Mr. Murder (31 page)

The Buick came to a sudden and noisy stop against the side of a parked Ford Explorer. Though the clang of the collision jarred the night, the car didn’t roll or burn.

To Marty’s astonishment, the right-side rear passenger door flew open, and his kids erupted like a pair of joke snakes exploding from a tin can.

As far as he could tell, they weren’t seriously hurt, and he shouted at them to get away from the Buick. But they didn’t need his advice. They had an agenda of their own, and immediately scrambled across the street, looking for cover.

He kept running. Now that the girls were out of the car, his fury was greater than his fear. He wanted to hurt the driver, kill him. It wasn’t a hot rage but cold, a mindless reptilian savagery that scared him even as he surrendered to it.

He was less than a third of a block from the car when its engine shrieked and the spinning tires began to smoke. The Other was trying to get away, but the vehicles were hung up on each other. Tortured metal abruptly screeched, popped, and the Buick started to tear loose of the Explorer.

Marty would have preferred to be closer when he opened fire, so he’d have a better chance of hitting The Other, but he sensed he was as close as he was going to get. He skidded to a halt, raised the Beretta, holding it with both hands, shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the sight on target, cursing himself for his weakness, trying to be a rock.

The recoil of the first shot kicked the barrel high, and Marty lowered it before firing another round.

The Buick broke free of the Explorer and lurched forward a few feet. For a moment its tires lost traction on the slick pavement and spun in place again, spewing behind it a silvery spray of water.

He pulled the trigger, grunting in satisfaction as the rear window of the Buick imploded, and squeezed off another round right away, aiming for the driver, trying to visualize the bastard’s skull imploding as the window had done, hoping that what he imagined would translate into reality. When its tires got a bite of the pavement, the Buick shot away from him. Marty pumped another round and another, even though the car was already out of range. The girls weren’t in the line of fire and no one else seemed to be on the rainy street, but it was irresponsible to continue shooting because he had little chance of hitting The Other. He was more likely to blow away an innocent who happened to pass on some cross street ahead, more likely to shatter a window in one of the nearby houses and waste someone sitting in front of a TV. But he didn’t care, couldn’t stop himself, wanted blood, vengeance, emptied the magazine, repeatedly pulled the trigger after the last bullet had been expended, making primitive wordless sounds of rage, totally out of control.

In the BMW, Paige ran the stop sign. The car slid around the corner, almost tipping onto two wheels before she straightened it out, facing east on the cross street.

The first thing she saw after making the corner was Marty in the middle of the street. He was standing with his legs widely spread, his back to her, firing the pistol at the dwindling Buick.

Her breath caught and her heart seized up. The girls must be in the receding car.

She tramped the accelerator to the floor, intending to swing around Marty and catch up with the Buick, ram the back of it, run it off the road, fight the kidnapper with her bare hands, claw the son of a bitch’s eyes out, whatever she had to do, anything. Then she saw the girls in their bright yellow rain slickers on the right-hand sidewalk, standing under a street lamp. They were holding each other. They looked so small and fragile in the drizzling rain and bitter yellowish light.

Past Marty, Paige pulled to the curb. She threw open the door and got out of the BMW, leaving the headlights on and the engine running.

As she ran to the kids, she heard herself saying, “Thank God, thank God, thank God, thank God.” She couldn’t stop saying it even when she crouched and swept both girls into her arms at the same time, as if on some level she believed that the two words had magic power and that her children would suddenly vanish from her embrace if she stopped chanting the mantra.

The girls hugged her fiercely. Charlotte buried her face against her mother’s neck. Emily’s eyes were huge.

Marty dropped to his knees beside them. He kept touching the kids, especially their faces, as if he was having difficulty believing that their skin was still warm and their eyes lively, astonished to see that breath still steamed from them. He repeatedly said, “Are you all right, are you hurt, are you all right?” The only injury he could find was a minor abrasion on Charlotte’s left palm, incurred when she’d plunged from the Buick and landed on her hands and knees.

