“If it happens here,” Spicer said, “probably the Mammoth County Sheriff’s Department.”
“Do we have a friend there?”
“Not now, but I’m sure we could have.”
“Coroner?”
“Out here in the boondocks—probably just a local mortician. ”
“No special forensic skills?”
Spicer said, “He’ll know a bullet hole from an asshole, but that’s about it.”
“So if we terminated the wife and Stillwater first, nobody’s going to be sophisticated enough to detect the order of homicides?”
“Big-city forensic lab would have a hard time doing that if the difference was, say, less than an hour.”
Oslett said, “What I’m thinking is . . . if we try to deal with the kids first, we’ll have a problem with Stillwater and his wife.”
“How so?”
“Either Clocker or I can cover the parents while the other one takes the kids into a different room. But stripping the girls, wiring their hands and ankles—it’ll take ten, fifteen minutes to do right, like in Maryland. Even with one of us covering Stillwater and his wife with a gun, they aren’t going to sit still for that. They’ll both rush me or Clocker, whoever’s guarding them, and together they might get the upper hand.”
“I doubt it,” Spicer said.
“How can you be sure?”
“People are gutless these days.”
“Stillwater fought off Alfie.”
“True,” Spicer admitted.
“When she was sixteen, the wife found her father and mother dead. The old man killed the mother, then himself—”
Spicer smiled. “Nice tie-in with our scenario.”
Oslett hadn’t thought about that. “Good point. Might also explain why Stillwater couldn’t write the novel based on the case in Maryland. Anyway, three months later she petitioned the court to free her from her guardian and declare her a legal adult.”
“Tough bitch.”
“The court agreed. It granted her petition.”
“So blow away the parents first,” Spicer advised, shifting in the armchair as if his butt had begun to go numb.
“That’s what we’ll do,” Oslett agreed.
Spicer said, “This is fucking crazy.”
For a moment Oslett thought Spicer was commenting on their plans for the Stillwaters. But he was referring to the television program, to which his attention drifted again.
On the talk show, the host with big hair had ushered off the cross-dressers and introduced a new group of guests. There were four angry-looking women seated on the stage. All of them were wearing strange hats.
As Oslett left the room, he saw Clocker out of the corner of his eye. The Trekker was still at the table by the window, riveted by the book, but Oslett refused to let the big man spoil his mood.
In the bedroom he sat on the bed again, amidst his toys, took off his sunglasses, and happily enacted and re-enacted the homicides in his mind, planning for every contingency.
Outside, the wind picked up. It sounded like wolves.
11
He stops at a service station to ask directions to the address he remembers from the Rolodex card. The young attendant is able to help him.
By 2:10 he enters the neighborhood in which he was evidently raised. The lots are large with numerous winter-bare birches and a wide variety of evergreens.
His mom and dad’s house is in the middle of the block. It’s a modest, two-story, white clapboard structure with forest-green shutters. The deep front porch has heavy white balusters, a green handrail, and decoratively scalloped fasciae along the eaves.
The place looks warm and welcoming. It is like a house in an old movie. Jimmy Stewart might live here. You know at a glance that a loving family resides within, decent people with much to share, much to give.
He cannot remember anything in the block, least of all the house in which he apparently spent his childhood and adolescence. It might as well be the residence of utter strangers in a town which he has never seen until this very day.
He is infuriated by the extent to which he has been brainwashed and relieved of precious memories. The lost years haunt him. The total separation from those he loves is so cruel and devastating that he finds himself on the verge of tears.
However, he suppresses his anger and grief. He cannot afford to be emotional while his situation remains precarious.
The only thing he
does
recognize in the neighborhood is a van parked across the street from his parents’ house. He has never seen this particular van, but he knows the type. The sight of it alarms him.
