Mr. Murder

on it and the dedication with which he dragged his half-numb and aching body toward it, the pistol might have been the Holy Grail.
        He became aware of a rumble separate from the sounds of the storm, followed by a thump, which he blearily assumed had something to do with The Other, but he didn't pause to look back. Maybe what he heard was a death twitch, heels drumming on the floor, one final convulsion.
        At the very least the bastard must be gravely injured.
        Crippled and dying. But Marty wanted to get his trembling hands on the gun before celebrating his own survival.
        He reached the pistol, clutched it, and let out a grunt of weary triumph. He flopped on his side, wheeled around, and aimed back toward the foyer, prepared to discover that his dogged pursuer was looming over him.
        But The Other was still flat on his back. Legs splayed out.
        Arms at his sides. Motionless. Might even be dead. No such luck.
        His head lolled toward Marty. His face was pale, glazed with sweat, as white and shiny as a porcelain mask.
        "Broke," he wheezed.
        He seemed able to move only his head and the fingers of his right hand, though not the hand itself. A grimace of effort, rather than pain, contorted his features. He lifted his head off the floor, and the stillvital fingers curled and uncurled like the legs of a dying tarantula, but he appeared incapable of sitting up or bending either leg at the knee.
        "Broke," he repeated.
        Something in the way the word was spoken made Marty think of a toy soldier, bent springs, and ruined gears.
        Steadying himself against the wall with one hand, Marty got to his feet.
        "Gonna kill me?" The Other asked.
        The prospect of putting a bullet in the brain of an injured and defenseless man was repulsive in the extreme, but Marty was tempted to commit the atrocity and worry about the psychological and legal consequences later. He was restrained as much by curiosity as by moral considerations.
        "Kill you? Love to." His voice was hoarse and no doubt would be so for a day or two, until he recovered from the strangulation attempt.
        "Who the hell are you?" Every raspy word reminded him of how fortunate he was to have lived to ask the question.
        The low rumble came again, the same noise he had heard when he'd been crawling toward the pistol. This time he recognized it, not the convulsions and drumming heels of a dying man, but simply the vibrations of the automatic garage door, which had been going up the first time, and which now was coming down.
        Voices arose in the kitchen as Paige and the girls entered the house from the garage.
        Less shaky by the second, and having caught his breath, Marty hurried across the living room, toward the dining room, eager to stop the kids before they saw anything of what had happened. For a long time to come, they would have trouble feeling comfortable in their own home, knowing an intruder had gotten in and had tried to kill their father.
        But they would be more seriously traumatized if they saw the destruction and the bloodstained man lying paralyzed on the foyer floor. Considering the macabre fact that the intruder was also a dead-ringer for their father, they might never sleep well in this house again.
        When Marty burst into the kitchen from the dining room, letting the swinging door slap back and forth behind him, Paige turned in surprise from the rack where she was hanging her raincoat. Still in their yellow slickers and floppy vinyl hats, the girls grinned and tilted their heads expectantly, probably figuring that his explosive entrance was the start of a joke or one of Daddy's silly impromptu performances.
        "Get them out of here," he croaked at Paige, trying to sound calm, defeated by his coarse voice and all-too-evident tension.
        "What's happened to you?"
        "Now," he insisted, "right away, take them across the street to Vic and Kathy's."
        The girls saw the gun in his hand. Their grins vanished, and their eyes widened.
        Paige said, "You're bleeding. What-"
        "Not me," he interrupted, belatedly realizing that he'd gotten the blood of The Other all over his shirt when he'd fallen atop the man.
        "I'm okay."
        "What's happened?" Paige demanded.
        Yanking open the connecting door to the garage, he said, "We've had a thing here." His throat hurt