Mr. Murder (26 page)

The restaurant is a McDonald’s outlet. The tinny speaker of the intercom at the ordering post has been exposed to enough years of summer sun and winter chill that the greeting of the unseen clerk is quavery and static-riddled. Confident that his own strained and shaky voice won’t sound unusual, the killer orders enough food to satisfy the staff of a small office: six cheeseburgers, Big Macs, fries, a couple of fish sandwiches, two chocolate milkshakes—and large Cokes because his racing metabolism, if not fueled, leads as swiftly to dehydration as to starvation.

He is in a long line of cars, and progression toward the pick-up window is aggravatingly slow. He has no choice but to wait, for with his blood-soaked clothes and bullet-torn shirt, he can’t walk into a restaurant or convenience store and get what he needs unless he is willing to draw a lot of attention to himself.

In fact, though blood vessels have been repaired, the two bullet wounds in his chest remain largely unhealed due to the shortage of fuel for anabolic processes. Those sucking holes, into which he can insert his thickest finger to a disturbing depth, would cause more comment than his bloody shirt.

One of the slugs passed completely through him, out his back to the left of his spine. He knows the exit wound is larger than either of the holes in his chest. He feels the ragged lips of it spreading apart when he leans back against the car seat.

He is fortunate that neither round pierced his heart. That might have stopped him for good. That and a brain-scrambling shot to the head are the only wounds he fears.

When he reaches the cashier’s window, he pays for the order with some of the money he took from Jack and Frannie in Oklahoma more than twenty-four hours ago. The young woman at the cash register can see his arm as he holds the currency toward her, so he strives to repress the severe tremors that might prick her curiosity. He keeps his face averted; in the night and rain, she can’t see his ravaged chest or the agony that contorts his pale features.

At the pick-up window, his order comes in several white bags, which he piles on the littered seat beside him, successfully averting his face from this clerk as well. All of his willpower is required to restrain himself from ripping the bags asunder and tearing into the food immediately upon receipt of it. He retains enough clarity of mind to realize he must not cause a scene by blocking the take-out lane.

He parks in the darkest corner of the restaurant lot, switches off the headlights and windshield wipers. His face looks so gaunt when he glimpses it in the rearview mirror that he knows he has lost several pounds in the past hour; his eyes are sunken and appear to be ringed with smudges of soot. He dims the instrument-panel lights as far as possible, but lets the engine run because, in his current debilitated condition, he needs to bask in the warm air from the heater vents. He is swaddled in shadows. The rain streaming down the glass shimmers with reflected light from neon signs, and it bends the night world into mutagenic forms, simultaneously screening him from prying eyes.

In this mechanical cave, he reverts to savagery and is, for a time, something less than human, tearing at his food with animalistic impatience, stuffing it into his mouth faster than he can swallow. Burgers and buns and fries crumble against his lips, his teeth, and leave a growing slope of organic scree across his chest; cola and milkshake dribble down the front of his shirt. He chokes repeatedly, spraying food on the steering wheel and dashboard, but eats no less wolfishly, no less urgently, issuing small wordless greedy sounds and low moans of satisfaction.

His feeding frenzy translates into a period of numb and silent withdrawal much like a trance, from which he eventually arises with three names on his lips, whispered like a prayer:
“Paige . . . Charlotte . . . Emily . . .”

From experience he knows that, in the hours before dawn, he will suffer new bouts of hunger, though none as devastating and obsessive as the seizure he has just endured. A few bars of chocolate or cans of Vienna sausages or packages of hot dogs—depending on whether it is carbohydrates or proteins that he craves—will ensure abatement of the pangs.

He will be able to focus his attention on other critical issues without worrying about major distractions of a physiological nature. The most serious of those crises is the continued enslavement of his wife and children by the man who has stolen his life.

Tears cloud his vision when he thinks of his family in the hands of the hateful imposter. They are so precious to him. They are his only fortune, his reason for existence, his future.

He recalls the wonder and joy with which he explored his house, standing in his daughters’ room, later touching the bed in which he and his wife make love. The moment he had seen their faces in the photograph on his desk, he had known they were his destiny and that in their loving embrace he would find surcease from the confusion, loneliness, and quiet desperation that have plagued him.

He remembers, as well, the first surprising confrontation with the imposter, the shock and amazement at their uncanny resemblance, the perfectly matched pitch and timbre of their voices. He had understood at once how the man could have stepped into his life without anyone being the wiser.

Though his exploration of the house provided no clue to explain the imposter’s origins, he was reminded of certain films from which answers might be garnered when he had a chance to view them again. Both versions of
Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
the first starring Kevin McCarthy, the second, Donald Sutherland. John Carpenter’s remake of
The Thing,
though not the first version. Perhaps even
Invaders from Mars.
Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin in a film whose title he could not recall.
The Prince and the Pauper. Moon Over Parador.
There must be others.

Movies had all the answers to life’s problems. From the movies he had learned about romance and love and the joy of family life. In the darkness of theaters, passing time between killings, hungry for meaning, he had learned to need what he didn’t have. And from the great lessons of the movies he might eventually unravel the mystery of his stolen life.

But first he must act.

That is another lesson he has learned from the movies. Action must come before thought. People in movies rarely sit around brooding about the predicament in which they find themselves. By God, they
do
something to resolve even their worst problems; they keep moving, ceaselessly moving, resolutely seeking confrontation with those who oppose them, grappling with their enemies in life-or-death struggles that they always win as long as they are sufficiently determined and righteous.

He is determined.

He is righteous.

His life has been stolen.

He is a victim. He has suffered.

He has known despair.