It is a recreational vehicle. Candy-apple red. An extended wheel-base provides a roomier interior. Oval camper dome on the roof. Large mud flaps with chrome letters: FUN TRUCK. The rear bumper is papered with overlapping rectangular, round, and triangular stickers memorializing visits to Yosemite National Park, Yellowstone, the annual Calgary Rodeo, Las Vegas, Boulder Dam, and other tourist attractions. Decorative, parallel green and black stripes undulate along the side, interrupted by a pair of mirrored view windows.
Perhaps the van is only what it appears to be, but at first sight he’s convinced it’s a surveillance post. For one thing, it seems too
aggressively
recreational, flamboyant. With his training in surveillance techniques, he knows that sometimes such vans seek to declare their harmlessness by calling attention to themselves, because potential subjects of surveillance expect a stakeout vehicle to be discreet and would never imagine they were being watched from, say, a circus wagon. Then there’s the matter of the mirrored windows on the side, which allow the people within to see without being seen, providing privacy that any vacationer might prefer but that is also ideal for undercover operatives.
He does not slow as he approaches his parents’ house, and he strives to show no interest in either the residence or the candy-apple red van. Scratching his forehead with his right hand, he also manages to cover his face as he passes those reflective view windows.
The occupants of the van, if any, must be employed by the unknown people who manipulated him so ruthlessly until Kansas City. They are a link to his mysterious superiors. He is as interested in them as in re-establishing contact with his beloved mother and father.
Two blocks later, he turns right at the corner and heads back toward a shopping area near the center of town, where earlier he passed a sporting-goods store. Lacking a firearm and, in any event, unable to buy one with a silencer, he needs to obtain a couple of simple weapons.
At 2:20, the motel-room telephone rang.
Oslett put on his sunglasses, hopped off the bed, and went to the living-room doorway.
Spicer answered the phone, listened, mumbled a word that might have been “good,” and hung up. Turning to Oslett, he said, “Jim and Alice Stillwater just came home from lunch.”
“Let’s hope Marty gives them a ring now.”
“He will,” Spicer said confidently.
Looking up from his book at last, Clocker said, “Speaking of lunch, we’re overdue.”
“The refrigerator in the kitchenette is loaded with stuff from the deli,” Spicer said. “Cold cuts, potato salad, macaroni salad, cheesecake. We won’t starve.”
“Nothing for me,” Oslett said. He was too excited to eat.
By the time he returns to the neighborhood where his parents live, it is 2:45, half an hour after he left. He is acutely aware of the minutes ticking away. The false father, Paige, and the kids could arrive at any time. Even if they made another bathroom stop after Red Mountain or haven’t maintained quite as high a speed as when he’d been following them, they are virtually certain to arrive in no more than fifteen or twenty minutes.
He desperately wants to see his parents before the treacherous imposter gets to them. He needs to prepare them for what has happened and enlist their aid in his battle to reclaim his wife and daughters. He is uneasy about the pretender getting to them first. If that creature could insinuate itself so thoroughly with Paige, Charlotte, and Emily, perhaps there is a risk, however small, that it will win over Mom and Dad as well.
When he turns the corner onto the block where he spent his unremembered childhood, he is no longer driving the Camry that he stole in Laguna Hills at dawn. He is in a florist’s delivery van, a lucky acquisition he made by force after leaving the sporting-goods store.
He has accomplished a great deal in half an hour. Nevertheless, time is running out.
Though the day is increasingly dreary, he drives with the sun visor down. He is wearing a baseball cap pulled low on his forehead and a fleece-lined varsity jacket that belong to the young man who actually delivers for Murchison’s Flowers. Masked by the sun visor and the cap, he will be unidentifiable to anyone observing him behind the wheel.
He pulls to the curb and parks directly behind the recreational van in which he suspects a stakeout team is ensconced. He gets out of his own vehicle and walks quickly to the back of it, giving them no time to observe him.
It has a single rear door. The hinges need lubrication; they squeak.
The dead deliveryman is lying on his back on the floor of the cargo hold. His hands are folded on his chest, and he is surrounded by flowers, as if he is already embalmed and available for viewing by mourners.
