Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

by Mr. Murder(Lit)

  In fact he ascends with remarkable speed from the depths of despair.

  Surprising, how readily he is willing to continue with his latest

  assignment--and with the mere shadow of a life that he leads.

  Sometimes it seems to him that he operates as if programmed in the

  manner of a dumb and obedient machine.

  On the other hand, if he were not to continue, what else would he do?

  This shadow of a life is the only life he has.

  While the girls were upstairs, brushing their teeth and preparing for

  bed, Marty methodically went from room to room on the first floor,

  making sure all of the doors and windows were locked.

  He had circled half the downstairs--and was testing the latch on the

  window above the kitchen sink--before he realized what a peculiar task

  he had set for himself. Prior to turning in every night, he checked the

  front and back doors, of course, plus the sliding doors between the

  family room and patio, but he did not ordinarily verify that any

  particular window was secure unless he knew that it had been open for

  ventilation during the day. Nevertheless, he was confirming the

  integrity of the house perimeter as conscientiously as a sentry might

  certify the outer defenses of a fortress besieged by enemies.

  As he was finishing in the kitchen, he heard Paige enter, and a moment

  later she slid both arms around his waist, embracing him from behind.

  "You okay?" she asked.

  "Yeah, well . .."

  "Bad day?"

  "Not really. Just one bad moment."

  Marty turned in her arms to embrace her. She felt wonderful, so warm

  and strong, so alive.

  That he loved her more now than when they had met in college was no

  surprise. The triumphs and failures they had shared, the years of daily

  struggle to make a place in the world and to seek the meaning of it, was

  rich soil in which love could grow.

  However, in an age when ideal beauty was supposedly embodied in

  nineteen-year-old professional cheerleaders for major-league football

  teams, Marty knew a lot of guys who would be surprised to hear he'd

  found his wife increasingly attractive as she had aged from nineteen to

  thirty-three. Her eyes were no bluer than they had been when he'd first

  met her, her hair was not a richer shade of gold, and her skin was

  neither smoother nor more supple. Nevertheless, experience had given

  her character, depth. Corny as it sounded in this era of knee-jerk

  cynicism, she sometimes seemed to shine with an inner light, as radiant

  as the venerated subject of a painting by Raphael.

  So, yeah, maybe he had a heart as soft as butter, maybe he was a sucker

  for romance, but he found her smile and the challenge of her eyes

  infinitely more exciting than a six-pack of naked cheerleaders.

  He kissed her brow.

  She said, "One bad moment? What happened?"

  He hadn't decided how much he should tell her about those seven lost

  minutes. For now it might be best to minimize the deep weirdness of the

  experience, see the doctor Monday morning, and even have some tests

  done. If he was in good health, what had happened in the office this

  afternoon might prove to be an inexplicable singularity. He didn't want

  to alarm Paige unnecessarily.

  "Well?" she persisted.

  With the inflection she gave that single word, she reminded him that

  twelve years of marriage forbade serious secrets, no matter what good

  intentions motivated his reticence.

  He said, "You remember Audrey Aimes?"

  "Who? Oh, you mean in One Dead Bishop?"

  One Dead Bishop was a novel he had written. Audrey Aimes was the lead

  character.

  "Remember what her problem was?" he asked.

  "She found a dead priest hanging on a hook in her foyer closet."

  "Aside from that."

  "She had another problem? Seems like a dead priest is enough.

  Are you sure you're not over-complicating your plots?"

  "I'm serious," he said, though aware of how odd it was that he should

  choose to inform his wife of a personal crisis by comparing it to the

  experiences of a mystery-novel heroine whom he had created.

  Was the dividing line between life and fiction as hazy for other people

  as it sometimes was for a writer? And if so--was there a book in that

  idea?

  Frowning, Paige said, "Audrey Aimes . . . Oh, yeah, you're talking

  about her blackouts."

  "Fugues," he said.

  A fugue was a serious personality dissociation. The victim went places,

  talked to people, and engaged in varied activities while appearing

  normal--yet later could not recall where he had been or what he had done

  during the blackout, as if the time had passed in deepest sleep. A

  fugue could last minutes, hours, or even days.

  Audrey Aimes had suddenly begun to suffer from fugues when she was

  thirty, because repressed memories of childhood abuse had begun to

  surface after more than two decades, and she had retreated from them

  psychologically. She'd been certain she'd killed the priest while in a

  fugue state, although of course someone else had murdered him and

  stuffed him in her closet, and the entire bizarre homicide was closed.

