Mr. Murder

use the phony credit cards, of which he still has two, because someone will surely be able to track him through his purchases. He will need to pay cash from now on.
        He takes the three large bags of supplies to the Honda and returns to the store with the Heckler & Koch P7. He shoots the clerk once in the head and empties the register, but all he gets is his own money back plus fifty dollars. Better than nothing.
        At an Arco service station, he fills the tank of the Honda with gasoline and buys a map of the United States.
        Parked at the edge of the Arco lot, under a sodium-vapor light that colors everything sickly yellow, he eats Slim Jims. He's ravenous.
        By the time he switches from sausages to doughnuts, he begins to study the map. He could continue westward on Interstate 70-or instead head southwest on the Kansas Turnpike to Wichita, keep going to Oklahoma City, and then turn directly west again on Interstate 40.
        He is not accustomed to having choices. He usually does what he is .. programmed to do. Now, faced with alternatives, he finds decision-making unexpectedly difficult. He sits irresolute, increasingly nervous, in danger of being paralyzed by indecision.
        At last he gets out of the Honda and stands in the cool night air, seeking guidance.
        The wind vibrates the telephone wires overhead-a haunting sound, as thin and bleak as the frightened crying of dead children wandering in a dark Beyond.
        He turns westward as inexorably as a compass needle seeks magnetic north. The attraction feels psychic, as if a presence out there calls to him, but the connection is less sophisticated than that, more biological, reverberating in his blood and marrow.
        Behind the wheel of the car again, he finds the Kansas Turnpike and heads toward Wichita. He is still not sleepy. If he has to, he can go two or even three nights without sleep and lose none of his mental or physical edge, which is only one of his special strengths. He is so excited by the prospect of being someone that he might drive nonstop until he finds his destiny.
        Paige knew that Marty half expected to be stricken by another blackout, this time in public, so she admired his ability to maintain a carefree facade. He seemed as lighthearted as the kids.
        From the girls' point of view, Sunday was a perfect day.
        Late-morning, Paige and Marty took them to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Dana Point for the Thanksgiving-weekend brunch. It was a place they went only on special occasions.
        As always, Emily and Charlotte were enchanted by the lushly landscaped grounds, beautiful public rooms, and impeccable staff in crisp uniforms.
        In their best dresses, with ribbons in their hair, the girls had great fun playing at being cultured young ladies-almost as much fun as raiding the dessert buffet twice each.
        In the afternoon, because it was unseasonably warm, they changed clothes and visited Irvine Park. They walked the picturesque trails, fed the ducks in the pond, and toured the small zoo.
        Charlotte loved the zoo because the animals were, like her menagerie at home, kept in enclosures where they were safe from harm.
        There were no exotic specimens-all the animals were indigenous to the region-but in her typical exuberance, Charlotte found each to be the most interesting and cutest creature she had ever seen.
        Emily got into a staring contest with a wolf. Large, amber-eyed, with a lustrous silver-gray coat, the predator met and intensely held the girl's gaze from his side of a chain-link fence.
        "If you look away first," Emily calmly and somberly informed them, "then a wolf will just eat you all up."
        The confrontation went on so long that Paige became uneasy in spite of the sturdy fence. Then the wolf lowered his head, sniffed the ground, yawned elaborately to show he had not been intimidated but had merely lost interest, and sauntered away.
        "If he couldn't get the three little pigs with all his huffing and puffing," Emily said, "then I knew he couldn't get me, 'cause I'm smarter than pigs."
        She was referring to the Disney cartoon, the only version of the fairy tale with which she was familiar.
        Paige resolved never to let her read the Brothers Grimm version, which was about seven little goats instead of three pigs. The wolf swallowed six of them whole. They were saved from digestion at the last