Mr. Murder

Three

1

The Oklahoma night made Drew Oslett uneasy. Mile after mile, on both sides of the interstate highway, with rare exception, the darkness was so deep and unrelenting that he seemed to be crossing a bridge over an enormously wide and bottomless abyss. Thousands of stars salted the sky, suggesting an immensity that he preferred not to consider.

He was a creature of the city, his soul in tune with urban bustle. Wide avenues flanked by tall buildings were the largest open spaces with which he was entirely comfortable. He had lived for many years in New York, but he had never visited Central Park; those fields and vales were encircled by the city, yet Oslett found them sufficiently large and bucolic to make him edgy. He was in his element only in sheltering forests of highrises, where sidewalks teemed with people and streets were jammed with noisy traffic. In his midtown Manhattan apartment, he slept with no drapes over the windows, so the ambient light of the metropolis flooded the room. When he woke in the night, he was comforted by periodic sirens, blaring horns, drunken shouts, car-rattled manhole covers, and other more exotic noises that rose from the streets even during the dead hours, though at diminished volume from the glorious clash and jangle of mornings, afternoons, and evenings. The continuous cacophony and infinite distractions of the city were the silk of his cocoon, protecting him, ensuring that he would never find himself in the quiet circumstances that encouraged contemplation and introspection.

Darkness and silence offered no distraction and were, therefore, enemies of contentment. Rural Oklahoma had too damned much of both.

Slightly slumped in the passenger seat of the rented Chevrolet, Drew Oslett shifted his attention from the unnerving landscape to the state-of-the-art electronic map that he was holding on his lap.

The device was as big as an attaché case, though square instead of rectangular, and operated off the car battery through a cigarette-lighter plug. The flat top of it resembled the front of a television set: mostly screen with a narrow frame of brushed steel and a row of control buttons. Against a softly luminous lime-green background, interstate highways were indicated in emerald green, state routes in yellow, and county roads in blue; unpaved dirt and gravel byways were represented by broken black lines. Population centers—precious few in this part of the world—were pink.

Their vehicle was a red dot of light near the middle of the screen. The dot moved steadily along the emerald-green line that was Interstate 40.

“About four miles ahead now,” Oslett said.

Karl Clocker, the driver, did not respond. Even in the best of times, Clocker was not much of a conversationalist. The average rock was more talkative.

The square screen of the electronic map was set to a mid-range scale, displaying a hundred square miles of territory in a ten-mile-by-ten-mile grid. Oslett touched one of the buttons, and the map blinked off, replaced almost instantly by a twenty-five-square-mile block, five miles on a side, that enlarged one quadrant of the first picture to fill the screen.

The red dot representing their car was now four times larger than before. It was no longer in the center of the picture but off to the right side.

Near the left end of the display, less than four miles away, a blinking white X remained stationary just a fraction of an inch to the right of Interstate 40. X marked the prize.

Oslett enjoyed working with the map because the screen was so colorful, like the board of a well-designed video game. He liked video games a lot. In fact, although he was thirty-two, some of his favorite places were arcades, where arrays of cool machines tantalized the eye with strobing light in every color and romanced the ear with incessant beeps, tweets, buzzes, hoots, whoops, waw-waws, clangs, booms, riffs of music, and oscillating electronic tones.

Unfortunately, the map had none of the action of a game. And it lacked sound effects altogether.

Still, it excited him because not just anyone could get his hands on the device—which was called a SATU, for Satellite Assisted Tracking Unit. It wasn’t sold to the public, partly because the cost was so exorbitant that potential purchasers were too few to justify marketing it broadly. Besides, some of the technology was encumbered by strict national-security prohibitions against dissemination. And because the map was primarily a tool for serious clandestine tracking and surveillance, most of the relatively small number of existing units were currently used by federally controlled law-enforcement and intelligence-gathering agencies or were in the hands of similar organizations in countries allied with the United States.

“Three miles,” he told Clocker.

The hulking driver did not even grunt by way of reply. Wires trailed from the SATU and terminated in a three-inch-diameter suction cup that Oslett had fixed to the highest portion of the curved windshield. A locus of microminiature electronics in the base of the cup was the transmitter and receiver of a satellite up-link package. Through coded bursts of microwaves, the SATU could quickly interface with scores of geosynchronous communication and survey satellites owned by private industry and various military services, override their security systems, insert its program in their logic units, and enlist them in its operations without either disturbing their primary functions or alerting their ground monitors to the invasion.

By using two satellites to search for—and get a lock on—the unique signal of a particular transponder, the SATU could triangulate a precise position for the carrier of that transponder. Usually the target transmitter was an inconspicuous package that had been planted in the undercarriage of the surveillance subject’s car—sometimes in his plane or boat—so he could be followed at a distance without ever being aware that someone was tailing him.

In this case, it was a transponder hidden in the rubber heel and sole of a shoe.

Oslett used the SATU controls to halve the area represented on the screen, thereby dramatically enlarging the details on the map. Studying the new but equally colorful display, he said, “He’s still not moving. Looks like maybe he’s pulled off the side of the road in a rest stop.”

The SATU microchips contained detailed maps of every square mile of the continental United States, Canada, and Mexico. If Oslett had been operating in Europe, the Mideast or elsewhere, he could have installed the suitable cartographical library for that territory.

“Two and a half miles,” Oslett said.

Driving with one hand, Clocker reached under his sportcoat and withdrew the revolver he carried in a shoulder holster. It was a Colt .357 Magnum, an eccentric choice of weaponry—and somewhat dated—for a man in Karl Clocker’s line of work. He also favored tweed jackets with leather-covered buttons, leather patches on the elbows, and on occasion—as now—leather lapels. He had an eccentric collection of sweater vests with bold harlequin patterns, one of which he was currently wearing. His brightly colored socks were usually chosen to clash with everything else, and without fail he wore brown suede Hush Puppies. Considering his size and demeanor, no one was likely to comment negatively on his taste in clothes, let alone make unasked-for observations about his choice of handguns.

“Won’t need heavy firepower,” Oslett said.

Without saying a word to Oslett, Clocker put the .357 Magnum on the seat beside him, next to his hat, where he could get to it easily.

“I’ve got the trank gun,” Oslett said. “That should do it.”

Clocker didn’t even look at him.

2

Before Marty would agree to get out of the rainswept street and tell the authorities what had happened, he insisted that a uniformed officer watch over Charlotte and Emily at the Delorios’ house. He trusted Vic and Kathy to do anything necessary to protect the girls. But they would not be a match for the vicious relentlessness of The Other.

He wasn’t sanguine that even a well-armed guard was enough protection.

On the Delorios’ front porch, rain streamed from the overhang. It looked like holiday tinsel in the glow of the brass hurricane lamp. Sheltering there, Marty tried to make Vic understand the girls were still in danger. “Don’t let anyone in except the cops or Paige.”

“Sure, Marty.” Vic was a physical-education teacher, coach of the local high-school swimming team, Boy Scout troop leader, primary motivator behind their street’s Neighborhood Watch program, and organizer of various annual charity fund drives, an earnest and energetic guy who enjoyed helping people and who wore athletic shoes even on occasions when he also wore a coat and tie, as if more formal footwear would not allow him to move as fast and accomplish as much as he wished. “Nobody but the cops or Paige. Leave it to me, the kids will be okay with me and Kathy. Jesus, Marty, what happened over there?”

“And for God’s sake, don’t give the girls to anyone, cops or anyone, unless Paige is with them. Don’t even give them to me unless Paige is with me.”

Vic Delorio looked away from the police activity and blinked in surprise.

In memory, Marty could hear the look-alike’s angry voice, see the flecks of spittle flying from his mouth as he raged: I want my life, my Paige . . . my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

“You understand, Vic?”

“Not to you?”

“Only if Paige is with me. Only then.”

“What—”

“I’ll explain later,” Marty interrupted. “Everybody’s waiting for me.” He turned and hurried along the front walk toward the street, looking back once to say, “Only Paige.”

... my Paige . . . my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

At home, in the kitchen, while recounting the assault to the officer who had caught the call and been first on the scene, Marty allowed a police technician to ink his fingers and roll them on a record sheet. They needed to be able to differentiate between his prints and those of the intruder. He wondered if he and The Other would prove to be as identical in that regard as they seemed in every other.

Paige also submitted to the process. It was the first time in their lives that either of them had been fingerprinted. Though Marty understood the need for it, the whole process seemed invasive.

After he got what he required, the technician moistened a paper towel with a glycerol cleanser and said that it would remove all the ink. It didn’t. No matter how hard he rubbed, dark stains remained in the whorls of his skin.

Before sitting down to make a more complete statement to the officer in charge, Marty went upstairs to change into dry clothes. He also took four Anacin.

He turned up the thermostat, and the house quickly overheated. But periodic shivers still plagued him—largely because of the unnerving presence of so many police officers.

They were everywhere in the house. Some were in uniforms, others were not, and all of them were strangers whose presence made Marty feel further violated.

He hadn’t anticipated how utterly a victim’s privacy was peeled away beginning the moment he reported a serious crime. Policemen and technicians were in his office to photograph the room where the violent confrontation had begun, dig a couple of bullets out of the wall, dust for fingerprints, and take blood samples from the carpet. They were also photographing the upstairs hall, stairs, and foyer. In their search for evidence that the intruder might have left behind, they assumed they had an invitation to poke into any room or closet.

Of course they were in his house to help him, and Marty was grateful for their efforts. Yet it was embarrassing to think that strangers might be noting the admittedly obsessive way he organized the clothes in his closet according to color—he and Emily both—the fact that he collected pennies and nickels in a half-gallon jar as might a boy saving for his first bicycle, and other unimportant yet highly personal details of his life.

And he was more unsettled by the plainclothes detective in charge than by the rest of them combined. The guy’s name was Cyrus Lowbock, and he elicited a complex response that went beyond mere embarrassment.

The detective could have made a good living as a male model posing for magazine advertisements for Rolls-Royce, tuxedoes, caviar, and stock-brokerage services. He was about fifty, trim, with salt-and-pepper hair, a tan even in November, an aquiline nose, fine cheekbones, and extraordinary gray eyes. In black loafers, gray cords, dark-blue cable-knit sweater, and white shirt—he had taken off a windbreaker—Lowbock managed to appear both distinguished and athletic, although the sports one would associate with him were not football and baseball but tennis, sailing, powerboat racing, and other pursuits of the upper classes. He looked less like any popular image of a cop than like a man who had been born to wealth and knew how to manage and preserve it.

Lowbock sat across the dining-room table from Marty, listening intently to his account of the assault, asking questions largely to clarify the details, and writing in a spiral-bound notebook with an expensive black-and-gold Montblanc pen. Paige sat beside Marty, offering emotional support. They were the only three people in the room, although uniformed officers interrupted periodically to confer with Lowbock, and twice the detective excused himself to examine evidence that had been deemed relevant to the case.

Sipping Pepsi from a ceramic mug, soothing his throat while recounting the life-and-death struggle with the intruder, Marty also experienced a resurgence of the inexplicable guilt that had first troubled him when he’d lain on the wet street with his hands cuffed. The feeling was no less irrational than before, considering that the biggest crime of which he could justifiably be accused was routine contempt for the speed limits on certain roads. But this time he understood that part of his uneasiness resulted from the perception that Lieutenant Cyrus Lowbock regarded him with quiet suspicion.

Lowbock was polite, but he did not say much. His silences were vaguely accusatory. When he wasn’t taking notes, his zinc-gray eyes focused unwaveringly, challengingly, on Marty.

Why the detective should suspect him of being less than entirely truthful was not clear. However, Marty supposed that after years of police work, dealing with the worst elements of society day in and day out, the understandable tendency was toward cynicism. Regardless of what the Constitution of the United States promised, a long-time cop probably felt justified in the conviction that all men—and women—were guilty until proven innocent.

Marty finished his story and took another long sip of cola. Cold fluids had done all they could for his sore throat; the greater discomfort was now in the tissues of his neck, where throttling hands had left the skin reddened and where extensive bruising would surely appear by morning. Though the four Anacin were beginning to kick in, a pain akin to whiplash made him wince when he turned his head more than a few degrees in either direction, so he adopted a stiff-necked posture and movement.

