He glanced out the window at the house and at the tire tracks in the
snow-covered driveway. “Alfie’s probably not over there any more.”
“Went after Stillwater,” Spicer agreed.
“Where was that call placed?”
“Cellular phone.”
Oslett said, “We can still trace that, can’t we?”
Pointing to three lines of numbers on a display terminal, Spicer said,
“We’ve got a satellite triangulation.”
“That’s meaningless to me, just numbers.”
“This computer can plot it on a map. To within a hundred feet of the
signal source.”
“How long will that take?”
“Five minutes tops,” Spicer said.
“Good. You work on it. We’ll check the house.”
Oslett stepped out of the red van with Clocker close behind.
As they crossed the street through the snow, Oslett didn’t care if a
dozen nosy neighbors were at their windows. The situation was already
blown wide open and couldn’t be salvaged. He, Clocker, and Spicer would
clear out, with their dead, in less than ten minutes, and after that no
one would ever be able to prove they’d been there.
They walked boldly onto the elder Stillwaters’ porch. Oslett rang the
bell. No one answered. He rang it again and tried the door, which
proved to be unlocked. From across the street it would appear as if Jim
or Alice Stillwater had opened up and invited them inside.
In the foyer, Clocker closed the front door behind them and drew his
Colt .357 Magnum from his shoulder holster. They stood for a few
seconds, listening to the silent house.
“Be at peace, Alfie,” Oslett said, even though he doubted that their bad
boy was still hanging around the premises. When there was no ritual
response to that command, he repeated the four words louder than before.
Silence prevailed.
Cautiously they moved deeper into the house–and found the dead couple
in the first room they checked. Stillwater’s parents.
Each of them somewhat resembled the writer–and Alfie, too, of course.
During a swift search of the house, repeating the command phrase before
they went through each new doorway, the only thing of interest they
found was in the laundry. The small room reeked of gasoline. What
Alfie had been up to was made apparent by the scraps of cloth, funnel,
and partly empty box of detergent that littered the counter beside the
sink.
“He’s taking no chances this time,” Oslett said. “Going after
Stillwater as if it’s war.”
They had to stop the boy–and fast. If he killed the Stillwater family
or even just the writer himself, he would make it impossible to
implement the murder-suicide scenario which would so neatly tie up so
many loose ends. And depending on what insane, fiery spectacle he had
in mind, he might draw so much attention to himself that keeping his
existence a secret and returning him to the fold would become
impossible.
“Damn,” Oslett said, shaking his head.
“Sociopathic clones,” Clocker said, almost as if trying to be
irritating, “are always big trouble.”
Sipping hot chocolate, Paige took her turn at guard duty by the front
window.
Marty was sitting cross-legged on the living room floor with Charlotte
and Emily, playing with a deck of cards they’d gotten from the game
chest. It was the least animated game of Go Fish that Paige had ever
seen, conducted without comment or argument. Their faces were grim, as
if they weren’t playing Go Fish at all but consulting a Tarot deck that
had nothing but bad news for them.
Studying the snowswept day outside, Paige suddenly knew that both she
and Marty shouldn’t be waiting in the cabin. Turning away from the
window, she said, “This is wrong.”
“What?” he asked, looking up from the cards.
“I’m going outside.”
“For what?”
“That rock formation over there, under the trees, halfway out toward the
county road. I can lie down in there and still see the driveway.”
Marty dropped his hand of cards. “What sense does that make?”
“Perfect sense. If he comes in the front way, like we both think he
will–like he has to–he’ll go right past me, straight to the cabin.
I’ll be behind him. I can pump a couple of rounds into the back of the
bastard’s head before he knows what’s happening.”