Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

study, and he was thrilled to speak with her. She sounded intelligent,

self-assured, gentle. Her voice had a slightly throaty timbre that he

found sexy.

It will be a wonderful bonus if she is sexy. Tonight, they will share a

bed. He will take her more than once. Recalling the face in the

photograph and the husky voice on the phone, he is confident that she

will satisfy his needs as they have never been satisfied before, that

she will not leave him unfulfilled and frustrated as have so many other

women.

He hopes she matches or exceeds his expectations. He hopes there will

be no reason to hurt her.

In the master bathroom, he locates a pair of tweezers in the drawer

where Paige keeps her makeup, cuticle scissors, nail files, emery

boards, and other grooming aids.

At the sink, he holds his hand over the basin. Although he has already

stopped bleeding, the flow starts again at each point from which he

works loose a piece of glass. He turns on the hot water so the dripping

blood will be sluiced down the drain.

Maybe tonight, after sex, he will talk with Paige about his writer’s

block. If he has been blocked before, she might remember what steps he

took on other occasions to break the creative impasse. Indeed, he is

sure she will know the solution.

Pleasantly surprised and with a sense of relief, he realizes that he no

longer has to deal with his problems alone. As a married man, he has a

devoted partner with whom to share the many troubles of the day.

Raising his head, looking at his reflection in the mirror behind the

sink, he grins and says, “I have a wife now.”

He notices a spot of blood on his right cheek, another on the side of

his nose.

Laughing softly, he says, “You’re such a slob, Marty. You’ve got to

clean up your act. You have a wife now. Wives like their husbands to

be neat.”

He returns his attention to his hand and, with the tweezers, picks at

the last of the prickling glass.

In an increasingly good mood, he laughs again and says, “Gonna have to

go out and buy a new computer monitor first thing tomorrow.”

He shakes his head, amazed by his own childish behavior.

“You’re something else, Marty,” he says. “But I guess writers are

supposed to be temperamental, huh?”

After easing the final splinter of glass from the web between two

fingers, he puts down the tweezers and holds his wounded hand under the

hot water.

“Can’t carry on like this any more. Not any more. You’ll scare the

be-jesus out of little Emily and Charlotte.”

He looks in the mirror again, shakes his head, grinning. “You nut,” he

says to himself, as if speaking with affection to a friend whose foibles

he finds charming. “What a nut.”

Life is good.

..

, The leaden sky settled lower under its own weight. According to a

radio report, rain would fall by dusk, ensuring rush-hour commuter

jam-ups that would make Hell preferable to the San Diego Freeway.

Marty should have gone directly home from Guthridge’s office.

He was close to finishing his current novel, and in the final throes of

a story, he usually spent as much time as possible at work because

distractions were ruinous to the narrative momentum.

Besides, he was uncharacteristically apprehensive about driving. When

he thought back, he could account for the time minute by minute since

he’d left the doctor and was sure he hadn’t called Paige while in a

fugue behind the wheel of the Ford. Of course, a fugue victim had no

memory of being afflicted, so even a meticulous reconstruction of the

past hour might not reveal the truth.

Researching On hundreds of miles and interacted with dozens of people

while in a disassociative condition yet later could recall nothing

they’d done.

The danger wasn’t as grave as drunken driving . . . though operating a

ton and a half of steel at high speed in an altered state of

consciousness wasn’t smart.

Nevertheless, instead of going home, he went to the Mission Viejo Mall.

Much of the workday was already shot. And he was too restless to read

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