Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder Read online

  West and south. Not far. A few miles.

  The pull is exigent, strangely pleasant at first but then almost

  painful. He feels as if, were he to get out of the car, he would

  instantly levitate off the ground and be drawn through the air at high

  speed directly into the orbit of the hateful false father who has taken

  his life.

  Suddenly he senses that his enemy is aware of being sought and perceives

  the lines of power connecting them.

  He stops imagining the magnetic attraction. Immediately he retreats

  into himself, shuts down. He isn't quite ready to re-engage the enemy

  in combat and doesn't want to alert him to the fact that another

  encounter is only hours away.

  He closes his eyes.

  Smiling, he drifts into sleep.

  Healing sleep.

  At first his dreams are of the past, peopled by those he has

  assassinated and by the women with whom he has had sex and on whom he

  has bestowed post-coital death. Then he is enraptured by scenes that

  are surely prophetic, involving those whom he loves--his sweet wife, his

  beautiful daughters, in moments of surpassing tenderness and gratifying

  submission, bathed in golden light, so lovely, all in a lovely golden

  light, flares of silver, ruby, amethyst, jade, and indigo.

  , Marty woke from a nightmare with the feeling that he was being

  crushed. Even when the dream shattered and blew away, though he knew

  that he was awake and in the motel room, he could not breathe or move so

  much as a finger. He felt small, insignificant, and was strangely

  certain he was about to be hammered into billions of disassociated atoms

  by some cosmic force beyond his comprehension.

  Breath came to him suddenly, implosively. The paralysis broke with a

  spasm that shook him from head to foot.

  He looked at Paige on the bed beside him, afraid that he had disturbed

  her sleep. She murmured to herself but didn't wake.

  He got up as quietly as possible, stepped to the front window,

  cautiously separated the drapery panels, and looked out at the motel

  parking lot and Pacific Coast Highway beyond. No one moved to or from

  any of the parked cars. As far as he remembered, all of the shadows

  that were out there now had been out there earlier. He saw no one

  lurking in any corner. The storm had taken all the wind with it into

  the east, and Laguna was so still that the trees might have been painted

  on a stage canvas. A truck passed, heading north on the highway, but

  that was the only movement in the night.

  In the wall opposite the front window, draperies covered a pair of

  sliding glass doors beyond which lay a balcony overlooking the sea.

  Through the doors and past the deck railing, down at the foot of the

  bluff, lay a width of pale beach onto which waves broke in garlands of

  silver foam. No one could easily climb to the balcony, and the sward

  was deserted.

  Maybe it had been only a nightmare.

  He turned away from the glass, letting the draperies fall back into

  place, and he looked at the luminous dial of his wristwatch. Three

  o'clock in the morning.

  He had been asleep about five hours. Not long enough, but it would have

  to do.

  His neck ached intolerably, and his throat was mildly sore.

  He went into the bathroom, eased the door shut, and snapped on the

  light. From his travel kit he took a bottle of Extra-Strength Excedrin.

  The label advised a dosage of no more than two tablets at a time and no

  more than eight in twenty-four hours. The moment seemed made for living

  dangerously, however, so he washed down four of them with a glass of

  water drawn from the sink tap, then popped a sore-throat lozenge in his

  mouth and sucked on it.

  After returning to the bedroom and picking up the short-barreled shotgun

  from beside the bed, he went through the open connecting door to the

  girls' room. They were asleep, burrowed in their covers like turtles in

  shells to avoid the annoying light of the nightstand lamp.

  He looked out their windows. Nothing.

  Earlier, he had returned the reading chair to the corner, but now he

  moved it farther out into the room, where light would reach it.

  He didn't want to alarm Charlotte and Emily if they woke before dawn and

  saw an unidentifiable man in the shadows.

  He sat with his knees apart, the shotgun across his thighs.

  Although he owned five weapons--three of them now in the hands of the

  police although he was a good shot with all of them, although he had

  written many stories in which policemen and other characters handled

  weapons with the ease of familiarity, Marty was surprised by how

  unhesitatingly he had resorted to guns when trouble arose. After all,

  he was neither a man of action nor experienced in killing.

  His own life and then his family had been in jeopardy, but he would have

  thought, before learning differently, that he'd have reservations when

  his finger first curled around the trigger. He would have expected to

  experience at least a flicker of regret after shooting a man in the

  chest even if the bastard deserved shooting.

