pair of deep 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 colon-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.
( , 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.”