Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

  “I’m not sure we can pay it entirely in hundreds,” Mrs. Higgens said. She spoke softly, discreetly, though there were only two other customers in the bank and neither of them nearby. “I’ll have to check our supply of bills in that denomination.”

  “Some twenties, fifties are okay,” Marty assured her. “I’m just trying to prevent it from getting too bulky.”

  Though both the assistant manager and the teller were smiling and polite, Marty was aware of their curiosity and concern. They were in the money business, after all, and they knew there weren’t many legitimate—and fewer sensible—reasons for anyone to carry seventy thousand in cash.

  Even if he had felt comfortable leaving Paige and the kids in the car, Marty would not have done so. The first suspicion to cross a banker’s mind would be that the cash was needed to meet a ransom payment, and prudence would require a call to the police. With the entire family present, kidnapping could be ruled out.

  Marty’s teller began to consult with other tellers, tabulating the number of hundreds contained in all their drawers, while Mrs. Higgens disappeared through the open door of the vault at the back of the cage.

  He glanced at Paige and the girls. East entrance. South. His watch. Smiling, smiling all the while, smiling like an idiot.

  We’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes, he told himself. Maybe as few as ten. Out of here and on our way and safe.

  The dark wave hit him.

  At a Denny’s, he uses the men’s room, then selects a booth by the windows and orders an enormous breakfast.

  His waitress is a cute brunette named Gayle. She makes jokes about his appetite. She is coming on to him. He considers trying to make a date with her. She has a lovely body, slender legs.

  Having sex with Gayle would be adultery because he is married to Paige. He wonders if it would still be adultery if, after having sex with Gayle, he killed her.

  He leaves her a good tip and decides to return within a week or two and ask her for a date. She has a pert nose, sensuous lips.

  In the Camry again, before he starts the engine, he closes his eyes, clears his mind, and imagines he is magnetized, likewise the false father, opposite poles toward each other. He seeks attraction.

  This time he is pulled into the orbit of the other man quicker than he was when he tried to make a connection in the middle of the night, and the adducent power is immeasurably greater than before. Indeed, the pull is so strong, so instant, he grunts in surprise and locks his hands around the steering wheel, as if he is in real danger of being yanked out of the Toyota through the windshield and shooting like a bullet straight to the heart of the false father.

  His enemy is immediately aware of the contact. The man is frightened, threatened.

  East.

  And south.

  That will lead him back in the general direction of Mission Viejo, though he doubts the imposter feels safe enough to have returned home already.

  A pressure wave, as from an enormous explosion, smashed into Marty and nearly rocked him off his feet. With both hands he clutched the countertop in front of the teller’s window to keep his balance. He leaned into the counter, bracing himself against it.

  The sensation was entirely subjective. The air seemed compressed to the point of liquefaction, but nothing disintegrated, cracked, or fell over. He appeared to be the only person affected.

  After the initial shock of the wave, Marty felt as if he’d been buried under an avalanche. Weighed down by immeasurable megatons of snow. Breathless. Paralyzed. Cold.

  He suspected that his face had turned pale, waxy. He knew for certain that he would be unable to speak if spoken to. Were anyone to return to the teller’s window while the seizure gripped him, the fear beneath his casual pose would be revealed. He would be exposed as a man in desperate trouble, and they would be reluctant to hand so much cash to someone who was so clearly either ill or deranged.

  He grew dramatically colder when he experienced a mental caress from the same malignant, ghostly presence that he’d sensed yesterday in the garage as he’d been trying to leave for the doctor’s office. The icy “hand” of the spirit pressed against the raw surface of his brain, as if reading his location by fingering data that was Brailled into the convoluted tissues of his cerebral cortex. He now understood that the spirit was actually the look-alike, whose uncanny powers were not limited to spontaneous recovery from mortal chest wounds.

  He breaks the magnetic connection.

  He drives out of the restaurant parking lot.

  He turns on the radio. Michael Bolton is singing about love.