  He clearly remembered the dark glee with which he had emptied the

  Beretta at the fleeing Buick. The savage lurking in the human genetic

  heritage was as accessible to him as to any man, regardless of how

  educated, well-read, and civilized he was.

  What he had discovered about himself did not displease him as much as

  perhaps it should. Hell, it didn't displease him at all.

  He knew that he was capable of killing any number of men to save his own

  life, Paige's life, or the lives of his children. And although he swam

  in a society where it was intellectually correct to embrace pacifism as

  the only hope of civilization's survival, he didn't see himself as a

  hopeless reactionary or an evolutionary throwback or a degenerate but

  merely as a man acting precisely as nature intended.

  Civilization began with the family, with children protected by mothers

  and fathers willing to sacrifice and even die for them.

  If the family wasn't safe any more, if the government couldn't or

  wouldn't protect the family from the depredations of rapists and child

  molesters and killers, if homicidal sociopaths were released from prison

  after serving less time than fraudulent evangelists who embezzled from

  their churches and greedy hotel-rich millionairesses who underpaid their

  taxes, then civilization had ceased to exist.

  If children were fair game--as any issue of a daily paper would confirm

  they were--then the world had devolved into savagery. Civilization

  existed only in tiny units, within the walls of those houses where the

  members of a family shared a love strong enough to make them willing to

  put their lives on the line in the defense of one another.

  What a day they'd been through. A terrible day. The only good thing

  about it was--he had discovered that his fugue, nightmares, and other

  symptoms didn't result from either physical or mental illness. The

  trouble was not within him, after all. The boogeyman was real.

  But he could take minimal satisfaction from that d
iagnosis. Although

  he had regained his self-confidence, he had lost so much else.

  Everything had changed.

  Forever.

  He knew that he didn't even yet grasp just how dreadfully their lives

  had been altered. In the hours remaining before dawn, as he tried to

  think what steps they must take to protect themselves, and as he dared

  to consider the few possible origins of The Other that logic dictated,

  their situation inevitably would seem increasingly difficult and their

  options narrower than he could yet envision or admit.

  For one thing, he suspected that they would never be able to go home

  again.

  He wakes half an hour before dawn, healed and rested.

  He returns to the front seat, switches on the interior light, and

  examines his forehead and left eye in the rearview mirror. The bullet

  furrow in his brow has knit without leaving any scar that he can detect.

  His eye is no longer damaged--or even bloodshot.

  However, half his face is crusted with dried blood and the grisly

  biological waste products of the accelerated healing process. A portion

  of his countenance looks like something out of The Abominable Dr.

  Phibes or Darkman.

  Rummaging in the glove compartment, he finds a small packet of Kleenex.

  Under the tissues is a travel-size box of Handi Wipes, moistened

  towelettes sealed in foil packets. They have a lemony scent.

  Very nice. He uses the Kleenex and towelettes to scrub the muck off his

  face, and he smooths out his sleep-matted hair with his hands.

  He won't frighten anyone now, but he is still not presentable enough to

  be inconspicuous, which is what he desires to be. Though the bulky

  raincoat, buttoned to the neck, covers his bullet-torn shirt, the shirt

  reeks of blood and the variety of foods that he spilled on it during his

  feeding frenzy in McDonald's rainswept parking lot last evening, in the

  now-abandoned Honda, before he'd ever met the unlucky owner of the

  Buick. His pants aren't pristine, either.

  On the off chance he'll find something useful, he takes the keys from

  the ignition, gets out of the car, goes around to the back, and opens

  the trunk. From the dark interior, lit only partially by an errant beam

  from the nearby tree-shrouded security lamp, the dead man stares at him

  with wide-eyed astonishment, as if surprised to see him again.

  The two plastic shopping bags lie atop the body. He empties the

  contents of both on the corpse. The owner of the Buick had been

  shopping for a variety of items. The thing that looks most useful at

  the moment is a bulky crew-neck sweater.

  Clutching the sweater in his left hand, he gently closes the trunk lid

  with his right to make as little noise as possible.

  People will be getting up soon, but sleep still grips most if not all of

  the apartment residents. He locks the trunk and pockets the keys.

  , The sky is dark, but the stars have faded. Dawn is no more than ,

  fifteen minutes away.

  Such a large garden-apartment complex must have at least two or three

  community laundry rooms, and he sets out in search of one.

  In a minute he finds a signpost that directs him to the recreation

  building, pool, rental office, and nearest laundry room.

