Mr. Murder

Spicer pulled past the van and parked the Explorer in front of it.

“Is this really smart?” Oslett wondered.

Using the cellular phone, Spicer called the surveillance team one more time. They didn’t answer.

“We don’t have a choice,” Spicer said as he opened his door and got out into the snow.

The three of them walked to the back of the red van.

On the blacktop between that vehicle and the delivery van, a large floral arrangement lay in ruins. The ceramic container was shattered. The stems of the flowers and ferns were still embedded in the spongy green material that florists used to fix arrangements, so the mild wind had not blown any of them away, though they looked as if they had been stepped on more than once. The colors of some flowers were masked by snow, which meant they hadn’t been disturbed in the past thirty to forty-five minutes.

The ruined blossoms and frost-paled ferns had a curious beauty. Snap a photo, hang it in an art gallery, title it something like “Romance” or “Loss,” and people would probably stand before it for long minutes, musing.

As Spicer rapped on the back door of the surveillance vehicle, Clocker said, “I’ll check the delivery van.”

No one answered the knock, so Spicer boldly opened the door and climbed inside.

As he followed, Oslett heard Spicer say softly, “Oh, shit.”

The interior of the van was dark. Little light penetrated the two-way mirrors that served as windows. Only the scopes and screens of the electronic equipment illuminated the space.

Oslett took off his sunglasses, saw the dead men, and pulled the rear door shut.

Spicer had taken off his sunglasses too. His eyes were an odd, baleful yellow. Or maybe that was just a color they reflected from the scopes and gauges.

“Alfie must’ve been coming to the Stillwater place, spotted the van, recognized it for what it was,” Spicer said. “Before he went over there, he stopped here, took care of business, so he wouldn’t be interrupted across the street.”

The electronic gear operated off banks of solar batteries wired to flat solar cells on the roof. When surveillance was conducted at night, the batteries could be charged in the conventional fashion, if necessary, by starting the van’s engine for short periods. Even on overcast days, however, the cells collected enough sunlight to keep the system operative.

Without the engine running, the interior temperature of the van was nonetheless comfortable, if slightly cool. The vehicle was unusually well insulated, and the solar cells also operated a small heater.

Stepping over the corpse on the floor, looking through one of the view windows, Oslett said, “If Alfie was drawn to that house, it had to be because Martin Stillwater was already there.”

“I guess.”

“Yet this team never saw him go in or out.”

“Evidently not,” Spicer agreed.

“Wouldn’t they have let us know if they’d seen Stillwater, his wife, or kids?”

“Absolutely.”

“So . . . is he over there now? Maybe they’re all over there, the whole family and Alfie.”

Peering through the other window, Spicer added, “And maybe not. Somebody left there not long ago. See the tracks in the driveway?”

A vehicle with wide tires had backed out of the garage that was attached to the white clapboard house. It had reversed to the left as it entered the street, then had shifted into forward and had driven away to the right. The snow had barely begun to fill in the multiple arcs of the tracks.

Clocker opened the rear door, startling them. He climbed inside and pulled the door shut after him, with no comment about the bloody ice axe on the floor or the two murdered operatives. “Looks like Alfie must’ve stolen the florist’s van for cover. The deliveryman’s in the back with the flowers, dead as the moon.”

In spite of the extended wheelbase that added extra room to the interior of the van, the space unoccupied by surveillance equipment and corpses was not large enough to accommodate the three of them comfortably. Oslett felt claustrophobic.

Spicer pulled the seated dead man out of the swivel chair in which he’d died. The corpse tumbled to the floor. Spicer checked the chair for blood before sitting down and turning to the array of monitors and switches, with which he appeared to be familiar.

Uncomfortably aware of Clocker looming over him, Oslett said, “Is it possible there was a phone call to the house that these guys never got a chance to report to us before Alfie wasted them?”

Spicer said, “That’s what I’m going to find out.”

As Spicer’s fingers flew over the programming keyboard, brightly colored graphs and other displays popped onto the half dozen video monitors.

Contriving, in those tight quarters, to ram his elbow into Clocker’s gut, Oslett turned again to the first of the side-by-side view windows. He watched the house across the street.

Clocker stooped to look out the other window. Oslett figured the Trekker was pretending to be at a starship portal, squinting through foot-thick glass at an alien world.

A couple of cars passed. A pickup truck. A black dog ran along the sidewalk; with snow on his paws, he looked as if he was wearing four white socks. The Stillwater house stood silent, serene.

“Got it,” Spicer said, taking off a set of headphones he had put on when Oslett had been staring out the window.

What he had, as it turned out, was a telephone call monitored, traced, and recorded by the automated equipment perhaps as long as thirty minutes after Alfie killed the surveillance team. In fact, Alfie had been in the Stillwater house when the call came through and had answered it after seven rings. Spicer played it back on a speaker instead of through headphones, so the three of them could listen at the same time.

“The first voice you hear is the caller,” Spicer said, “because the man who picks up the receiver in the Stillwater house doesn’t initially say anything.”

“Hello? Mom? Dad?”

“How did you win them over?”

Stopping the tape, Spicer said, “That second voice is the receiving phone—and it’s Alfie.”

“They both sound like Alfie.”

“The other one’s Stillwater. Alfie also speaks next.”

“Why would they love you more than me?”

“Don’t touch them, you son of a bitch. Don’t you lay one finger on them.”

“They betrayed me.”

“I want to talk to my mother and father.”

“MY mother and father.”

“Put them on the phone.”

“So you can tell them more lies?”

They listened to the entire conversation. It was over-the -top creepy because it sounded as if one man was talking to himself, a radically split personality. Worse, their bad boy was obviously not just a renegade but flat-out psychotic.

When the tape ended, Oslett said, “So Stillwater never stopped at his parents’ house.”

“Evidently not.”

“Then how did Alfie find it? And why did he go there? Why was he interested in Stillwater’s parents, not just Stillwater himself?”

Spicer shrugged. “Maybe you’ll get a chance to ask the boy if you manage to recover him.”

Oslett didn’t like having so many unanswered questions. It made him feel as if he wasn’t in control.

He glanced out the window at the house and at the tire tracks in the snow-covered driveway. “Alfie’s probably not over there any more.”

“Went after Stillwater,” Spicer agreed.

“Where was that call placed?”

“Cellular phone.”

Oslett said, “We can still trace that, can’t we?”

Pointing to three lines of numbers on a display terminal, Spicer said, “We’ve got a satellite