For what seemed an excessive length of time, Lowbock paged through his notes, reviewing them in silence, quietly tapping the Montblanc pen against the pages.

The splash and tap of rain still enlivened the night, though the storm had abated somewhat.

Floorboards upstairs creaked now and then with the weight of the policemen still at their assigned tasks.

Under the table, Paige’s right hand sought Marty’s left, and he gave it a squeeze as if to say that everything was all right now.

But everything wasn’t all right. Nothing had been explained or resolved. As far as he knew, their trouble was just beginning.

... my Paige . . . my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

At last Lowbock looked at Marty. In a flat tone of voice that was damning precisely because of its complete lack of interpretable inflection, the detective said, “Quite a story.”

“I know it sounds crazy.” Marty stifled the urge to assure Lowbock that he had not exaggerated the degree of resemblance between himself and the look-alike or any other aspect of his account. He had told the truth. He was not required to apologize for the fact that the truth, in this instance, was as astounding as any fantasy.

“And you say you don’t have a twin brother?” Lowbock asked.

“No, sir.”

“No brother at all?”

“I’m an only child.”

“Half brother?”

“My parents were married when they were eighteen. Neither of them was ever married to anyone else. I assure you, Lieutenant, there’s no easy explanation for this guy.”

“Well, of course, no other marriages would’ve been necessary for you to have a half brother . . . or a full brother, for that matter,” Lowbock said, meeting Marty’s eyes so directly that to look away from him would have been an admission of something.

As Marty digested the detective’s statement, Paige squeezed his hand under the table, an admonition not to let Lowbock rattle him. He tried to tell himself that the detective was only stating a fact, which he was, but it would have been decent to look at the notebook or at the window when making such implications.

Replying almost as stiffly as he was holding his head, Marty said, “Let me see . . . I guess I have three choices then. Either my father knocked up my mother before they were married, and they put this full brother—this bastard brother—up for adoption. Or after my folks were married, Dad screwed around with some other woman, and she gave birth to my half brother. Or my mother got pregnant by some other guy, either before or after she married my father, and that whole pregnancy is a deep, dark family secret.”

Maintaining eye contact, Lowbock said, “I’m sorry if I offended you, Mr. Stillwater.”

“I’m sorry you did, too.”

“Aren’t you being a little sensitive about this?”

“Am I?” Marty asked sharply, though he wondered if in fact he was over-reacting.

“Some couples do have a first child before they’re ready to make that commitment,” the detective said, “and they often put it up for adoption.”

“Not my folks.”

“Do you know that for a fact?”

“I know them.”

“Maybe you should ask them.”

“Maybe I will.”

“When?”

“I’ll think about it.”

A smile, as faint and brief as the passing shadow of a bird in flight, crossed Lowbock’s face.

Marty was sure he saw sarcasm in that smile. But, for the life of him, he couldn’t understand why the detective would regard him as anything less than an innocent victim.

Lowbock looked down at his notes, letting the silence build for a while.

Then he said, “If this look-alike isn’t related to you, brother or half brother, then do you have any idea how to explain such a remarkable resemblance?”

Marty started to shake his head, winced as pain shot through his neck. “No. No idea at all.”

Paige said, “You want some aspirin?”

“Had some Anacin,” Marty said. “I’ll be okay.”

Meeting Marty’s eyes again, Lowbock said, “I just thought you might have a theory.”

“No. Sorry.”

“You being a writer and all.”

Marty didn’t get the detective’s meaning. “Excuse me?”

“You use your imagination every day, you earn a living with it.”

“So?”

“So I thought maybe you’d figure out this little mystery if you put your mind to it.”

“I’m no detective. I’m clever enough at constructing mysteries, but I don’t unravel them.”

“On television,” Lowbock said, “the mystery writer—any amateur detective, for that matter—is always smarter than the cops.”

“It’s not that way in real life,” Marty said.

Lowbock let a few seconds of silence drift past, doodling on the bottom of a page of his notes, before he replied: “No, it’s not.”

“I don’t confuse fantasy and reality,” Marty said a little too harshly.

“I wouldn’t have thought you do,” Cyrus Lowbock assured him, concentrating on his doodle.

Marty turned his head cautiously to see if Paige showed any sign of perceiving hostility in the detective’s tone and manner. She was frowning thoughtfully at Lowbock, which made Marty feel better; maybe he was not over-reacting, after all, and didn’t need to add paranoia to the list of symptoms he had recounted to Paul Guthridge.

Emboldened by Paige’s frown, Marty faced Lowbock again and said, “Lieutenant, is something wrong here?”

Raising his eyebrows as if surprised by the question, Lowbock said archly, “It’s certainly my impression that something’s wrong, or otherwise you wouldn’t have called us.”

Restraining himself from making the caustic reply that Lowbock deserved, Marty said, “I mean, I sense hostility here, and I don’t understand the reason for it. What is the reason?”

“Hostility? Do you?” Without looking up from his doodle, Lowbock frowned. “Well, I wouldn’t want the victim of a crime to be as intimidated by us as by the creep who assaulted him. That wouldn’t be good public relations, would it?” With that, he neatly avoided a direct answer to Marty’s question.

The doodle was finished. It was a drawing of a pistol.

“Mr. Stillwater, the gun with which you shot this intruder—was that the same weapon taken from you out in the street?”

“It wasn’t taken from me. I voluntarily dropped it when told to do so. And, yes, it was the same gun.”

“A Smith and Wesson nine-millimeter pistol?”

“Yes.”

“Did you purchase that weapon from a licensed gun dealer?”

“Yes, of course.” Marty told him the name of the shop.

“Do you have a receipt from the store and proof of pre-purchase review by the proper law-enforcement agency?”

“What does this have to do with what happened here today?”

“Routine,” Lowbock said. “I have to fill out all the little lines on the crime report later. Just routine.”

Marty didn’t like the way the interview increasingly seemed to be turning into an interrogation, but he didn’t know what to do about it. Frustrated, he looked to Paige for the answer to Lowbock’s inquiry because she kept their financial records for the accountant.

She said, “All the paperwork from the gun shop would be stapled together and filed with all of our canceled checks for that year.”

“We bought it maybe three years ago,” Marty said.

“That stuff’s packed away in the garage attic,” Paige added.

“But you can get it for me?” Lowbock asked.

“Well . . . yes, with a little digging around,” Paige said, and she started to get up from her chair.

“Oh, don’t trouble yourself right this minute,” Lowbock said. “It’s not that urgent.” He turned to Marty again: “What about the Korth thirty-eight in the glovebox of your Taurus? Did you buy that at the same gun shop?”

Surprised, Marty said, “What were you doing in the Taurus?”

Lowbock feigned surprise at Marty’s surprise, but it seemed calculated to look false, to needle Marty by mimicking him. “In the Taurus? Investigating the case. That is what we’ve been asked to do? I mean, there aren’t any places, any subjects, you’d rather we didn’t look into? Because, of course, we’d respect your wishes in that regard.”

The detective was so subtle in his mockery and so vague in his insinuations that any strong response on Marty’s part would appear to be the reaction of a man with something to hide. Clearly, Lowbock thought he did have something to hide and was toying with him, trying to rattle him into an inadvertent admission.

Marty almost wished he did have an admission to make. As they were currently playing this game, it was enormously frustrating.

“Did you buy the thirty-eight at the same gun shop where you purchased the Smith and Wesson?” Lowbock persisted.

“Yes.” Marty sipped his Pepsi.

“Do you have the paperwork on that?”

“Yes, I’m sure we do.”

“Do you always carry that gun in your car?”

“No.”

“It was in your car today.”

Marty was aware that Paige was looking at him with some degree of surprise. He couldn’t explain about his panic attack now or tell her about the strange awareness of an onrushing Juggernaut which had preceded it, and which had driven him to take extraordinary precautions. Considering the unexpected and less-than-benign turn the questioning had taken, this was not information he wanted to share with the detective, for fear he’d sound unbalanced and would find himself involuntarily committed for psychiatric evaluation.

Marty sipped some Pepsi, not to soothe his throat but to gain a little time to think before responding to Lowbock. “I didn’t know it was there,” he said at last.

Lowbock said, “You didn’t know the gun was in your glovebox?”

“No.”

“Are you aware that it’s illegal to carry a loaded weapon in your car?”

And just what the hell were you people doing, poking around in my car?

“Like I said, I didn’t know it was there, so of course I didn’t know it was loaded, either.”

“You didn’t load it yourself?”

“Well, I probably did.”

“You mean, you don’t remember if you loaded it or how it got in the Taurus?”

“What probably happened . . . the last time I went to the shooting range, maybe I loaded it for one more round of target practice and then forgot.”

“And brought it home from the shooting range in your glovebox?”

“That’s right.”

“When was the last time you were at the shooting range?”

“I don’t know . . . three, four weeks ago.”

“Then you’ve been carrying a loaded gun around in your car for a month?”

“But I’d forgotten it was in there.”

One lie, told to avoid a misdemeanor gun-possession charge, had led to a string of lies. All were minor falsehoods, but Marty had enough grudging respect for Cyrus Lowbock’s abilities to know that he perceived them as untruthful. Because the detective already seemed unreasonably convinced that the apparent victim should be regarded instead as a suspect, he would assume that each mendacity was further proof that dark secrets were being concealed from him.

Tilting his head back slightly, staring cooly yet accusingly at Marty, using his patrician looks to intimidate but keeping his voice soft and without inflection, Lowbock said, “Mr. Stillwater, are you always so careless with guns?”

“I don’t believe I’ve been careless.”

The raised eyebrow again. “Don’t you?”

“No.”

The detective picked up his pen and made a cryptic note in his spiral-bound notebook. Then he began to doodle again. “Tell me, Mr. Stillwater, do you have a permit to carry a concealed weapon?”

“No, of course not.”

“I see.”

Marty sipped his Pepsi.

Under the table, Paige sought his hand again. He was grateful for the contact.

The new doodle was taking shape. A pair of handcuffs.

Lowbock said, “Are you a gun enthusiast, a collector?”

“No, not really.”

“But you have a lot of guns.”

“Not so many.”

Lowbock enumerated them on the fingers of one hand. “Well, the Smith and Wesson, the Korth—the Colt M16 assault rifle in the foyer closet.”

Oh, sweet Jesus.

Looking up from his hand, meeting Marty’s eyes with that cool, intense gaze, Lowbock said, “Were you aware the M16 was also loaded?”

“I’ve bought all the guns primarily for research, book research. I don’t like to write about a gun without having used it.” It was the truth, but even to Marty it sounded like flimflam.

“And you keep them loaded, tucked into drawers and closets all over the house?”

No safe answer occurred to Marty. If he said he knew the rifle was loaded, Lowbock would want to know why anyone would need to keep a military weapon in such a state of readiness in a peaceful, quiet residential neighborhood. An M16 was sure as hell not a suitable home-defense gun except, perhaps, if you lived in Beirut or Kuwait City or South Central Los Angeles. On the other hand, if he said that he hadn’t known the rifle was loaded, there would be more snide questions about his carelessness with guns and bolder insinuations that he was lying.

Besides, whatever he said might seem foolish or deceptive in the extreme if they had also found the Mossberg shotgun under the bed in the master bedroom or the Beretta that he had stashed in a kitchen cabinet.

Trying not to lose his temper, he said, “What do my guns have to do with what happened today? It seems to me we’ve gotten way off the track, Lieutenant.”

“Is that how it seems?” Lowbock asked, as if genuinely puzzled by Marty’s attitude.

“Yes, that’s how it seems,” Paige said sharply, obviously realizing she was in a better position than Marty to be harsh with the detective. “You make it seem as if Marty’s the one who broke into somebody’s home and tried to strangle them to death.”

Marty said, “Do you have men searching the neighborhood, have you put out an APB?”

“An APB?”

Marty was irritated by the detective’s intentional obtuseness. “An APB for The Other.”

Frowning, Lowbock said, “For the what?”

“For the look-alike, the other me.”

“Oh, yes, him.” That wasn’t actually an answer, but Lowbock went on with his agenda before Marty or Paige could insist on a more specific reply: “Is the Heckler and Koch another one of the weapons you purchased for research?”

