Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

implication was made to the effect that he might even be dangerous,

although it was so smooth and so subtly inserted that it was more a

matter of the reporter’s tone of voice and expressions than any words in

the script.

Rattled, he switched off the television.

For a while he stared at the blank screen. The gray of the dead monitor

matched his mood.

After everyone was showered and dressed, the girls got in the back seat

of the BMW and dutifully put on their seatbelts while their parents

stowed the luggage in the trunk.

When Marty slammed the trunk lid and locked it, Paige spoke to him

quietly, so Charlotte and Emily couldn’t hear. “You really think we

have to go this far, do these things, it’s really that bad?”

“I don’t know. Like I told you, I’ve been brooding about this ever

since I woke up, since three o’clock this morning, and I still don’t

know if I’m over-reacting.”

“These are serious steps to take, even risky.”

“It’s just that . . . as strange as this already is, with The Other and

everything he said to me, whatever underlies it all is stranger still.

More dangerous than one lunatic with a gun. Deadlier and a lot bigger

than that. Something so big it’ll crush us if we try to stand up to it.

That’s how I felt in the middle of the night, afraid, more scared even

than when he had the kids in his car. And after what I saw on TV this

morning, I’m more–not less–inclined to go with my gut feelings He

realized that his expression of dread was extreme, with an unmistakable

flavor of paranoia. But he was no alarmist, and he was confident that

his instincts could be trusted. Events had dissolved all of his doubts

about his mental well-being.

He wished he could identify an enemy other than the improbable

dead-ringer, for he knew intuitively that there was another enemy, and

it would be comforting to have it defined. The Mafia, Ku Klux Klan,

neo-Nazis, consortiums of evil bankers, the board of directors of some

ferociously greedy international conglomerate, right-wing generals

intent on establishing a military dictatorship, a cabal of in sane

Mideastern zealots, mad scientists intent on blowing the world to

smithereens for the sheer hell of it, or Satan himself in all his horned

splendor–any of the standard villains of television dramas and

countless novels, regardless of how unlikely and cliched, would be

preferable to an adversary without face or form or name.

Chewing her lower lip, lost in thought, Paige let her gaze travel across

the breeze-ruffled trees, other parked cars, and the front of the motel,

before tilting her head back and looking up at three shrieking sea gulls

that wheeled across the mostly blue and uncaring azure sky.

“You sense it too,” he said.

“Yes.”

“Oppressive. We’re not being watched, but the feeling is almost the

same.”

‘ More than that,” she said. “Different. The world has changed or the

way I look at it.”

“Me too.”

“Something’s been . . . lost.”

And we’ll never find it again, he thought.

The Ritz-Carlton was a remarkable hotel, exquisitely tasteful, with

generous applications of marble, limestone, granite, quality art, and

antiques throughout its public areas. The enormous flower arrangements,

on display wherever one turned, were the most artfully fashioned that

Oslett had ever seen. Attired in subdued uniforms, courteous,

omnipresent, the staff seemed to outnumber the guests.

All in all, it reminded Oslett of home, the Connecticut estate on which

he had been raised, although the family mansion was larger than the

Ritz-Carlton, was furnished with antiques only of museum quality, had a

staff-to-family ratio of six to one, and featured a landing pad large

enough to accommodate the military helicopters in which the President of

the United States and his retinue sometimes traveled.

The two-bedroom suite with spacious living room, in which Drew Oslett

and Clocker were quartered, offered every amenity from a fully stocked

bar to marble shower stalls so spacious that it would have been possible

for a visiting ballet dancer to practice entrechats during his morning

ablutions. The towels were not by Pratesi, as were those he had used

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195

Leave a Reply 0

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *