Mr. Murder

minute when their mother cut open the wolf's belly to pull them from his steaming innards.
        Paige glanced back at the wolf as they walked away. It was watching Emily again.
        Sunday is a full day for the killer.
        In Wichita, just before dawn, he gets off the turnpike. In another residential neighborhood rather like the one in Topeka, he swaps the license plates on the Honda for those on a Chevy, making his stolen vehicle more difficult to locate.
        Shortly after nine Sunday morning he arrives in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, where he stops long enough to fill the tank with gasoline.
        A shopping mall is across the road from the service station. In one corner of the huge deserted parking lot stands an unmanned Goodwill Industries collection box, as large as a garden shed.
        After tanking up, he leaves his suitcases and their contents with Goodwill.
        He keeps only the clothes he's wearing and the pistol.
        During the night, on the highway, he had time to think about his peculiar existence and to wonder if he might be carrying a compact transmitter that would help his superiors locate him. Perhaps they anticipated that one day he would go renegade on them.
        He knows that a moderately powerful transmitter, operating off a tiny battery, can be hidden in an extremely small space. Such as the walls of a suitcase.
        As he turns directly west on Interstate 40, a coal-dark sludge of clouds seeps across the sky. Forty minutes later, when the rain comes, it is molten silver, and it instantly washes all of the color out of the vast empty land that flanks the highway. The world is twenty, forty, a hundred shades of gray, without even lightning to relieve the oppressive dreariness.
        The monochromatic landscape provides no distraction, so he has time to worry further about the faceless hunters who might be close behind him.
        Is it paranoid to wonder if a transmitter could be woven into his clothing? He doubts it could be concealed in the material of his pants, shirt, sweater, underwear, or socks without being detectable by its very weight or upon casual inspection.
        Which leaves his shoes and leather jacket.
        He rules out the pistol. They wouldn't build anything into the P7 that might interfere with its function. Besides, he was expected to discard it soon after the murders for which it was provided.
        Halfway between Oklahoma City and Amarillo, east of the Texas border, he pulls off the interstate into a rest area, where ten cars, two big trucks, and two motorhomes have taken refuge from the storm.
        In a surrounding grove of evergreens, the boughs of the trees droop as if sodden with rain, and they appear charcoal gray instead of green.
        The large pinecones are tumorous and strange.
        A squat block building houses restrooms. He hurries through the cold downpour to the men's facilities.
        While the killer is at the first of three urinals, rain drumming loudly on the metal roof and the humid air heavy with the limy smell of damp concrete, a man in his early sixties enters. At a glance, thick white hair, deeply seamed face, bulbous nose patterned with broken capillaries. He goes to the third of the urinals.
        "Some storm, huh?" the stranger says.
        "A real rat drowner," the killer answers, having heard that phrase in a movie.
        "Hope it blows over soon."
        The killer notices that the older man is about his height and build.
        As he zips up his pants, he says, "Where you headed?"
        "Right now, Las Vegas, but then somewhere else and somewhere else after that. Me and the wife, we're retired, we pretty much live in that motorhome. Always wanted to see the country, and we sure in blue blazes are seeing it now. Nothing like life on the road, new sights every day, pure freedom."
        "Sounds great."
        At the sink, washing his hands, the killer stalls, wondering if he dares take the jabbering old fool right now, jam the body in a toilet stall.
        But with all the people in the parking lot, somebody might walk in unexpectedly.
        Closing his fly, the stranger says, "Only problem is, Frannie that's my wife-she hates for me to drive in the rain. Anything more than the tiniest drizzle, she wants to pull over and wait it out."
        He sighs. "This won't be a day we make a lot of miles."
        The killer dries his hands under a hot-air