“Heckler and Koch?”

“The P7. Fires nine-millimeter ammunition.”

“I don’t own a P7.”

“You don’t? Well, it was lying on the floor of your office upstairs.”

“That was his gun,” Marty said. “I told you he had a gun.”

“Did you know the barrel on that P7 is threaded for a silencer?”

“He had a gun, that’s all I knew. I didn’t take time to notice if it had a silencer. I didn’t exactly have the leisure to catalogue all its features.”

“Wasn’t a silencer on it, actually, but it’s threaded for one. Mr. Stillwater, did you know it’s illegal to equip a firearm with a silencer?”

“It’s not my gun, Lieutenant.”

Marty was beginning to wonder if he should refuse to answer any more questions without an attorney present. But that was crazy. He hadn’t done anything. He was innocent. He was the victim, for God’s sake. The police wouldn’t even have been there if he hadn’t told Paige to call them.

“A Heckler and Koch P7 threaded for a silencer—that’s very much a professional’s weapon, Mr. Stillwater. Hitman, assassin, whatever you want to call him. What would you call him?”

“What do you mean?” Marty asked.

“Well, I was wondering, if you were writing about such a man, a professional, what are the various terms you’d use to refer to him?”

Marty sensed an unspoken implication in the question, something that was getting close to the heart of whatever agenda Lowbock was promoting, but he was not quite sure what it was.

Apparently Paige sensed it, too, for she said, “Exactly what are you trying to say, Lieutenant?”

Frustratingly, Cyrus Lowbock edged away from confrontation again. In fact, he lowered his gaze to his notes and pretended as if there had been nothing more to his question than casual curiosity about a writer’s choice of synonyms. “Anyway, you’re very lucky that a professional like this, a man who would carry a P7 threaded for a silencer, wasn’t able to get the best of you.”

“I surprised him.”

“Evidently.”

“By having a gun in my desk drawer.”

“It always pays to be prepared,” Lowbock said. Then quickly: “But you were lucky to get the best of him in hand-to-hand combat, too. A professional like that would be a good close-in fighter, maybe even know Tae Kwon Do or something, like they always do in books and movies. ”

“He was slowed a little. Two shots in the chest.”

Nodding, the detective said, “Yes, that’s right, I remember. Ought to’ve brought down any ordinary man.”

“He was lively enough.” Marty tenderly touched his throat.

Changing subjects with a suddenness meant to be disconcerting, Lowbock said, “Mr. Stillwater, were you drinking this afternoon?”

Giving in to his anger, Marty said, “It can’t be explained away that easily, Lieutenant.”

“You weren’t drinking this afternoon?”

“No.”

“Not at all?”

“No.”

“I don’t mean to be argumentative, Mr. Stillwater, really I don’t, but when we first met, I smelled alcohol on your breath. Beer, I believe. And there’s a can of Coors lying in the living room, beer spilled on the wood floor.”

“I drank some beer after.”

“After what?”

“After it was over. He was lying on the foyer floor with a broken back. At least I thought it was broken.”

“So you figured, after all that shooting and fighting, a cold beer was just the thing.”

Paige glared at the detective. “You’re trying so hard to make the whole business sound silly—”

“—and I wish to hell you’d just come right out and tell us why you don’t believe me,” Marty added.

“I don’t disbelieve you, Mr. Stillwater. I know this is all very frustrating, you feel put-upon, you’re still shaken up, tired. But I’m still absorbing, listening and absorbing. That’s what I do. It’s my job. And I really haven’t formed any theories or opinions yet.”

Marty was certain that was not the truth. Lowbock had carried with him a set of fully formed opinions when he’d first sat down at the dining-room table.

After draining the last of the Pepsi in the mug, Marty said, “I almost drank some milk, orange juice, but my throat was so sore, hurt like hell, as if it was on fire. I couldn’t swallow without agony. When I opened the refrigerator, the beer just looked a lot better than anything else, the most refreshing.”

With his Montblanc pen, Lowbock was again doodling on one corner of a page in his notebook. “So you only had that one can of Coors.”

“Not all of it. I drank half, maybe two-thirds. When my throat was feeling a little better, I went back to see how The Other . . . how the look-alike was doing. I was carrying the beer with me. I was so surprised to see the bastard gone, after he’d looked half dead, the can of Coors just sort of slipped out of my hand.”

Even though it was upside-down, Marty was able to see what the detective was drawing. A bottle. A long-necked beer bottle.

“So then half a can of Coors,” Lowbock said.

“That’s right.”

“Maybe two-thirds.”

“Yes.”

“But nothing more.”

“No.”

Finishing his doodle, Lowbock looked up from the notebook and said, “What about the three empty bottles of Corona in the trash can under the kitchen sink?”

3

“Rest area, this exit,” Drew Oslett read. Then he said to Clocker, “You see that sign?”

Clocker did not reply.

Returning his attention to the SATU screen in his lap, Oslett said, “That’s where he is, all right, maybe taking a leak in the men’s room, maybe even stretched out on the back seat of whatever car he’s driving, catching a few winks.”

They were about to go into action against an unpredictable and formidable adversary, but Clocker appeared unperturbed. Even though driving, he seemed to be lost in a meditative state. His bearlike body was as relaxed as that of a Tibetan monk in a transcendental swoon. His enormous hands rested on the steering wheel, the thick fingers only slightly curled, maintaining the minimum grip. Oslett wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that the big man was steering the car mostly with some arcane power of the mind. Nothing in Clocker’s broad, blunt-featured face indicated that he knew what the word “tension” meant: pale brow as smooth as polished marble; cheeks unlined; sapphire-blue eyes softly radiant in the reflected light of the instrument panel, gazing into the distance, not merely at the road ahead but possibly beyond this world. His wide mouth was open just enough to accept a thin communion wafer. His lips were curved in the faintest of smiles, but it was impossible to know if he was pleased by something he was contemplating in a spiritual reverie or by the prospect of imminent violence.

Karl Clocker had a talent for violence.

For that reason, in spite of his taste in clothes, he was a man of his times.

“Here’s the rest area,” Oslett said as they neared the end of the access road.

“Where else would it be?” Clocker responded.

“Huh?”

“It is where it is.”

The big man wasn’t much of a talker, and when he did have something to say, half the time it was cryptic. Oslett suspected Clocker of being either a closet existentialist or—at the other end of the spectrum—a New Age mystic. Though the truth might be that he was so totally self-contained, he didn’t need much human contact or interaction; his own thoughts and observations adequately engaged and entertained him. One thing was certain: Clocker was not as stupid as he looked; in fact, he had an IQ well above average.

The rest-area parking lot was illuminated by eight tall sodium-vapor lamps. After so many grim miles of unrelieved darkness, which had begun to seem like the blasted black barrens of a post-nuclear landscape, Oslett’s spirits were lifted by the glow of the tall lamps, though it was a sickly urine-yellow reminiscent of the sour light in a bad dream. No one would ever mistake the place for any part of Manhattan, but it confirmed that civilization still existed.

A large motorhome was the only vehicle in sight. It was parked near the concrete-block building that housed the comfort stations.

“We’re right on top of him now.” Oslett switched off the SATU screen and placed the unit on the floor between his feet. Popping the suction cup off the windshield, dropping it on the electronic map, he said, “No doubt about it—our Alfie’s snug in that road hog. Probably ripped it off some poor schmuck, now he’s on the run with all the comforts of home.”

They drove past a grassy area with three picnic tables and parked about twenty feet away from the Road King, on the driver’s side.

No lights were on in the motorhome.

“No matter how far off the tracks Alfie’s gone,” Oslett said, “I still think he’ll respond well to us. We’re all he has, right? Without us, he’s alone in the world. Hell, we’re like his family.”

Clocker switched off the lights and the engine.

Oslett said, “Regardless of what condition he’s in, I don’t think he’d hurt us. Not old Alfie. Maybe he’d waste anyone else who got in his way but not us. What do you think?”

Getting out of the Chevy, Clocker plucked both his hat and his Colt .357 Magnum off the front seat.

Oslett took a flashlight and the tranquilizer gun. The bulky pistol had two barrels, over and under, each loaded with a fat hypodermic cartridge. It was designed for use in zoos and wasn’t accurate at more than fifty feet, which was good enough for Oslett’s purpose, since he wasn’t planning to go after any lions on the veldt.

Oslett was grateful that the rest area was not crowded with travelers. He hoped that he and Clocker could finish their business and get away before any cars or trucks pulled in from the highway.

On the other hand, when he got out of the Chevy and eased the door shut behind him, he was disturbed by the emptiness of the night. Except for the singing of tires and the air-cutting whoosh of passing traffic on the interstate, the silence was as oppressive as it must be in the vacuum of deep space. A copse of tall pines stood as backdrop to the entire rest area, and, in the windless darkness, their heavy boughs drooped like swags of funeral bunting.

He craved the hum and bustle of urban streets, where ceaseless activity offered continuous distractions. Commotion provided escape from contemplation. In the city, the flash-clatter-spin of daily life allowed his attention to be directed forever outward if he wished, sparing him the dangers inherent in self-examination.

Joining Clocker at the driver’s door of the Road King, Oslett considered making as stealthy an entrance as possible. But if Alfie was inside, as the SATU electronic map specifically indicated, he was probably already aware of their arrival.

Besides, on the deepest cognitive levels, Alfie was conditioned to respond to Drew Oslett with absolute obedience. It was almost inconceivable that he would attempt to harm him.

Almost.

They had also been certain that the chances of Alfie going AWOL were so small as to be nonexistent. They had been wrong about that. Time might prove them wrong about other things.

That was why Oslett had the tranquilizer gun.

And that was why he didn’t try to dissuade Clocker from bringing the .357 Magnum.

Steeling himself for the unexpected, Oslett knocked on the metal door. Knocking seemed a ludicrous way to announce himself under the 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.

4

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, counsel thyself. Reducing the level of interaction was 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.

5

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 bumper sticker 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 seventy-two hours. Although he was unable to recall what he was or who controlled him, Alfie was intelligent enough to apply his knowledge 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 jeopardizing the organization and everyone in it. He had no more pity for the dead man and woman than did Clocker, felt no responsibility for what had happened to them, and figured the world, in fact, was better off without two more non-productive parasites sucking on the substance of society and hindering traffic in their lumbering home on wheels. He had no love for the masses. As he saw it, the basic problem with the average man and woman was precisely that they were so average and that there were so many of them, taking far more than they gave to the world, quite incapable of managing their own lives intelligently let alone society, government, the economy, and the environment.

Nevertheless, he was alarmed by the way Clocker had phrased his contempt for the victims. The word “Klingons” made him uneasy because it was the name of the alien race that had been at war with humanity through so many television episodes and movies in the Star Trek series before events in that fictional far future had begun to reflect the improvement of relations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the real world. Oslett found Star Trek tedious, insufferably boring. He never had understood why so many people had such a passion for it. But Clocker was an ardent fan of the series, unabashedly called himself a “Trekker,” could reel off the plots of every movie and episode ever filmed, and knew the personal histories of every character as if they were all his dearest friends. Star Trek was the only topic about which he seemed willing or able to conduct a conversation; and as taciturn as he was most of the time, he was to the same degree garrulous when the subject of his favorite fantasy arose.

Oslett tried to make sure that it never arose.

Now, in his mind, the dreaded word “Klingons” clanged like a firehouse bell.

With the entire organization at risk because Alfie’s trail had been lost, with something new and exquisitely violent loose in the world, the return trip to Oklahoma City through so many miles of lightless and unpeopled land was going to be bleak and depressing. The last thing Oslett needed was to be assaulted by one of Clocker’s exhaustingly enthusiastic monologues about Captain Kirk, Mr. Spock, Scotty, the rest of the crew, and their adventures in the far reaches of a universe that was, on film, stuffed with far more meaning and moments of sophomoric enlightenment than was the real universe of hard choices, ugly truths, and mindless cruelty.

“Let’s get out of here,” Oslett said, pushing past Clocker and heading for the front of the Road King. He didn’t believe in God, but he prayed nonetheless ardently that Karl Clocker would subside into his usual self-absorbed silence.

6

Cyrus Lowbock excused himself temporarily to confer with some colleagues who wanted to talk to him elsewhere in the house.

