Mr. Murder

Marty pulled the 9mm pistol from the desk drawer, grasping it in both hands, thumbing off the safety, squeezing the trigger even as he raised the muzzle. He didn’t care if the target was real or some form of spirit. All he cared about was obliterating it before it killed him.

The first shot tore a chunk out of the far edge of the desk, and wood splinters exploded like a swarm of angry wasps bursting into flight. The second and third rounds hit the other Marty in the chest. They neither passed through him as if he were ectoplasm nor shattered him as if he were a reflection in a mirror, but instead catapulted him backward, off his feet, taking him by surprise before he could raise his own gun, which flew out of his hand and hit the floor with a hard thud. He crashed against a bookcase, clawing at a shelf with one hand, pulling a dozen volumes to the floor, blood spreading across his chest—sweet Jesus, so much blood—eyes wide with shock, no cry escaping him except for one hard low “uh” that was more a sound of surprise than pain.

The bastard should have fallen like a rock down a well, but he stayed on his feet. In the same moment that he slammed into the bookcase, he pushed away from it, staggered-plunged through the open doorway, into the upstairs hall, out of sight.

Stunned more by the fact that he’d actually pulled the trigger on someone than that the “someone” was the mirror image of himself, Marty sagged against the desk, gasping for breath as desperately as if he hadn’t inhaled since the double had first walked into the room. Maybe he hadn’t. Shooting a man for real was a whole hell of a lot different from shooting a character in a novel; it almost seemed as if, in some magical fashion, part of the impact of the bullets on the target redounded on the shooter himself. His chest ached, he was dizzy, and his peripheral vision briefly succumbed to a thick seeping darkness which he pressed back with an act of will.

He didn’t dare pass out. He thought the other Marty must be badly wounded, dying, maybe dead. God, the spreading blood on his chest, scarlet blossoms, sudden roses. But he didn’t know for sure. Maybe the wounds only looked mortal, maybe the brief glimpse he’d had was misleading, and maybe the double was not only still alive but strong enough to get out of the house and away. If the guy escaped and lived, sooner or later he’d be back, just as weird and crazy but even angrier, better prepared. Marty had to finish what he started before his double had a chance to do the same.

He glanced at the phone. Dial 911. Get the police, then go after the wounded man.

But the desk clock was beside the phone, and he saw the time—4:26. Paige and the girls. On their way home from school, later than usual, delayed by piano lessons. Oh, my God. If they came into the house and saw the other Marty, or found him in the garage, they’d think he was their Marty, and they’d run to him, frightened by his wounds, wanting to help, and maybe he would still be strong enough to harm them. Was the pistol that he dropped his only weapon? Can’t make that assumption. Besides, the son of a bitch could get a knife out of the rack in the kitchen, the butcher’s knife, hide it against his side, behind his back, let Emily get close, then jam it through her throat, or deep into Charlotte’s belly.

Every second counted. Forget 911. Waste of time. The cops wouldn’t get there before Paige.

As Marty rounded the desk, his legs were wobbly, but less so as he crossed the room toward the hallway. He saw blood splattered on the wall, oozing down the spines of his own books, staining his name. A creeping tide of darkness lapped at the edges of his vision again. He clenched his teeth and kept going.

When he reached the double’s pistol, he kicked it deeper into the room, farther from the doorway. That simple act gave him a surge of confidence because it seemed like something a cop would have the presence of mind to do—make it harder for the perp to regain his weapon.

Maybe he could handle this, get through it, as strange and scary as it was, the blood and all. Maybe he would be okay.

So nail the guy. Make sure he’s down, all the way down and all the way out.

To write his mystery novels, he’d done a lot of research into police procedures, not merely studying police- academy textbooks and training films but riding with uniformed cops on night patrols and hanging out with plainclothes detectives on and off the job. He knew perfectly well how best to go through a doorway under these circumstances.

Don’t be too confident. Figure the creep has another weapon besides the one he dropped, gun or knife. Stay low, clear that doorway fast. Easier to die in a doorway than anywhere else because every door opens on the unknown. Keep your gun in both hands as you move, arms in front of you, straight and locked, sweep left and right as you cross the threshold, swinging the gun to cover both flanks. Then slip to one side or the other and keep your back against the wall as you move, so you always know your back is safe, only three sides to worry about.

All of that wisdom flashed through his mind, as it might have passed through the mind of one of his hard- nosed police characters—yet he behaved like any panicked civilian, stumbling heedlessly into the upstairs hall, holding the pistol in only his right hand, arms loose, breathing explosively, making more of a target than a threat of himself, because when you came right down to it, he wasn’t a cop, only an asshole who sometimes wrote about them. No matter how long you indulged the fantasy, you couldn’t live the fantasy, you couldn’t act like a cop in a pressurized situation unless you had trained like a cop. He had been as guilty as anyone of confusing reality and fiction, thinking he was as invincible as the hero on a printed page, and he’d been damned lucky the other Marty hadn’t been waiting for him. The upstairs hall was deserted.

He looked exactly like me.

Couldn’t think about that now, no time for it yet. Concentrate on staying alive, wasting the bastard before he hurt Paige or the girls. If you survive, there’ll be time to seek an explanation for that astonishing resemblance, solve the mystery, but not now.

Listen. Movement?

Maybe.

No. Nothing.

Keep the gun up, muzzle aimed ahead.

Just outside the office doorway, a smeary handprint in wet blood marred the wall. A horrid amount of blood was puddled on the light-beige carpet there. At least part of the time when Marty had stood behind his desk, stunned and temporarily immobilized by the violence, the wounded man had leaned against this hallway wall, perhaps trying unsuccessfully to staunch his bleeding wounds.

Marty was sweating, nauseated and afraid. Perspiration trickled into the corner of his left eye, stinging, blurring his vision. He blotted his slick forehead with his shirt sleeve, blinked furiously to wash the salt out of his eye.

When the intruder had shoved away from the wall and started moving—perhaps while Marty was still frozen behind his desk—he had walked through his own pooled blood. His route was marked by fragmentary red imprints of the ridged patterns on athletic-shoe soles as well as by a continuous scarlet drizzle.

Silence in the house. With a little luck, maybe it was the silence of the dead.

Shivering, Marty cautiously followed the repulsive trail past the hall bath, around the corner, past the double-door entrance to the dark master bedroom, past the head of the stairs. He stopped at that point where the second-floor hall became a gallery overlooking the living room.

On his right was a bleached oak railing, beyond which hung the brass chandelier that he’d switched on when he’d passed through the foyer earlier. Below the chandelier were the descending stairs and the two-story, tile- floored entrance foyer that flowed directly into the two-story living room.

To his left and a few feet farther along the gallery was the room Paige used as a home office. One day it would become another bedroom for Charlotte or Emily when they decided they were ready to sleep separately. The door stood half open. Bat-black shadows swarmed beyond, relieved only by the gray storm light of the waning day, which hardly penetrated the windows.

The blood trail led past that office to the end of the gallery, directly to the door of the girls’ bedroom, which was closed. The intruder was in there, and it was infuriating to think of him among the girls’ belongings, touching things, tainting their room with his blood and madness.

He recalled the angry voice, touched with lunacy yet so like his own voice: My Paige, she’s mine, my Charlotte, my Emily . . .

“Like hell, they’re yours,” Marty said, keeping the Smith & Wesson aimed squarely at the closed door.

He glanced at his wristwatch.