  , The walkways connecting the buildings wind through large and

  attractively landscaped courtyards under spreading laurels and quaint

  iron carriage lamps with verdigris patina. The development is well

  planned and attractive. He would not mind living here himself. Of

  course his own house, in Mission Viejo, is even more appealing, and he

  is sure the girls and Paige are so attached to it that they will never

  want to leave.

  The laundry-room door is locked, but it doesn't pose a great obstacle.

  Management has installed a cheap lockset, a latch-bolt not a dead-bolt.

  Having anticipated the need, he has a credit card from the cadaver's

  wallet, which he slips between the faceplate and the striker plate. He

  slides it upward, encounters the latch-bolt, applies pressure, and pops

  the lock.

  Inside, he finds six coin-operated washing machines, four gas dryers, a

  vending machine filled with small boxes of detergents and fabric

  softeners, a large table on which clean clothes can be folded, and a

  pair of deep sinks. Everything is clean and pleasant under the

  fluorescent lights.

  He takes off the raincoat and the grossly soiled flannel shirt. He wads

  up both the shirt and the coat and stuffs them into a large trash can

  that stands in one corner.

  His chest is unmarked by bullet wounds. He doesn't need to look at his

  back to know that the single exit wound is also healed.

  He washes his armpits at one of the laundry sinks and dries with paper

  towels taken from a wall dispenser.

  He looks forward to taking a long hot shower before the day is done, in

  his own bathroom, in his own home. Once he has located the false father

  and killed him, once he has recovered his family, he will have time for

  simple pleasures. Paige will shower with him.

  She will enjoy that.

  If necessary, he could take off his jeans and wash them in one of the

  laundry-room machines, using coins taken from the owner of the Buick.

  But when he scrapes the crusted food off the denim with his fingernails

  and works at the few stains with damp paper towels, the result is

  satisfactory.

  The sweater is a pleasant surprise. He expects it to be too large for

  him, as the raincoat was, but the dead man evidently did not buy it for

  himself. It fits perfectly. The colon-cranberry red--goes well with

  the blue jeans and is also a good color for him. If the room had a

  mirror, he is sure it would show that he is not only inconspicuous but

  quite respectable and even attractive.

  Outside, dawn is just a ghost light in the east.

  Morning birds are chirruping in the trees.

  The air is sweet.

  Tossing the Buick keys into some shrubbery, abandoning the car and the

  dead man in it, he proceeds briskly to the nearest multiple stall

  carport and systematically tries the doors of the vehicles parked under

  the bougainvillea-covered roof. Just when he thinks all of them are

  going to be locked, a Toyota Camry proves to be open.

  He slips in behind the wheel. Checks behind the sun visor for keys.

  Under the seat. No such luck.

  It doesn't matter. He's nothing if not resourceful. Before the sky has

  brightened appreciably, he hot-wires the car and is on the road again.

  Most likely, the owner of the Camry will discover it's missing in a

  couple of hours, when he's ready to go to work, and will quickly report

  it stolen. No problem. By then the license plates will be on another

  car, and the Camry will be sporting a different set of tags that will

  make it all but invisible to the police.

  He feels invigorated, driving through the hills of Laguna Niguel in the

  rose light of dawn. The early sky is as yet only a faded blue, but the

  high formations of striated clouds are runneled with bright pink.

  It is the first day of December. Day one. He is making a fresh start.


  From now on, everything will go his way because he will no longer

  underestimate his enemy.

  Before he kills the false father, he will put out the bastard's eyes in

  retribution for the wound that he himself suffered. He will require his

  daughters to watch, for this will be an important lesson to them, proof

  that false fathers cannot triumph in the long run and that their real

  father is a man to be disobeyed only at the risk of severe punishment.

  ( , Shortly after dawn, Marty woke Charlotte and Emily. "Got to get

  showered and hit the road, ladies. Lots to do this morning."

  Emily was fully awake in an instant. She scrambled out from under the

  covers and stood on the bed in her daffodil-yellow pajamas, which

  brought her almost to eye-level with him. She demanded a hug and a

  good-morning kiss. "I had a super dream last night."

  "Let me guess. You dreamed you were old enough to date Tom Cruise,

  drive a sports car, smoke cigars, get drunk, and puke your guts out."

  "Silly," she said. "I dreamed, for breakfast, you went out to the

  vending machines and got us Mountain Dew and candy bars."

  "Sorry, but it wasn't prophetic."

  "Daddy, don't be a writer using big words."

  "I meant, your dream isn't going to come true."

  "Well, I know that, " she said. "You and Mommy would blow a basket if