Marty was relieved by his departure.

When the detective left the dining room, Paige returned from the window and sat once more in the chair beside Marty.

Although the Pepsi was gone, some of the ice cubes had melted in the mug, and he drank the cold water. “All I want now is to put an end to this. We shouldn’t be here, not with that guy out there somewhere, loose.”

“Do you think we should be worried about the kids?”

... need . . . my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

Marty said, “Yeah. I’m worried shitless.”

“But you shot the guy twice in the chest.”

“I thought I’d left him in the foyer with a broken back, too, but he got up and ran away. Or limped away. Or maybe even vanished into thin air. I don’t know what the hell’s going on here, Paige, but it’s wilder than anything I’ve ever put in a novel. And it’s not over, not by a long shot.”

“If it was just Vic and Kathy looking after them, but there’s a cop over there too.”

“If this bastard knew where the girls were, he’d waste that cop, Vic, and Kathy in about a minute flat.”

“You handled him.”

“I was lucky, Paige. Just damned lucky. He never imagined I had a gun in the desk drawer or that I’d use one if I had it. I took him by surprise. He won’t let that happen again. He’ll have all the surprise on his side.”

He tilted the mug to his lips, let a melting ice cube slide onto his tongue.

“Marty, when did you take the guns out of the garage cabinet and load them?”

Speaking around the ice cube, he said, “I saw how that jolted you. I did it this morning. Before I went to see Paul Guthridge.”

“Why?”

As best he could, Marty described the curious feeling he’d had that something was bearing down on him and was going to destroy him before he even got a chance to identify it. He tried to convey how the feeling intensified into a panic attack, until he was certain he would need guns to defend himself and became almost incapacitated by fear.

He would have been embarrassed to tell her, would have sounded unbalanced—if events had not proved the validity of his perceptions and precautions.

“And something was coming,” she said. “This dead-ringer. You sensed him coming.”

“Yeah. I guess so. Somehow.”

“Psychic.”

He shook his head. “No, I wouldn’t call it that. Not if you mean a psychic vision. There wasn’t any vision. I didn’t see what was coming, didn’t have a clear premonition. Just this . . . this awful sense of pressure, gravity . . . like on one of those whip rides at an amusement park, when it swings you around real fast and you’re pinned to the seat, feel a weight on your chest. You know, you’ve been on rides like that, Charlotte always loves them.”

“Yeah. I understand . . . I guess.”

“This started out like that . . . and got a hundred times worse, until I could hardly breathe. Then suddenly it just stopped as I was leaving for the doctor’s office. And later, when I came home, the sonofabitch was here, but I didn’t feel anything when I walked into the house.”

They were silent for a moment.

Wind flung pellets of rain against the window.

Paige said, “How could he look exactly like you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why would he say you stole his life?”

“I don’t know, I just don’t know.”

“I’m scared, Marty. I mean, it’s all so weird. What’re we going to do?”

“Past tonight, I don’t know. But tonight, at least, we’re not staying here. We’ll go to a hotel.”

“But if the police don’t find him dead somewhere, then there’s tomorrow . . . and the day after tomorrow.”

“I’m battered and tired and not thinking straight. For now I can only concentrate on tonight, Paige. I’ll just have to worry about tomorrow when tomorrow gets here.”

Her lovely face was lined with anxiety. He had not seen her even half this distraught since Charlotte’s illness five years ago.

“I love you,” he said, laying his hand gently against the side of her head.

Putting her hand over his, she said, “Oh, God, I love you, too, Marty, you and the girls, more than anything, more than life itself. We can’t let anything happen to us, to what we all have together. We just can’t.”

“We won’t,” he said, but his words sounded as hollow and false as a young boy’s braggadocio.

He was aware that neither of them had expressed the slightest hope that the police would protect them. He could not repress his anger over the fact they were not accorded anything resembling the service, courtesy, and consideration that the characters in his novels always received from the authorities.

At the core, mystery novels were about good and evil, about the triumph of the former over the latter, and about the reliability of the justice system in a modern democracy. They were popular because they reassured the reader that the system worked far more often than not, even if the evidence of daily life sometimes pointed toward a more troubling conclusion. Marty had been able to work in the genre with conviction and tremendous pleasure because he liked to believe that law-enforcement agencies and the courts delivered justice most of the time and thwarted it only inadvertently. But now, the first time in his life that he’d turned to the system for help, it was in the process of failing him. Its failure not only jeopardized his life—as well as the lives of his wife and children—but seemed to call into doubt the value of everything that he had written and the worthiness of the purpose to which he had committed so many years of hard work and struggle.

Lieutenant Lowbock returned through the living room, looking and moving as if in the middle of an Esquire magazine fashion-photography session. He was carrying a clear plastic evidence bag, which contained a black zippered case about half the size of a shaving kit. He put the bag on the dining-room table as he sat down.

“Mr. Stillwater, was the house securely locked when you left it this morning?”

“Locked?” Marty asked, wondering where they were headed now, trying not to let his anger show. “Yes, locked up tight. I’m careful about that sort of thing.”

“Have you given any thought as to how this intruder might have gained entry?”

“Broke a window, I guess. Or forced a lock.”

“Do you know what’s in this?” he asked, tapping the black leather case through the plastic bag.

“I’m afraid I don’t have X-ray vision,” Marty said.

“I thought you might recognize it.”

“No.”

“We found it in your master bedroom.”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

“On the dresser.”

Paige said, “Get it over with, Lieutenant.”

Lowbock’s faint shadow of a smile passed across his face again, like a visiting spirit shimmering briefly in the air above a séance table. “It’s a complete set of lock picks.”

“That’s how he got in?” Marty asked.

Lowbock shrugged. “I suppose that’s what I’m expected to deduce from it.”

“This is tiresome, Lieutenant. We have children we’re worried about. I agree with my wife—just get it over with.”

Leaning over the table and regarding Marty once more with his patented intense gaze, the detective said, “I’ve been a cop for twenty-seven years, Mr. Stillwater, and this is the first time I’ve ever encountered a break-in at a private residence where the intruder used a set of professional lock picks.”

“So?”

“They break glass or force a lock, like you said. Sometimes they pry a sliding door or window out of its track. The average burglar has a hundred ways of getting in—all of which are a lot faster than picking a lock.”

“This wasn’t an average burglar.”

“Oh, I can see that,” Lowbock said. He leaned away from the table, settled back in his chair. “This guy is a lot more theatrical than the average perp. He contrives to look exactly like you, spouts a lot of strange stuff about wanting his life back, comes armed with an assassin’s gun threaded for a silencer, uses burglary tools like a Hollywoodized professional heist artist in a caper movie, takes two bullets in the chest but isn’t fazed, loses enough blood to kill an ordinary man but walks away. He’s downright flamboyant, this guy, but he’s also muy misterioso, the kind of character Andy Garcia could play in a movie or, a lot better yet, that Ray Liotta who was in Goodfellas.”

Marty suddenly saw where the detective was headed and understood why he was going there. The inevitable terminus of the interrogation should have been obvious sooner, but Marty simply hadn’t tumbled to it because it was too obvious. As a writer, he had been seeking some more exotic, complex reason for Lowbock’s barely concealed disbelief and hostility, when all the while Cyrus Lowbock had been going for the cliché.

Still, the detective had one more unpleasant surprise to reveal. He leaned forward again and made eye contact in what had ceased to be an effective confrontational manner and had become instead a personal tic as annoying and transparent as Peter Falk’s disarmingly humble posture and relentless self-deprecation when he played Columbo, Nero Wolfe’s thoughtful puckering of the mouth in moments of inspiration, James Bond’s knowing smirk, or any of the slew of colorful traits by which Sherlock Holmes was characterized. “Do your daughters have pets, Mr. Stillwater?”

“Charlotte does. Several.”

“An odd collection of pets.”

Paige said cooly, “Charlotte doesn’t think they’re odd.”

“Do you?”

“No. What does it matter if they’re odd or not?”

“Has she had them long?” Lowbock inquired.

“Some longer than others,” Marty said, baffled by this new twist in the questioning even as he remained convinced that he understood the theory Lowbock was laboring to prove.

“She loves them, her pets?”

“Yes. Very much. Like any kid. Odd as you might think they are, she loves them.”

Nodding, leaning away from the table again, drumming his pen against his notebook, Lowbock said, “It’s another flamboyant touch, but also convincing. I mean, if you were a detective and disposed to doubt the whole scenario, you’d have to think twice if the intruder killed all of the daughter’s pets.”

Marty’s heart began sinking in him like a dropped stone seeking the bottom of a pond.

“Oh, no,” Paige said miserably. “Not poor little Whiskers, Loretta, Fred . . . not all of them?”

“The gerbil was crushed to death,” Lowbock said, his gaze fixed on Marty. “The mouse had its neck broken, the turtle was smashed underfoot, and so was the beetle. I didn’t examine the others that carefully.”

Marty’s anger flared into barely contained fury, and he curled his hands into tight fists under the table, because he knew Lowbock was accusing him of having killed the pets merely to lend credibility to an elaborate lie. No one would believe a loving father would stomp his daughter’s pet turtle and break the neck of her cute little mouse for the shabby purpose that Lowbock thought motivated Marty; therefore, perversely, the detective assumed that Marty had done it, after all, because it was so outrageous as to exonerate him, the perfect finishing touch.

“Charlotte’s going to be heartbroken,” Paige said.

Marty knew that he was flushed with rage. He could feel the heat in his face, as if he’d spent the past hour under a sunlamp, and his ears felt almost as if they were on fire. He also knew the cop would interpret his anger as a blush of shame that was a testament of guilt.

When Lowbock revealed that fleeting smile again, Marty wanted to punch him in the mouth.

“Mr. Stillwater, please correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you recently had a book on the paperback bestseller list, the reprint of a hardcover that was first released last year?”

Marty didn’t answer him.

Lowbock didn’t require an answer. He was rolling now. “And a new book coming out in a month or so, which some people think might be your first hardcover bestseller? And you’re probably working on yet another book even now. There’s a portion of a manuscript on the desk in your office, anyway. And I guess, once you get a couple of good career breaks, you’ve got to keep your foot on the gas, so to speak, take full advantage of the momentum.”

Frowning, her whole body tense again, Paige seemed on the verge of precisely grasping the detective’s ludicrous interpretation of Marty’s crime report, the source of his antagonism. She had the temper in the family; and since Marty was barely able to keep from striking the cop, he wondered what Paige’s reaction would be when Lowbock made his idiotic suspicions explicit.

“It must help a career to be profiled in People magazine, ” the detective continued. “And I guess when Mr. Murder himself becomes the target of a muy misterioso killer, then you’ll get a lot more free publicity in the press, and just at a crucial turning point in your career.”

Paige jerked in her chair as if she’d been slapped.

Her reaction drew Lowbock’s attention. “Yes, Mrs. Stillwater?”

“You can’t actually believe . . .”

“Believe what, Mrs. Stillwater?”

“Marty isn’t a liar.”

“Have I said he is?”

“He loathes publicity.”

“Then they must have been quite persistent at People. ”

“Look at his neck, for Christ’s sake! The redness, swelling, it’ll be covered with bruises in a few hours. You can’t believe he did that to himself.”

Maintaining a maddening pretense of objectivity, Lowbock said, “Is that what you believe, Mrs. Stillwater?”

She spoke between clenched teeth, saying what Marty felt he couldn’t allow himself to say: “You stupid ass.”

Raising his eyebrows and looking stricken, as if he couldn’t imagine what he’d done to earn such enmity, Lowbock said, “Surely, Mrs. Stillwater, you realize there are people out there, a world of cynics, who might say that attempted strangulation is the safest form of assault to fake. I mean, stabbing yourself in the arm or leg would be a convincing touch, but there’s always the danger of a slight miscalculation, a nicked artery, then suddenly you find yourself bleeding a lot more seriously than you’d intended. And as for self-inflicted gunshot wounds—well, the risk is even higher, what with the possibility that a bullet might ricochet off a bone and into deeper flesh, and there’s always the danger of shock.”

Paige bolted to her feet so abruptly that she knocked over her chair. “Get out.”