  The song is touching. He is deeply moved by it, almost to tears. Now that he finally is somebody, now that a wife waits for him and two young children need his guidance, he knows the meaning and value of love. He wonders how he could have lived this long without it.

  He heads south. And east.

  Destiny calls.

  Abruptly, the spectral hand lifted from Marty.

  The crushing pressure was released, and the world snapped back to normal—if there was such a thing as normality any more.

  He was relieved that the attack had lasted only five or ten seconds. None of the bank employees had been aware anything was wrong with him.

  However, the need to obtain the cash and get out of there was urgent. He looked at Paige and the kids in the open lounge at the far end of the room. He shifted his gaze worriedly to the east entrance, the south entrance, east again.

  The Other knew where they were. In minutes, at most, their mysterious and implacable enemy would be upon them.

  4

  The scrambled eggs on Oslett’s abandoned plate acquired a faint grayish cast as they cooled and congealed. The salty aroma of bacon, previously so appealing, induced in him a vague nausea.

  Stunned by the consideration that Alfie might have developed into a creature with sexual urges and with the ability to satisfy them, Oslett was nonetheless determined not to appear concerned, at least not in front of Peter Waxhill. “Well, all of this still amounts to nothing but conjecture.”

  “Yes,” said Waxhill, “but we’re checking the past to see if the theory holds water.”

  “What past?”

  “Police records in every city where Alfie has been on assignment in the past fourteen months. Rapes and rape-murders during the hours he wasn’t actually working.”

  Oslett’s mouth was dry. His heart was thudding.

  He didn’t care what happened to the Stillwater family. Hell, they were only Klingons.

  He didn’t care, either, if the Network collapsed and all of its grand ambitions went unfulfilled. Eventually an organization similar to it would be formed, and the dream would be renewed.

  But if their bad boy proved impossible to recapture or stop, the potential was here for a stain to spread deep into the Oslett family, jeopardizing its wealth and seriously diminishing its political power for decades to come. Above all, Drew Oslett demanded respect. The ultimate guarantor of respect had always been family, bloodline. The prospect of the Oslett name becoming an object of ridicule and scorn, target of public outrage, brunt of every TV comedian’s puerile jokes, and the subject of embarrassing stories in papers as diverse as the New York Times and the National Enquirer was soul-shaking.

  “Didn’t you ever wonder,” Waxhill asked, “what your boy did with his free time, between assignments?”

  “We monitored him closely, of course, for the first six weeks. He went to movies, restaurants, parks, watched television, did all the things that people do to kill time—just as we wanted him to act outside a controlled environment. Nothing strange. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. Certainly nothing to do with women.”

  “He would have been on his best behavior, naturally, if he was aware that he was being watched.”

  “He wasn’t aware. Couldn’t be. He never made our surveillance men. No way. They’re the best.” Oslett realized he was protesting too much. Nevertheless, he couldn’t keep from adding, “No way.”


  “Maybe he was aware of them the same way he became aware of this Martin Stillwater. Some low-key psychic perception.”

  Oslett was beginning to dislike Waxhill. The man was a hopeless pessimist.

  Picking up the thermos-pot and pouring more coffee for all of them, Waxhill said, “Even if he was only going to movies, watching television—didn’t that worry you?”

  “Look, he’s supposed to be the perfect assassin. Programmed. No remorse, no second thoughts. Hard to catch, harder to kill. And if something does go wrong, he can never be traced to his handlers. He doesn’t know who we are or why we want these people terminated, so he can’t turn state’s evidence. He’s nothing, a shell, a totally hollow man. But he’s got to function in society, be inconspicuous, act like an ordinary Joe, do things real people do in their spare time. If we had him sitting around hotel rooms staring at walls, maids would comment to one another, think he’s weird, remember him. Besides, what’s the harm in a movie, some television?”

