Koontz, Dean R. - Mr. Murder

by Dean Koontz

  Gregory Peck, and so many other men have taken him under their wings and

  have taught him courage and determination. He knows that death is a

  mystery of infinite complication because he has learned so many

  conflicting lessons about it, Tim Robbins has shown him that the

  afterlife is only an illusion, while Patrick Swayze has shown him that

  the afterlife is a joyous place as real as anywhere and that those you

  love (like Demi Moore) will see you there when they eventually pass from

  this world, yet Freddy Krueger has shown him that the afterlife is a

  gruesome nightmare from which you can return for gleeful vengeance.

  When Debra Winger died of cancer, leaving Shirley MacLaine bereft, he

  had been inconsolable, but only a few days later he had seen her, alive

  again, younger and more beautiful than ever, reincarnated in a new life

  where she enjoyed a new destiny with Richard Gere. Paul New man has

  often shared with him bits of wisdom about death, life, pool, poker,

  love, and honor, therefore, he considers this man one of his most

  important mentors. Likewise, Wilford Brimley, Gene Hackman, burly old

  Edward Asner, Robert Redford, Jessica Tandy. Often he absorbs quite

  contradictory lessons from such friends, but he has heard some of these

  people say that all beliefs are of equal value and that there is no one

  truth, so he is comfortable with the contradictions by which he lives.

  He learned the most secret of all truths not in a public theater or

  on a pay-per-view movie service in a hotel room. Instead, that moment

  of stunning insight had come in the private media chamber of one of the

  men it was his duty to kill.

  His target had been a United States Senator. A requirement of the

  termination was that it be made to look like a suicide.

  He had to enter the Senator's residence on a night when the man was

  known to be alone. He was provided with a key so there would be no

  signs of forced entry.

  After gaining access to the house, he found the Senator in the

  eight-seat home media room, which featured THe Sound and a the

  better-quality projection system capable of displaying television, video

  tape, or laserdisc images on a five-by-six-foot screen. It was a plush,

  windowless space. There was even an antique Coke machine which, he

  learned later, dispensed the soft drink in classic ten-ounce glass

  bottles, plus a candy-vending machine stocked with Milk Duds, Jujubes,

  Raisinettes, and other favorite movie-house snacks.

  Because of the music in the film, he found it easy to creep up behind

  the Senator and overpower him with a chloroform-soaked rag, which he

  pulled out of a plastic bag a second before putting it to use. He

  carried the politician upstairs to the ornate master bath, undressed

  him, and gently conveyed him into a Roman tub filled with hot water,

  periodically employing the chloroform to assure continued

  unconsciousness. With a razor blade, he made a deep, clean incision

  across the Senator's right wrist (since the politician was a southpaw

  and most likely to use his left hand to make his first cut), and let

  that arm drop into the water, which was quickly discolored by the

  arterial gush. Before dropping the razor blade in the water, he made a

  few feeble attempts to slash the left wrist, never scoring deeply,

  because the Senator wouldn't have been able to grip the blade firmly in

  his right hand after cutting the tendons and ligaments along with the

  artery in that wrist.

  Sitting on the edge of the tub, administering chloroform every time the

  politician groaned and seemed about to wake, he gratefully shared the

  sacred ceremony of death. When he was the only living man in the room,

  he thanked the departed for the precious opportunity to share that most

  intimate of experiences.

  Ordinarily, he would have left the house then, but what he had witnessed

  on the movie screen drew him back to the media room on the first floor.

  He had seen pornography before, in adult theaters in many cities, and

  from those experiences he had learned all of the possible sexual

  positions and techniques. But the pornography on that home screen was

  different from everything he'd seen previously, for it involved chains,

  handcuffs, leather straps, metal-studded belts, as well as a wide

  variety of other instruments of punishment and restraint. Incredibly,

  the beautiful women on the screen seemed to be excited by brutality. The

  more cruelly they were treated, the more willingly they gave themselves

  to orgasmic pleasure, in fact, they frequently begged to be dealt with

  even more harshly, ravished more sadistically.

  He settled into the seat from which he had removed the Senator.

  He stared with fascination at the screen, absorbing, learning.

  When that videotape reached a conclusion, a quick search turned up an

  open walk-in vault--usually cleverly concealed behind the wall

  paneling--that contained a collection of similar material.

  There was an even more stunning trove of tapes depicting children

  involved in carnal acts with adults. Daughters with fathers.