Lowbock blinked at her, feigning innocence long past the point of diminishing returns. “Excuse me?”

“Get out of my house,” she demanded. “Now.”

Although Marty realized they were throwing away their last slim hope of winning over the detective and gaining police protection, he also got up from his chair, so angry that he was trembling. “My wife is right. I think you and your men better leave, Lieutenant.”

Remaining seated because to do so was a challenge to them, Cyrus Lowbock said, “You mean, leave before we finish our investigation?”

“Yes,” Marty said. “Finished or not.”

“Mr. Stillwater . . . Mrs. Stillwater . . . you do realize that it’s against the law to file a false crime report?”

“We haven’t filed a false report,” Marty said.

Paige said, “The only fake in this room is you, Lieutenant. You do realize that it’s against the law to impersonate a police officer?”

It would have been satisfying to see Lowbock’s face color with anger, to see his eyes narrow and his lips tighten at the insult, but his equanimity remained infuriatingly unshaken.

As he got slowly to his feet, the detective said, “If the blood samples taken from the upstairs carpet are, say, only pig’s blood or cow’s blood or anything like that, the lab will be able to determine the exact species, of course.”

“I’m aware of the analytic powers of forensic science,” Marty assured him.

“Oh, yes, that’s right, you’re a mystery writer. According to People magazine, you do a great deal of research for your novels.”

Lowbock closed his notebook, clipped his pen to it.

Marty waited.

“In your various researches, Mr. Stillwater, have you learned how much blood is in the human body, say in a body approximately the size of your own?”

“Five liters.”

“Ah. That’s correct.” Lowbock put the notebook on top of the plastic bag containing the leather case of lock picks. “At a guess, but an educated guess, I’d say there’s somewhere between one and two liters of blood soaked into the upstairs carpet. Between twenty and forty percent of this look-alike’s entire supply, and closer to forty unless I miss my guess. You know what I’d expect to find along with that much blood, Mr. Stillwater? I’d expect to find the body it came from, because it really does stretch the imagination to picture such a grievously wounded man being able to flee the scene.”

“I’ve already told you, I don’t understand it either.”

“Muy misterioso,” Paige said, investing those two words with a measure of scorn equal to the mockery with which the detective had spoken them earlier.

Marty decided there was at least one good thing about this mess: the way Paige had not doubted him for an instant, even though reason and logic virtually demanded doubt; the way she stood beside him now, fierce and resolute. In all the years they had been together, he had never loved her more than at that moment.

Picking up the notebook and the evidence bag, Lowbock said, “If the blood upstairs proves to be human blood, that raises all sorts of other questions that would require us to finish the investigation whether or not you’d prefer to be rid of us. Actually, whatever the lab results, you’ll be hearing from me again.”

“We’d simply adore seeing you again,” Paige said, the edge gone from her voice, as if suddenly she ceased to see Lowbock as a threat and could not help but view him as a comic figure.

Marty found her attitude infecting him, and he realized that with him, as with her, this sudden dark hilarity was a reaction to the unbearable tension of the past hour. He said, “By all means, drop by again.”

“We’ll make a nice pot of tea,” Paige said.

“And scones.”

“Crumpets.”

“Tea cakes.”

“And by all means, bring the wife,” Paige said. “We’re quite broad-minded. We’d love to meet her even if she is of another species.”

Marty was aware that Paige was perilously close to laughing out loud, because he was close to it himself, and he knew their behavior was childish, but he required all of his self-control not to continue making fun of Lowbock all the way out the front door, driving him backward with jokes the way that Professor Von Helsing might force Count Dracula to retreat by brandishing a crucifix at him.

Strangely, the detective was disconcerted by their frivolity as he had never been by their anger or by their earnest insistence that the intruder had been real. Visible self-doubt took hold of him, and he looked as if he might suggest they sit down and start over again. But self-doubt was a weakness unfamiliar to him, and he could not sustain it forlong.

Uncertainty quickly gave way to his familiar smug expression, and he said, “We’ll be taking the look-alike’s Heckler and Koch, as well as your guns, of course, until you can produce the paperwork that I requested.”

For a terrible moment, Marty was sure that they had found the Beretta in the kitchen cupboard and the Mossberg shotgun under the bed upstairs, as well as the other weapons, and were going to leave him defenseless.

But Lowbock listed the guns and mentioned only three: “The Smith and Wesson, the Korth thirty-eight, and the M16.”

Marty tried not to let his relief show.

Paige distracted Lowbock by saying, “Lieutenant, are you ever going to get the fuck out of here?”

The detective finally could not prevent his face from tightening with anger. “You can certainly hurry me along, Mrs. Stillwater, if you would repeat your request in the presence of two other officers.”

“Always worrying about those lawsuits,” Marty said.

Paige said, “Happy to oblige, Lieutenant. Would you like me to phrase the request in the same language I just used?”

Never before had Marty heard her use the F-word except in the most intimate circumstances—which meant, though masked by her light tone of voice and frivolous manner, her anger was as strong as ever. That was good. After the police left, she would need the anger to get her through the night ahead. Anger would help keep fear at bay.

7

When he closes his eyes and tries to picture the pain, he can see it as a filigree of fire. A beautifully luminous lacework, white-hot with shadings of red and yellow, stretches from the base of his throbbing neck across his back, encircling his sides, looping and knotting intricately across his chest and abdomen as well.

By visualizing the pain, he has a better sense of whether his condition is improving or deteriorating. Actually, his only concern is how fast he is improving. He has been wounded on other occasions, though never this grievously, and knows what to expect; continued deterioration would be a wholly new and alarming experience for him.

The pain had been vicious during the minute or two after he’d been shot. He had felt as if a monstrous fetus had come awake within him and was burrowing its way out.

Fortunately, he has a singularly high tolerance for pain. He also draws courage from the knowledge that the agony will swiftly subside to a less crippling level.

By the time he staggers through the rear door of the house and heads for the Honda, the bleeding stops completely, and his hunger pangs become more terrible than the pain of his wounds. His stomach knots, loosens with a spasm, but immediately knots again, violently clenching and unclenching repeatedly, as if it is a grasping fist that can seize the nourishment he so desperately needs.

Driving away from his house through gray torrents at the height of the storm, he becomes so achingly ravenous that he begins to shake with deprivation. They are not mere tremors of need but wracking shudders that clack his teeth together. His twitching hands beat a palsied tattoo upon the steering wheel, and he is barely able to hold it firmly enough to control the vehicle. Fits of dry wheezing convulse him, hot flashes alternate with chills, and the sweat gushing from him is colder than the rain that still soaks his hair and clothes.

His extraordinary metabolism gives him great strength, keeps his energy level high, frees him from the need to sleep every night, allows him to heal with miraculous rapidity, and is in general a cornucopia of physical blessings, but it also makes demands on him. Even on a normal day, he has an appetite formidable enough for two lumberjacks. When he denies himself sleep, when he is injured, or when any other unusual demands are made on his system, mere hunger soon becomes a ravenous craving, and craving escalates almost at once into a dire need for sustenance that drives all other thoughts from his mind and forces him into the rapacious consumption of whatever he can find.

Although the interior of the Honda is adrift in empty food containers—wrappers and packages and bags of every description—there is no hidden morsel in the trash. In the final plummet from the San Bernardino Mountains into the lowlands of Orange County, he feverishly consumed every crumb that remained. Now there are only dried smears of chocolate and mustard, thin films of glistening oil, grease, sprinkles of salt, none of it sufficiently fortifying to compensate for the energy needed to rummage for it in the darkness and lick it up.

By the time he locates a fast-food restaurant with a drive-in window, at the center of his gut is an icy void into which he seems to be dissolving, growing hollower and hollower, colder and colder, as if his body is consuming itself to repair itself, catabolizing two cells for every one it creates. He almost bites his own hand in a frantic and despairing attempt to relieve the grueling pangs of starvation. He imagines tearing out chunks of his own flesh with his teeth and greedily swallowing, sucking down his own hot blood, anything to moderate his suffering—anything, no matter how repulsive it might be. But he restrains himself because, in the madness of his inhuman hunger, he is half convinced no flesh remains on his bones. He feels utterly hollow, more fragile than the thinnest spun-glass Christmas ornament, and believes he might dissolve into thousands of lifeless fragments the moment his teeth puncture his brittle skin and thereby shatter the illusion of substance.

The restaurant is a McDonald’s outlet. The tinny speaker of the intercom at the ordering post has been exposed to enough years of summer sun and winter chill that the greeting of the unseen clerk is quavery and static-riddled. Confident that his own strained and shaky voice won’t sound unusual, the killer orders enough food to satisfy the staff of a small office: six cheeseburgers, Big Macs, fries, a couple of fish sandwiches, two chocolate milkshakes—and large Cokes because his racing metabolism, if not fueled, leads as swiftly to dehydration as to starvation.

He is in a long line of cars, and progression toward the pick-up window is aggravatingly slow. He has no choice but to wait, for with his blood-soaked clothes and bullet-torn shirt, he can’t walk into a restaurant or convenience store and get what he needs unless he is willing to draw a lot of attention to himself.

In fact, though blood vessels have been repaired, the two bullet wounds in his chest remain largely unhealed due to the shortage of fuel for anabolic processes. Those sucking holes, into which he can insert his thickest finger to a disturbing depth, would cause more comment than his bloody shirt.

One of the slugs passed completely through him, out his back to the left of his spine. He knows the exit wound is larger than either of the holes in his chest. He feels the ragged lips of it spreading apart when he leans back against the car seat.

He is fortunate that neither round pierced his heart. That might have stopped him for good. That and a brain-scrambling shot to the head are the only wounds he fears.

When he reaches the cashier’s window, he pays for the order with some of the money he took from Jack and Frannie in Oklahoma more than twenty-four hours ago. The young woman at the cash register can see his arm as he holds the currency toward her, so he strives to repress the severe tremors that might prick her curiosity. He keeps his face averted; in the night and rain, she can’t see his ravaged chest or the agony that contorts his pale features.

At the pick-up window, his order comes in several white bags, which he piles on the littered seat beside him, successfully averting his face from this clerk as well. All of his willpower is required to restrain himself from ripping the bags asunder and tearing into the food immediately upon receipt of it. He retains enough clarity of mind to realize he must not cause a scene by blocking the take-out lane.

He parks in the darkest corner of the restaurant lot, switches off the headlights and windshield wipers. His face looks so gaunt when he glimpses it in the rearview mirror that he knows he has lost several pounds in the past hour; his eyes are sunken and appear to be ringed with smudges of soot. He dims the instrument-panel lights as far as possible, but lets the engine run because, in his current debilitated condition, he needs to bask in the warm air from the heater vents. He is swaddled in shadows. The rain streaming down the glass shimmers with reflected light from neon signs, and it bends the night world into mutagenic forms, simultaneously screening him from prying eyes.

In this mechanical cave, he reverts to savagery and is, for a time, something less than human, tearing at his food with animalistic impatience, stuffing it into his mouth faster than he can swallow. Burgers and buns and fries crumble against his lips, his teeth, and leave a growing slope of organic scree across his chest; cola and milkshake dribble down the front of his shirt. He chokes repeatedly, spraying food on the steering wheel and dashboard, but eats no less wolfishly, no less urgently, issuing small wordless greedy sounds and low moans of satisfaction.

His feeding frenzy translates into a period of numb and silent withdrawal much like a trance, from which he eventually arises with three names on his lips, whispered like a prayer: “Paige . . . Charlotte . . . Emily . . .”

From experience he knows that, in the hours before dawn, he will suffer new bouts of hunger, though none as devastating and obsessive as the seizure he has just endured. A few bars of chocolate or cans of Vienna sausages or packages of hot dogs—depending on whether it is carbohydrates or proteins that he craves—will ensure abatement of the pangs.

He will be able to focus his attention on other critical issues without worrying about major distractions of a physiological nature. The most serious of those crises is the continued enslavement of his wife and children by the man who has stolen his life.

“Paige . . . Charlotte . . . Emily . . .”

Tears cloud his vision when he thinks of his family in the hands of the hateful imposter. They are so precious to him. They are his only fortune, his reason for existence, his future.