The only major and troubling difference in the girls was their unusual constraint. They were so subdued that they seemed meek, as if they had just been severely chastised. The brief experience with the kidnapper had left them frightened and withdrawn. Their usual self-confidence might not return for some time, might never be as strong as it had once been. For that reason alone Paige wanted to make the man in the Buick suffer.

Along the block, a couple of people had come out on their front porches to see what the commotion was about—now that the shooting had stopped. Others were at their windows.

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Rising to his feet, Marty said, “Let’s get out of here.” “The police are coming,” Paige said.

“That’s what I mean.”

“But they—”

“They’ll be as bad as last time, worse.”

He picked up Charlotte and hurried with her to the BMW as the sirens swelled louder.

Chips of glass are lodged in his left eye. For the most part, the tempered window had dissolved in a gummy mass. It had not cut his face. But tiny shards are embedded deep in the tender ocular tissues, and the pain is devastating. Every movement of the eye works the glass deeper, does more damage.

Because his eye twitches when the worst needle-sharp pains stitch through it, he keeps blinking involuntarily, although it is torture to do so. To stop the blinking, he holds the fingers of his left hand against his closed eyelid, applying only the gentlest pressure. As much as possible, he drives with just his right hand.

Sometimes he has to let the eye twitch unattended because he needs to use the left hand to drive. With the right, he tears open one of the candy bars and crams it into his mouth as fast as he can chew. His metabolic furnace demands fuel.

A bullet crease marks his forehead above the same eye. The furrow is as wide as his index finger and a little more than an inch long. To the bone. At first it bled freely. Now the clotting blood oozes thickly over his eyebrow and seeps between the fingers that he holds to the eyelid.

If the bullet had been one inch to the left, it would have taken him in the temple and drilled into his brain, jamming splinters of bone in front of it.

He fears head wounds. He is not confident that he can recover from brain damage either as entirely or as swiftly as from other injuries. Maybe he can’t recover from it at all.

Half blind, he drives cautiously. With only one eye he has lost depth perception. The rain-pooled streets are treacherous.

The police now have a description of the Buick, perhaps even the license number. They will be looking for it, routinely if not actively, and the damage along the driver’s side will make it easier to spot.

He is in no condition to steal another car at this time. He’s not only half blind but still shaky from the gunshot wounds that he suffered three hours ago. If he is caught in the act of stealing an unattended car, or if he encounters resistance when trying to kill another motorist such as the one whose raincoat he wears and who is temporarily entombed in the Buick’s trunk, he is likely to be apprehended or more seriously wounded.

Driving north and west from Mission Viejo, he quickly crosses the city line into El Toro. Though in a new community, he does not feel safe. If there is an APB out on the Buick, it will probably be county-wide.

The greatest danger arises from staying on the move, increasing the risk of being seen by the cops. If he can find a secluded place to park the Buick, where it will be safe from discovery at least until tomorrow, he can curl up on the back seat and rest.

He needs to sleep and give his body a chance to mend. He has gone two nights without rest since leaving Kansas City. Ordinarily he could remain alert and active for a third night, possibly a fourth, with no diminution of his faculties. But the toll of his injuries, combined with lost sleep and tremendous physical exertion, requires time out for convalescence.

Tomorrow he will get his family back, reclaim his destiny. He has wandered alone and in darkness for so long. One more day will make little difference.

He was
so
close to success. For a brief time his daughters belonged to him again. His Charlotte. His Emily.

He recalls the joy he felt in the foyer of the Delorio house, holding the girls’ small bodies against him. They were so sweet. Butterfly-soft kisses on his cheeks. Their musical voices—“Daddy, Daddy”—so full of love for him.

Remembering how close he was to taking permanent possession of them, he is on the brink of tears. He must not cry. The convulsion of the muscles in his damaged eye will amplify his pain unbearably, and tears in his right eye will reduce him to virtual blindness.

Instead, as he cruises residential neighborhoods from El Toro into Laguna Hills, where house lights glow warmly in the rain and taunt him with images of domestic bliss, he thinks about how those same children ultimately defied and abandoned him, for this subject leads him away from tears and toward anger. He does not understand why his sweet little girls would choose the charlatan over their real father, when minutes previously they had showered him with thrilling kisses and adoration. Their betrayal disturbs him. Gnaws at him.

