Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

  He was less than a third of a block from the car when its engine shrieked and the spinning tires began to smoke. The Other was trying to get away, but the vehicles were hung up on each other. Tortured metal abruptly screeched, popped, and the Buick started to tear loose of the Explorer.

  Marty would have preferred to be closer when he opened fire, so he’d have a better chance of hitting The Other, but he sensed he was as close as he was going to get. He skidded to a halt, raised the Beretta, holding it with both hands, shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the sight on target, cursing himself for his weakness, trying to be a rock.

  The recoil of the first shot kicked the barrel high, and Marty lowered it before firing another round.

  The Buick broke free of the Explorer and lurched forward a few feet. For a moment its tires lost traction on the slick pavement and spun in place again, spewing behind it a silvery spray of water.

  He pulled the trigger, grunting in satisfaction as the rear window of the Buick imploded, and squeezed off another round right away, aiming for the driver, trying to visualize the bastard’s skull imploding as the window had done, hoping that what he imagined would translate into reality. When its tires got a bite of the pavement, the Buick shot away from him. Marty pumped another round and another, even though the car was already out of range. The girls weren’t in the line of fire and no one else seemed to be on the rainy street, but it was irresponsible to continue shooting because he had little chance of hitting The Other. He was more likely to blow away an innocent who happened to pass on some cross street ahead, more likely to shatter a window in one of the nearby houses and waste someone sitting in front of a TV. But he didn’t care, couldn’t stop himself, wanted blood, vengeance, emptied the magazine, repeatedly pulled the trigger after the last bullet had been expended, making primitive wordless sounds of rage, totally out of control.

  In the BMW, Paige ran the stop sign. The car slid around the corner, almost tipping onto two wheels before she straightened it out, facing east on the cross street.

  The first thing she saw after making the corner was Marty in the middle of the street. He was standing with his legs widely spread, his back to her, firing the pistol at the dwindling Buick.

  Her breath caught and her heart seized up. The girls must be in the receding car.

  She tramped the accelerator to the floor, intending to swing around Marty and catch up with the Buick, ram the back of it, run it off the road, fight the kidnapper with her bare hands, claw the son of a bitch’s eyes out, whatever she had to do, anything. Then she saw the girls in their bright yellow rain slickers on the right-hand sidewalk, standing under a street lamp. They were holding each other. They looked so small and fragile in the drizzling rain and bitter yellowish light.

  Past Marty, Paige pulled to the curb. She threw open the door and got out of the BMW, leaving the headlights on and the engine running.

  As she ran to the kids, she heard herself saying, “Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God.” She couldn’t stop saying it even when she crouched and swept both girls into her arms at the same time, as if on some level she believed that the two words had magic power and that her children would suddenly vanish from her embrace if she stopped chanting the mantra.

  The girls hugged her fiercely. Charlotte buried her face against her mother’s neck. Emily’s eyes were huge.

  Marty dropped to his knees beside them. He kept touching the kids, especially their faces, as if he was having difficulty believing that their skin was still warm and their eyes lively, astonished to see that breath still steamed from them. He repeatedly said, “Are you all right, are you hurt, are you all right?” The only injury he could find was a minor abrasion on Charlotte’s left palm, incurred when she’d plunged from the Buick and landed on her hands and knees.

  The only major and troubling difference in the girls was their unusual constraint. They were so subdued that they seemed meek, as if they had just been severely chastised. The brief experience with the kidnapper had left them frightened and withdrawn. Their usual self-confidence might not return for some time, might never be as strong as it had once been. For that reason alone Paige wanted to make the man in the Buick suffer.

  Along the block, a couple of people had come out on their front porches to see what the commotion was about—now that the shooting had stopped. Others were at their windows.

  Sirens wailed in the distance.

  Rising to his feet, Marty said, “Let’s get out of here.” “The police are coming,” Paige said.

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “But they—”

  “They’ll be as bad as last time, worse.”

  He picked up Charlotte and hurried with her to the BMW as the sirens swelled louder.

  Chips of glass are lodged in his left eye. For the most part, the tempered window had dissolved in a gummy mass. It had not cut his face. But tiny shards are embedded deep in the tender ocular tissues, and the pain is devastating. Every movement of the eye works the glass deeper, does more damage.

  Because his eye twitches when the worst needle-sharp pains stitch through it, he keeps blinking involuntarily, although it is torture to do so. To stop the blinking, he holds the fingers of his left hand against his closed eyelid, applying only the gentlest pressure. As much as possible, he drives with just his right hand.

  Sometimes he has to let the eye twitch unattended because he needs to use the left hand to drive. With the right, he tears open one of the candy bars and crams it into his mouth as fast as he can chew. His metabolic furnace demands fuel.

  A bullet crease marks his forehead above the same eye. The furrow is as wide as his index finger and a little more than an inch long. To the bone. At first it bled freely. Now the clotting blood oozes thickly over his eyebrow and seeps between the fingers that he holds to the eyelid.

  If the bullet had been one inch to the left, it would have taken him in the temple and drilled into his brain, jamming splinters of bone in front of it.