He recalls the wonder and joy with which he explored his house, standing in his daughters’ room, later touching the bed in which he and his wife make love. The moment he had seen their faces in the photograph on his desk, he had known they were his destiny and that in their loving embrace he would find surcease from the confusion, loneliness, and quiet desperation that have plagued him.

He remembers, as well, the first surprising confrontation with the imposter, the shock and amazement at their uncanny resemblance, the perfectly matched pitch and timbre of their voices. He had understood at once how the man could have stepped into his life without anyone being the wiser.

Though his exploration of the house provided no clue to explain the imposter’s origins, he was reminded of certain films from which answers might be garnered when he had a chance to view them again. Both versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the first starring Kevin McCarthy, the second, Donald Sutherland. John Carpenter’s remake of The Thing, though not the first version. Perhaps even Invaders from Mars. Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin in a film whose title he could not recall. The Prince and the Pauper. Moon Over Parador. There must be others.

Movies had all the answers to life’s problems. From the movies he had learned about romance and love and the joy of family life. In the darkness of theaters, passing time between killings, hungry for meaning, he had learned to need what he didn’t have. And from the great lessons of the movies he might eventually unravel the mystery of his stolen life.

But first he must act.

That is another lesson he has learned from the movies. Action must come before thought. People in movies rarely sit around brooding about the predicament in which they find themselves. By God, they do something to resolve even their worst problems; they keep moving, ceaselessly moving, resolutely seeking confrontation with those who oppose them, grappling with their enemies in life-or-death struggles that they always win as long as they are sufficiently determined and righteous.

He is determined.

He is righteous.

His life has been stolen.

He is a victim. He has suffered.

He has known despair.

He has endured abuse and anguish and betrayal and loss like Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago, like William Hurt in The Accidental Tourist, Robin Williams in The World According to Garp, Michael Keaton in Batman, Sidney Poitier in In the Heat of the Night, Tyrone Power in The Razor’s Edge, Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. He is one with all of the brutalized, despised, downtrodden, misunderstood, cheated, outcast, manipulated people who live upon the silver screen and who are heroic in the face of devastating tribulations. His suffering is as important as theirs, his destiny every bit as glorious, his hope of triumph just as great.

This realization moves him deeply. He is wrenched by shuddering sobs, weeping not with sadness but with joy, overwhelmed by a feeling of belonging, brotherhood, a sense of common humanity. He has deep bonds with those whose lives he shares in theaters, and this glorious epiphany motivates him to get up, move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

“Paige, I’m coming for you,” he says through his tears.

He throws open the driver’s door and gets out in the rain.

“Emily, Charlotte, I won’t fail you. Depend on me. Trust me. I’ll die for you if I have to.”

Shedding the detritus of his gluttony, he goes around to the back of the Honda and opens the trunk. He finds a tire iron that is a prybar on one end, for popping loose hub-caps, and a lug wrench on the other end. It has satisfying heft and balance.

He returns to the front seat, slides in behind the wheel, and puts the tire iron on top of the fragrant trash that overflows the seat beside him.

As he sees in memory the photograph of his family, he murmurs, “I’ll die for you.”

He is healing. When he explores the bullet holes in his chest, he can probe little more than half the depth that he was previously able to plumb.

In the second wound, his finger encounters a hard and gnarled lump which might be a wad of dislocated gristle. He quickly realizes it is, instead, the lead slug that didn’t pass through him and out of his back. His body is rejecting it. He picks and pries until the misshapen bullet oozes free with a thick wet sound, and he throws it on the floor.

Although he is aware that his metabolism and recuperative powers are extraordinary, he does not see himself as being much different from other men. Movies have taught him that all men are extraordinary in one way or another: some have a powerful magnetism for women, who are unable to resist them; others have courage beyond measure; still others, like those whose lives Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have portrayed, can walk through a hail of bullets untouched and prevail in hand-to-hand combat with half a dozen men at one time or in quick succession. Rapid convalescence seems less exceptional, by comparison, than the common ability of on-screen heroes to pass unscathed through Hell itself.

Plucking a cold fish sandwich from the remaining pile of food, bolting it down in six large bites, he leaves McDonald’s. He begins searching for a shopping mall.

Because this is southern California, he finds what he’s looking for in short order: a sprawling complex of department and specialty stores, its roof composed of more sheets of metal than a battleship, textured concrete walls as formidable as the ramparts of any medieval fortress, surrounded by acres of lamp-lit blacktop. The ruthless commercial nature of the place is disguised by parklike rows and clusters of carrotwood trees, Indian laurels, willowy melaleucas, and palms.

He cruises endless aisles of parked cars until he spots a man in a raincoat hurrying away from the mall and burdened by two full plastic shopping bags. The shopper stops behind a white Buick, puts down the bags, and fumbles for keys to unlock the trunk.

Three cars from the Buick, an open parking space is available. The Honda, with him all the way from Oklahoma, has outlived its usefulness. It must be abandoned here.

He gets out of the car with the tire iron in his right hand. Gripping the tapered end, he holds it close to his leg to avoid calling attention to it.

The storm is beginning to lose some of its force. The wind is abating. No lightning scores the sky.

Although the rain is no less cold than it was earlier, he finds it refreshing rather than chilling.

As he heads toward the mall—and the white Buick—he surveys the huge parking lot. As far as he can tell, no one is watching him. None of the bracketing vehicles along that aisle is in the process of leaving: no lights, no telltale plumes of exhaust fumes. The nearest moving car is three rows away.

The shopper has found his keys, opened the trunk of the Buick, and stowed away the first of the two plastic bags. Bending to pick up the second bag, the stranger becomes aware that he is no longer alone, turns his head, looks back and up from his bent position in time to see the tire iron sweeping toward his face, on which an expression of alarm barely has time to form.

The second blow is probably unnecessary. The first will have driven fragments of facial bones into the brain. He strikes again, anyway, at the inert and silent shopper.

He throws the tire iron in the open trunk. It hits something with a dull clank.

Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

Wasting no time looking around to determine if he is still unobserved, he plucks the man off the wet blacktop in the manner of a bodybuilder beginning a clean-and-jerk lift with a barbell. He drops the corpse into the trunk, and the car rocks with the impact of the dead weight.

The night and rain provide what little cover he needs to wrestle the raincoat off the cadaver while it lies hidden in the open trunk. One of the dead eyes stares fixedly while the other rolls loosely in the socket, and the mouth is frozen in a broken-toothed howl of terror that was never made.

When he pulls the coat on over his wet clothes, it is somewhat roomy and an inch long in the sleeves but adequate for the time being. It covers his bloodstained, torn, and food-smeared clothes, making him reasonably presentable, which is all that he cares about. It is still warm from the shopper’s body heat.

Later he will dispose of the cadaver, and tomorrow he will buy new clothes. Now he has much to do and precious little time in which to do it.

He takes the dead man’s wallet, which has a pleasingly thick sheaf of currency in it.

He tosses the second shopping bag on top of the corpse, slams the trunk lid. The keys are dangling from the lock.

In the Buick, fiddling with the heater controls, he drives away from the mall.

Move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

He starts looking for a service station, not because the Buick needs fuel but because he has to find a pay phone.

He remembers the voices in the kitchen while he had twitched in agony amidst the ruins of the stair railing. The imposter had been hustling Paige and the girls out of the house before they could come into the foyer and see their real father struggling to get off his back onto his hands and knees.

“. . . take them across the street to Vic and Kathy’s . . .”

And seconds later, there had been a name more useful still: “. . . over to the Delorios’ place . . .”

Although they are his neighbors, he can’t remember Vic and Kathy Delorio or which house is theirs. That knowledge was stolen from him with the rest of his life. However, if they have a listed phone, he will be able to find them.

A service station. A blue Pacific Bell sign.

Even as he drives up beside the Plexiglas-walled phone booth, he can dimly see the thick directory secured by a chain.

Leaving the Buick engine running, he sloshes through a puddle into the booth. He closes the door to turn on the overhead light, and flips frantically through the White Pages.

Luck is with him. Victor W. Delorio. The only listing under that name. Mission Viejo. His own street. Bingo. He memorizes the address.

He runs into the service station to buy candy bars. Twenty of them. Hershey’s bars with almonds, 3 Musketeers, Mounds, Nestle’s white chocolate Crunch. His appetite is sated for the time being; he does not want the candy now—but the need will soon arise.

He pays with some of the cash that belongs to the dead man in the trunk of the Buick.

“You sure have a sweet tooth,” says the attendant.

In the Buick again, pulling out of the service station into traffic, he is afraid for his family, which remains unwittingly under the thrall of the imposter. They might be taken away to a far place where he won’t be able to find them. They might be harmed. Or even killed. Anything can happen. He has just seen their photograph and has only begun to re-acquaint himself with them, yet he might lose them before he ever has a chance to kiss them again or tell them how much he loves them. So unfair. Cruel. His heart pounds fiercely, re-igniting some of the pain that had been recently extinguished in his steadily knitting wounds.

Oh God, he needs his family. He needs to hold them in his arms and be held in return. He needs to comfort them and be comforted and hear them say his name. Hearing them say his name, he once and for all will be somebody.

Accelerating through a traffic light as it turns from yellow to red, he speaks aloud to his children in a voice that quavers with emotion: “Charlotte, Emily, I’m coming. Be brave. Daddy’s coming. Daddy’s coming. Daddy. Is. Coming.”

8

Lieutenant Lowbock was the last cop out of the house.

On the front stoop, as the doors of squad cars slammed in the street behind him and engines started, he turned to Paige and Marty to favor them with one more short-lived and barely perceptible smile. He was evidently loath to be remembered for the tightly controlled anger they had finally stirred in him. “I’ll be seeing you as soon as we have the lab results.”

“Can’t be too soon,” Paige said. “We’ve had such a charming visit, we simply can’t wait for the next time.”

Lowbock said, “Good evening, Mrs. Stillwater.” He turned to Marty. “Good evening, Mr. Murder.”

Marty knew it was childish to close the door in the detective’s face, but it was also satisfying.

Sliding the security chain into place as Marty engaged the dead-bolt lock, Paige said, “Mr. Murder?”

“That’s what they call me in the People article.”

“I haven’t seen it yet.”

“Right in the headline. Oh, wait’ll you read it. It makes me look ridiculous, spooky-old-scary-old Marty Stillwater, book hustler extraordinary. Jesus, if he happened to read that article today, I don’t half blame Lowbock for thinking this was all a publicity scam of some kind.”

She said, “He’s an idiot.”

“It is an unlikely damn story.”

“I believed it.”

“I know. And I love you for that.”

He kissed her. She clung to him but briefly.

“How’s your throat?” she asked.

“I’ll live.”

“That idiot thinks you choked yourself.”

“I didn’t. But it’s possible, I suppose.”

“Stop seeing his side of it. You’re making me mad. What now? Shouldn’t we get out of here?”

“Fast as we can,” he agreed. “And not come back until we can figure out what the hell this is all about. Can you throw a couple of suitcases together, basics for all of us for a few days?”

“Sure,” she said, already heading for the stairs.

“I’ll go call Vic and Kathy, make sure everything’s all right over there, then I’ll come help you. And Paige—the Mossberg is under the bed in our room.”

Starting up the stairs, stepping over the splintery debris, she said, “Okay.”

“Get it out, put it on top of the bed while you pack.”

“I will,” she said, already a third of the way up the stairs.

He didn’t think he had sufficiently impressed her with the need for uncommon caution. “Take it with you to the girls’ room.”

“All right.”

Speaking sharply enough to halt her, pain encircling his neck when he tilted his head back to stare up at her, he said, “Damn it, I mean it, Paige.”

She looked down, surprised because he never used that tone of voice. “Okay. I’ll keep it close.”

“Good.”

He headed for the telephone in the kitchen and made it as far as the dining room when he heard Paige cry out from the second floor. Heart pounding so hard he could draw only shallow staccato breaths, Marty raced back into the foyer, expecting to see her in The Other’s grasp.

She was standing at the head of the stairs, horrified by the gruesome stains on the carpet, which she was seeing for the first time. “Hearing about it, I still didn’t think . . .” She looked down at Marty. “So much blood. How could he just . . . just walk away?”

“He couldn’t if he was . . . just a man. That’s why I’m sure he’ll be back. Maybe not tonight, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not for a month, but he’ll be back.”

