Mr. Murder

sinks. Everything is clean and pleasant under the fluorescent lights.

He takes off the raincoat and the grossly soiled flannel shirt. He wads up both the shirt and the coat and stuffs them into a large trash can that stands in one corner.

His chest is unmarked by bullet wounds. He doesn’t need to look at his back to know that the single exit wound is also healed.

He washes his armpits at one of the laundry sinks and dries with paper towels taken from a wall dispenser.

He looks forward to taking a long hot shower before the day is done, in his own bathroom, in his own home. Once he has located the false father and killed him, once he has recovered his family, he will have time for simple pleasures. Paige will shower with him. She will enjoy that.

If necessary, he could take off his jeans and wash them in one of the laundry-room machines, using coins taken from the owner of the Buick. But when he scrapes the crusted food off the denim with his fingernails and works at the few stains with damp paper towels, the result is satisfactory.

The sweater is a pleasant surprise. He expects it to be too large for him, as the raincoat was, but the dead man evidently did not buy it for himself. It fits perfectly. The color—cranberry red—goes well with the blue jeans and is also a good color for him. If the room had a mirror, he is sure it would show that he is not only inconspicuous but quite respectable and even attractive.

Outside, dawn is just a ghost light in the east.

Morning birds are chirruping in the trees.

The air is sweet.

Tossing the Buick keys into some shrubbery, abandoning the car and the dead man in it, he proceeds briskly to the nearest multiple-stall carport and systematically tries the doors of the vehicles parked under the bougainvillea-covered roof. Just when he thinks all of them are going to be locked, a Toyota Camry proves to be open.

He slips in behind the wheel. Checks behind the sun visor for keys. Under the seat. No such luck.

It doesn’t matter. He’s nothing if not resourceful. Before the sky has brightened appreciably, he hot-wires the car and is on the road again.

Most likely, the owner of the Camry will discover it’s missing in a couple of hours, when he’s ready to go to work, and will quickly report it stolen. No problem. By then the license plates will be on another car, and the Camry will be sporting a different set of tags that will make it all but invisible to the police.

He feels invigorated, driving through the hills of Laguna Niguel in the rose light of dawn. The early sky is as yet only a faded blue, but the high formations of striated clouds are runneled with bright pink.

It is the first day of December. Day one. He is making a fresh start. From now on, everything will go his way because he will no longer underestimate his enemy.

Before he kills the false father, he will put out the bastard’s eyes in retribution for the wound that he himself suffered. He will require his daughters to watch, for this will be an important lesson to them, proof that false fathers cannot triumph in the long run and that their real father is a man to be disobeyed only at the risk of severe punishment.

Five

1

Shortly after dawn, Marty woke Charlotte and Emily. “Got to get showered and hit the road, ladies. Lots to do this morning.”

Emily was fully awake in an instant. She scrambled out from under the covers and stood on the bed in her daffodil-yellow pajamas, which brought her almost to eye-level with him. She demanded a hug and a good-morning kiss. “I had a super dream last night.”

“Let me guess. You dreamed you were old enough to date Tom Cruise, drive a sports car, smoke cigars, get drunk, and puke your guts out.”

“Silly,” she said. “I dreamed, for breakfast, you went out to the vending machines and got us Mountain Dew and candy bars.”

“Sorry, but it wasn’t prophetic.”

“Daddy, don’t be a writer using big words.”

“I meant, your dream isn’t going to come true.”

“Well, I know that,” she said. “You and Mommy would blow a basket if we had candy for breakfast.”

“Gasket. Not basket.”

She wrinkled her face. “Does it really matter?”

“No, I guess not. Basket, gasket, whatever you say.”

Emily squirmed out of his arms and jumped down from the bed. “I’m going to the potty,” she announced.

“That’s a start. Then take a shower, brush your teeth, and get dressed.”

Charlotte was, as usual, slower to come fully awake. By the time Emily was closing the bathroom door, Charlotte had only managed to push back the blankets and sit on the edge of her bed. She was scowling down at her bare feet.

Marty sat beside her. “They’re called ‘toes.’ ”

“Mmmm,” she said.

“You need them to fill out the ends of your socks.”

She yawned.

Marty said, “You’ll need them a lot more if you’re going to be a ballet dancer. But for most other professions, however, they’re not essential. So if you aren’t going to be a ballet dancer, then you could have them surgically removed, just the biggest ones or all ten, that’s entirely up to you.”

She cocked her head and gave him a Daddy’s-being-cute -so-let’s-humor-him look. “I think I’ll keep them.”

“Whatever you want,” he said, and kissed her forehead.

“My teeth feel furry,” she complained. “So does my tongue.”

“Maybe during the night you ate a cat.”

She was awake enough to giggle.

In the bathroom the toilet flushed, and a second later the door opened. Emily said, “Charlotte, you want privacy for the potty, or can I shower now?”

“Go ahead and shower,” Charlotte said. “You smell.”

“Yeah? Well, you stink.”

“You reek.”

“That’s because I want to,” Emily said, probably because she couldn’t think of a comeback word for “reek.”

“My gracious young daughters, such little ladies.”

As Emily disappeared back into the bathroom and began to fiddle with the shower controls, Charlotte said, “Gotta get this fuzz off my teeth.” She got up and went to the open door. At the threshold she turned to Marty. “Daddy, do we have to go to school today?”

“Not today.”

“I didn’t think so.” She hesitated. “Tomorrow?”

“I don’t know, honey. Probably not.”

Another hesitation. “Will we be going to school again ever?”

“Well, sure, of course.”

She stared at him for too long, then nodded and went into the bathroom.

Her question rattled Marty. He wasn’t sure if she was merely fantasizing about a life without school, as most