheless, they weren't going back into the damn house. No way in

  hell.

  "Leave the lights on," he said. "Lock up, raise the garage door, let's

  get the kids and get out of here."

  Maybe Paige had lived with a novelist long enough for her own

  imagination to be corrupted, or maybe she remembered all of the blood in

  the upstairs hall. For whatever reason, she didn't protest that leaving

  so many lights on would be a waste of electricity. She thumbed the

  button to activate the Genie lift, and shut the door to the kitchen with

  her other hand.

  As Marty closed and locked the trunk of the BMW, the garage door

  finished rising. With a final clatter it settled into the full-open

  position.

  He looked out at the rainy night, his right hand straying to the butt of

  the Beretta at his waistband. His imagination was still churning, and

  he was prepared to see the indomitable look-alike coming up the

  driveway.

  What he saw, instead, was worse than any image conjured by his

  imagination. A car was parked across the street in front of the De

  lorios' house. It wasn't the Delorios' car. Marty had never seen it

  before. The headlights were on, though the driver was having difficulty

  getting the engine to turn over, it cranked and cranked. Although the

  driver was only a dark shape, the small pale oval of a child's face was

  visible at the rear window, staring out from the back seat. Even at a

  distance, Marty was sure that the little girl in the Buick was Emily.

  At the connecting door to the kitchen, Paige was fumbling for house keys

  in the pockets of her corduroy jacket.

  Marty was in the grip of paralytic shock. He couldn't call out to

  Paige, couldn't move.

  Across the street, the engine of the Buick caught, chugged

  consumptively, then roared fully to life. Clouds of crystallized fumes

  billowed from the exhaust pipe.

  Marty didn't realize he'd shattered the paralysis and begun to move

  until he was out of the garage, in the middle of the driveway, sprinting

  through the cold rain toward the street. He felt as though he had

  teleported thirty feet in a tiny fraction of a second, but it was just

  that, operating on instinct and sheer animal terror, his body was ahead

  of his mind.

  The Beretta was in his hand. He didn't recall drawing it out of his

  waistband.

  The Buick pulled away from the curb and Marty turned left to follow it.

  The car was moving slowly because the driver had not yet realized that

  he was being pursued.

  Emily was still visible. Her frightened face was now pressed tightly to

  the glass. She was staring directly at her father.

  Marty was closing on the car, ten feet from the rear bumper.

  Then it accelerated smoothly away from him, much faster than he could

  run. Its tires parted the puddles with a percolative burble and plash.

  Like a passenger on Charon's gondola, Emily was being ferried not just

  along a street but across the river Styx, into the land of the dead.

  A black wave of despair washed over Marty, but his heart began to pound

  even more fiercely than before, and he found a strength he had not

  imagined he possessed. He ran harder than ever, splashing through

  puddles, feet hammering the blacktop with what seemed like jackhammer

  force, pumping his arms, head tucked down, eyes always on the prize.

  At the end of the block the Buick slowed. It came to a full stop at the

  intersection.

  Gasping, Marty caught up with it. Back bumper. Rear fender.

  Rear door.

  Emily's face was at the window.

  She was looking up at him now.

  His senses were as heightened by terror as if he'd taken mind altering

  drugs. He was hallucinogenically aware of every detail of the scores of

  raindrops on the glass between himself and his daughter their curved and

  pendulous shapes, the bleak whorls and shards of light from the street

  lamps reflected in their quivering surfaces--as if each of those

  droplets was equal in importance to anything else in the world.

  Likewise, he saw the interior of the car not just as a dark blur but as

  an elaborate dimensional tapestry of shadows in countless hues of gray,

  blue, black. Beyond Emily's pale face, in that intricate needlework of

  dusk and gloom, was another figure, a second child, Charlotte.

  Just as he drew even with the driver's door and reached for the handle,

  the car began to move again. It swung right, through the intersection.

  Marty slipped and almost fell on the wet pavement. He regained his

  balance, held on to the gun, and scrambled after the Buick as it turned

  into the cross street.

  The driver was looking to the right, unaware of Marty on his left.

  He was wearing a black coat. Only the back of his head was visible

  through the rain-streaked side window. His hair was darker than Vic

  Delorio's.

  Because the car was still moving slowly as it completed the turn, MR.

  Marty caught up with it again, breathing strenuously, ears filled with

  the hard drumming of his heart. He didn't reach for the door this time

  because maybe it was locked. He would squander the element of surprise

  by trying it. Raising the Beretta, he aimed at the back of the man's

  head.

  The kids could be hit by a ricochet, flying glass. He had to risk it.

  Otherwise, they were lost forever.

  Though there was little chance the driver was Vic Delorio or another

  innocent person, Marty couldn't squeeze the trigger without knowing for

  sure at whom he was shooting. Still moving, paralleling the car, he

  shouted, "Hey, hey, hey!"
<
br />   The driver snapped his head around to look out the side window.

  Along the barrel of the pistol, Marty stared at his own face.

  The Other. The glass before him seemed like a cursed mirror in which

  his reflection was not confined to precise mimicry but was free to

  reveal more vicious emotions than anyone would ever want the world to

  see, as it confronted him, that looking-glass face clenched with hatred

  and fury.

  Startled, the driver had let his foot slip off the accelerator.

  For the briefest moment the Buick slowed.

  No more than four feet from the window, Marty squeezed off two rounds.

  In the instant before the resonant thunder of the first gunshot echoed

  off an infinitude of wet surfaces across the rainswept night, he thought

  he saw the driver drop to the side and down, still holding the steering

  wheel with at least one hand but trying to get his head out of the line

  of fire. The muzzle flashed, and shattering glass obscured the

  bastard's fate.

 

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