Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

Dana Point for the Thanksgiving-weekend brunch. It was a place they

went only on special occasions.

As always, Emily and Charlotte were enchanted by the lushly landscaped

grounds, beautiful public rooms, and impeccable staff in crisp uniforms.

In their best dresses, with ribbons in their hair, the girls had great

fun playing at being cultured young ladies–almost as much fun as

raiding the dessert buffet twice each.

In the afternoon, because it was unseasonably warm, they changed clothes

and visited Irvine Park. They walked the picturesque trails, fed the

ducks in the pond, and toured the small zoo.

Charlotte loved the zoo because the animals were, like her menagerie at

home, kept in enclosures where they were safe from harm.

There were no exotic specimens–all the animals were indigenous to the

region–but in her typical exuberance, Charlotte found each to be the

most interesting and cutest creature she had ever seen.

Emily got into a staring contest with a wolf. Large, amber-eyed, with a

lustrous silver-gray coat, the predator met and intensely held the

girl’s gaze from his side of a chain-link fence.

“If you look away first,” Emily calmly and somberly informed them, “then

a wolf will just eat you all up.”

The confrontation went on so long that Paige became uneasy in spite of

the sturdy fence. Then the wolf lowered his head, sniffed the ground,

yawned elaborately to show he had not been intimidated but had merely

lost interest, and sauntered away.

“If he couldn’t get the three little pigs with all his huffing and

puffing,” Emily said, “then I knew he couldn’t get me, ’cause I’m

smarter than pigs.”

She was referring to the Disney cartoon, the only version of the fairy

tale with which she was familiar.

Paige resolved never to let her read the Brothers Grimm version, which

was about seven little goats instead of three pigs. The wolf swallowed

six of them whole. They were saved from digestion at the last minute

when their mother cut open the wolf’s belly to pull them from his

steaming innards.

Paige glanced back at the wolf as they walked away. It was watching

Emily again.

Sunday is a full day for the killer.

In Wichita, just before dawn, he gets off the turnpike. In another

residential neighborhood rather like the one in Topeka, he swaps the

license plates on the Honda for those on a Chevy, making his stolen

vehicle more difficult to locate.

Shortly after nine Sunday morning he arrives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,

where he stops long enough to fill the tank with gasoline.

A shopping mall is across the road from the service station. In one

corner of the huge deserted parking lot stands an unmanned Goodwill

Industries collection box, as large as a garden shed.

After tanking up, he leaves his suitcases and their contents with

Goodwill.

He keeps only the clothes he’s wearing and the pistol.

During the night, on the highway, he had time to think about his

peculiar existence and to wonder if he might be carrying a compact

transmitter that would help his superiors locate him. Perhaps they

anticipated that one day he would go renegade on them.

He knows that a moderately powerful transmitter, operating off a tiny

battery, can be hidden in an extremely small space. Such as the walls

of a suitcase.

As he turns directly west on Interstate 40, a coal-dark sludge of clouds

seeps across the sky. Forty minutes later, when the rain comes, it is

molten silver, and it instantly washes all of the color out of the vast

empty land that flanks the highway. The world is twenty, forty, a

hundred shades of gray, without even lightning to relieve the oppressive

dreariness.

The monochromatic landscape provides no distraction, so he has time to

worry further about the faceless hunters who might be close behind him.

Is it paranoid to wonder if a transmitter could be woven into his

clothing? He doubts it could be concealed in the material of his pants,

shirt, sweater, underwear, or socks without being detectable by its very

weight or upon casual inspection.

Which leaves his shoes and leather jacket.

He rules out the pistol. They wouldn’t build anything into the P7 that

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