Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

searching for it, and sees it on the nearby vanity, where it skitters

between a hairbrush and a comb, onto a jewelry box. There it freezes

and begins to change color to match its background, but when he tries to

snatch it up, it darts away, off the dresser, onto the floor, across the

room, under Emily’s bed, out of sight.

He decides to let it go.

This might be for the best. When Paige and the girls get home, the four

of them will search for it together. When they find it, he will kill it

in front of Charlotte or perhaps require her to kill it herself. That

will be a good lesson. Thereafter, she will bring no more inappropriate

pets into the Stillwater house.

In the parking lot outside of the three-story, Spanish-style business

complex where Dr. Guthridge had his offices, while a gusty wind harried

dead leaves across the pavement, Marty sat in his car and read the

article about himself in People. Two photographs and a page’s worth of

prose were spread over three pages of the magazine. At least for the

few minutes he took to read the piece, all of his other worries were

forgotten.

The black headline made him flinch even though he knew what it would be

MR. MURDER–but he was equally embarrassed by the subhead in smaller

letters, IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA, MYSTERY NOVELIST MARTIN STILLWATER SEES

DARKNESS AND EVIL WHERE OTHERS SEE ONLY SUNSHINE .

He felt it portrayed him as a brooding pessimist who dressed entirely in

black and lurked on beaches and among the palm trees, glowering at

anyone who dared to have fun, tediously expounding on the inherent

vileness of the human species. At best it implied he was a theatrical

phony costuming himself in what he thought was the most commercial image

for a mystery novelist.

Possibly he was over-reacting. Paige would tell him that he was too

sensitive about these things. That was what she always said, and she

usually made him feel better, whether he could bring himself to believe

her or not.

He examined the photographs before reading the piece.

In the first and largest picture, he was standing in the yard behind the

house, against a backdrop of trees and twilight sky. He looked

demented.

The photographer, Ben Walenko, had been given instructions to induce

Marty into a pose deemed fitting for a mystery novelist, so he had come

with props he assumed Marty would brandish with suitable expressions of

malevolent intent, an axe, an enormous knife, an ice pick, and a gun.

When Marty politely declined to use the props and also refused to wear a

trenchcoat with the collar turned up and a fedora pulled low on his

forehead, the photographer agreed it was ludicrous for an adult to play

dress-up, and suggested they avoid the usual cliches in favor of shots

portraying him simply as a writer and an ordinary human being.

Now it was obvious that Walenko had been clever enough to get what he

wanted without props, after lulling his subject into a false sense of

security. The backyard had seemed an innocuous setting.

However, through a combination of the deep shadows of dusk, looming

trees, ominous clouds backlit by the final somber light of day, the

strategic placement of studio lights, and an extreme camera angle, the

photographer succeeded in making Marty appear weird.

Furthermore, of the twenty exposures taken in the backyard, the editors

had chosen the worst, Marty was squinting, his features were distorted,

the photographer’s lights were reflected in his slitted eyes, which

seemed to be glowing like the eyes of a zombie.

The second photograph was taken in his study. He was sitting at his

desk, facing the camera. He was recognizably himself in this one,

though by now he preferred not to be recognizable, for it seemed that

the only way he could maintain a shred of dignity was to have his true

appearance remain a mystery, a combination of shadows and the peculiar

light of the stained-glass lamp, even in a black-and-white shot, made

him resemble a Gypsy fortuneteller who had glimpsed a portent of

disaster in his crystal ball.

He was convinced that a lot of the modern world’s problems could be

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