Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

  "Come on, over to the Delorios' place, all of you."

  He stepped across the threshold, into the dark garage, hit the Genie

  button, and the big door rumbled upward. He met Paige's eyes.

  "They'll be safe at the Delorios' place."

  Not bothering to pull her coat off the rack, Paige shepherded the girls

  past him, into the garage, toward the rising door.

  "Call the police," he shouted after her, wincing at the pain that a

  shout cost him.

  She glanced back at him, her face lined with worry.

  He said, "I'm all right, but we got a guy here, shot bad."

  "Come with us," she pleaded.

  "Can't. Call the police."

  "Marty--"

  "Go, Paige, just go!"

  She moved between Charlotte and Emily, took each of them by the hand,

  and led them out of the garage, into the downpour, turning to look back

  at him only once more.

  He watched until they reached the end of the driveway, checked left and

  right for traffic, and then started across the street.

  Step by step, as they moved away through the silver curtains of rain,

  they looked less like real people and more like three retreating

  spirits. He had the disconcertingly present feeling that he would never

  see them alive again, he knew it was nothing more than an irrational

  adrenaline hyped reaction to what he'd been through, but the fear took

  root in him and grew nevertheless.

  A cold wet wind invaded the deepest reaches of the garage, and the

  perspiration on Marty's face felt as if it had been instantly

  transformed into ice.

  He stepped back into the kitchen and pushed the door shut.

  Though he was shivering, half freezing, he craved a cold drink because

  his throat burned as if it harbored a kerosene fire.

  Maybe the man in the foyer was dying, having convulsions right that

  second, or a heart attack. He was in damned bad shape. So it would be

  a good idea to get in there and watch over him, in case CPR was

  necessary before the authorities arrived. Marty didn't care if the guy

  died--wanted him dead--but not until a lot of questions were answered

  and these recent events made at least some sense.

  But before he did anything else, he had to get a drink to soothe his

  throat. Right now, every swallow was torture. When the cops arrived,

  he would have to be prepared to do a lot of talking.

  Tap water didn't seem cold enough to do the trick, so he opened the

  refrigerator, which he could have sworn was a lot emptier than it had

  been earlier in the day, and grabbed a carton of milk. No, the idea of

  milk made him gag. Milk reminded him of blood because it was a bodily

  fluid, which was ridiculous, of course, but the events of the past hour

  were irrational, so it followed that some of his reactions would be

  irrational as well. He returned the carton to the shelf, reached for

  the orange juice, then saw the bottles of Corona and sixteen-ounce cans

  of Coors. Nothing had ever looked more desirable than those chilled

  beers. He grabbed one of the cans because it contained one-third more

  ounces than a bottle of Corona.

  The first long swallow fueled the fire in his throat instead of

  quenching it. The second hurt slightly less than the first, the third

  less than the second, and thereafter every sip was as soothing as

  medicated honey.

  With the pistol in one hand and the half-empty can of Coors in the

  other, shivering more at the memory of what had happened and at the

  prospect of what lay ahead than because of the iv her h went back

  through the house to the foyer.

  The Other was gone.

  Marty was so startled, he dropped the Coors. The can rolled behind him,

  spilling foamy beer on the hardwood floor of the living room.

  Although the can had slipped out of his grasp so easily, nothing short

  of hydraulic prybars could have forced him to let go of the gun.

  Broken balusters, a section of handrail, and splinters littered the

  foyer floor. Several Mexican tiles were cracked and chipped from the

  impact of hard oak and Smith & Wesson steel. No body.

  From the moment the double entered Marty's office, the waking day had

  drifted into nightmare without the usual prerequisite of sleep.

  Events had slipped the chains of reality, and his own home had become a

  dark dreamscape. As surreal as the confrontation had been, he hadn't

  seriously doubted its actuality while it had been playing out.

  And he didn't doubt it now, either. He hadn't shot a figment of the

  mind, been strangled by an illusion, or plunged alone through the

  gallery railing. Lying incapacitated in the foyer, The Other had been

  as real as the shattered balustrade still scattered on the tiles.

  Alarmed by the possibility that Paige and the girls had been attacked in

  the street before they had gotten to the Delorios' house, Marty turned

  to the front door. It was locked. From the inside. The security chain

  was in place. The madman hadn't left the house by that route.

  Hadn't left it at all. How could he, in his condition? Don't panic.

  Be calm. Think it through.

