Although he was finally finished eating, Clocker stayed in his chair. Oslett didn’t know whether his partner’s behavior was a minor betrayal or only evidence that the Trekker’s mind was off with Spock and the gang in some distant corner of the universe.
After a sip of coffee, Waxhill said, “If you have to terminate our boy, that’s regrettable but acceptable. If you can bring him back into the fold, at least until he can be gotten into a secure facility and restrained, even better. However it goes . . . Stillwater, his wife, and his kids have to be eliminated.”
“No problem.”
5
The branch manager, Mrs. Takuda, visited Marty while he waited at the teller’s window, shortly after the dark wave slammed into him and washed away. If he had been confronted by his reflection, he would have expected to see that he was still tight-lipped and pale, with an animal wildness in his eyes; however, if Mrs. Takuda noticed anything strange in his appearance, she was too polite to mention it. Primarily she was concerned that he might be withdrawing the majority of his savings because something about the bank displeased him.
He was surprised he could summon a convincing smile and enough charm to assure her that he had no quarrel with the bank and to set her mind at rest. He was chilled and shaking deep inside, but none of the tremors reached the surface or affected his voice.
When Mrs. Takuda went to assist Elaine Higgens in the vault, Marty looked at Paige and the kids, the east door, the south door, and his Timex. The sight of the red sweep hand cleaning the seconds off the dial made sweat break out on his brow. The Other was coming. How long? Ten minutes, two minutes, five seconds?
Another wave hit him.
Cruising a wide boulevard. Morning sun flaring off the chrome of passing cars. Phil Collins on the radio, singing about betrayal.
Sympathizing with Collins, he again imagines magnetism. Click. Contact. He feels an irresistible pull farther east and south, so he is still heading in the right direction.
He breaks contact seconds after establishing it, hoping to get another fix on the false father without revealing himself. But even during that brief linkage, the enemy senses the intrusion.
Though the second wave was of shorter duration than the first, it was no less powerful. Marty felt as if he had been hit in the chest with a hammer.
With Mrs. Higgens, the teller returned to the window. She had loose cash and banded packets of both hundred- and twenty-dollar bills. It amounted to two stacks of approximately three inches each.
The teller started to count out the seventy thousand.
“That’s all right,” Marty said. “Just put it in a couple of manila envelopes.”
Surprised, Mrs. Higgens said, “Oh, but Mr. Stillwater, you’ve signed the withdrawal order, we ought to count it in front of you.”
“No, I’m sure you’ve already counted correctly.”
“But bank procedure—”
“I trust you, Mrs. Higgens.”
“Well, thank you, but I really think—”
“Please.”
6
Merely by remaining seated at the room-service table while Drew Oslett stood impatiently beside it, Waxhill exerted control. Oslett disliked him and grudgingly admired him simultaneously.
“It’s almost certain,” Waxhill said, “that the wife and children saw Alfie in that second incident last night. They know very little about what’s going on, but if they know Stillwater was telling the truth when he talked about a look-alike, then they know too much.”
“I said, no problem,” Oslett reminded him impatiently.
Waxhill nodded. “Yes, all right, but the home office wants it done in a certain way.”
Sighing, Oslett gave up and sat down. “Which is?”
“Make it look as if Stillwater went off the deep end.”
“Murder-suicide?”
“Yes, but not just any murder-suicide. The home office would be pleased if it could be made to appear as if Stillwater was acting out a particular psychopathic delusion. ”
“Whatever.”
“The wife must be shot in each breast and in the mouth.”
“And the daughters?”
“First, make them undress. Tie their wrists behind them. Tie their ankles together. Nice and tight. There’s a particular brand of braided wire we’d like you to use. It’ll be provided. Then shoot each girl twice. Once in her ... private parts, then between the eyes. Stillwater must appear to have shot himself once through the roof of his mouth. Will you remember all of that?”
“Of course.”
“It’s important that you do everything precisely that way, no deviations from the script.”
“What’s the story we’re trying to tell?” Oslett asked.
“Didn’t you read the article in People?”
“Not all the way through,” Oslett admitted. “Stillwater seemed like such a jerk—and a boring jerk, at that.”
Waxhill said, “A few years ago, in Maryland, a man killed his wife and two daughters in exactly this fashion. He was a pillar of the community, so it shocked everybody. Tragic story. Everyone was left wondering why. It seemed so meaningless, so out of character. Stillwater was intrigued by the crime and considered writing a novel based on it, to explore the possible motivation behind it. But after he’d done a lot of research, he dropped the project. In People, he says it just depressed him too much. Says that fiction, his kind of fiction, needs to make sense of things, bring order to chaos, but he just couldn’t find any meaning in what happened in Maryland.”
Oslett sat in silence for a moment, trying to hate Waxhill but finding that his dislike for the man was fading rapidly. “I must say . . . this is very nice.”
Waxhill smiled almost shyly and shrugged.
“This was your idea?” Oslett asked.
“Mine, yes. I proposed it to the home office, and they went for it right away.”
“It’s ingenious,” Oslett said with genuine admiration.
“Thank you.”
“Very neat. Martin Stillwater kills his family the same way the guy did in Maryland, and it looks as if the real reason he couldn’t write a novel about the original case was because it struck too close to home, because it was what he secretly wanted to do to his family.”
“Exactly.”
“And it’s been preying on his mind ever since.”
“Haunts his dreams.”
“This psychotic urge to symbolically rape—”
“—and literally kill—”
“—his daughters—”
“—kill his wife, too, the woman who—”
“—nurtured them,” Oslett finished.
They were smiling at each other again, as they had smiled when discussing that lovely café off the Champs Elysées.
Waxhill said, “No one will ever be able to figure out what killing his family had to do with his crazy report of a look-alike intruder, but they’ll figure the look-alike was somehow part of his delusion, too.”
“I just realized, samples of Alfie’s blood taken from the house in Mission Viejo are going to appear to be Stillwater’s blood.”
“Yes. Was he periodically exsanguinating himself, saving his own blood for the hoax? And why? A great many theories are sure to be put forth, and in the end it’ll be a mystery of less interest than what he did to his family. No one will ever untangle the truth from all that.”
Oslett was beginning to hope they might recover Alfie, salvage the Network, and keep their reputations intact after all.
Turning to Clocker, Waxhill said, “What about you, Karl? Do you have a problem with any of this?”