Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Read online

  We have to be sharp, ready to move. Are you fully awake?"

  Clocker's eyes were rheumy. "None of us is ever fully awake."

  "Oh, please, will you cut that half-baked mystical crap? I just don't

  have any patience for that right now."

  Clocker stared at him a long moment and then said, "You've got a

  turbulent heart, Drew."

  "Wrong. It's my stomach that's turbulent from having to listen to this

  crap."

  "An inner tempest of blind hostility."

  "Fuck you," Oslett said.

  The pitch of the jet engines changed subtly. A moment later the

  stewardess approached to announce that the plane had entered its

  approach to the Orange County airport and to ask them to put on their

  seatbelts.

  According to Oslett's Rolex, it was 1:52 in the morning, but that was

  back in Oklahoma City. As the Lear descended, he reset his watch until

  it showed eight minutes to midnight.

  By the time they landed, Monday had ticked into Tuesday like a bomb

  clock counting down toward detonation.

  The advance man--who appeared to be in his late twenties, not much

  younger than Drew Oslett--was waiting in the lounge at the

  private-aircraft terminal. He told them his name was Jim Lomar, which

  it most likely was not.

  Oslett told him that their names were Charlie Brown and Dagwood

  Bumstead.

  The contact didn't seem to get the joke. He helped them carry their

  luggage out to the parking lot, where he loaded it in the trunk of a

  green Oldsmobile.

  Lomar was one of those Californians who had made a temple of his body

  and then had proceeded to more elaborate architecture. The

  exercise-and-health-food ethic had long ago spread into every corner of

  the country, and for years Americans had been striving for hard buns and

  healthy hearts to the farthest outposts of snowy Maine.

  However, the Golden State was where the first carrot-juice cocktail had

  been poured, where the first granola bar had been made, and was still

  the only place where a significant number of people believed that sticks

  of raw jicama were a satisfactory substitute for french fries, so only

  certain fanatically dedicated Californians had enough determination to

  exceed the structural requirements of a temple. Jim Lomar had a neck

  like a granite column, shoulders like limestone door lintels, a chest

  that could buttress a nave wall, a stomach as flat as an altar stone,

  and had pretty much made a great cathedral out of his body.

  Although a storm front had passed through earlier in the night and the

  air was still damp and chilly, Lomar was wearing just jeans and a

  T-shirt on which was a photo of Madonna with her breasts bared (the rock

  singer, not the mother of God), as if the elements affected him as

  little as they did the quarried walls of any mighty fortress. He

  virtually strutted instead of walking, performing every task with

  calculated grace and evident self-consciousness, obviously aware and

  pleased that people were prone to watch and envy him.

  Oslett suspected Lomar was not merely a proud man but profoundly vain,

  even narcissistic. The only god worshipped in the cathedral of his body

  was the ego that inhabited it.

  Nevertheless Oslett liked the guy. The most appealing thing about Lomar

  was that, in his company, Karl Clocker appeared to be the smaller of the

  two. In fact it was the only appealing thing about the guy, but it was

  enough. Actually, Lomar was probably only slightly--if at all--larger

  than Clocker, but he was harder and better honed. By comparison,

  Clocker seemed slow, shambling, old, and soft. Because he was sometimes

  intimidated by Clocker's size, Oslett delighted at the thought of

  Clocker intimidated by Lomar--though, frustratingly, if the Trekker was

  at all impressed, he didn't show it.

  Lomar drove. Oslett sat up front, and Clocker slumped in the back seat.

  Leaving the airport, they turned right onto MacArthur Boulevard.

  They were in an area of expensive office towers and complexes, many of

  which seemed to be the regional or national headquarters of major

  corporations, set back from the street behind large and meticulously

  maintained lawns, flowerbeds, swards of shrubbery, and lots of trees,

  all illuminated by artfully placed landscape lighting.

  "Under your seat," Lomar told Oslett, "you'll find a Xerox of the

  Mission Viejo Police report on the incident at the Stillwater house.

  Wasn't easy to get hold of. Read it now, 'cause I have to take it with

  me and destroy it."

  Clipped to the report was a penlight by which to read it. As they

  followed MacArthur Boulevard south and west into Newport Beach, Oslett

  studied the document with growing astonishment and dismay.

  They reached the Pacific Coast Highway and turned south, traveling all

  the way through Corona Del Mar before he finished.

  "This cop, this Lowbock," Oslett said, looking up from the report, "he

  thinks it's all a publicity stunt, thinks there wasn't even an

  intruder."

