Mr. Murder

the first time in his word-obsessed life. “A problem, a thing, Jesus, you know, like a thing that happened, some trouble—”

“Marty—”

“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 prescient 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 icy beer, he 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 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 capered 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