He has endured abuse and anguish and betrayal and loss like Omar Sharif in
Doctor Zhivago,
like William Hurt in
The Accidental Tourist,
Robin Williams in
The World According to Garp,
Michael Keaton in
Batman,
Sidney Poitier in
In the Heat of the Night,
Tyrone Power in
The Razor’s Edge,
Johnny Depp in
Edward Scissorhands.
He is one with all of the brutalized, despised, downtrodden, misunderstood, cheated, outcast, manipulated people who live upon the silver screen and who are heroic in the face of devastating tribulations. His suffering is as important as theirs, his destiny every bit as glorious, his hope of triumph just as great.

This realization moves him deeply. He is wrenched by shuddering sobs, weeping not with sadness but with joy, overwhelmed by a feeling of belonging, brotherhood, a sense of common humanity. He has deep bonds with those whose lives he shares in theaters, and this glorious epiphany motivates him to get up, move, move, confront, challenge, grapple, and prevail.

“Paige, I’m coming for you,” he says through his tears.

He throws open the driver’s door and gets out in the rain.

“Emily, Charlotte, I won’t fail you. Depend on me. Trust me. I’ll die for you if I have to.”

Shedding the detritus of his gluttony, he goes around to the back of the Honda and opens the trunk. He finds a tire iron that is a prybar on one end, for popping loose hub-caps, and a lug wrench on the other end. It has satisfying heft and balance.

He returns to the front seat, slides in behind the wheel, and puts the tire iron on top of the fragrant trash that overflows the seat beside him.

As he sees in memory the photograph of his family, he murmurs, “I’ll die for you.”

He is healing. When he explores the bullet holes in his chest, he can probe little more than half the depth that he was previously able to plumb.

In the second wound, his finger encounters a hard and gnarled lump which might be a wad of dislocated gristle. He quickly realizes it is, instead, the lead slug that didn’t pass through him and out of his back. His body is rejecting it. He picks and pries until the misshapen bullet oozes free with a thick wet sound, and he throws it on the floor.

Although he is aware that his metabolism and recuperative powers are extraordinary, he does not see himself as being much different from other men. Movies have taught him that all men are extraordinary in one way or another: some have a powerful magnetism for women, who are unable to resist them; others have courage beyond measure; still others, like those whose lives Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone have portrayed, can walk through a hail of bullets untouched and prevail in hand-to-hand combat with half a dozen men at one time or in quick succession. Rapid convalescence seems less exceptional, by comparison, than the common ability of on-screen heroes to pass unscathed through Hell itself.

Plucking a cold fish sandwich from the remaining pile of food, bolting it down in six large bites, he leaves McDonald’s. He begins searching for a shopping mall.

Because this is southern California, he finds what he’s looking for in short order: a sprawling complex of department and specialty stores, its roof composed of more sheets of metal than a battleship, textured concrete walls as formidable as the ramparts of any medieval fortress, surrounded by acres of lamp-lit blacktop. The ruthless commercial nature of the place is disguised by parklike rows and clusters of carrotwood trees, Indian laurels, willowy melaleucas, and palms.

He cruises endless aisles of parked cars until he spots a man in a raincoat hurrying away from the mall and burdened by two full plastic shopping bags. The shopper stops behind a white Buick, puts down the bags, and fumbles for keys to unlock the trunk.

Three cars from the Buick, an open parking space is available. The Honda, with him all the way from Oklahoma, has outlived its usefulness. It must be abandoned here.

He gets out of the car with the tire iron in his right hand. Gripping the tapered end, he holds it close to his leg to avoid calling attention to it.

The storm is beginning to lose some of its force. The wind is abating. No lightning scores the sky.

Although the rain is no less cold than it was earlier, he finds it refreshing rather than chilling.

As he heads toward the mall—and the white Buick—he surveys the huge parking lot. As far as he can tell, no one is watching him. None of the bracketing vehicles along that aisle is in the process of leaving: no lights, no telltale plumes of exhaust fumes. The nearest moving car is three rows away.

The shopper has found his keys, opened the trunk of the Buick, and stowed away the first of the two plastic bags. Bending to pick up the second bag, the stranger becomes aware that he is no longer alone, turns his head, looks back and up from his bent position in time to see the tire iron sweeping toward his face, on which an expression of alarm barely has time to form.

The second blow is probably unnecessary. The first will have driven fragments of facial bones into the brain. He strikes again, anyway, at the inert and silent shopper.

He throws the tire iron in the open trunk. It hits something with a dull clank.

Wasting no time looking around to determine if he is still unobserved, he plucks the man off the wet blacktop in the manner of a bodybuilder beginning a clean-and-jerk lift with a barbell. He drops the corpse into the trunk, and the car rocks with the impact of the dead weight.

The night and rain provide what little cover he needs to wrestle the raincoat off the cadaver while it lies hidden in the open trunk. One of the dead eyes stares fixedly while the other rolls loosely in the socket, and the mouth is frozen in a broken-toothed howl of terror that was never made.

When he pulls the coat on over his wet clothes, it is somewhat roomy and an inch long in the sleeves but adequate for the time being. It covers his bloodstained, torn, and food-smeared clothes, making him reasonably presentable, which is all that he cares about. It is still warm from the shopper’s body heat.

Later he will dispose of the cadaver, and tomorrow he will buy new clothes. Now he has much to do and precious little time in which to do it.

He takes the dead man’s wallet, which has a pleasingly thick sheaf of currency in it.

He tosses the second shopping bag on top of the corpse, slams the trunk lid. The keys are dangling from the lock.

In the Buick, fiddling with the heater controls, he drives away from the mall.

He starts looking for a service station, not because the Buick needs fuel but because he has to find a pay phone.

He remembers the voices in the kitchen while he had twitched in agony amidst the ruins of the stair railing. The imposter had been hustling Paige and the girls out of the house before they could come into the foyer and see their real father struggling to get off his back onto his hands and knees.