“Haunts his dreams.”
“This psychotic urge to symbolically rape–”
“–and literally kill–”
“–his daughters–”
“–kill his wife, too, the woman who–”
“–nurtured them,” Oslett finished.
They were smiling at each other again, as they had smiled when
discussing that lovely cafe off the Champs Elysees.
Waxhill said, “No one will ever be able to figure out what killing his
family had to do with his crazy report of a look-alike intruder, but
they’ll figure the look-alike was somehow part of his delusion, too.”
“I just realized, samples of Alfie’s blood taken from the house in
Mission Viejo are going to appear to be Stillwater’s blood.”
“Yes. Was he periodically exsanguinating himself, saving his * 303 own
blood for the hoax? And why? A great many theories are sure to be put
forth, and in the end it’ll be a mystery of less interest than what he
did to his family. No one will ever untangle the truth from all that.”
Oslett was beginning to hope they might recover Alfie, salvage the
Network, and keep their reputations intact after all.
Turning to Clocker, Waxhill said, “What about you, Karl? Do you have a
problem with any of this?”
Though he was sitting at the table, Clocker appeared distant in spirit.
He pulled his attention back to them as if his thoughts had been with
the Enterprise crew on a hostile planet in the Crab nebula.
“There are five billion people on earth,” he said, “so we think it’s
crowded, but for every one of us, the universe contains countless
thousands of stars, an infinity of stars for each of us.”
Waxhill stared at Clocker, waiting for elucidation. When he realized
that Clocker had nothing more to say, he turned to Oslett.
“I believe what Karl means,” Oslett said, “is that . . . Well, in the
vast scheme of things, what does it matter if a few people die a little
sooner than they would have in the natural course of events?”
The sun is high over the distant mountains, where the loftiest peaks are
capped with snow. It seems odd to have a view of winter from this
springlike December morning full of palm trees and flowers.
He drives south and east into Mission Viejo. He is vengeance on wheels.
Justice on wheels. Rolling, rolling.
He considers locating a gun shop and buying a shotgun or hunting rifle,
some weapon for which there is no waiting period prior to the right of
purchase. His adversary is armed, but he is not.
However, he doesn’t want to delay his pursuit of the kidnapper who has
stolen his family. If the enemy is kept off balance and on the move, he
is more likely to make mistakes. Unrelenting pressure is a better
weapon than any gun.
Besides, he is vengeance, justice, and virtue. He is the hero of this
movie, and heroes do not die. They can be shot, clubbed, run off the
road in high-speed car chases, slashed with a knife, pushed from a
cliff, locked in a dungeon filled with poisonous snakes, and endure an
endlessly imaginative series of abuses without perishing. With Harrison
Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes,
and so many other heroes, he shares the invincibility of virtue and high
noble purpose.
He realizes why his initial assault on the false father, in his house
yesterday, was doomed to fail in spite of his being a hero. He’d been
drawn westward by the powerful attraction between him and his double, to
the same degree that he had been aware of something pulling him, the
double had been aware of something approaching all day Sunday and
Monday. By the time they encountered each other – in the upstairs
study, the false father had been alerted and had prepared for battle.
Now he understands that he can initiate and terminate the connection
between them at will. Like the electrical current in any house hold
circuit, it can be controlled by an ON-OFF switch. Instead of leaving
the switch in the ON position all the time, he can open the pathway for
brief moments, just long enough to feel the pull of the false father and
take a fix on him.