  He fears head wounds. He is not confident that he can recover from brain damage either as entirely or as swiftly as from other injuries. Maybe he can’t recover from it at all.

  Half blind, he drives cautiously. With only one eye he has lost depth perception. The rain-pooled streets are treacherous.

  The police now have a description of the Buick, perhaps even the license number. They will be looking for it, routinely if not actively, and the damage along the driver’s side will make it easier to spot.

  He is in no condition to steal another car at this time. He’s not only half blind but still shaky from the gunshot wounds that he suffered three hours ago. If he is caught in the act of stealing an unattended car, or if he encounters resistance when trying to kill another motorist such as the one whose raincoat he wears and who is temporarily entombed in the Buick’s trunk, he is likely to be apprehended or more seriously wounded.

  Driving north and west from Mission Viejo, he quickly crosses the city line into El Toro. Though in a new community, he does not feel safe. If there is an APB out on the Buick, it will probably be county-wide.

  The greatest danger arises from staying on the move, increasing the risk of being seen by the cops. If he can find a secluded place to park the Buick, where it will be safe from discovery at least until tomorrow, he can curl up on the back seat and rest.

  He needs to sleep and give his body a chance to mend. He has gone two nights without rest since leaving Kansas City. Ordinarily he could remain alert and active for a third night, possibly a fourth, with no diminution of his faculties. But the toll of his injuries, combined with lost sleep and tremendous physical exertion, requires time out for convalescence.

  Tomorrow he will get his family back, reclaim his destiny. He has wandered alone and in darkness for so long. One more day will make little difference.

  He was so close to success. For a brief time his daughters belonged to him again. His Charlotte. His Emily.

  He recalls the joy he felt in the foye
r of the Delorio house, holding the girls’ small bodies against him. They were so sweet. Butterfly-soft kisses on his cheeks. Their musical voices—“Daddy, Daddy”—so full of love for him.

  Remembering how close he was to taking permanent possession of them, he is on the brink of tears. He must not cry. The convulsion of the muscles in his damaged eye will amplify his pain unbearably, and tears in his right eye will reduce him to virtual blindness.

  Instead, as he cruises residential neighborhoods from El Toro into Laguna Hills, where house lights glow warmly in the rain and taunt him with images of domestic bliss, he thinks about how those same children ultimately defied and abandoned him, for this subject leads him away from tears and toward anger. He does not understand why his sweet little girls would choose the charlatan over their real father, when minutes previously they had showered him with thrilling kisses and adoration. Their betrayal disturbs him. Gnaws at him.

  While Marty drove, Paige sat in the back seat with Charlotte and Emily, holding their hands. She was emotionally incapable of letting go of them just yet.

  Marty followed an indirect route across Mission Viejo, initially stayed off main streets as much as possible, and successfully avoided the police. Block after block, Paige continued to study the traffic around them, expecting the battered Buick to appear and try to force them off the pavement. Twice she turned to look out the rear window, certain that the Buick was following them, but her fears were never realized.

  When Marty picked up the Marguerite Parkway and headed south, Paige finally asked, “Where are we going?”

  He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. Just away from here. I’m still thinking about where.”

  “Maybe they would’ve believed you this time.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “People back there must’ve seen the Buick.”

  “Maybe. But they didn’t see the man driving it. None of them can back up my story.”

  “Vic and Kathy must’ve seen him.”

  “And thought he was me.”

  “But now they’ll realize he wasn’t.”

  “They didn’t see us together, Paige. That’s what matters, damn it! Someone seeing us together, an independent witness.”

  She said, “Charlotte and Emily. They saw him and you at the same time.”

  Marty shook his head. “Doesn’t count. I wish it did. But Lowbock won’t put any stock in the testimony of little kids.”

  “Not so little,” Emily piped up from beside Paige, sounding even younger and tinier than she actually was.

  Charlotte remained uncharacteristically quiet. Both girls were still shivering, but Charlotte had a worse case of the shakes than did Emily. She was leaning against her mother for warmth, her head pulled turtlelike into the collar of her coat.

  Marty had the heater turned up as high as it would go. The interior of the BMW should have been suffocatingly hot. It wasn’t.

  Even Paige was cold. She said, “Maybe we should go back and try to talk sense to them anyway.”

  Marty was adamant. “Honey, no, we can’t. Think about it. They’ll sure as hell take the Beretta. I shot at the guy with it. From their point of view, one way or another, there’s been a crime, and the gun was used in the commission of it. Either somebody really attempted to kidnap the girls, and I tried to kill him. Or it’s still all a hoax to sell books, get me higher on the bestseller list. Maybe I hired a friend to drive the Buick, shot a bunch of blanks at him, induced my own kids to lie, now I’m filing another false police report.”

  “After all this, Lowbock won’t still be pushing that ridiculous theory.”

  “Won’t he? The hell he won’t.”

  “Marty, he can’t.”

  He sighed. “Okay, all right, maybe he won’t, probably he won’t.”

  Paige said, “He’ll realize that something a lot more serious is going on—”

  “But he won’t believe my story either, which I’ve got to admit sounds nuttier than a giant-size can of Planters finest. And if you’d read the piece in People . . . Anyway, he’ll take the Beretta. What if he discovers the shotgun in the trunk?”