  Mothers with sons. Sisters with brothers, sisters with sisters. He sat

  for hours, until almost dawn, transfixed.

  Absorbing.

  Learning, learning.

  To have become a United States Senator, an exalted leader, the dead man

  in the bathtub must have been extremely wise. Therefore, his personal

  film library would, of course, contain diverse material of a

  transcendent nature, reflecting his singular intellectual and moral

  insights, embodying philosophies far too complex to be within the grasp

  of the average film-goer at a public theater. How very fortunate to

  have discovered the politician lounging in the media room rather than

  preparing a snack in the kitchen or reading a book in bed.

  Otherwise, this opportunity to share the wisdom in the great man's

  hidden vault would never have arisen.

  Now, curled fetally on the back seat of the Buick, he may be temporarily

  blinded in one eye, bullet-creased and bullet-pierced, weak and weary,

  defeated for the moment, but he is not despairing.

  He has another advantage in addition to his magically resilient body, .'.. , .

  unparalleled stamina, and exhaustive knowledge of the killing arts.

  Equally important, he possesses what he perceives to be great wisdom,

  acquired from movie screens both public and private, and that wisdom

  will ensure his ultimate triumph. He knows what he believes to be the

  great secrets that the wisest people hide in concealed vaults, those

  things which women really need but which they may not know they

  subconsciously desire, those things which children want but of which

  they dare not speak. He understands that his wife and children will

  welcome and thrive upon utter domination, harsh discipline, physical

  abuse, sexual subjugation, even humiliation. At first opportunity, he

  intends to fulfill their deepest and most primitive longings, as the

  lenient false father apparently will never be able to do, and together

  they will be a family, living in harmony and love, sharing a destiny,

&nb
sp; held together forever by his singular wisdom, strength, and demanding

  heart.

  He drifts toward healing sleep, confident of waking with full health and

  vigor in several hours.

  A few feet from him, in the trunk of the car, lies the dead man who once

  owned the Buick--cold, stiff, and without any appealing prospects of his

  own.

  How good it is to be special, to be needed, to have a destiny.

  Still we're at the point where hope and reason part, lies the spot where

  madness gets a start.

  Hope to make the world kinder and free but flowers of hope root in

  reality.

  No peaceful bed exists for lamb and lion, unless on some world out

  beyond Orion.

  Do not instruct the owls to spare the mice.

  Owls acting as owls must is not a vice.

  Storms do not respond to heartfelt pleas.

  All the words of men can't calm the seas.

  Nature--always beneficent o.nd cruel wont change for a wise man or a

  fool.

  Mankind shares all Nature's imperfections, clearly visible to casual

  inspections.

  Resisting betterment is the human trait.

  The ideal of utopia is our tragic fate.

  --The Book of Counted Sorrows

  We sense that life is a dark comedy and

  maybe we can live with that.

  However, because the whole thing is written for the entertainment of the

  gods, too many of the jokes go right over our heads.

  Two Vanished Victims, Martn Stillwater Immediately after leaving the

  roadside rest area where the dead retirees relaxed forever in the cozy

  dining nook of their motorhome, heading back along I-40 toward Oklahoma

  City with the inscrutable Karl Clocker behind the wheel, Drew Oslett

  used his state-of-the-art cellular phone to call the home office in New

  York City. He reported developments and requested instructions.

  The telephone he used wasn't yet for sale to the general public.

  To the average citizen, it would never be available with all of the

  features that Oslett's model offered.

  It plugged into the cigarette lighter like other cellulars, however,

  unlike others, it was operable virtually anywhere in the world, not

  solely within the state or service area in which it was issued.

  Like the SATU electronic map, the phone incorporated a direct satellite

  up link. It could directly access at least ninety percent of the

  communications satellites currently in orbit, bypassing their land-based

  control stations, override security-exclusion programs, and connect with

  any telephone the user wished, leaving absolutely no record that the

  call had been made. The violated phone company would never issue a bill

  for Oslett's call to New York because they would never know that it had

  been placed using their system.

  He spoke freely to his New York contact about what he had found at the

  rest stop, with no fear that he would be overheard by anyone, because

  his phone also included a scrambling device that he activated with a

  simple switch. A matching scrambler on the home office phone rendered

  his report intelligible again upon receipt, but to anyone who might

  intercept the signal between Oklahoma and the Big Apple, Oslett's words

  would sound like gibberish.