  Marty would have bet a year of his life that The Other's catastrophic

  injuries had been real, not pretense. The bastard's back had been

  broken. His inability to move more than his head and the fingers of one

  hand meant his spine probably had been severed, as well, when he had

  done his gravity dance with the floor.

  So where was he?

  Not upstairs. Even if his spine hadn't been damaged, even if he'd

  escaped quadriplegia, he couldn't have dragged his battered body up to

  the second floor during the short time Marty had been in the kitchen.

  Opposite the entrance to the living room, a small den opened off the

  study. The dishwater-gray light of the storm-washed dusk seeped between

  the open slats of the shutters, illuminating nothing. Marty stepped

  through the doorway, snapped on the lights. The den was deserted. At

  the closet, he slid open the mirrored door, but The Other wasn't hiding

  in there, either.

  Foyer closet. Nothing. Powder bath. Nothing. The deep closet under

  the stairs. Laundry. Family room. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Marty searched frantically, recklessly, heedless of his safety.

  He expected to discover his would-be killer nearby and essentially

  helpless, perhaps even dead, this feeble attempt at escape having

  depleted the last of the man's resources.

  Instead, in the kitchen, he found the back door standing open to the

  patio. A gust of cold wind swept in from outside, rattling the cupboard

  doors. On the rack by the entrance to the garage, Paige's raincoat

  billowed with false life.

  While Marty had been returning to the foyer via the dining room and

  living room, The Other had headed for the kitchen by another route. He

  must have gone along the short hall that led from the foyer past the

  powder bath and laundry, and then crossed one end of the family room.

  He couldn't have crawled that far so quickly. He had been on his feet,

  perhaps unsteady, but on his feet nonetheless.

  No. It wasn't possible. Okay, maybe the guy didn't have a severed<
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  spine, after all. Maybe not even a fractured spine. But his back had

  to have been broken. He couldn't simply have sprung to his feet and

  scampered off.

  The waking nightmare had displaced reality again. It was time once more

  to stalk--and be stalked--by something which enjoyed the regenerative

  powers of a monster in a dream, something which said it had come looking

  for a life and which seemed fearfully equipped to take it.

  Marty stepped through the open door onto the patio.

  Renewed fear lifted him to a higher state of awareness in which colors

  were more intense, odors were more pungent, and sounds were clearer and

  more refined than ever before. The feeling was akin to the

  inexpressibly keen sensations of certain childhood and adolescent dreams

  especially those in which the dreamer travels the skies as effortlessly

  as a bird, or experiences sexual communion with a woman of such

  exquisite form that, later, neither her face nor body can be recalled

  but only the essential radiance of perfect beauty.

  Those special dreams seemed not to be fantasies at all but glimpses of a

  greater and more detailed reality beyond the reality of the waking

  world. Stepping through the kitchen door, passing out of the warm house

  into the cold realm of nature, Marty was strangely reminded of the

  ravishing vividness of those long-forgotten visions, for now he

  experienced similarly acute sensations, alert to every nuance of what he

  saw-heard-smelled-touched.

  From the thick thatching of bougainvillea overhead, scores of drips and

  drizzles splashed into puddles as black as oil in the fading light.

  Upon that liquid blackness floated crimson blossoms in patterns that,

  though random, seemed consciously mysterious, as portentous and full of

  meaning as the ancient calligraphy of some long-dead Chinese mystic.

  Around the perimeter of the backyard--small and walled, as in most

  southern California neighborhoods--Indian laurels and clustered eugenias

  shivered miserably in the brisk wind. Near the northwest corner,

  eucalyptus lashed the air, shedding oblong leaves as smoky-silver as the

  wings of dragonflies. In the shadows cast by the trees--and behind

  several of the larger shrubs--were places in which a man could hide.

  Marty had no intention of searching there. If his quarry had dragged

  himself out of the house to cower in a chilly, sodden nest of jasmine

  and agapanthus, weak from IQSS of blood--which was most likely the case

  finding him was not urgent. It was more important to be sure he was not

  at that moment escaping unpursued.

  Long adapted to dry conditions and accustomed to only the water provided

  by the sprinkler system, choruses of toads sang from their hidden

  niches, scores of shrill voices that were usually charming but seemed

  eerie and threatening now. Above their aria rose the wail of distant

  but approaching sirens.

  If the intruder was trying to get away before the police came, the

  possible routes of escape were few. He could have climbed one of the

  property walls, but that seemed unlikely because, regardless of how

  miraculous his recovery, he simply hadn't had sufficient time to cross

  the lawn, push through the shrubs, and clamber into one of the

  neighbors' yards.