  “There’s no reason for him to take that.”

  “He might find an excuse. Listen, Paige, Lowbock’s not going to change his mind about me that easily, not just because the kids tell him it’s all true. He’ll still be a lot more suspicious of me than of any guy in a Buick he’s never seen. If he takes both guns, we’re defenseless. Suppose the cops leave, then this bastard, this look-alike, he walks into the house two minutes later, when we don’t have anything to protect ourselves.”

  “If the police still don’t believe it, if they won’t give us protection, then we won’t stay at the house.”

  “No, Paige, I literally mean what if the bastard walks in two minutes after the cops leave, doesn’t even give us a chance to clear out?”

  “He’s not likely to risk—”

  “Oh, yes, he is! Yes, he is. He came back almost immediately after the cops left the first time—didn’t he?—just boldly walked up to the Delorios’ front door and rang the damn bell. He seems to thrive on risk. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to break in on us while the cops were still there, shoot everyone in sight. He’s crazy, this whole situation is crazy, and I don’t want to bet my life or yours or the kids’ lives on what the creep is going to do next.”

  Paige knew he was right.

  However, it was difficult, even painful, to accept that their situation was so dire as to place them beyond the help of the law. If they couldn’t receive official assistance and protection, then the government had failed them in its most basic duty: to provide civil order through the fair but strict enforcement of a criminal code. In spite of the complex machine in which they rode, in spite of the modern highway on which they traveled and the sprawl of suburban lights that covered most of the southern California hills and vales, this failure meant they were not living in a civilized world. The shopping malls, elaborate transit systems, glittering centers for the performing arts, sports arenas, imposing government buildings, multiplex movie theaters, office towers, sophisticated French restaurants, churches, museums, parks, universities, and nuclear power plants amounted to nothing but an elaborate facade of civilization, tissue-thin for all its apparent solidity, and in truth they were living in a high-tech anarchy, sustained by hope and self-delusion.

  The steady hum of the car tires gave birth in her to a mounting dread, a mood of impending calamity. It was such a common sound, hard rubber tread spinning at high speed over blacktop, merely a part of the quotidian music of daily life, but suddenly it was as ominous as the drone of approaching bombers.

  When Marty turned southwest on the Crown Valley Parkway, toward Laguna Niguel, Charlotte at last broke her silence. “Daddy?”

  Paige saw him glance at the rearview mirror and knew by his worried eyes that he, too, had been troubled by the girl’s unusual spell of introversion.

  He said, “Yes, baby?”

  “What was that thing?” Charlotte asked.

  “What thing, honey?”

  “The thing that looked like you.”

  “That’s the million-dollar question. But whoever he is, he’s just a man, not a thing. He’s just a man who looks an awful lot like me.”

  Paige thought about all the blood in the upstairs hall, about how quickly the look-alike had recovered from two chest wounds to make a quick escape and to return, a short time later, strong enough to renew the assault. He didn’t seem human. And Marty’s statements to the contrary were, she knew, nothing but the obligatory reassurances of a father who knew that children sometimes needed to believe in the omniscience and unshakable equanimity of adults.

  After further silence, Charlotte said, “No, it wasn’t a man. It was a thing. Mean. Ugly inside. A cold thing.” A shudder wracked her, causing her next words to issue tremolo: “I kissed it and said ‘I love you’ to it, but it was just a thing.”

  The upscale garden-apartment
complex encompasses a score or more of large buildings housing ten or twelve apartments each. It sprawls over parklike grounds shaded by a small forest of trees.

  The streets within the complex are serpentine. Residents are provided with community carports, redwood structures with only a back wall and roof, eight or ten stalls in each. Bougainvillea climbs the columns that support each roof, lending a note of grace, although at night the vivid blossoms are bleached of most of their color by the detergent-blue light of mercury-vapor security lamps.

  Throughout the development are uncovered parking areas where the white curbs are stenciled with black letters: VISITOR PARKING ONLY.

  In a deep cul-de-sac, he finds a visitors’ zone that provides him with a perfect place to spend the night. None of the six spaces is occupied, and the last is flanked on one side by a five-foot-high oleander hedge. When he backs the car into the slot, tight against the hedge, the oleander conceals the damage along the driver’s side.

  An acacia tree has been allowed to encroach upon the nearest street lamp. Its leafy limbs block most of the light. The Buick stands largely in darkness.

  The police are not likely to cruise the complex more than once or twice between now and dawn. And when they do, they will not be checking license plates but scanning the grounds for indications of burglary or other crimes in progress.

  He switches off the headlights and the engine, gathers up what remains of his store of candy, and gets out of the car, shaking off the bits of gummy, tempered glass that cling to him.

  Rain is no longer falling.

  The air is cool and clean.

  The night keeps its own counsel, silent but for the tick and plop of still-dripping trees.

  He gets into the back seat and softly closes the door. It is not a comfortable bed. But he has known worse. He settles into the fetal position, curled around candy bars instead of an umbilicus, blanketed only by the roomy raincoat.

  As he waits for sleep to overtake him, he thinks again of his daughters and their betrayal.