Mr. Murder

in Mammoth Lakes, California. The street address means nothing to him, and he wonders if it is the house in which he grew up.
        He must love his parents. He dedicated a book to them. Yet they are ciphers to him. So much has been lost.
        He returns to the bookshelves. Opening the U.S. or British edition of every title in the collection to study the dedication, he eventually characters are based-excluding, of course, the homicidal psychopaths.
        And two volumes later, To my daughters, Charlotte and Emily, with the hope they will read this book one day when they are grown up and will know that the daddy in this story speaks my own heart when he talks with such conviction and emotion about his feelings for his own little girls.
        Putting the books aside, he picks up the photograph once more and holds it in both hands with something like reverence.
        The attractive blonde is surely Paige. A perfect wife.
        The two girls are Charlotte and Emily,-although he has no way of knowing which is which. They look sweet and obedient.
        Paige, Charlotte, Emily.
        At last he has found his life. This is where he belongs. This is home.
        The future begins now.
        Paige, Charlotte, Emily.
        This is the family toward which destiny has led him.
        "I need to be Marty Stillwater," he says, and he is thrilled to have found, at last, his own warm place in this cold and lonely world.
        Dr. Paul Guthridge's office suite had three examination rooms. Over the years, Marty had been in all of them. They were identical to one another, indistinguishable from rooms in doctors' offices from Maine to Texas, pale-blue walls, stainless-steel fixtures, otherwise white-on white, scrub sink, stool, an eye chart. The place had no more charm than a morgue though a better smell.
        Marty sat on the edge of a padded examination table that was protected by a continuous roll of paper sheeting. He was shirtless, and the room was cool. Though he was still wearing his pants, he felt naked, vulnerable. In his mind's eye, he saw himself having a catatonic seizure, being unable to talk or move or even blink, whereupon the physician would mistake him for dead, strip him naked, wire an ID tag to his big toe, tape his eyelids shut, and ship him off to the coroner for processing.
        Although it earned him a living, a suspense writer's imagination made him more aware of the constant proximity of death than were most people.
        Every dog was a potential rabies carrier. Every strange van passing through the neighborhood was driven by a sexual psychopath who would kidnap and murder any child left unattended for more than three seconds.
        Every can of soup in the pantry was botulism waiting to happen.
        He was not particularly afraid of doctors-though he was not comforted by them, either.
        What troubled him was the whole idea of medical science, not because he distrusted it but because, irrationally, its very existence was a reminder that life was tenuous, death inescapable. He didn't need reminders. He already possessed an acute awareness of mortality, and spent his life trying to cope with it.
        Determined not to sound like an hysteric while describing his symptoms to Guthridge, Marty recounted the odd experiences of the past three days in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice. He tried to use clinical rather than emotional terms, beginning with the seven-minute fugue in his office and ending with the abrupt panic attack he had suffered as he had been leaving the house to drive to the doctor's office.
        Guthridge was an excellent internist-in part because he was a good listener-although he didn't look the role. At forty-five, he appeared ten years younger than his age, and he had a boyish manner. Today he wore tennis shoes, chinos, and a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. In the summer, he favored colorful Hawaiian shirts. On those rare occasions when he wore a traditional white smock over slacks, shirt, and tie, he claimed to be "playing doctor" or "on strict probation from the American Medical Association's dress-code committee," or "suddenly overwhelmed by the godlike responsibilities of my office."
        Paige thought Guthridge was an exceptional physician, and the girls regarded him with the special affection usually reserved for a favorite uncle.
        Marty liked him too.
        He suspected the doctor's eccentricities were not calculated