From a plastic bag beside the cadaver, he removes the ice axe that he purchased from an extensive display of climbing gear in the sporting-goods store. The one-piece steel tool has a rubber grip around the handle. One head on the business end is the shape and the size of a tack hammer, while the other head is wickedly pointed. He tucks the handle under the waistband of his jeans.
From the same plastic bag he removes an aerosol can of deicing chemical. If sprayed on existing ice, it will melt through in swift order. If applied to car glass, locks, and windshield wipers prior to a freeze, it is guaranteed to prevent an ice build-up. At least that is what the label promises. He doesn’t really care whether it works for its intended purpose or not.
He removes the cap from this pressurized can, exposing the nozzle. There are two settings: SPRAY and STREAM. He sets it on STREAM, then slips it into one pocket of his varsity jacket.
Between the legs of the corpse is a huge arrangement of roses, carnations, delicate baby’s breath, and ferns in a celadon container. He slides it out of the van and, holding it in both hands, pushes the door shut with one shoulder.
Carrying the arrangement in an entirely natural fashion that nonetheless shields his face from the observers in the red van, he walks to the door of the house in front of which both vehicles are parked. The flowers are not meant for anyone at this address. He hopes no one is home. If someone answers the door, he will pretend to discover that he has the wrong house, so he can return to the street with the arrangement still held in front of him.
He is in luck. No one responds to the doorbell. He rings it several times and, through body language, exhibits impatience.
He turns away from the door. He follows the front walk to the street.
Looking through the spray of flowers and greenery that he holds in front of himself, he sees this side of the red van also sports two mirrored windows on the rear compartment. Considering how deserted and quiet the street is, he knows they are watching him, for want of anything better to do.
That’s okay. He’s just a florist’s frustrated deliveryman. They will see no reason to fear him. Better that they watch him, dismiss him, and turn their attention again to the white clapboard house.
He angles past the side of the surveillance vehicle. However, instead of following the cracked and hoved sidewalk to the back of the florist’s van, he steps off the curb in front of it and behind the red “fun truck.”
There is a smaller mirrored porthole in the back door of the surveillance vehicle, and in case they are still watching, he fakes an accident. He stumbles, lets the arrangement slip out of his hands, and sputters in anger as it smashes to ruin on the blacktop. “Oh, shit! Son of a bitch. Nice, real nice. Damn it, damn it, damn it.”
Even as the expletives are flying from him, he’s dropping below the rear porthole and pulling the can of deicing chemical out of his jacket pocket. With his left hand, he grasps the door handle.
If the door is locked, he will have revealed his intentions by the attempt to open it. Failing, he will be in deep trouble because they will probably have guns.
They have no reason to expect an attack, however, and he assumes the door will be unlocked. He assumes correctly. The lever handle moves smoothly.
He does not check to see if anyone has come out on the street and is watching him. Looking over his shoulder would only make him appear more suspicious.
He jerks the door open. Clambering up into the comparatively dark interior of the van, before he is sure anyone’s inside, he jams his index finger down on the nozzle of the aerosol can, sweeping it back and forth.
A lot of electronic equipment fills the vehicle. Dimly lit control boards. Two swivel chairs bolted to the floor. Two men on the surveillance team.
The nearest man appears to have gotten out of his chair and turned to the rear door a split second ago, intending to look through the porthole. He is startled as it flies open.
The thick stream of deicing chemical splashes across his face, blinding him. He inhales it, burning his throat, lungs. His breath is choked off before he can cry out.
Blur of motion now. Like a machine. Programmed. In high gear.
Ice axe. Freed from his waistband. Smooth, powerful arc. Swung with great force. To the right temple. A crunch. The guy drops hard. Jerk the weapon loose.
Second man. Second chair. Wearing earphones. Sitting at a bank of equipment behind the cab, his back to the door. Headset muffles his partner’s wheezing. Senses commotion. Feels the van rock when first operative goes down. Swivels around. Surprised, reaching too late for gun in shoulder holster. Makeshift Mace showers his face.