  “Cultural influences. They could change him somehow. ”

  “It’s nature that matters, how he was engineered, not what he did with his Saturday afternoon.” Oslett leaned back in his chair, feeling guardedly better, having convinced himself to some degree, if not Waxhill. “Check into the past. But you won’t find anything.”

  “Maybe we already have. A prostitute in Kansas City. Strangled in a cheap motel across the street from a bar called the Blue Life Lounge. Two different bartenders at the lounge gave the Kansas City Police a description of the man she left with. Sounds like Alfie.”

  Oslett had perceived a bond of class and experience between himself and Peter Waxhill. He had even entertained the prospect of friendship. Now he had the uneasy feeling that Waxhill was taking pleasure from being the bearer of all this bad news.

  Waxhill said, “One of our contacts managed to get us a sample of the sperm that the Kansas City Police Scientific Investigation Division recovered from the prostitute’s vagina. It’s being flown to our New York lab now. If it’s Alfie’s sperm, we’ll know.”

  “He can’t produce sperm. He was engineered—”

  “Well, if it’s his, we’ll know. We have his genetic structure mapped, we know it better than Rand McNally knows the world. And it’s unique. More individual than fingerprints.”

  Yale men. They were all alike. Smug, self-satisfied bastards.

  Clocker picked up a plump hot-house strawberry between thumb and forefinger. Examining it closely, as if he had excruciatingly high standards for comestibles and would not eat anything that failed to pass his demanding inspection, he said, “If Alfie’s drawn to Martin Stillwater, then what we need to know is where we can find Stillwater now.” He popped the entire berry, half as large as a lemon, onto his tongue and into his mouth, in the manner of a toad taking a fly.

  “Last night we sent a man into their house for a look around,” Waxhill said. “Indications are, they packed in a hurry. Bureau drawers left open, clothes scattered around, a few empty suitcases left out after they decided not to use them. Judging by appearances, they don’t intend to return home within the next few days, but we’re having the place watched just in case.”

  “And you have no idea in hell where to find them,” Oslett said, taking perverse pleasure in putting Waxhill on the defensive.

  Unruffled, Waxhill said, “We can’t say where they are at this moment, no—”

  “Ah.”

  “—but we think we can predict one place we can get a lead on them. Stillwater’s parents live in Mammoth Lakes. He has no other relatives on the West Coast, and unless there’s a close friend we don’t know about, he’s almost certain to call his father and mother, if not go there.”

  “What about the wife’s parents?”

  “When she was sixteen, her father shot her mother in the face and then killed himself.”

  “Interesting.” What Oslett meant was that the tawdriness of the average person’s life never ceased to amaze him.

  “It is interesting, actually,” Waxhill said, perhaps meaning something different from what Oslett meant. “Paige came home from school and found their bodies. For a few months, she was under the guardianship of an aunt. But she didn’t like the woman, and she filed a petition with the court to have herself declared a legal adult.”

  “At sixteen?”

  “The judge was sufficiently impressed with her to rule in her favor. It’s rare but it does happen.”

  “She must’ve had one hell of an attorney.”

  “I suppose she did. She studied the applicable statutes and precedents, then represented herself.”

  The situation was bleaker all the time. Even if he’d been lucky, Martin Stillwater had gotten the better of Alfie, which meant he was a more formidable man than the jerk in People. Now it was beginning to seem as if his wife had more than a common measure of fortitude, as well, and would make a worthy adversary.

  Oslett said, “To push Stillwater to get in touch with his folks, we should use Network affiliates in the media to hype the incidents at his house last night onto the front page.”

  “We are,” Peter Waxhill said infuriatingly. He framed imaginary headlines with his hands: “ ‘Bestselling Author Shoots Intruder. Hoax or Real Threat? Author and Family Missing. Hiding from Killer or Avoiding Police Scrutiny?’ That sort of thing. When Stillwater sees a newspaper or TV news program, he’s going to call his parents right then because he’ll know they’ve seen the news and they’re worried.”

  “We’ve tapped their phone?”

