Maybe he should have welcomed a heavy snowfall. It would further
isolate the cabin and make them less accessible to whatever enemies were
hunting them. But he felt only uneasiness at the prospect of a storm.
If luck was not with them, the moment might come when they needed to get
out of Mammoth Lakes in a hurry. Roads * drifted shut by a blizzard
could cause a delay long enough to be the death of them.
Charlotte and Emily wanted to play Look Who’s the Monkey Now, a word
game Marty had invented a couple of years ago to entertain them on long
car trips. They had already played twice since leaving Mission Viejo.
Paige declined to join them, pleading the need to focus her attention on
driving, and Marty ended up being the monkey more frequently than usual
because he was distracted by worry.
The higher reaches of the Sierras disappeared in mist. The clouds
blackened steadily, as if the fires of the hidden sun were burning to
extinction and leaving only charry ruin in the heavens.
The motel owners referred to their establishment as a lodge. The
buildings were embraced by the boughs of hundred-foot Douglas firs,
smaller pines, and tamaracks. The design was studiedly rustic.
The rooms couldn’t compare with those at the Ritz-Carlton, of course,
and the interior designer’s attempt to call to mind Bavaria with
knotty-pine paneling and chunky wood-frame furniture was jejune, but
Drew Oslett found the accommodations pleasant nonetheless. A sizable
stone fireplace, in which logs and starter material already had been
arranged, was especially appealing, within minutes of their arrival, a
fire was blazing.
Alec Spicer telephoned the surveillance team stationed in a van across
the street from the Stillwater house. In language every bit as cryptic
as some of Clocker’s statements, he informed them that Alfie’s handlers
were now in town and could be reached at the motel.
“Nothing new,” Spicer said when he hung up the phone. “Jim and Alice
Stillwater aren’t home yet. The son and his family haven’t shown up,
either, and there’s no sign of our boy, of course.”
Spicer turned on every light in the room and opened the drapes because
he was still wearing his sunglasses, though he had taken off his leather
flight jacket. Oslett suspected that Alec Spicer didn’t remove his
shades to have sex–and perhaps not even when he went to bed at night.
The three of them settled into swiveling barrel chairs around a
herringbone-pine dinette table off the compact kitchenette. The nearby
mullioned window offered a view of the wooded slope behind the motel.
From a black leather briefcase, Spicer produced several items Oslett and
Clocker would need to stage the murders of the Stillwater family in the
fashion that the home office desired.
“Two coils of braided wire,” he said, putting a pair of plastic wrapped
spools on the table. “Bind the daughters’ wrists and ankles with it.
Not loosely. Tight enough to hurt. That’s how it was in the Maryland
case.”
“All right,” Oslett said.
“Don’t cut the wire,” Spicer instructed. “After binding the wrists, run
the same strand to the ankles. One spool for each girl. That’s also
like Maryland.”
The next article produced from the briefcase was a pistol.
“It’s a SIG nine-millimeter,” Spicer said. “Designed by the Swiss maker
but actually manufactured by Suer in Germany. A very good piece.”
Accepting the SIG, Oslett said, “This is what we do the wife and kids
with?”
Spicer nodded. “Then Stillwater himself.”
Oslett familiarized himself with the gun while Spicer withdrew a box of
9mm ammunition from the briefcase. “Is this the same weapon the father
used in Maryland?”
“Exactly,” Spicer said. “Records will show it was bought by Martin
Stillwater three weeks ago at the same gun shop where he’s purchased
other weapons. There’s a clerk who’s been paid to remem her selling it
to him.”
“Very nice.”
“The box this gun came in and the sales receipt have already been
planted in the back of one of the desk drawers in Stillwater’s home
office, down in the house in Mission Viejo.”
Smiling, filled with genuine admiration, beginning to believe they were
going to salvage the Network, Oslett said, “Superb attention to detail.”