  In spite of being able to earn a living by spinning elaborate fantasies

  out of thin air, Marty had a reputation for being as emotionally stable

  as the Rock of Gibraltar and as easy-going as a golden retriever on

  Valium, which was probably why Paige still smiled at him and appeared

  reluctant to take him seriously.

  She stood on her toes, kissed his nose, and said, "So you forgot to take

  out the garbage, and now you're going to claim it's because you're

  suffering a personality breakdown due to long-forgotten, hideous abuses

  when you were six years old. Really, Marty. Shame on you.

  Your mom and dad are the sweetest people I've ever met."

  He let go of her, closed his eyes, and pressed one hand against his

  forehead. He was developing a fierce headache.

  "I'm serious, Paige. This afternoon, in the office . . . for seven

  minutes . . . well, I only know what the hell I was doing during that

  time because I've got it on a tape recorder. I don't remember any of

  it. And it's creepy. Seven creepy minutes."

  He felt her body tense against his, as she realized that he was not

  engaged in some complex joke. And when he opened his eyes, he saw that

  her playful smile was gone.

  "Maybe there's a simple explanation," he said. "Maybe there's no reason

  to be concerned. But I'm scared, Paige. I feel stupid, like I should

  just shrug and forget about it, but I'm scared."

  In Kansas City, a chill wind polishes the night until the sky seems to

  be an infinite slab of clear crystal in which stars are suspended and

  behind which is pent a vast reservoir of darkness.

  Beneath that enormous weight of space and blackness, the Blue Life

  Lounge huddles like a research station on the floor of an ocean trench,

  pressurized to resist implosion. The facade is covered in a shiny

  aluminum skin reminiscent of Airstream travel trailers and roadside

  diners from the 1950s. Blue and green neon spells the name in lazy

 
; script and outlines the structure, glimmering in the aluminum and

  beckoning with as much allure as the lamps of Neptune.

  Inside, where an amplified combo blasts out rock-'n'-roll from the past

  two decades, the killer moves toward the huge horseshoe bar in the

  center of the room. The air is thick with cigarette smoke, beer fumes,

  and body heat, it almost resists him, as if it's water.

  The crowd offers radically different images from the traditional

  Thanksgiving scenes flooding television screens during this holiday

  weekend. At the tables the customers are mostly raucous young men in

  groups with too much energy and testosterone for their own good.

  They shout to be heard above the thundering music, grab at waitresses to

  get their attention, whoop in approval when the guitarist gets off a

  good riff.

  Their determination to enjoy themselves has the frantic quality of

  insectile frenzy.

  A third of the men at the tables are accompanied by young wives or

  girlfriends of the big-hair and heavy-makeup persuasion. They are as

  rowdy as the men--and would be as out of place at a hearthside family

  gathering as screeching bright-plumed parrots would be out of place at

  the bedside of a dying nun.

  The horseshoe-shaped bar encircles an oval stage, bathed in red and

  white spotlights, where two young women with exceptionally firm bodies

  thrash to the music and call it dancing. They wear cowgirl costumes

  designed to tease, all fringe and spangles, and one of them elicits

  whistles and hoots when she removes her halter top.

  The men on the bar stools are all ages and, unlike the customers at the

  tables, each appears to be alone. They sit in silence, staring up at

  the two smooth-skinned dancers. Many sway slightly on their stools or

  move their heads dreamily from side to side in time to some other music

  far less driving than the tunes the band is actually playing, they are

  like a colony of sea anemones, stirred by slow deep currents, waiting

  dumbly for a morsel of pleasure to drift to them.

  He sits on one of only two empty stools and orders a bottle of Beck's

  dark from a bartender who could crack walnuts in the crooks of his arms.

  All three bartenders are tall and muscular, no doubt hired for their

  ability to double as bouncers if the need arises.

  The dancer at the far end of the stage, the one whose breasts bounce

  unfettered, is a striking brunette with a thousand-watt smile.

  She is into the music and genuinely seems to enjoy performing.

  Although the nearest dancer, a leggy blonde, is even more attractive

  than the brunette, her routine is mechanical, and she seems to be numbed

  either by drugs or disgust. She neither smiles nor looks at anyone, but

  gazes at some far place only she can see.

  She seems haughty, disdainful of the men who stare at her, the killer

  included. He would derive a lot of pleasure from drawing his pistol and

  pumping several rounds into her exquisite body one for good measure in

  the center of her pouting face.

  An intense thrill shakes him at the mere contemplation of taking her

  beauty from her. The theft of her beauty appeals to him more than

  taking her life. He places little value on life but a great deal on

  beauty because his own life is often unbearably bleak.

