Mr. Murder

a doughnut shop, and an office-supply store are open for business. The BMW races across the parking lot, swinging wide of the few clusters of cars, to the service road that fronts the stores. It turns left and heads toward the north end of the center.
        He follows but not aggressively. If he loses them, locating them again is an easy matter because of the mysterious but reliable link between him and the hateful man who has usurped his life.
        The BMW reaches the north exit and turns right into the street.
        By the time he arrives at that same intersection, the BMW is already two blocks away, stopped at a red traffic signal and barely in sight.
        For more than an hour, he follows them discreetly along surface streets, north on the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways, then east on the Riverside Freeway, staying well back from them. Tucked in among the heavy morning commuter traffic, his small Camry is as good as invisible.
        On the Riverside Freeway, west of Corona, he imagines switching on the psychic current between himself and the false father. He pictures the rheostat and turns it five degrees out of a possible three hundred and sixty. That is sufficient for him to sense the presence of the false father ahead in traffic, although it gives him no precise fix.
        Six degrees, seven, eight. Eight is too much. Seven. Seven is ideal.
        With the switch open only seven degrees, the attraction is powerful enough to serve as a beacon to him without alerting the enemy that the link has been re-established. In the BMW, the imposter rides east toward Riverside, tense and watchful but unaware of being monitored.
        Yet, in the hunter's mind, the signal of the prey registers like a blinking red light on an electronic map.
        Having mastered control of this strange adducent power, he may be able to strike at the false father with some degree of surprise.
        Though the man in the BMW is expecting an attack and is on the run to avoid it, he's also accustomed to being forewarned of assault. When enough time passes without a disturbance in the ether, when he feels no unnerving probes, he'll regain confidence.
        With a return of confidence, his caution will diminish, and he'll become vulnerable.
        The hunter needs only to stay on the trail, follow the spoor, bide his time, and wait for the ideal moment to strike.
        As they pass through Riverside, morning traffic thins out around them.
        He drops back farther, until the BMW is a distant, colorless dot that sometimes vanishes temporarily, miragelike, in a shimmer of sunlight or swirl of dust.
        Onward and north. Through San Bernardino. Onto Interstate 15.
        Into the northern end of the San Bernardino Mountains. Through the El Cajon Pass at forty-three hundred feet.
        Soon thereafter, south of the town of Hesperia, the BMW departs the interstate and heads directly north on U.S. Highway 395, into the westernmost reaches of the forbidding Mojave Desert. He follows, continuing to remain at such a distance that they can't possibly realize the dark speck in their rearview mirror is the same car that has trailed them now through three counties.
        Within a couple of miles, he passes a road sign indicating the mileage to Ridgecrest, Lone Pine, Bishop, and Mammoth Lakes. Mammoth is the farthest-two hundred and eighty-two miles.
        The name of the town has an instant association for him. He has an eidetic memory. He can see the words on the dedication page of one of the mystery novels he has written and which he keeps on the shelves in his home office in Mission Viejo, This opus is for my mother and father, Jim and Alice Stillwater, who taught me to be an honest man-and who can't be blamed if I am able to think like a criminal.
        He recalls, as well, the Rolodex card with their names and address.
        They live in Mammoth Lakes.
        Again, he is poignantly aware of what he has lost. Even if he can reclaim his life from the imposter who wears his name, perhaps he will never regain the memories that have been stolen from him. His childhood. His adolescence. His first date. His high school experiences. He has no recollection of his mother's or his father's love, and it seems outrageous, monstrous, that he could be robbed of those most essential and enduringly supportive memories.
        For more than sixty miles, he alternates between despair at the