Mr. Murder

managed to get a call through, he was going to insist they immediately pack up their motorhome and get out of Mammoth Lakes for a few weeks, a month, maybe longer. While they were traveling, changing campgrounds every night or two, no one could try to get at him through them.

Since the attempted contact at the bank in Mission Viejo, Marty had been subjected to no more of The Other’s probes. He was hopeful that the haste and decisiveness with which they’d fled north had bought them safety. Even clairvoyance or telepathy—or whatever the hell it was—must have its limits. Otherwise, they were not merely up against a fantastic mental power but flat-out magic; while Marty could be driven, by experience, to credit the possibility of psychic ability, he simply could not believe in magic. Having put hundreds of miles between themselves and The Other, they were most likely beyond the range of his questing sixth sense. The mountains, which periodically interfered with the operation of the cellular telephone, might further insulate them from telepathic detection.

Perhaps it would have been safer to stay away from Mammoth Lakes and hide out in a town to which he had no connections. However, he opted for the cabin because even those who might target his parents’ house as a possible refuge for him would not be aware of the mountain retreat and would be unlikely to learn of it casually. Besides, two of his former high school buddies had been Mammoth County deputy sheriffs for a decade, and the cabin was close to the town in which he had been raised and where he was still well known. As a hometown boy who had never been a hell-raiser in his youth, he could expect to be taken seriously by the authorities and given greater protection if The Other did try to contact him again. In a strange place, however, he would be an outsider and regarded with more suspicion even than Detective Cyrus Lowbock had exhibited. Around Mammoth Lakes, if worse came to worst, he would not feel so isolated and alienated as he was certain to be virtually anywhere else.

“Might be bad weather ahead,” Paige said.

The sky was largely blue to the east, but masses of dark clouds were surging across the peaks and through the passes of the Sierra Nevadas to the west.

“Better stop at a service station in Bishop,” Marty said, “find out if the Highway Patrol’s requiring chains to go up into Mammoth.”

Maybe he should have welcomed a heavy snowfall. It would further isolate the cabin and make them less accessible to whatever enemies were hunting them. But he felt only uneasiness at the prospect of a storm. If luck was not with them, the moment might come when they needed to get out of Mammoth Lakes in a hurry. Roads drifted shut by a blizzard could cause a delay long enough to be the death of them.

Charlotte and Emily wanted to play Look Who’s the Monkey Now, a word game Marty had invented a couple of years ago to entertain them on long car trips. They had already played twice since leaving Mission Viejo. Paige declined to join them, pleading the need to focus her attention on driving, and Marty ended up being the monkey more frequently than usual because he was distracted by worry.

The higher reaches of the Sierras disappeared in mist. The clouds blackened steadily, as if the fires of the hidden sun were burning to extinction and leaving only charry ruin in the heavens.

10

The motel owners referred to their establishment as a lodge. The buildings were embraced by the boughs of hundred-foot Douglas firs, smaller pines, and tamaracks. The design was studiedly rustic.

The rooms couldn’t compare with those at the Ritz-Carlton, of course, and the interior designer’s attempt to call to mind Bavaria with knotty-pine paneling and chunky wood-frame furniture was jejune, but Drew Oslett found the accommodations pleasant nonetheless. A sizable stone fireplace, in which logs and starter material already had been arranged, was especially appealing; within minutes of their arrival, a fire was blazing.

Alec Spicer telephoned the surveillance team stationed in a van across the street from the Stillwater house. In language every bit as cryptic as some of Clocker’s statements, he informed them that Alfie’s handlers were now in town and could be reached at the motel.

“Nothing new,” Spicer said when he hung up the phone. “Jim and Alice Stillwater aren’t home yet. The son and his family haven’t shown up, either, and there’s no sign of our boy, of course.”

Spicer turned on every light in the room and opened the drapes because he was still wearing his sunglasses, though he had taken off his leather flight jacket. Oslett suspected that Alec Spicer didn’t remove his shades to have sex—and perhaps not even when he went to bed at night.

The three of them settled into swiveling barrel chairs around a herringbone-pine dinette table off the compact kitchenette. The nearby mullioned window offered a view of the wooded slope behind the motel.

From a black leather briefcase, Spicer produced several items Oslett and Clocker would need to stage the murders of the Stillwater family in the fashion that the home office desired.

“Two coils of braided wire,” he said, putting a pair of plastic-wrapped spools on the table. “Bind the daughters’ wrists and ankles with it. Not loosely. Tight enough to hurt. That’s how it was in the Maryland case.”

“All right,” Oslett said.

“Don’t cut the wire,” Spicer instructed. “After binding the wrists, run the same strand to the ankles. One spool for each girl. That’s also like Maryland.”

The next article produced from the briefcase was a pistol.

“It’s a SIG nine-millimeter,” Spicer said. “Designed by the Swiss maker but actually manufactured by Sauer in Germany. A very good piece.”

Accepting the SIG, Oslett said, “This is what we do the wife and kids with?”

Spicer nodded. “Then Stillwater himself.”

Oslett familiarized himself with the gun while Spicer withdrew a box of 9mm ammunition from the briefcase. “Is this the same weapon the father used in Maryland?”

“Exactly,” Spicer said. “Records will show it was bought by Martin Stillwater three weeks ago at the same gun shop where he’s purchased other weapons. There’s a clerk who’s been paid to remember selling it to him.”

“Very nice.”

“The box this gun came in and the sales receipt have already been planted in the back of one of the desk drawers in Stillwater’s home office, down in the house in Mission Viejo.”

Smiling, filled with genuine admiration, beginning to believe they were going to salvage the Network, Oslett said, “Superb attention to detail.”

“Always,” Spicer said.

The Machiavellian complexity of the plan delighted Oslett the way Wile E. Coyote’s elaborate schemes in Road Runner cartoons had thrilled him as a child—except that, in this case, the coyotes were the inevitable winners. He glanced at Karl Clocker, expecting him to be likewise enthralled.

The Trekker was cleaning under his fingernails with the blade of a penknife. His expression was somber. From every indication, his mind was at least four parsecs and two dimensions from Mammoth Lakes, California.

From the briefcase, Spicer produced a Ziploc plastic bag that contained a folded sheet of paper. “This is a suicide note. Forged. But so well done, any graphologist would be convinced it was written by Stillwater’s own hand.”

“What’s it say?” Oslett asked.

Quoting from memory, Spicer said, “ ‘There’s a worm. Burrowing inside. All of us contaminated. Enslaved. Parasites within. Can’t live this way. Can’t live.’ ”

“That’s from the Maryland case?” Oslett asked.

“Word for word.”

“The guy was creepy.”

“Won’t argue with you on that.”

“We leave it by the body?”

“Yeah. Handle it only with gloves. And press Stillwater’s fingers all over it after you’ve killed him. The paper’s got a hard, smooth finish. Should take prints well.”

Spicer reached into the briefcase once more and withdrew another Ziploc bag containing a black pen.