Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Page 14

  Laughing softly, he says, "You're such a slob, Marty. You've got to

  clean up your act. You have a wife now. Wives like their husbands to

  be neat."

  He returns his attention to his hand and, with the tweezers, picks at

  the last of the prickling glass.

  In an increasingly good mood, he laughs again and says, "Gonna have to

  go out and buy a new computer monitor first thing tomorrow."

  He shakes his head, amazed by his own childish behavior.

  "You're something else, Marty," he says. "But I guess writers are

  supposed to be temperamental, huh?"

  After easing the final splinter of glass from the web between two

  fingers, he puts down the tweezers and holds his wounded hand under the

  hot water.

  "Can't carry on like this any more. Not any more. You'll scare the

  be-jesus out of little Emily and Charlotte."

  He looks in the mirror again, shakes his head, grinning. "You nut," he

  says to himself, as if speaking with affection to a friend whose foibles

  he finds charming. "What a nut."

  Life is good.

  ..

  , The leaden sky settled lower under its own weight. According to a

  radio report, rain would fall by dusk, ensuring rush-hour commuter

  jam-ups that would make Hell preferable to the San Diego Freeway.

  Marty should have gone directly home from Guthridge's office.

  He was close to finishing his current novel, and in the final throes of

  a story, he usually spent as much time as possible at work because

  distractions were ruinous to the narrative momentum.

  Besides, he was uncharacteristically apprehensive about driving. When

  he thought back, he could account for the time minute by minute since

  he'd left the doctor and was sure he hadn't called Paige while in a

  fugue behind the wheel of the Ford. Of course, a fugue victim had no

  memory of being afflicted, so even a meticulous reconstruction of the

  past hour might not reveal the truth.

  Researching On hundreds of miles and interacted with dozens of people

  while in a disassociative condition yet later could recall nothing

  they'd done.

  The danger wasn't as grave as drunken driving . . . though operating a

  ton and a half of steel at high speed in an altered state of

  consciousness wasn't smart.

  Nevertheless, instead of going home, he went to the Mission Viejo Mall.

  Much of the workday was already shot. And he was too restless to read

  or watch TV until Paige and the girls got home.

  When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping, so he browsed for

  books and records, buying a novel by Ed McBain and a CD by Alan Jackson,

  hoping that such mundane activities would help him forget his troubles.

  He strolled past the cookie shop twice, coveting the big ones with

  chocolate chips and pecans but finding the will power to resist their

  allure.

  The world is a better place, he thought, if you're ignorant of good

  nutrition.

  When he left the mall, sprinkles of cold rain were painting camouflage

  patterns on the concrete sidewalk. Lightning flashed as he ran for the

  Ford, caissons of thunder rolled across the embattled sky, and the

  sprinkles became heavy volleys just as he pulled the door shut and

  settled behind the steering wheel.

  Driving home, Marty took considerable pleasure in the glimmer of

  rain-silvered streets, the burbling splash of the tires churning through

  deep puddles--and the sight of swaying palm fronds, which seemed to be

  combing the gray tresses of the stormy sky and which reminded him of

  certain Somerset Maugham stories and an old Bogart film. Because rain

  was an infrequent visitor to drought-stricken California, the benefit

  and novelty outweighed the inconvenience.

  He parked in the garage and entered the house by the connecting door to

  the kitchen, enjoying the damp heaviness of the air and the scent of

  ozone that always accompanied the start of a storm.

  In the shadowy kitchen, the luminous green display of the electronic

  clock on the stove read 4,10. Paige and the girls might be home in

  twenty minutes.

  He switched on lamps and sconces as he moved from room to room. The

  house never felt homier than when it was warm and well lighted while

  rain drummed on the roof and the gray pall of a storm veiled the world

  beyond every window. He decided to start the gas-log fire in the

  family-room fireplace and to lay out all of the fixings for hot

  chocolate so it could be made immediately after Paige and the girls

  arrived.

  First, he went upstairs to check the fax and answering machines in his

  office. By now Paul Guthridge's secretary should have called with a

  schedule of test appointments at the hospital.

  He also had a wild hunch his literary agent had left a message about a

  sale of rights in one foreign territory or another, or maybe news of an

  offer for a film option, a reason to celebrate.

  Curiously, the storm had improved his mood instead of darkening it,

  probably because inclement weather tended to focus the mind on the

  pleasures of home, though it was always his nature to find reasons to be

  upbeat even when common sense suggested pessimism was a more realistic

  reaction. He was never able to stew in gloom for long, and since

  Saturday he'd had enough negative thoughts to last a couple of years.