  "That's a break for us," Lomar said. He grinned, which was a mistake,

  because it made him look like the poster boy for some charity formed to

  help the willfully stupid.

  Oslett said, "Considering the whole damn Network is maybe being sucked

  down a drain here, I think we need more than a break.

  We need a miracle."

  "Let me see," Clocker said.

  Oslett passed the report and penlight into the back seat, and then said

  to Lomar, "How did our bad boy know Stillwater was even out here, how

  did he find him?"

  Lomar shrugged his limestone-lintel shoulders. "Nobody knows."

  Oslett made a wordless sound of disgust.

  To the right of the highway, they passed a pricey gate-guarded

  golf-course community, after which the lightless Pacific lay so vast and

  black to the west that they seemed to be driving along the edge of

  eternity.

  Lomar said, "We figure if we keep tabs on Stillwater, sooner or later

  our man will turn up, and we'll recover him."

  "Where's Stillwater now?"

  "We don't know."

  "Terrific."

  "Well, see, not half an hour after the cops left, there was this other

  thing happened to the Stillwaters, before we got to them, and after that

  they seemed to . . . go into hiding, I guess you'd say."

  "What other thing?"

  Lomar frowned. "Nobody's sure. It happened right around the corner

  from their house. Different neighbors saw different pieces, but a guy

  fitting Stillwater's description fired a lot of shots at another guy in

  a Buick. The Buick slams into a parked Explorer, see, gets hung up on

  it for a second. Two kids fitting the description of the Stillwater

  girls tumble out the back seat of the Buick and run, the Buick takes

  off, Stillwater empties his gun at it, and then this BMW--which fits the

  description of one of the cars registered to the Stillwaters--it comes

  around the corner like a bat out of hell, driven by Stillwater's wife,

  and all of them get in it and take off."

  "After the Buick?"

  "No. It's long gone. It's like they
're trying to get out of there

  before the cops arrive."

  "Any neighbors see the guy in the Buick?"

  "No. Too dark."

  "It was our bad boy."

  Lomar said, "You really think so?"

  "Well, if it wasn't him, it must've been the Pope."

  Lomar gave him an odd look, then stared thoughtfully at the highway

  ahead.

  Before the dimwit could ask how the Pope was involved in all of this,

  Oslett said, "Why don't we have the police report on the second

  incident?"

  "Wasn't one. No complaint. No crime victim. Just a report of the

  hit-and-run damage to the Explorer."

  "According to what Stillwater told the cops, our Alfie thinks he is

  Stillwater, or ought to be. Thinks his life was stolen from him.

  The poor boy's totally over the edge, whacko, so to him it makes sense

  to go right back and steal the Stillwater kids because somehow he thinks

  they're his kids. Jesus, what a mess."

  A highway sign indicated they would soon reach the city limits of Laguna

  Beach.

  Oslett said, "Where are we going?"

  "Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point," Lomar replied. "You've got a suite

  there. I took the long way so you'd both have a chance to read the

  police report."

  "We napped on the plane. I sort of thought, once we landed, we'd get

  right into action."

  Lomar looked surprised. "Doing what?"

  "Go to the Stillwater house for starters, have a look around, see what

  we can see."

  "Nothing to see. Anyway, I'm supposed to take you to the Ritz.

  You're to get some sleep, be ready to go by eight in the morning."

  "Go where?"

  "They expect to have a lead on Stillwater or your boy or both by

  morning. Someone will come to the hotel to give you a briefing at eight

  o'clock, and you've gotta be rested, ready to move. Which you should

  be, since it's the Ritz. I mean, it's a terrific hotel.

  Great food too. Even from room service. You can get a good, healthy

  breakfast, not typical greasy hotel crap. Egg-white omelets,

  seven-grain bread, all kinds of fresh fruit, non-fat yogurt--" Oslett

  said, "I sure hope I can get a breakfast like I have in Manhattan every

  morning. Alligator embryos and chicken-fried eel heads on a bed of

  seaweed sauteed in a garlic butter, with a double side order of calves'

  brains. Ahhh, man, you never in your life feel half as pumped as you do

  after that breakfast."

  So astonished that he let the speed of the Oldsmobile fall to half of

  what it had been, Lomar stared at Oslett. "Well, they have great food

  at the Ritz but maybe not as exotic as what you can get in New York."

  He looked at the street again, and the car picked up speed.

  "Anyway, you sure that's healthy food? Sounds packed with cholesterol

  to me."

  Not a hint of irony, not a trace of humor informed Lomar's voice.

  It was clear that he actually believed Oslett ate eel heads, alligator

  embryos, and calves' brains for breakfast.

