False Memory

glare melted off his face, and what replaced it was not the flat, grimly determined expression with which he had entered the house, but the glazed and slightly quizzical look that signified activation.
    Ed Mavole was the name, all right, but Dusty was still lacking a haiku. According to Ned Motherwell, umpteen feet of shelves in the bookstore were devoted to haiku, so even if all the volumes Ned had bought were now near at hand—which they weren’t—the accessing lines might not be in them.
    Down in the foyer, Eric twitched, blinked, and reacquainted himself with his murderous intentions.
    “Ed Mavole,” Dusty said again, and once more Eric froze and said, “I’m listening.”
    This wouldn’t be fun, but it ought to be doable. Keep using the magic name, snap Eric back into an activated state every time he came out of it, go straight down the stairs at him, snatch the gun from his hand, knock him ass over teakettle, clip him alongside the head with the butt of the gun, just hard enough to knock him unconscious without leaving him comatose for life, and then tie him up with whatever was at hand. Maybe when he regained consciousness, he would no longer be a robotic killer. Otherwise, they could keep him under restraint, buy all umpteen shelf feet of haiku, brew ten gallons of strong coffee, and read every verse to him until they got a response.
    As Dusty rolled the filing cabinet aside, Martie said, “Oh, God, please, babe, don’t chance it,” and Eric twitched back to his killing glare.
    “Ed Mavole.”
    “I’m listening.”
    Dusty descended the stairs fast. Eric was looking straight at him but didn’t seem to be able to work out the physics of what was about to happen. Before Dusty was a third of the way down, taking no chances, he shouted, “Ed Mavole,” and Eric Jagger replied, “I’m listening,” and then he was two-thirds of the way down, and he said, “Ed Mavole,” and as he reached Eric, the answer came in that same mellow voice, “I’m listening.” Looking straight into the muzzle, which seemed as big as any tunnel that he might drive through, Dusty closed one hand around the barrel, pushed it aside and out of his face, wrenched the gun from Eric’s slack hands, and at the same time drove his shoulder into the dazed man, knocking him to the floor.
    Dusty fell, too, and rolled across broken glass and chunks of wood from the bullet-riddled front door, afraid he might accidentally discharge the pistol. He tumbled into the half-moon table that stood against the foyer wall, rapping his forehead hard against the sturdy stretcher bar that connected its three legs, but he didn’t shoot himself in the thigh, the groin, or anywhere else.
    When Dusty staggered to his feet, he saw that Eric had already gotten off the floor. The guy looked confused but nonetheless angry and still in a programmed-killer mode.
    From the stairs, which she was rapidly descending, Martie said, “Ed Mavole,” even before Dusty could say it, and suddenly this seemed to be the lamest video game Martie had ever concocted:
    Housepainter Versus Investment Adviser, one armed with an automatic weapon and the other with furniture and magic names.
    It might have been funny, this thought at this moment, if he’d not looked past Martie to the top of the stairs, where Junior stood with a crossbow, cranked to full tension and loaded.
    “No!” Dusty shouted.
    Shusssh.
    A crossbow quarrel, shorter and thicker than an ordinary arrow, is far more difficult to see in flight than is an arrow let off by a standard bow, so much faster does it move. Magic, the way this one appeared to pop from Eric Jagger’s chest, as if out of his heart like a rabbit out of a hat: All but two inches of its notchless butt protruded in a small carnation of blood.
    Eric dropped to his knees. The homicidal glare cleared from his eyes, and he looked around in bewilderment at the foyer, which apparently was altogether new to him. Then he blinked up at Dusty and seemed astonished as he fell forward, dead.
    When Martie tried to stop Dusty from going upstairs, he shook her off, and he climbed two steps at a time, his forehead throbbing where he’d rapped it against the stretcher bar, his vision swimming, but not from the blow on the head, swimming because his body was flooded with whatever brain chemicals induce and sustain rage, his heart pumping as much pure fury as blood, the angelic-looking boy seen now through a dark lens and a red tint, as though Dusty’s eyes were streaming tears of