“Marty, this is crazy.”

“I know.”

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, less in any profane sense than as a prayer, and hurried into the master bedroom.

Marty returned to the kitchen and took the Beretta out of the cabinet. Although he had loaded the pistol himself, he popped out the magazine, checked it, slammed it back into place, and jacked a round into the chamber.

He noticed scores of overlapping dirty footprints all across the Mexican-tile floor. Many were still wet. During the past two hours, the police had tramped in and out of the rain, and evidently not all of them had been thoughtful enough to wipe their feet at the door.

Though he knew the cops had been busy and that they had better things to do than worry about tracking up the house, the footprints—and the thoughtlessness they represented—seemed to be nearly as profound a violation as the assault by The Other. A surprisingly intense resentment uncoiled in Marty.

While sociopaths stalked the modern world, the judicial system operated on the premise that evil was spawned primarily by societal injustice. Thugs were considered victims of society as surely as the people they robbed or killed were their victims. Recently a man had been released from a California prison after serving six years for raping and murdering an eleven-year-old girl. Six years. The girl, of course, was still as dead as she had ever been. Such outrages were now so common that the story got only minor press coverage. If the courts would not protect eleven-year-old innocents, and if the House and Senate wouldn’t write laws to force the courts to do so, then judges and politicians couldn’t be counted on to protect anyone, anywhere, at any time.

But, damn it, at least you expected the cops to protect you because cops were on the street every day, in the thick of it, and they knew what the world was really like. The grand poobahs in Washington and smug eminences in courtrooms had isolated themselves from reality with high salaries, endless perks, and lush pensions; they lived in gate-guarded neighborhoods with private security, sent their kids to private schools—and lost touch with the damage they perpetrated. But not cops. Cops were blue-collar. Working men and women. In their work they saw evil every day; they knew it was as widespread among the privileged as among the middle-class and the poor, that society was less at fault than the flawed nature of the human species.

The police were supposed to be the last line of defense against barbarity. But if they became cynical about the system they were asked to uphold, if they believed they were the only ones who cared about justice any more, they would cease caring. When you needed them, they would conduct their forensic tests, fill out thick files of paperwork to please the bureaucracy, track dirt across your once-clean floors, and leave you without even sympathy.

Standing in his kitchen, holding the loaded Beretta, Marty knew that he and Paige now constituted their own last line of defense. No one else. No greater authority. No guardian of the public welfare.

He needed courage but also the free-wheeling imagination that he brought to the writing of his books. Suddenly he seemed to be living in a noir novel, in that amoral realm where stories by James M. Cain or Elmore Leonard took place. Survival in such a dark world depended upon quick thinking, fast action, utter ruthlessness. Most of all it hinged on the ability to imagine the worst that life could come up with next and, by imagining, be ready for it rather than surprised.

His mind was blank.

He had no idea where to go, what to do. Pack up and get out of the house, yes. But then what?

He just stared at the gun in his hand.

Although he loved the works of Cain and Leonard, his own books were not that dark. They celebrated reason, logic, virtue, and the triumph of social order. His imagination did not lead him toward vigilante solutions, situational ethics, or anarchism.

Blank.

Worried about his ability to cope when so much was riding on him, Marty picked up the kitchen phone and called the Delorios. When Kathy answered on the first ring, he said, “It’s Marty.”

“Marty, are you okay? We saw all the police leaving, and then the officer over here left, too, but nobody’s made the situation clear to us. I mean, is everything all right? What in the world is going on?”

Kathy was a good neighbor and genuinely concerned, but Marty had no intention of wasting time in a full recounting of what he’d been through with either the would-be killer or the police. “Where are Charlotte and Emily?”

“Watching TV.”

“Where?”

“Well, in the family room.”

“Are your doors locked?”

“Yes, of course, I think so.”

“Be sure. Check them. Do you have a gun?”

“A gun? Marty, what is this?”

“Do you have a gun?” he insisted.

“I don’t believe in guns. But Vic has one.”

“Is he carrying it now?”

“No. He’s—”

“Tell him to load it and carry it until Paige and I can get there to pick up the girls.”

“Marty, I don’t like this. I don’t—”

“Ten minutes, Kathy. I’ll pick up the girls in ten minutes or less, fast as I can.”

He hung up before she was able to respond.

He hurried upstairs to the guest room that doubled as Paige’s home office. She did the family bookkeeping, balanced the checkbook, and looked after the rest of their financial affairs.

In the right-hand bottom drawer of the pine desk were files of receipts, invoices, and canceled checks. The drawer also contained their checkbook and savings-account passbook, which Marty retrieved fixed together with a rubberband. He stuffed them into one pocket of his chinos.

His mind wasn’t blank any more. He’d thought of some precautions he ought to take, though they were too feeble to be considered a plan of action.

In his office he went to the walk-in storage closet and hastily selected four cardboard cartons from stacks of thirty to forty boxes of the same size and shape. Each held twenty hardcover books. He could only carry two at a time to the garage. He put them in the trunk of the BMW, wincing from the pain in his neck, which the effort exacerbated.

Entering the master bedroom after his second hasty trip to the car, he was brought up short just past the threshold by the sight of Paige snatching up the shotgun and whipping around to confront him.

“Sorry,” she said, when she saw who it was.

“You did it right,” he said. “Have you gotten the girls’ things together?”

“No, I’m just finishing here.”

“I’ll get started on theirs,” he said.

Following the blood trail to Charlotte and Emily’s room, passing the broken-out section of gallery railing, Marty glanced at the foyer floor below. He still expected to see a dead man sprawled on the cracked tiles.

9

Charlotte and Emily were slumped on the Delorios’ family -room sofa, heads close together. They were pretending to be deeply involved in a stupid television comedy show about a stupid family with stupid kids and stupid parents doing stupid things to resolve a stupid problem. As long as they appeared to be caught up in the program, Mrs. Delorio stayed in the kitchen, preparing dinner. Mr. Delorio either paced through the house or stood at the front windows watching the cops outside. Ignored, the girls had a chance to whisper to each other and try to figure out what was happening at home.

“Maybe Daddy’s been shot,” Charlotte worried.

“I told you already a million times he wasn’t.”

“What do you know? You’re only seven.”

Emily sighed. “He told us he was okay, in the kitchen, when Mommy thought he was hurt.”

“He was covered with blood,” Charlotte fretted.

“He said it wasn’t his.”

“I don’t remember that.”

“I do,” Emily said emphatically.

“If Daddy wasn’t shot, then who was?”

“Maybe a burglar,” Emily said.

“We’re not rich, Em. What would a burglar want in our place? Hey, maybe Daddy had to shoot Mrs. Sanchez.”

“Why shoot Mrs. Sanchez? She’s just the cleaning lady.”

“Maybe she went berserk,” Charlotte said, and the possibility appealed enormously to her thirst for drama.

Emily shook her head. “Not Mrs. Sanchez. She’s nice.” “Nice people go berserk.”

“Do not.”

“Do too.”

Emily folded her arms on her chest. “Name one.” “Mrs. Sanchez,” Charlotte said.

“Besides Mrs. Sanchez.”

“Jack Nicholson.”

“Who’s he?”

“You know, the actor. In Batman he was the Joker, and he was totally massively berserk.”

“So maybe he’s always totally massively berserk.”

“No, sometimes he’s nice, like in that movie with Shirley MacLaine, he was an astronaut, and Shirley’s daughter got real sick and they found out she had cancer, she died, and Jack was just so sweet and nice.”

“Besides, this isn’t Mrs. Sanchez’s day,” Emily said.

“What?”

“She only comes on Thursdays.”

“Really, Em, if she went berserk, she wouldn’t know what day it was,” Charlotte countered, pleased with her response, which made such perfect sense. “Maybe she’s loose from a looney-tune asylum, goes around getting housekeeping jobs, then sometimes when she’s berserk she kills the family, roasts them, and eats them for dinner. ”

“You’re weird,” Emily said.

“No, listen,” Charlotte insisted in an urgent whisper, “like Hannibal Lecter.”

“Hannibal the Cannibal!” Emily gasped.

Neither of them had been allowed to see the movie—which Emily insisted on calling The Sirens of the Lambs—because Mom and Daddy didn’t think they were old enough, but they’d heard about it from other kids in school who’d seen it on video a billion times.

Charlotte could tell that Emily was no longer so sure about Mrs. Sanchez. After all, Hannibal the Cannibal had been a doctor who went humongously berserk and bit off people’s noses and stuff, so the idea of a berserk cannibal cleaning lady suddenly made a lot of sense.

Mr. Delorio came into the family room to part the drapes over the sliding glass doors and study the backyard, which was pretty much revealed by the patio lights. In his right hand he held a gun. He had not been carrying a gun before.

Letting the drapes fall back into place, turning away from the glass doors, he smiled at Charlotte and Emily. “You kids okay?”

“Yes, sir,” Charlotte said. “This is a great show.”

“You need anything?”

“No thanks, sir,” Emily said. “We just want to watch the show.”

“It’s a great show,” Charlotte repeated.

As Mr. Delorio left the room, both Charlotte and Emily turned to watch him until he was out of sight.

“Why’s he have a gun?” Emily wondered.

“Protecting us. And you know what that means? Mrs. Sanchez must still be alive and on the loose, looking for someone to eat.”

“But what if Mr. Delorio goes berserk next? He’s got a gun, we could never get away from him.”

“Be serious,” Charlotte said, but then she realized a physical-education teacher was just as likely to go berserk as any cleaning lady. “Listen, Em, you know what to do if he goes berserk?”

“Call nine-one-one.”

“You won’t have time for that, silly. So what you’ll have to do is, you’ll have to kick him in the nuts.”

Emily frowned. “Huh?”

“Don’t you remember the movie Saturday?” Charlotte asked.

Mom had been upset enough about the movie to complain to the theater manager. She’d wanted to know how the picture could have received a PG rating with the language and violence in it, and the manager had said it was PG-13, which was very different.

One of the things that bothered Mom was a scene where the good guy got away from the bad guy by kicking him hard between the legs. Later, when someone asked the good guy what the bad guy wanted, the good guy said, “I don’t know what he wanted, but what he needed was a good kick in the nuts.”

Charlotte had sensed, at once, that the line annoyed her mother. Later, she could have asked for an explanation, and her mother would have given her one. Mom and Daddy believed in answering all of a child’s questions honestly. But sometimes, it was more exciting to try to learn the answer on her own, because then it was something she knew that they didn’t know she knew.

At home, she’d checked the dictionary to see if there was any definition of “nuts” that would explain what the good guy had done to the bad guy and also explain why her mother was so unhappy about it. When she saw that one meaning of the word was obscene slang for “testicles,” she checked that mysterious word in the same dictionary, learned what she could, then sneaked into Daddy’s office and used his 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.”

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, musta 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?”

Fearful 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 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 anybody, 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 Delorios 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—whereupon 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 Delorios’ 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, 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!”

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.

Even as the second shot boomed close after the first, the car tires shrieked. The Buick bolted forward, as a mean horse might explode out of a rodeo gate.

He ran after the car, but it blew away from him with a backwash of turbulent air and exhaust fumes. The look-alike was still alive, perhaps injured but still alive and determined to escape.

Rocketing eastward, the Buick began to angle onto the wrong side of the two-lane street. On that trajectory, it was going to jump the curb and crash into someone’s front lawn.

In his treacherous mind’s eye, Marty imagined the car hitting the curb at high speed, flipping, rolling, slamming into one of the trees or the side of a house, bursting into flames, his daughters trapped in a coffin of blazing steel. In the darkest corner of his mind, he could even hear them screaming as the fire seared the flesh from their bones.

Then, as he pursued it, the Buick swung back across the center line, into its own lane. It was still moving fast, too fast, and he had no hope of catching it.

But he ran as if it was his own life for which he was running, his throat beginning to burn again as he breathed through his open mouth, chest aching, needles of pain lancing the length of his legs. His right hand was clamped so fiercely around the butt of the Beretta that the muscles in his arm throbbed from wrist to shoulder. And with each desperate stride, the names of his daughters echoed through his mind in an unvoiced scream of loss and grief.