While Marty drove, Paige sat in the back seat with Charlotte and Emily, holding their hands. She was emotionally incapable of letting go of them just yet.

Marty followed an indirect route across Mission Viejo, initially stayed off main streets as much as possible, and successfully avoided the police. Block after block, Paige continued to study the traffic around them, expecting the battered Buick to appear and try to force them off the pavement. Twice she turned to look out the rear window, certain that the Buick was following them, but her fears were never realized.

When Marty picked up the Marguerite Parkway and headed south, Paige finally asked, “Where are we going?”

He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. Just away from here. I’m still thinking about where.”

“Maybe they would’ve believed you this time.”

“Not a chance.”

“People back there must’ve seen the Buick.”

“Maybe. But they didn’t see the man driving it. None of them can back up my story.”

“Vic and Kathy must’ve seen him.”

“And thought he was me.”

“But now they’ll realize he wasn’t.”

“They didn’t see us
together,
Paige. That’s what matters, damn it! Someone seeing us together, an independent witness.”

She said, “Charlotte and Emily. They saw him and you at the same time.”

Marty shook his head. “Doesn’t count. I wish it did. But Lowbock won’t put any stock in the testimony of little kids.”

“Not so little,” Emily piped up from beside Paige, sounding even younger and tinier than she actually was.

Charlotte remained uncharacteristically quiet. Both girls were still shivering, but Charlotte had a worse case of the shakes than did Emily. She was leaning against her mother for warmth, her head pulled turtlelike into the collar of her coat.

Marty had the heater turned up as high as it would go. The interior of the BMW should have been suffocatingly hot. It wasn’t.

Even Paige was cold. She said, “Maybe we should go back and try to talk sense to them anyway.”

Marty was adamant. “Honey, no, we can’t. Think about it. They’ll sure as hell take the Beretta. I shot at the guy with it. From their point of view, one way or another, there’s been a crime, and the gun was used in the commission of it. Either somebody really attempted to kidnap the girls, and I tried to kill him. Or it’s still all a hoax to sell books, get me higher on the bestseller list. Maybe I hired a friend to drive the Buick, shot a bunch of blanks at him, induced my own kids to lie, now I’m filing
another
false police report.”

“After all this, Lowbock won’t still be pushing that ridiculous theory.”

“Won’t he? The hell he won’t.”

“Marty, he can’t.”

He sighed. “Okay, all right, maybe he won’t, probably he won’t.”

Paige said, “He’ll realize that something a lot more serious is going on—”

“But he won’t believe
my
story either, which I’ve got to admit sounds nuttier than a giant-size can of Planters finest. And if you’d read the piece in
People . . .
Anyway, he’ll take the Beretta. What if he discovers the shotgun in the trunk?”

“There’s no reason for him to take that.”

“He might find an excuse. Listen, Paige, Lowbock’s not going to change his mind about me that easily, not just because the kids tell him it’s all true. He’ll still be a lot more suspicious of me than of any guy in a Buick he’s never seen. If he takes both guns, we’re defenseless. Suppose the cops leave, then this bastard, this look-alike, he walks into the house two minutes later, when we don’t have anything to protect ourselves.”

“If the police still don’t believe it, if they won’t give us protection, then we won’t stay at the house.”

“No, Paige, I literally mean what if the bastard walks in
two minutes
after the cops leave, doesn’t even give us a chance to clear out?”

“He’s not likely to risk—”

“Oh, yes, he is! Yes, he is. He came back almost
immediately
after the cops left the first time—didn’t he?—just boldly walked up to the Delorios’ front door and rang the damn bell. He seems to
thrive
on risk. I wouldn’t put it past the bastard to break in on us while the cops were still there, shoot everyone in sight. He’s crazy, this whole situation is crazy, and I don’t want to bet my life or yours or the kids’ lives on what the creep is going to do next.”