Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz
Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz
Synopsis:
Mystery writer Marty Stillwater’s happy life in southern California is
turned upside-down by a stranger claiming to be he. By the best-selling
author of Midnight.
Berkley Pub Group;
ISBN: 0425144429
Copyright 1996
Winter that year was strange and gray.
The damp wind smelled of Apocalypse, and morning skies had a peculiar
way of slipping cat-quick into midnight.
–The Book of Counted Sorrows
Life is an unrelenting comedy. Therein
lies the tragedy of it.
the Dead Bishop, Martin Stillwater Leaning back in his comfortable
leather office chair, rocking gently, holding a compact cassette
recorder in his right hand and dictating a letter to his editor in New
York, Martin Stillwater suddenly realized he was repeating the same two
words in a dreamy whisper.
“. . . I need . . . I need . . . I need . ..”
Frowning, Marty clicked off the recorder.
His train of thought had clattered down a siding and chugged to a stop.
He could not recall what he had been about to say.
Needed what?
The big house was not merely quiet but eerily still. Paige had taken
the kids to lunch and a Saturday matinee movie.
But this childless silence was more than just a condition. It had
substance. The air felt heavy with it.
He put one hand to the nape of his neck. His palm was cool and moist.
He shivered.
Outside, the autumn day was as hushed as the house, as if all of
southern California had been vacated. At the only window of his
second-floor study, the wide louvers of the plantation shutters were
ajar. Sunlight slanted between angled slats, imprinting the sofa and
carpet with narrow red-gold stripes as lustrous as fox fur, the nearest
luminous ribbon wrapped one corner of the U-shaped desk.
I need . . .
Instinct told him that something important had happened only a moment
ago, just out of his sight, perceived subliminally.
He swiveled his chair and surveyed the room behind him. Other than the
fasciae of coppery sunshine interleaved with louver shadows, the only
light came from a small desk lamp with a stained-glass shade. Even in
that gloom, however, he could see he was alone with his books, research
files, and computer.
Perhaps the silence seemed unnaturally deep only because the house had
been filled with noise and bustle since Wednesday, when the schools had
closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. He missed the kids. He should
have gone to the movie with them.
I need . . .
The words had been spoken with peculiar tension–and long Now an ominous
feeling overcame him, a keen sense of impending danger. It was felt in
his novels, and which he always struggled to describe without resorting
to cliches.
He had not actually experienced anything like it in years, not since
Charlotte had been seriously ill when she was four and the doctor had
prepared them for the possibility of cancer. All day in the hospital,
as his little girl had been wheeled from one lab to another for tests,
all that sleepless night, and during the long days that followed before
the physicians ventured a diagnosis, Marty felt haunted by a malevolent
spirit whose presence thickened the air, making it difficult to breathe,
to move, to hope. As it turned out, his daughter had been threatened
neither by supernatural malevolence nor malignancy. The problem was a
treatable blood disorder. Within three months Charlotte recovered.
But he remembered that oppressive dread too well.
He was in its icy grip again, though for no discernible reason.
Charlotte and Emily were healthy, well-adjusted kids. He and Paige were
happy together–absurdly happy, considering how many thirty-something
couples of their acquaintance were divorced, separated, or cheating on
each other. Financially, they were more secure than they had ever
expected to be.
Nevertheless, Marty knew something was wrong.
He put down the tape recorder, went to the window, and opened the
shutters all the way. A leafless sycamore cast stark, elongated shadows
across the small side yard. Beyond those gnarled branches, the
pale-yellow stucco walls of the house next door appeared to have soaked