  Reluctantly, Oslett had to face the fact that there were worse potential

  partners than the one he already had. Karl Clocker only looked stupid.

  In Laguna Beach, December was the off season, and the streets were

  nearly deserted at a quarter to one on a Tuesday morning. At the

  three-way intersection in the heart of town, with the public beach on

  the right, they stopped for the red traffic signal, even though no other

  moving car was in sight.

  Oslett thought the town was as unnervingly dead as any place in

  Oklahoma, and he longed for the bustle of Manhattan, the all-night rush

  of police vehicles and ambulances, the noir music of sirens, the endless

  honking of horns. Laughter, drunken voices, arguments, and the mad

  gibbering of the drug-blasted schizophrenic street dwellers that echoed

  up to his apartment even in the deepest hours of the night were sorely

  lacking in this somnolent burg on the edge of the winter sea.

  As they continued out of Laguna, Clocker passed the Mission Viejo Police

  report forward from the back seat.

  Oslett waited for a comment from the Trekker. When none was

  forthcoming, and when he could no longer tolerate the silence that

  filled the car and seemed to blanket the world outside, he half-turned

  to Clocker and said, "Well?"

  "Well what?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Not good," Clocker pronounced from his nest of shadows in the back

  seat.

  "Not good? That's all you can say? Looks like one colossal mess to

  me."

  "Well," Clocker said philosophically, "into every crypto-fascist

  organization, a little rain must fall.

  Oslett laughed. He turned forward, glanced at the solemn Lomar, and

  laughed harder. "Karl, sometimes I actually think maybe you're not a

  bad guy."

  "Good or bad," Clocker said, "everything resonates with the same

  movement of subatomic particles."

  "Now don't go ruining a beautiful moment," Oslett warned him.

  In the deepest swale of the night, he rises from vivid dreams of slashed

  throats, bullet-shattered heads, pale wrists carved by razor blades, and

  strangled prostitutes, but he does not sit up or gasp or cry out like a

  man waking from a nightmare, for he is always soothed by his dreams. He

  lies in the fetal position upon the back seat of the car, half in and

  half out of convalescent sleep.

  One side of his face is wet with a thick, sticky substance. He raises

  one hand to his cheek and cautiously, sleepily works the viscous

  material between his fingers, trying to understand what it is.

  Discovering prickly bits of glass in the congealing slime, he realizes

  that his healing eye has rejected the splinters of the car window along

  with the damaged ocular matter, which has been replaced by healthy

  tissue.

  He blinks, opens his eyes, and can again see as well through the left as

  through the right. Even in the shadow-filled Buick, he clearly

  perceives shapes, variations of texture, and the lesser darkness of the

  night that presses at the windows.

  Hours hence, by the time the palm trees are casting the long

  west-falling shadows of dawn and tree rats have squirmed into their

  secret refuges among the lush fronds to wait out the day, he will be

  completely healed. He will be ready once more to claim his destiny.

  He whispers, "Charlotte . .."

  Outside, a haunting light gradually arises. The clouds trailing the

  storm are thin and torn. Between some of the ragged streamers, the cold

  face of the moon peers down.

  '. . . Emily. .."

  Beyond the car windows, the night glimmers softly like slightly

  tarnished silver in the glow of a single candle flame.

  . . . Daddy is going to be all right . . . all right . . . don't worry

  ... Daddy is going to be all right.... " He now understands that he was

  drawn to his double by a magneti.sen which arose because of their

  essential oneness and which he perceived through a sixth sense.

  He'd had no awareness that another self existed, but he'd been pulled

  toward him as if the attraction was an autonomic function of his body to />
  the same extent that the beating of his heart, the production and

  maintenance of his blood supply, and the functioning of internal organs

  were autonomic functions proceeding entirely without need of conscious

  volition.

  Still half embraced by sleep, he wonders if he can apply that sixth

  sense with conscious intention and reach out to find the false father

  any time he wishes.

  Dreamily, he imagines himself to be a figure sculpted from iron and

  magnetized. The other self, hiding somewhere out there in the night, is

  a similar figure. Each magnet has a negative and positive pole. He

  imagines his positive is aligned with the false father's negative.

  Opposites attract.

  He seeks attraction, and almost at once he finds it. Invisible waves of

  force tug lightly at him, then less lightly.

  West. West and south.

  As during his frantic and compulsive drive across more than half the

  country, he feels the power of the attractant grow until it is like the

  ponderous gravity of a planet pulling a minor asteroid into the fiery

  promise of its atmosphere.