triangulation.”
“That’s meaningless to me, just numbers.”
“This computer can plot it on a map. To within a hundred feet of the signal source.”
“How long will that take?”
“Five minutes tops,” Spicer said.
“Good. You work on it. We’ll check the house.”
Oslett stepped out of the red van with Clocker close behind.
As they crossed the street through the snow, Oslett didn’t care if a dozen nosy neighbors were at their windows. The situation was already blown wide open and couldn’t be salvaged. He, Clocker, and Spicer would clear out, with their dead, in less than ten minutes, and after that no one would ever be able to prove they’d been there.
They walked boldly onto the elder Stillwaters’ porch. Oslett rang the bell. No one answered. He rang it again and tried the door, which proved to be unlocked. From across the street it would appear as if Jim or Alice Stillwater had opened up and invited them inside.
In the foyer, Clocker closed the front door behind them and drew his Colt .357 Magnum from his shoulder holster. They stood for a few seconds, listening to the silent house.
“Be at peace, Alfie,” Oslett said, even though he doubted that their bad boy was still hanging around the premises. When there was no ritual response to that command, he repeated the four words louder than before.
Silence prevailed.
Cautiously they moved deeper into the house—and found the dead couple in the first room they checked. Stillwater’s parents. Each of them somewhat resembled the writer—and Alfie, too, of course.
During a swift search of the house, repeating the command phrase before they went through each new doorway, the only thing of interest they found was in the laundry. The small room reeked of gasoline. What Alfie had been up to was made apparent by the scraps of cloth, funnel, and partly empty box of detergent that littered the counter beside the sink.
“He’s taking no chances this time,” Oslett said. “Going after Stillwater as if it’s war.”
They had to stop the boy—and fast. If he killed the Stillwater family or even just the writer himself, he would make it impossible to implement the murder-suicide scenario which would so neatly tie up so many loose ends. And depending on what insane, fiery spectacle he had in mind, he might draw so much attention to himself that keeping his existence a secret and returning him to the fold would become impossible.
“Damn,” Oslett said, shaking his head.
“Sociopathic clones,” Clocker said, almost as if
Sipping hot chocolate, Paige took her turn at guard duty by the front window.
Marty was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with Charlotte and Emily, playing with a deck of cards they’d gotten from the game chest. It was the least animated game of Go Fish that Paige had ever seen, conducted without comment or argument. Their faces were grim, as if they weren’t playing Go Fish at all but consulting a Tarot deck that had nothing but bad news for them.
Studying the snowswept day outside, Paige suddenly knew that both she and Marty shouldn’t be waiting in the cabin. Turning away from the window, she said, “This is wrong.”
“What?” he asked, looking up from the cards.
“I’m going outside.”
“For what?”
“That rock formation over there, under the trees, halfway out toward the county road. I can lie down in there and still see the driveway.”
Marty dropped his hand of cards. “What sense does that make?”
“Perfect sense. If he comes in the front way, like we both think he will—like he
Getting to his feet, shaking his head, Marty said, “No, it’s too risky.”
“If we both stay inside here, it’ll be like trying to defend a fort.”
“A fort sounds good to me.”
“Don’t you remember all those movies about the cavalry in the Old West, defending the fort? Sooner or later, no matter how strong the place was, the Indians overran it and got inside.”
“That’s just in the movies.”
“Yeah, but maybe he’s seen them too. Come here,” she insisted. When he joined her at the window, she pointed to the rocks, which were barely visible in the sable shadows under the pines. “It’s perfect.”
“I don’t like it.”
“It’ll work.”
“I don’t like it.”
“You know it’s right.”
“Okay, so maybe it’s right, but I still don’t have to like it,” he said sharply.
“I’m going out.”
He searched her eyes, perhaps looking for signs of fear that he could exploit to change her mind. “You think you’re an adventure-story heroine, don’t you?”
“You got my imagination working.”
“I wish I’d kept my mouth shut.” He stared for a long moment at the shadow-blanketed jumble of rocks, then sighed and said, “All right, but I’m the one who’ll go out there. You’ll stay in here with the girls.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t work that way, baby.”
“Don’t pull a feminist number on me.”
“I’m not. It’s just that . . . you’re the one he’s got a psychic bead on.”
“So?”
“He can sense where you are, and depending on how refined that talent is, he might sense you’re in the rocks. You have to stay in the cabin so he’ll feel you in here, come straight for you—and right past me.”
“Maybe he can sense you too.”
“Evidence so far indicates it’s only you.”
He was in an agony of fear for her, his feelings carved in every hollow of his face. “I don’t like this.”
“You already said. I’m going out.”
By the time Oslett and Clocker left the Stillwater house and crossed the street, Spicer was getting behind the wheel of the red surveillance van.
The wind accelerated. Snow was driven out of the sky at a severe angle and harried along the street.
Oslett walked to the driver’s door of the surveillance van.
Spicer had his sunglasses on again even though the last hour or so of daylight was upon them. His eyes, yellow or otherwise, were hidden.
He looked down at Oslett and said, “I’m going to drive this heap away from here, clear across the county line and out of local jurisdiction before I call the home office and get some help with body disposal.”
“What about the delivery man in the florist’s van?”
“Let them haul their own garbage,” Spicer said.
He handed Oslett a standard-size sheet of typing paper on which the computer had printed a map, plotting the point from which Martin Stillwater had telephoned his parents’ house. Only a few roads were depicted on it. Oslett tucked it inside his ski jacket before either the wind could snatch it out of his hand or the paper could become damp from the snow.