  Entering his office, he reached for the wall switch to flick on the

  overhead light but left it untouched, surprised that the stained-glass

  lamp and a work lamp were aglow. He always extinguished lights when

  leaving the house. Before he'd gone to the doctor's office, however,

  he'd been inexplicably oppressed by the bizarre feeling of being in the

  path of an unknown Juggernaut, and evidently he'd not had sufficient

  presence of mind to switch off the lamps.

  Remembering the panic attack at its worst, in the garage, when he'd been

  nearly incapacitated by terror, Marty felt some of the air bleeding out

  of his balloon of optimism.

  The fax and answering machines were on the back corner of the U-shaped

  work area. The red message light was blinking on the latter, and a

  couple of flimsy sheets of thermal paper were in the tray of the former.

  Before he reached either machine, Marty saw the shattered video display,

  glass teeth bristling from the frame. A black maw gaped in the center.

  A piece of glass crunched under his shoe as he pushed his office chair

  aside and stared down at the computer in disbelief.

  Jagged pieces of the screen littered the keyboard.

  A twist of nausea knotted his stomach. Had he done this, too, in a

  fugue? Picked up some blunt object, hammered the screen to pieces?

  His life was disintegrating like the ruined monitor.

  Then he noticed something else on the keyboard in addition to the glass.

  In the dim light he thought he was looking at drops of melted chocolate.

  Frowning, Marty touched one of the splotches with the tip of his index

  finger. It was still slightly tacky. Some of it stuck to his skin.

  He moved his hand under the work lamp. The sticky substance on his

  fingertip was dark red, almost maroon. N
ot chocolate.

  He raised his stained finger to his nose, seeking a defining scent.

  The odor was faint, barely detectable, but he knew at once what it was,

  probably had known from the moment he touched it, because on a deep

  primitive level he was programmed to recognize it. Blood.

  Whoever destroyed the monitor had been cut.

  Marty's hands were free of lacerations.

  He was utterly still, except for a crawling sensation along his spine,

  which left the nape of his neck creped with gooseflesh.

  Slowly he turned, expecting to find that someone had entered the room

  behind him. But he was alone.

  Rain pummeled the roof and gurgled through a nearby downspout.

  Lightning flickered, visible through the cracks between the wide slats

  of the plantation shutters, and peals of thunder reverberated in the

  window glass.

  He listened to the house.

  The only sounds were those of the storm. And the rapid thud of his

  heartbeat.

  He stepped to the bank of drawers on the right-hand side of the desk,

  slid open the second one. This morning he had placed the Smith & Wesson

  9mm pistol in there, on top of some papers. He expected it to be

  missing, but again his expectations were not fulfilled. Even in the

  soft and beguiling light of the stained-glass lamp, he could see the

  handgun gleaming darkly.

  "I need my life."

  The voice startled Marty, but its effect was nothing compared to the

  paralytic shock that seized him when he looked up from the gun and saw

  the identity of the speaker. The man was just inside the hallway door.

  He was wearing what might have been Marty's own jeans and flannel shirt,

  which fit him well because he was a deadringer for Marty. In fact, but

  for the clothes, the intruder might have been a reflection in a mirror.

  "I need my life," the man repeated softly.

  Marty had no brother, twin or otherwise. Yet only an identical twin

  could be so perfectly matched to him in every detail of face, height,

  weight, and body type.

  "Why have you stolen my life?" the intruder asked with what seemed to

  be genuine curiosity. His voice was level and controlled, as if the

  question was not entirely insane, as if it was actually possible, at

  least in his experience, to steal a life.

  Realizing that the intruder sounded like him, too, Marty closed his eyes

  and tried to deny what stood before him. He assumed he was

  hallucinating and was, himself, speaking for the phantom in a sort of

  unconscious ventriloquism. Fugues, an unusually intense nightmare, a

  panic attack, now hallucinations. But when he opened his eyes, the

  doppelganger was still there, a stubborn illusion.

  "Who are you?" the double asked.

  Marty could not speak because his heart felt as if it had moved into his

  throat, each fierce beat almost choking him. And he didn't dare to

  speak because to engage in conversation with an hallucination would

  surely be to lose his final tenuous grasp on sanity and descend entirely

  into madness.

  The phantom refined its question, still speaking in a tone of wonder and

  fascination but nonetheless menacing for its hushed voice, "What are

  you?"

  With none of the eerie fluidity and ghostly shimmer of either a

  psychological or supernatural apparition, neither transparent nor

  radiant, the double took another step into the room. When he moved,

  shadows and light played over him in the same manner as they would have

  caressed any three-dimensional object. He seemed as solid as a real

  man.