When their father shouted at them to shut up, Charlotte was as hurt as if he’d slapped her face, for in her nine years, nothing she had said and no stunt she’d pulled had ever before made him so angry. Yet she didn’t understand what had infuriated him because all she’d done was ask some questions. His scolding of her was so unfair; and the fact that he had never been unfair in her recollection only added sting to his reprimand. He seemed angry with her for no other reason than that she was herself, as if something about her very nature suddenly repelled and disgusted him, which was an unbearable thought because she couldn’t change who she was, what she was, and maybe her own father was never again going to like her. He would never be able to take back the look of rage and hatred on his face, and she would never be able to forget it as long as she lived. Everything had changed between them forever. All of this she thought and understood in a second, even before he had finished shouting at them, and she burst into tears.

Dimly aware that the car finally started, pulled away from the curb, and reached the end of the block, Charlotte rose partway out of her misery only when Em turned from the window, grabbed her arm, and shook her. Em whispered fiercely, “Daddy.”

At first, Charlotte thought Em was unjustly peeved with her for making Daddy angry and was warning her to be quiet. But before she could launch into sisterly combat, she realized there had been joyful excitement in Em’s voice.

Something important was happening.

Blinking back tears, she saw that Em was already pressed to the window again. As the car pulled through the intersection and turned right, Charlotte followed the direction of her sister’s gaze.

As soon as she spotted Daddy running alongside the car, she knew he was her real father. The daddy behind the wheel—the daddy with the hateful look on his face, who screamed at children for no reason—was a fake. Somebody else. Or some thing else, maybe like in the movies, grown out of a seed pod from another galaxy, one day just a lot of ugly goop and the next day all formed into Daddy’s look-alike. She suffered no confusion at the sight of two identical fathers, had no trouble knowing which was the real one, as an adult might have, because she was a kid and kids knew these things.

Keeping pace with the car as it turned into the next street, pointing the gun at the window of the driver’s door, Daddy yelled, “Hey, hey, hey!”

As the fake daddy realized who was shouting at him, Charlotte reached out as far as her safety belt would allow, grabbed a handful of Em’s coat, and yanked her sister away from the window. “Get down, cover your face, quick!”

They leaned toward each other, cuddled together, shielded each other’s heads with their arms.

BAM!

The gunfire was the loudest sound Charlotte had ever heard. Her ears rang.

She almost started to cry again, in fear this time, but she had to be tough for Em. At a time like this a big sister had to think about her responsibilities.

BAM!

Even as the second shot boomed a heartbeat after the first, Charlotte knew the fake daddy had been hit because he squealed with pain and cursed, spitting out the S-word over and over. He was still in good enough shape to drive, and the car leaped forward.

They seemed out of control, swinging to the left, going very fast, then turning sharply back to the right.

Charlotte sensed they were going to crash into something. If they weren’t smashed to smithereens in the wreck, she and Em had to be ready to move fast when they came to a stop, get out of the car, and out of the way so Daddy could deal with the fake.

She had no doubt Daddy could handle the other man. Though she wasn’t old enough to have read any of his novels, she knew he wrote about killers and guns and car chases, just this sort of thing, so he would know exactly what to do. The fake would be real sorry he had messed with Daddy; he would wind up in prison for a long, long time.

The car swerved back to the left, and in the front seat the fake made small bleating sounds of pain that reminded her of the cries of Wayne the Gerbil that time when somehow he’d gotten one small foot stuck in the mechanism of his exercise wheel. But Wayne never cursed, of course, and this man was cursing more angrily than ever, not just using the S-word but God’s name in vain, plus all sorts of words she had never heard before but knew were unquestionably bad language of the worst kind.

Keeping a grip on Em, Charlotte felt along her seatbelt with her free hand, seeking the release button, found it, and held her thumb lightly on it.

The car jolted over something, and the driver hit the brakes. They slid sideways on the wet street. The back end of the car swung around to the left, and her tummy turned over as if they were on an amusement-park ride.

The driver’s side of the car slammed hard into something, but not hard enough to kill them. She jammed her thumb on the release button, and her safety belt retracted. Fumbling at Em’s waist—“Your belt, get your belt off!”—she found her sister’s release button in a second or two.

Em’s door was jammed against whatever they had hit. They had to go out Charlotte’s side.

She pulled Em across her. Pushed open the door. Shoved Em through it.

At the same time, Em was pulling her, as if Em herself was the one doing the rescuing, and Charlotte wanted to say, Hey, who’s the big sister here?

The fake daddy saw or heard them getting out. He lunged for them across the back of the front seat—“Little bitch!”—and grabbed Charlotte’s floppy rain hat.

She scooted out from under the hat, through the door, into the night and rain, tumbling onto her hands and knees on the blacktop. Looking up, she saw that Em was already tottering across the street toward the far sidewalk, wobbling like a baby that had just learned to walk. Charlotte scrambled up and ran after her sister.

Somebody was shouting their names.

Daddy.

Their real Daddy.

Three-quarters of a block away, the speeding Buick hit a broken tree branch in a huge puddle and slid on a churning foam of water.

Marty was heartened by the chance to close the gap but horrified by the thought of what might happen to his daughters. The mental film clip of a car crash didn’t just play through his mind again; it had never stopped playing. Now it seemed about to be translated out of his imagination, the way scenes were translated from mental images into words on the page, except that this time he was taking it one large step further, leaping over type-script, translating directly from imagination into reality. He had the crazy idea that the Buick wouldn’t have gone out of control if he hadn’t pictured it doing so, and that his daughters would burn to death in the car merely because he had imagined it happening.

The Buick came to a sudden and noisy stop against the side of a parked Ford Explorer. Though the clang of the collision jarred the night, the car didn’t roll or burn.

To Marty’s astonishment, the right-side rear passenger door flew open, and his kids erupted like a pair of joke snakes exploding from a tin can.

As far as he could tell, they weren’t seriously hurt, and he shouted at them to get away from the Buick. But they didn’t need his advice. They had an agenda of their own, and immediately scrambled across the street, looking for cover.

He kept running. Now that the girls were out of the car, his fury was greater than his fear. He wanted to hurt the driver, kill him. It wasn’t a hot rage but cold, a mindless reptilian savagery that scared him even as he surrendered to it.

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 foyer 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.

Inevitably, he wonders if they prefer their other father to him, the false to the real. This is a dreadful possibility to be forced to explore. If it is true, it means that those he loves the most are not victims, as he is, but are active participants in the Byzantine plot against him.

Their false father is probably lenient with them. Allows them to eat what they want. Lets them go to bed as late as they please.

All children are anarchists by nature. They need rules and standards of behavior, or they grow up to be wild and antisocial.

When he kills the hateful false father and retakes control of his family, he will establish rules for everything and will strictly enforce them. Misbehavior will be instantly punished. Pain is one of life’s greatest teachers, and he is an expert in the application of pain. Order will be restored within the Stillwater household, and his children will commit no act without first soberly reflecting upon the rules that govern them.

Initially, of course, they will hate him for being so stern and uncompromising. They will not understand that he is acting in their best interests.

However, each tear that his punishments wring from them will be sweet to him. Each cry of pain will be a gladdening music. He will be unrelenting with them because he knows that in time they will realize he imposes guidance upon them only because he cares so profoundly about them. They will love him for his stern fatherly concern. They will adore him for providing the discipline which they need—and secretly desire—but which it is their very nature to resist.

Paige also will need to be disciplined. He knows about women’s needs. He remembers a film with Kim Basinger in which sex and a craving for discipline were shown to be inextricably entwined. He anticipates Paige’s instructions with particular pleasure.

Since the day that his career, family, and memories were stolen from him—which might be a year or ten years ago, for all he knows—he has lived primarily through the movies. The adventures he has experienced and the poignant lessons he has learned in countless darkened theaters seem as real to him as the car seat on which he now lies and the chocolate dissolving on his tongue. He remembers making love to Sharon Stone, to Glenn Close, from both of whom he learned the potential for sexual mania and treachery inherent in all women. He remembers the exuberant fun of sex with Goldie Hawn, the rapture of Michelle Pfeiffer, the exciting sweaty urgency of Ellen Barkin when he incorrectly suspected her of being a murderess but pinned her to the wall of his apartment and penetrated her anyway. John Wayne, Clint Eastwood, Gregory Peck, and so many other men have taken him under their wings and have taught him courage and determination. He knows that death is a mystery of infinite complication because he has learned so many conflicting lessons about it: Tim Robbins has shown him that the afterlife is only an illusion, while Patrick Swayze has shown him that the afterlife is a joyous place as real as anywhere and that those you love (like Demi Moore) will see you there when they eventually pass from this world, yet Freddy Krueger has shown him that the afterlife is a gruesome nightmare from which you can return for gleeful vengeance. When Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul Newman has often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker, love, and honor; therefore, he considers this man one of his most important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.

He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the men it was his duty to kill.

His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.

He had to enter the Senator’s residence on a night when the man was known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no signs of forced entry.

After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the eight-seat home media room, which featured THX Sound and a theater-quality projection system capable of displaying television, videotape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush, windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes, Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.

Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water, periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision across the Senator’s right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply, because the Senator wouldn’t have been able to grip the blade firmly in his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the artery in that wrist.

Sitting on the edge of the tub, administering chloroform every time the politician groaned and seemed about to wake, he gratefully shared the sacred ceremony of death. When he was the only living man in the room, he thanked the departed for the precious opportunity to share that most intimate of experiences.

Ordinarily, he would have left the house then, but what he had witnessed on the movie screen drew him back to the media room on the first floor. He had seen pornography before, in adult theaters in many cities, and from those experiences he had learned all of the possible sexual positions and techniques. But the pornography on that home screen was different from everything he’d seen previously, for it involved chains, handcuffs, leather straps, metal-studded belts, as well as a wide variety of other instruments of punishment and restraint. Incredibly, the beautiful women on the screen seemed to be excited by brutality. The more cruelly they were treated, the more willingly they gave themselves to orgasmic pleasure; in fact, they frequently begged to be dealt with even more harshly, ravished more sadistically.

He settled into the seat from which he had removed the Senator. He stared with fascination at the screen, absorbing, learning.

When that videotape reached a conclusion, a quick search turned up an open walk-in vault—usually cleverly concealed behind the wall paneling—that contained a collection of similar material. There was an even more stunning trove of tapes depicting children involved in carnal acts with adults. Daughters with fathers. Mothers with sons. Sisters with brothers, sisters with sisters. He sat for hours, until almost dawn, transfixed.

Absorbing.

Learning, learning.

To have become a United States Senator, an exalted leader, the dead man in the bathtub must have been extremely wise. Therefore, his personal film library would, of course, contain diverse material of a transcendent nature, reflecting his singular intellectual and moral insights, embodying philosophies far too complex to be within the grasp of the average film-goer at a public theater. How very fortunate to have discovered the politician lounging in the media room rather than preparing a snack in the kitchen or reading a book in bed. Otherwise, this opportunity to share the wisdom in the great man’s hidden vault would never have arisen.

Now, curled fetally on the back seat of the Buick, he may be temporarily blinded in one eye, bullet-creased and bullet-pierced, weak and weary, defeated for the moment, but he is not despairing. He has another advantage in addition to his magically resilient body, unparalleled stamina, and exhaustive knowledge of the killing arts. Equally important, he possesses what he perceives to be great wisdom, acquired from movie screens both public and private, and that wisdom will ensure his ultimate triumph. He knows what he believes to be the great secrets that the wisest people hide in concealed vaults: those things which women really need but which they may not know they subconsciously desire, those things which children want but of which they dare not speak. He understands that his wife and children will welcome and thrive upon utter domination, harsh discipline, physical abuse, sexual subjugation, even humiliation. At first opportunity, he intends to fulfill their deepest and most primitive longings, as the lenient false father apparently will never be able to do, and together they will be a family, living in harmony and love, sharing a destiny, held together forever by his singular wisdom, strength, and demanding heart.

He drifts toward healing sleep, confident of waking with full health and vigor in several hours.

A few feet from him, in the trunk of the car, lies the dead man who once owned the Buick—cold, stiff, and without any appealing prospects of his own.

How good it is to be special, to be needed, to have a destiny.