Mr. Murder

he'd been through tonight, it had left deep marks on him.
        Before Marty could respond, Charlotte and Emily appeared at the end of the hall, where it opened on the family room. They must have slipped into their raincoats the minute they heard their father's voice.
        They were buttoning up as they came.
        Charlotte's voice wavered as she said, "Daddy?"
        At the sight of his daughters, Marty's eyes flooded with tears.
        When Charlotte spoke to him, he took another step inside, so Vic could close the door.
        The kids ran past Kathy, and Marty dropped to his knees on the foyer floor, and the kids just about flew into his arms hard enough to knock him over. As the three of them hugged one another, the girls talked at once, "Daddy, are you okay? We were so scared. Are you okay? I love you, Daddy. You were all yucky bloody. I told her it wasn't your blood. Was it a burglar, was it Mrs. Sanchez, did she go berserk, did the mailman go berserk, who went berserk, are you all right, is Mommy all right, is it over now, why do nice people just suddenly go berserk anyway?" All three were chattering at once, in fact, because Marty kept talking through all of their questions, "My Charlotte, my Emily, my kids, I love you, I love you so much, I won't let them steal you away again, never again." He kissed their cheeks, their foreheads, hugged them fiercely, smoothed their hair with his shaky hands, and in general made over them as if he hadn't seen them in years.
        Kathy was smiling and at the same time crying quietly, daubing at her eyes with a yellow dish towel.
        Vic supposed the reunion was touching, but he wasn't as moved by it as his wife was, partly because Marty looked and sounded peculiar to him, not strange in the way he expected a man to be strange after fighting off an intruder in his house if that was actually what had happened-but just… well, just strange. Odd. The things Marty was saying were slightly weird, "My Emily, Charlotte, mine, just as cute as in your picture, mine, we'll be together, it's my destiny."
        His tone of voice was also unusual, too shaky and urgent if the ordeal was over, which the departure of the police surely indicated, but also too forced. Dramatic. Overly dramatic. He wasn't speaking spontaneously but seemed to be playing a stage role, struggling to remember the right thing to say.
        Everyone said creative people were strange, especially writers, and when Vic first met Martin Stillwater, he expected the novelist to be eccentric. But Marty had disappointed in that regard, he had been the most normal, levelheaded neighbor anyone could hope to have.
        Until now.
        Getting to his feet, holding on to his daughters, Marty said, "We've got to go." He turned toward the front door.
        Vic said, "Wait a second, Marty, buddy, you can't just blow out of here like that, with us so damned curious and all."
        Marty had let go of Charlotte only long enough to open the door.
        He grabbed her hand again as the wind whistled into the foyer and rattled the framed embroidery of bluebirds and spring flowers that hung on the wall.
        When the writer stepped outside without responding to Vic in any way, Vic glanced at Kathy and saw her expression had changed.
        Tears still glistened on her cheeks, but her eyes were dry, and she looked puzzled.
        So it isn't just me, he thought.
        He went outside and saw that the writer was already off the stoop, heading down the walk in the wind-tossed rain, holding the girls' hands.
        The air was chilly. Frogs were singing, but their songs were unnatural, cold and tinny, like the grinding-racheting of stripped gears in frozen machinery. The sound of them made Vic want to go back inside, sit in front of the fire, and drink a lot of hot coffee with brandy in it.
        "Damn it, Marty, wait a minute!"
        The writer turned, looked back, with the girls cuddling close to his sides.
        Vic said, "We're your friends, we want to help. Whatever's wrong, we want to help."
        "Nothing you can do, Victor' "Victor? Man, you know I hate "Victor," nobody calls me that, not even my dear old gray-haired mother if she knows what's good for her."
        "Sorry… Vic. I'm just… I've got a lot on my mind."
        With the girls in tow, he started down the walkway again.
        A car was parked directly at the end of the walk. A new