Mr. Murder

Emily was now Suzie Lori Gault.
        "We got to choose our own first and second names," Charlotte said with more animation than she'd shown in days. "I'm Rebecca like in the movie, a woman of beauty and mystery, haunting Manderley forever."
        "We didn't exactly get to pick what names we wanted," Emily said. "We didn't get first choice, for sure."
        Marty had been deep in wounded sleep back in Bishop, California, when the names had been selected. "What was your first choice?" he asked Emily.
        "Bob," she said.
        Marty laughed, and Charlotte giggled explosively.
        "I like Bob," Emily said.
        "Well, you have to admit it isn't really appropriate," Marty said.
        "Suzie Lori is cute enough to puke over," Charlotte said.
        "Well, if I can't be Bob," Emily said, "then I want to be Suzie Lori, and everyone has to always use both names, never just Suzie."
        While the girls washed the dishes, Karl brought in a suitcase from the Range Rover, opened it on the table, and discussed the contents with Marty and Paige. There were scores of computer discs containing Network files, which Karl had secretly copied over the years, plus at least a hundred microcassette tapes of conversations that he had recorded, including one at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point that involved Oslett and a man named Peter Waxhill.
        "That one," Karl said, "will explain the entire clone crisis in a nutshell." He began returning the items to the suitcase. "These are all copies, the discs and the cassettes. You've got two full sets.
        And I've got other duplicates besides."
        Marty didn't understand. "Why do you want us to have these?"
        "You're a good writer," Karl said. "I've read a couple of your books since Tuesday night. Take all this, write up an explanation of it, an explanation of what happened to you and your family. I'm going to leave you the name of the owner of a major newspaper and a man high in the FBI. I'm confident that neither of them is part of the Network-because both of them were on Alfie's list of future targets.
        Send your explanation and one set of discs and tapes to each of them.
        Mail it blind, of course, no return address, and from another state, not Wyoming."
        "Shouldn't you do this?" Paige asked.
        "I'll try again if you don't get the kind of reaction I expect you will.
        But it's better coming from you first. Your disappearance, the action in Mission Viejo, the murders of your parents, the bodies I've made sure they found in that bell tower near your folks' cabin-all of that has kept your story hot. The Network has made sure it's kept hot, 'cause they're desperate for someone to find you for them. Let's use your notoriety to make it all backfire on them if we can."
        The day was cool but not cold. The sky was a crystalline blue.
        Marty and Karl went for a walk along the perimeter of the woods, always keeping the cabin in sight.
        "This Alfie," Marty said.
        "What about him?"
        "Was he the only one?"
        "The first and only operative clone. Others are being grown."
        "We have to stop that."
        "We will."
        "Okay. Suppose we blow the Network apart," Marty wondered.
        "Their house of cards collapses. Afterward… can we ever go back home, resume our lives?"
        Karl shook his head. "I don't intend to. Don't dare. Some of them will slip the noose. And these are people who hold a grudge from Sunday to Hell and back. Good haters. You ruin their lives or even just the lives of people in their families, and sooner or later they'll kill all of you."
        "Then the Gault name isn't just temporary cover?"
        "It's the best ID you can get. As good as real paper. I got it from sources the Network doesn't know about. No one will ever see through this ID… or track you down by it."
        "My career, income from my books…"
        "Forget it," Karl said. "You're on a new voyage of discovery, outward to worlds unknown."
        "And you've got a new name too?"
        Yes."
        "None of my business what it is, huh?"
        "Exactly."
        Karl left that same afternoon, an hour before dusk.
        As they accompanied him to the Range Rover, he withdrew an envelope from an inside pocket of his tweed jacket and handed it to Paige, explaining that it was the grant deed to the cabin and the land on which it