  New York was concerned about the murdered retirees only to the extent

  that there might be a way for the Oklahoma authorities to link their

  killing to Alfie or to the Network, which was the name they used among

  themselves to describe their organization. "You didn't leave the shoes

  there?" New York asked.

  "Of course not," Oslett said, offended at the suggestion of

  incompetence.

  "All of the electronics in the heel--"

  "I have the shoes here."

  "That's right-out-of-the-lab stuff. Any knowledgeable person who sees

  it, he's going to go ape-shit and maybe"

  "I have the shoes," Oslett said tightly.

  "Good. Okay, then let them find the bodies and bang their heads against

  the wall trying to solve it. None of our business. Somebody else can

  haul away the garbage."

  "Exactly."

  "I'll be back to you soon."

  "I'm counting on it," Oslett said.

  After disconnecting, while he waited for a response from the home

  office, he was filled with uneasiness at the prospect of passing more

  than a hundred black and empty miles with no company but himself and

  Clocker. Fortunately, he was prepared with noisy and involving

  entertainment. From the floor behind the driver's seat, he retrieved a

  Game Boy and slipped the headset over his ears. Soon he was happily

  distracted from the unnerving rural landscape by the challenges of a

  rapidly paced computer game.

  Suburban lights speckled the night when Oslett next looked up from the

  miniature screen in response to a tap on the shoulder from Clocker. On

  the floor between his feet, the cellular phone was ringing.

  The New York contact sounded as somber as if he had just come from his

  own mother's funeral. "How soon can you get to the airport in Oklahoma

  City?"

  Oslett relayed the question to Clocker.

  Clocker's impassive face didn't change expressions as he said, "Half an

  hour, forty minutes--assuming the fabric of reality doesn't warp between

  here and there."

  Oslett relayed to New York only the estimated traveling time and left

  out the science fiction.

  "Get there quick as you can," New York said. "You're going to

  California."

  "Where in California?"

  "John Wayne Airport, Orange County."

  "You have a lead on Alfie?"

  "We don't know what the fuck we've got."

  "Please don't make your answers so darn technical," Oslett said.

  "You're losing me."

  "When you get to the airport in Oklahoma City, find a news stand. Buy

  the latest issue of People magazine. Look on pages sixty six,

  sixty-seven, sixty-eight. Then you'll know as much as we do."

  "Is this a joke?"

  "We just found out about it."

  "About what?" Oslett asked. "Look, I don't care about the latest

  scandal in the British royal family or what diet Julia Roberts follows

  to keep her figure."

  "Pages sixty-six, sixty-seven, and sixty-eight. When you've seen it,

  call me. Looks as if we might be standing hip-deep in gasoline, and

  someone just struck a match."

  New York disconnected before Oslett could respond.

  "We're going to California," he told Clocker.

  "Why?"

  "People magazine thinks we'll like the place," he said, deciding to give

  the big man a taste of his own cryptic dialogue.

  "We probably will," Clocker replied, as if what Oslett had said made

  perfect sense to him.

  As they drove through the outskirts of Oklahoma City, Oslett was

  relieved to find himself surrounded by signs of civilization--though he

  would have blown his brains out rather than live there. Even at its

  busiest hour, Oklahoma City didn't assault all five senses the way

  Manhattan did. He didn't merely thrive on sensory overload, he found it

  almost as essential to life as food and water, and more important than


  sex.

  Seattle had been better than Oklahoma City, although it still hadn't

  measured up to Manhattan. Really, it had far too much sky for a city,

  too little crowding. The streets were so comparatively quiet, and the

  people seemed so inexplicably . . . relaxed. You would think they

  didn't know that they, like everyone else, would die sooner or later.

  He and Clocker had been waiting at Seattle International at two o'clock

  yesterday afternoon, Sunday, when Alfie had been scheduled to arrive on

  a flight from Kansas City, Missouri. The 747 touched down eighteen

  minutes late, and Alfie wasn't on it.

  In the nearly fourteen months that Oslett had been handling Alfie, which

  was the entire time that Alfie had been in service, nothing like that

  had ever happened. Alfie faithfully showed up where he was supposed to,

  traveled wherever he was sent, performed whatever task was assigned to

  him, and was as punctual as a Japanese train conductor.

  Until yesterday.

  They had not panicked right away. It was possible that a snafu perhaps

  a traffic accident--had delayed Alfie on his way to the air port,

  causing him to miss his flight.

  Of course, the moment he went off schedule, a "cellar command,"

  implanted in his deep subconscious, should have been activated,