Mr. Murder

jejune, but Drew Oslett found the accommodations pleasant nonetheless. A sizable stone fireplace, in which logs and starter material already had been arranged, was especially appealing, within minutes of their arrival, a fire was blazing.
        Alec Spicer telephoned the surveillance team stationed in a van across the street from the Stillwater house. In language every bit as cryptic as some of Clocker's statements, he informed them that Alfie's handlers were now in town and could be reached at the motel.
        "Nothing new," Spicer said when he hung up the phone. "Jim and Alice Stillwater aren't home yet. The son and his family haven't shown up, either, and there's no sign of our boy, of course."
        Spicer turned on every light in the room and opened the drapes because he was still wearing his sunglasses, though he had taken off his leather flight jacket. Oslett suspected that Alec Spicer didn't remove his shades to have sex-and perhaps not even when he went to bed at night.
        The three of them settled into swiveling barrel chairs around a herringbone-pine dinette table off the compact kitchenette. The nearby mullioned window offered a view of the wooded slope behind the motel.
        From a black leather briefcase, Spicer produced several items Oslett and Clocker would need to stage the murders of the Stillwater family in the fashion that the home office desired.
        "Two coils of braided wire," he said, putting a pair of plastic wrapped spools on the table. "Bind the daughters' wrists and ankles with it.
        Not loosely. Tight enough to hurt. That's how it was in the Maryland case."
        "All right," Oslett said.
        "Don't cut the wire," Spicer instructed. "After binding the wrists, run the same strand to the ankles. One spool for each girl. That's also like Maryland."
        The next article produced from the briefcase was a pistol.
        "It's a SIG nine-millimeter," Spicer said. "Designed by the Swiss maker but actually manufactured by Suer in Germany. A very good piece."
        Accepting the SIG, Oslett said, "This is what we do the wife and kids with?"
        Spicer nodded. "Then Stillwater himself."
        Oslett familiarized himself with the gun while Spicer withdrew a box of 9mm ammunition from the briefcase. "Is this the same weapon the father used in Maryland?"
        "Exactly," Spicer said. "Records will show it was bought by Martin Stillwater three weeks ago at the same gun shop where he's purchased other weapons. There's a clerk who's been paid to remem her selling it to him."
        "Very nice."
        "The box this gun came in and the sales receipt have already been planted in the back of one of the desk drawers in Stillwater's home office, down in the house in Mission Viejo."
        Smiling, filled with genuine admiration, beginning to believe they were going to salvage the Network, Oslett said, "Superb attention to detail."
        "Always," Spicer said.
        The Machiavellian complexity of the plan delighted Oslett the way Wile E. Coyote's elaborate schemes in Road Runner cartoons had thrilled him as a child-except that, in this case, the coyotes were the inevitable winners. He glanced at Karl Clocker, expecting him to be likewise enthralled.
        The Trekker was cleaning under his fingernails with the blade of a penknife. His expression was somber. From every indication, his mind was at least four parsecs and two dimensions from Mammoth Lakes, California.
        From the briefcase, Spicer produced a Ziploc plastic bag that contained a folded sheet of paper. "This is a suicide note. Forged.
        But so well done, any graphologist would be convinced it was written in Stillwater's own hand."
        "What's it say?" Oslett asked.
        Quoting from memory, Spicer said,"
        "There's a worm. Burrowing inside.
        All of us contaminated. Enslaved. Parasites within.
        Can't live this way. Can't live."
        "That's from the Maryland case?" Oslett asked.
        "Word for word."
        "The guy was creepy."
        "Won't argue with you on that."
        "We leave it by the body?"
        "Yeah. Handle it only with gloves. And press Stillwater's fingers all over it after you've killed him. The paper's got a hard, smooth finish.
        Should take prints well."
        Spicer reached into the briefcase once more and withdrew an other Ziploc bag containing a black pen.
        "Pentel Rolling