Mr. Murder. By: Dean R. Koontz

Worried that the flashlight beam, seen from outside, would look

suspicious to anyone pulling into the rest area, Drew Oslett quickly

examined the two cadavers in the cramped dining nook. Because the

spilled blood was thoroughly dry and caked hard, he knew the man and

woman had been dead more than just a few hours. However, although rigor

mortis was still present in both bodies, they were no longer entirely

stiff, the rigor evidently had peaked and had begun to fade, as it

usually did between eighteen and thirty-six hours after death.

The bodies had not begun to decompose noticeably as yet. The only bad

smell came from their open mouths–the sour gases produced by the

rotting food in their stomachs.

“Best guesstimate–they’ve been dead since sometime yesterday

afternoon,” he told Clocker.

The Road King had been sitting in the rest area for more than

twenty-four hours, so at least one Oklahoma Highway Patrol officer must

have seen it on two separate shifts. State law surely forbade using

rest areas as campsites. No electrical connections, water supplies, or

sewage-tank pump-outs were provided, which created a potential for

health problems. Sometimes cops might be lenient with retirees afraid

of driving in weather as inclement as the storm that had assaulted

Oklahoma yesterday, the American Association of Retired People

bumpersticker on the back of the motorhome might have gained these

people some dispensation. But not even a sympathetic cop would let them

park two nights. At any moment, a patrol car might pull into the rest

area and a knock might come at the door.

Averse to complicating their already serious problems by killing a

highway patrolman, Oslett turned away from the dead couple and hastily

proceeded with the search of the motorhome. He was no longer cautious

out of fear that Alfie, dysfunctional and disobedient, would put a

bullet in his head. Alfie was long gone from here.

He found the discarded shoes on the kitchen counter. With a large

serrated knife, Alfie had sawed at one of the heels until he had exposed

the electronic circuitry and the attendant chain of tiny batteries.

Staring at the Rockports and the pile of rubber shavings, Oslett was

chilled by a premonition of disaster. “He never knew about the shoes.

Why would he get it in his head to cut them open?”

“Well, he knows what he knows,” Clocker said.

Oslett interpreted Clocker’s statement to mean that part of Alfie’s

training included state-of-the-art electronic surveillance equipment and

techniques. Consequently, though he was not told that he was “tagged,”

he knew that a microminiature transponder could be made small enough to

fit in the heel of a shoe and, upon receipt of a remote microwave

activating signal, could draw sufficient power from a series of watch

batteries to transmit a trackable signal for at least seven two edge of

surveillance to his own situation and reach the logical conclusion that

his controllers had made prudent provisions for locating and following

him in the event he went renegade, even if they had been thoroughly

convinced rebellion was not possible.

Oslett dreaded reporting the bad news to the home office in New York.

The organization didn’t kill the bearer of bad tidings, especially not

if his surname happened to be Oslett. However, as Alfie’s primary

handler, he knew that some of the blame would stick to him even though

the operative’s rebellion was not his fault to any degree whatsoever.

The error must be in Alfie’s fundamental conditioning, damn it, not in

his handling.

Leaving Clocker in the kitchen to keep a lookout for unwanted visitors,

Oslett quickly inspected the rest of the motorhome.

He found nothing else of interest except a pile of discarded clothes on

the floor of the main bedroom at the back of the vehicle.

In the beam of the flashlight, he needed to disturb the garments only

slightly with the toe of his shoe to see that they were what Alfie had

been wearing when he had boarded the plane for Kansas City on Saturday

morning.

Oslett returned to the kitchen, where Clocker waited in the dark.

He turned the flashlight on the dead pensioners one last time.

“What a mess. Damn it, this didn’t have to happen.”

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