  Fortunately, the pistol is in the trunk of the rented Ford. He has left

  the gun in the car precisely to avoid a temptation like this, when he

  feels compelled toward violence.

  As often as two or three times a day, he is gripped by a desire to

  destroy anyone who happens to be near him--men, women, children, it

  makes no difference. In the thrall of these dark seizures, he hates

  every last human being on the face of the earth--whether they are

  beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, smart or stupid, young or old.

  Perhaps, in part, his hatred arises from the knowledge that he is

  different from them. He must always live as an outsider.

  But simple alienation is not the primary reason he frequently

  contemplates random slaughter. He needs something from other people

  which they are unwilling to provide, and, because they withhold it, he

  hates them with such passion that he is capable of any atrocity-even

  though he has no idea what he expects to receive from them.

  This mysterious need is sometimes so intense that it becomes painful.

  It is a hunger akin to starvation--but not a hunger for food.

  Often he finds himself on the trembling edge of a revelation, he

  realizes that the answer is astonishingly simple if only he can open

  himself to it, but enlightenment always eludes him.

  The killer takes a long pull on the bottle of Beck's. He wants the

  beer, but he does not need it. Want is not need.

  On the elevated stage, the blonde slips off her halter, exposing pale

  upswept breasts.

  If he retrieves the pistol and expanded magazines of ammo from the trunk

  of the car, he will have ninety rounds. When the arrogant blonde is

  dead, he can kill the other dancer. Then the three musclebound

  bartenders with three headshots. He is well trained in the use of

  firearms--though he has no recollection of who trained him. With those

  five dead, he can target the fleeing crowd. Many who don't die from

  gunfire will perish when trampled in the panic to escape.

  The prospect of slaughter excites him, and he knows that blood can make

  him forget, at least for a short while, the aching need that plagues

  him. He has experienced the pattern before. Need fosters frustration,

  frustration grows into anger, anger leads to hatred, hatred generates

  violence and violence sometimes soothes.

  He drinks more beer and wonders if he is insane.

  He remembers a movie in which a psychiatrist assures the hero that only

  sane people question their sanity. Genuine madmen are always firmly

  convinced of their rationality. Therefore, he must be sane even to be

  able to doubt himself.

  Marty leaned against the door frame and watched while the girls took

  turns sitting on their bedroom vanity bench to let Paige brush their

  hair. Fifty strokes each.

  Perhaps it was the easy rhythmic motion of the hairbrush or the

  tranquilizing domesticity of the scene that soothed Marty's headache.

  Whatever the reason, the pain faded.

  Charlotte's hair was golden, just like her mother's, and Emily's was so

  dark brown that it was almost black, like Marty's. Charlotte chatted

  nonstop with Paige throughout her brushing, but Emily kept silent,

  arched her back, closed her eyes, and took an almost catlike pleasure in

  the grooming.

  The contrasting halves of their shared room attested to other

  differences between the sisters. Charlotte liked posters full of

  motion, colorful hot-air balloons against a desert twilight, a ballet

  dancer in mid-entrechat, sprinting gazelles. Emily preferred posters of

  autumn leaves, evergreens hung with heavy snow, and moonlight-silvered

  surf breaking on a pale beach. Charlotte's bedspread was green, red,

  and yellow, Emily's was a beige chenille.

  Disorder ruled in Charlotte's domain, while Emily prized nea
tness.

  Then there was the matter of pets. On Charlotte's side of the room,

  built-in bookshelves housed the terrarium that was home to Fred the

  Turtle, the wide-mouthed gallon jar where Bob the Bug made his home in

  dead leaves and grass, the cage that housed Wayne the Gerbil, another

  terrarium in which Sheldon the Snake was the tenant, a second cage in

  which Whiskers the Mouse spent a lot of time keeping an eye on Sheldon

  in spite of the glass and wire that separated them, and a final

  terrarium occupied by Loretta the Chameleon.

  Charlotte had rejected the suggestion that a kitten or puppy was a more

  appropriate pet. "Dogs and cats run around loose all the time, you

  can't keep them in a nice safe little home and protect them," she

  explained.

  Emily had only one pet. Its name was Peepers. It was a stone the size

  of a small lemon, smoothed by decades of running water in the Sierra

  creek from which she had retrieved it during their summer vacation a

  year ago. She had painted two soulful eyes on it, and insisted,

  "Peepers is the best pet of all. I don't have to feed him or clean up

  after him. He's been around forever, so he's real smart and real wise,

  and when I'm sad or maybe mad, I just tell him what I'm hurting about,

  and he takes it all in and worries about it so I don't have to think