Mr. Murder

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 cafe off the Champs Elysees.
        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* 303 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?"
        Though he was sitting at the table, Clocker appeared distant in spirit.
        He pulled his attention back to them as if his thoughts had been with the Enterprise crew on a hostile planet in the Crab nebula.
        "There are five billion people on earth," he said, "so we think it's crowded, but for every one of us, the universe contains countless thousands of stars, an infinity of stars for each of us."
        Waxhill stared at Clocker, waiting for elucidation. When he realized that Clocker had nothing more to say, he turned to Oslett.
        "I believe what Karl means," Oslett said, "is that… Well, in the vast scheme of things, what does it matter if a few people die a little sooner than they would have in the natural course of events?"
        The sun is high over the distant mountains, where the loftiest peaks are capped with snow. It seems odd to have a view of winter from this springlike December morning full of palm trees and flowers.
        He drives south and east into Mission Viejo. He is vengeance on wheels.
        Justice on wheels. Rolling, rolling.
        He considers locating a gun shop and buying a shotgun or hunting rifle, some weapon for which there is no waiting period prior to the right of purchase. His adversary is armed, but he is not.
        However, he doesn't want to delay his pursuit of the kidnapper who has stolen his family. If the enemy is kept off balance and on the move, he is more likely to make mistakes. Unrelenting pressure is a better weapon than any gun.
        Besides, he is vengeance, justice, and virtue. He is the hero of this movie, and heroes do not die. They can be shot, clubbed, run off the road in high-speed car chases, slashed with a knife, pushed from a cliff, locked in a dungeon filled with poisonous snakes, and endure an endlessly imaginative series of abuses without perishing. With Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, Steven Seagal, Bruce Willis, Wesley Snipes, and so many other heroes, he shares the invincibility of virtue and high noble purpose.
        He realizes why his initial assault on the false father, in his house yesterday, was doomed to fail in spite of his being a hero. He'd been drawn westward by the powerful attraction between him and his double, to the same degree that he had been aware of something pulling him, the double had been aware of something approaching all day Sunday and Monday. By the time they encountered each other - in the upstairs study, the false father had been alerted and had prepared for battle.
        Now he understands that he can initiate and terminate the connection between them at will. Like the electrical current in any house hold circuit, it can be controlled by an ON-OFF switch. Instead of leaving the switch in the ON position all the time, he can open the pathway for brief moments, just long enough to feel the pull of the false father and take a fix on him.
        Logic suggests he also can modify the power flowing along the psychic wire. By imagining the psychic control is a