  Marty turned right and ran out from under the dripping patio cover.

  Soaked to the skin in half a dozen steps, he followed the rear walkway

  along the house, then hurried past the back of the attached garage.

  The downpour had lured snails from moist and shadowy retreats where they

  usually remained until well after nightfall. Their pale, jellied bodies

  were stretched most of the way out of their shells, thick feelers

  questing ahead. Unavoidably, he stepped on a few, smashed them to pulp,

  and through his mind flashed the superstitious notion that a cosmic

  entity would at any second crush him underfoot with equal callousness.

  When he turned the corner onto the service walkway flanked by a garage

  wall and eugenia hedge, he expected to see the look-alike limping toward

  the front of the property. The walkway was deserted.

  The gate at the end stood half open.

  The sirens were much louder by the time Marty sprinted into the driveway

  in front of the house. He sloshed through a gutter filled with four or

  five inches of fast-flowing water as cold as the Styx, stepped into the

  street, looked left and right, but as yet no police cars were in sight.

  The Other was nowhere to be seen, either. Marty was alone on the

  street.

  In the next block south, too far off for him to recognize the make and

  model, a car was speeding away. In spite of the fact that it was moving

  too fast for weather conditions, he doubted it was driven by the

  look-alike. He was still hard-pressed to believe the injured man had

  been able to walk, let alone reach his car and drive away so quickly.

  Surely they would find the son of a bitch nearby, lying in shrubbery,

  unconscious or dead. The car turned the corner much too fast, the thin

  squeal of its protesting tires was audible above the plink, plop, and

  susurration of the rain. Then it was gone.

  From the north, the banshee shriek of sirens abruptly swelled much

  louder, and Marty turned to see a black-and-white police sedan negotiate

  that corner almost as fast as the other car had rounded the corner to

  the south. Revolving red and blue emergency beacons threw bright

  Frisbees of light through the gray rain and across the blacktop.

  The siren cut off as the sedan fishtailed to a stop twenty feet from

  Marty in the center of the street, with stunt-driver dramatics that

  seemed excessive even under the circumstances.

  The siren of a backup cruiser warbled in the distance as the front doors

  of the first black-and-white flew open. Two uniformed officers came out

  of the cruiser, staying low, sheltering behind the doors, shouting,

  "Drop it! Now! Do it! Drop it right now or die, asshole!

  Now!"

  Marty realized he was still holding the 9mm pistol. The cops knew

  nothing more than what Paige had told them when she'd called 911, that a

  man had been shot, so of course they figured he was the perp. If he

  didn't do exactly what they demanded, and do it fast, they would shoot

  him and be justified in doing so.

  He let the gun fall out of his hand.

  It clattered on the pavement.

  They ordered him to kick it away from himself. He complied.

  As they rose from behind the open car doors, one of the cops shouted,

  "On the ground, facedown, hands behind your back!"

  He knew better than to try to make them understand that he was the

  victim rather than the perpetrator. They wanted obedience first,

  explanations later, and if their positions had been reversed he would

  have expected the same thing of them.

  He dropped to his hands and knees, then stretched full length on the

  street. Even through his shirt, the wet blacktop was so cold that it

  took his breath away.

  Vic and Kathy Delorio's house was directly across the street from where

  he was lying, and Marty hoped Charlotte and Emily had been
kept away

  from the front windows. They shouldn't have to see their father flat on

  the ground, under the guns of policemen. They were already scared.

  He remembered their wide-eyed stares when he'd burst into the kitchen

  with the gun in his hand, and he didn't want them frightened further.

  The cold leached into his bones.

  The second siren suddenly grew much louder from one second to the next.

  He guessed the backup black-and-white had turned a corner to the south

  and was approaching from that end of the block.

  The piercing wail was as cold as a sharp icicle in the ear.

  With one side of his face to the pavement, blinking rain out of his

  eyes, he watched the cops approach. They kept their guns drawn.

  When they tramped through a shallow puddle, the splashes seemed huge

  from Marty's perspective.

  As they reached him, he said, "It's okay. I live here. This is my

  house." His speech, already raspy, was further distorted by the shivers

  that wracked him. He worried that he sounded drunk or demented.

  "This is my house."

  "Just stay down," one of them said sharply. "Keep your hands behind

  your back and stay down."

  The other one asked, "You have any ID?"

  Shuddering so badly that his teeth chattered, he said, "Yeah, sure, in