  Marty noticed the pistol in the intruder's right hand. Held against his

  thigh. Muzzle pointed at the floor.

  The double advanced one more step, stopping no more than eight feet from

  the other side of the desk. With a half-smile that was more unnerving

  than any glower could have been, the gunman said, "How does this happen?

  What now? Do we somehow become one person, fade into each other, like

  in some crazy science-fiction movie " Terror had sharpened Marty's

  senses. As if looking at his doppelganger through a magnifying glass,

  he could see every contour, line, and pore of its face. In spite of the

  dim light, the furniture and books in the shadowed areas were as clearly

  detailed as those items on which the glow of lamps fell. Yet with all

  his heightened powers of observation, he did not recognize the make of

  the other's pistol.

  "--or do I just kill you and take your place?" the stranger continued.

  "And if I kill you--" It seemed that any hallucination he conjured would

  be carrying a weapon with which he was familiar.

  "--do the memories you've stolen from me become mine again when you're

  dead? If I kill you--" After all, if this figure was merely a symbolic

  threat spewed up by a diseased psyche, then everything--the phantom, his

  clothes, his armament--had to come from Marty's experience and

  imagination.

  "--am I made whole? When you're dead, will I be restored to my family?

  And will I know how to write again?"

  Conversely, if the gun was real, the double was real.

  Cocking his head, leaning forward slightly, as if intensely interested

  in Marty's response, the intruder said, "I need to write if I'm going to

  be what I'm meant to be, but the words won't come."

  The one-sided conversation repeatedly surprised Marty with its twists

  and turns, which didn't support the notion that his troubled psyche had

  fabricated the intruder.

  Anger entered the double's voice for the first time, bitterness rather

  than hot fury but rapidly growing fiery, "You've stolen that too, the

  words, the talent, and I need it back, need it now so bad I ache.

  A purpose, meaning. Do you know? You understand? Whatever you are,

  can you understand? The terrible emptiness, hollowness, God, such a

  deep, dark hollowness." He was spitting out the words now, and his eyes

  were fierce. "I want what's mine, mine, damn it, my life, mine, I want

  my life, my destiny, my Paige, she's mine, my Charlotte, my Emily--" The

  width of the desk and eight feet beyond, eleven feet in all, point-blank

  range.

  Marty pulled the 9mm pistol from the desk drawer, grasping it in both

  hands, thumbing off the safety, squeezing the trigger even as he raised

  the muzzle. He didn't care if the target was real or some form of

  spirit. All he cared about was obliterating it before it killed him.

  The first shot tore a chunk out of the far edge of the desk, and wood

  splinters exploded like a swarm of angry wasps bursting into flight.

  The second and third rounds hit the other Marty in the chest.

  They neither passed through him as if he were ectoplasm nor shattered

  him as if he were a reflection in a mirror, but instead catapulted him

  backward, off his feet, taking him by surprise before he could raise his

  own gun, which flew out of his hand and hit the floor with a hard thud.

  He crashed against a bookcase, clawing at a shelf with one hand, pulling

  a dozen volumes to the floor, blood spreading across his chest--sweet

  Jesus, so much blood eyes wide with shock, no cry escaping him except


  for one hard low "uh" that was more a sound of surprise than pain.

  The bastard should have fallen like a rock down a well, but he stayed on

  his feet. In the same moment that he slammed into the bookcase, he

  pushed away from it, staggered-plunged through the open doorway, into

  the upstairs hall, out of sight.

  Stunned more by the fact that he'd actually pulled the trigger on

  someone than that the "someone" was the mirror image of himself, Marty

  sagged against the desk, gasping for breath as desperately as if he

  hadn't inhaled since the double had first walked into the room.

  Maybe he hadn't. Shooting a man for real was a whole hell of a lot

  different from shooting a character in a novel, it almost seemed as if,

  in some magical fashion, part of the impact of the bullets on the target

  redounded on the shooter himself. His chest ached, he was dizzy, and

  his peripheral vision briefly succumbed to a thick seeping darkness

  which he pressed back with an act of will.

  He didn't dare pass out. He thought the other Marty must be badly

  wounded, dying, maybe dead. God, the spreading blood on his chest,

  scarlet blossoms, sudden roses. But he didn't know for sure.

  Maybe the wounds only looked mortal, maybe the brief glimpse he'd had

  was misleading, and maybe the double was not only still alive but strong

  enough to get out of the house and away. If the guy escaped and lived,