Mr. Murder (38 page)

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 anymore, 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 diagnosis. 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 color—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.

Five

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 we had candy for breakfast.”

“Gasket. Not basket.”

She wrinkled her face. “Does it really matter?”

“No, I guess not. Basket, gasket, whatever you say.”

Emily squirmed out of his arms and jumped down from the bed. “I’m going to the potty,” she announced.

“That’s a start. Then take a shower, brush your teeth, and get dressed.”

Charlotte was, as usual, slower to come fully awake. By the time Emily was closing the bathroom door, Charlotte had only managed to push back the blankets and sit on the edge of her bed. She was scowling down at her bare feet.

Marty sat beside her. “They’re called ‘toes.’ ”

“Mmmm,” she said.

“You need them to fill out the ends of your socks.”

She yawned.

Marty said, “You’ll need them a lot more if you’re going to be a ballet dancer. But for most other professions, however, they’re not essential. So if you
aren’t
going to be a ballet dancer, then you could have them surgically removed, just the biggest ones or all ten, that’s entirely up to you.”

She cocked her head and gave him a Daddy’s-being-cute -so-let’s-humor-him look. “I think I’ll keep them.”

“Whatever you want,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

“My teeth feel furry,” she complained. “So does my tongue.”

“Maybe during the night you ate a cat.”

She was awake enough to giggle.

In the bathroom the toilet flushed, and a second later the door opened. Emily said, “Charlotte, you want privacy for the potty, or can I shower now?”

“Go ahead and shower,” Charlotte said. “You smell.”

“Yeah? Well, you stink.”

“You reek.”

“That’s because I
want
to,” Emily said, probably because she couldn’t think of a comeback word for “reek.”

“My gracious young daughters, such little ladies.”

As Emily disappeared back into the bathroom and began to fiddle with the shower controls, Charlotte said, “Gotta get this fuzz off my teeth.” She got up and went to the open door. At the threshold she turned to Marty. “Daddy, do we have to go to school today?”

“Not today.”

“I didn’t think so.” She hesitated. “Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, honey. Probably not.”

Another hesitation. “Will we be going to school again ever?”

“Well, sure, of course.”

She stared at him for too long, then nodded and went into the bathroom.

Her question rattled Marty. He wasn’t sure if she was merely fantasizing about a life without school, as most kids did now and then, or whether she was expressing a more genuine concern about the depth of the trouble that had rolled over them.