  “Yes. We have caller-ID equipment on the line. The moment the connection is made, we’ll have a number where Stillwater’s staying.”

  “What do we do in the meantime?” Oslett asked. “Just sit around here having manicures, eating strawberries?”

  At the rate Clocker was eating strawberries, the hotel supply would be gone shortly, and soon thereafter the entire hot-house crop in California and adjacent states would also be exhausted.

  Waxhill looked at his gold Rolex.

  Drew Oslett tried to detect some indication of ostentation in the way Waxhill consulted the expensive timepiece. He would have been pleased to note any revelatory action that might expose a gauche pretender under the veneer of grace and sophistication.

  But Waxhill seemed to regard the wristwatch as Oslett did his own gold Rolex: as though it was no different from a Timex purchased at K-Mart. “In fact, you’ll be flying up to Mammoth Lakes later this morning.”

  “But we can’t be certain Stillwater’s going to show up there.”

  “It’s a reasonable expectation,” Waxhill said. “If he does, then there’s a good chance Alfie will follow. You’ll be in position to collect our boy. And if Stillwater doesn’t go there, just calls his dear mater and pater, you can fly out or drive out at once to wherever he called from.”

  Reluctant to sit a moment longer, for fear that Waxhill would use the time to deliver more bad news, Oslett put his napkin on the table and pushed his chair back. “Then let’s get moving. The longer our boy’s on the loose, the greater the chance someone’s going to see him and Stillwater at the same time. When that happens, the police are going to start believing his story.”

  Remaining in his chair, picking up his coffee cup, Waxhill said, “One more thing.”

  Oslett had risen. He was loath to sit again because it would appear as if Waxhill controlled the moment. Waxhill did control the moment, in fact, but only because he possessed needed information, not because he was Oslett’s superior in rank or in any other sense. At worst, they held equal power in the organization; and more likely, Oslett was the heavyweight of the two. He remained standing beside the table, gazing down at the Yale man.

  Although he was finally finished eating, Clocker stayed in his chair. Oslett didn’t know whether his partner’s behavior was a minor betrayal or only evidence that the Trekker’s mind was off with Spock and the gang in some distant corner of the universe.

  After a sip of coffe
e, Waxhill said, “If you have to terminate our boy, that’s regrettable but acceptable. If you can bring him back into the fold, at least until he can be gotten into a secure facility and restrained, even better. However it goes . . . Stillwater, his wife, and his kids have to be eliminated.”

  “No problem.”

  5

  The branch manager, Mrs. Takuda, visited Marty while he waited at the teller’s window, shortly after the dark wave slammed into him and washed away. If he had been confronted by his reflection, he would have expected to see that he was still tight-lipped and pale, with an animal wildness in his eyes; however, if Mrs. Takuda noticed anything strange in his appearance, she was too polite to mention it. Primarily she was concerned that he might be withdrawing the majority of his savings because something about the bank displeased him.

  He was surprised he could summon a convincing smile and enough charm to assure her that he had no quarrel with the bank and to set her mind at rest. He was chilled and shaking deep inside, but none of the tremors reached the surface or affected his voice.

  When Mrs. Takuda went to assist Elaine Higgens in the vault, Marty looked at Paige and the kids, the east door, the south door, and his Timex. The sight of the red sweep hand cleaning the seconds off the dial made sweat break out on his brow. The Other was coming. How long? Ten minutes, two minutes, five seconds?

  Another wave hit him.

  Cruising a wide boulevard. Morning sun flaring off the chrome of passing cars. Phil Collins on the radio, singing about betrayal.

  Sympathizing with Collins, he again imagines magnetism. Click. Contact. He feels an irresistible pull farther east and south, so he is still heading in the right direction.

  He breaks contact seconds after establishing it, hoping to get another fix on the false father without revealing himself. But even during that brief linkage, the enemy senses the intrusion.

  Though the second wave was of shorter duration than the first, it was no less powerful. Marty felt as if he had been hit in the chest with a hammer.