Mr. Murder

his pain unbearably, and tears in his right eye will reduce him to virtual blindness.
        Instead, as he cruises residential neighborhoods from El Toro into Laguna Hills, where house lights glow warmly in the rain and taunt him with images of domestic bliss, he thinks about how those same children ultimately defied and abandoned him, for this subject leads him away from tears and toward anger. He does not understand why his sweet little girls would choose the charlatan over their real father, when minutes previously they had showered him with thrilling kisses and adoration. Their betrayal disturbs him. Gnaws at him.
        While Marty drove, Paige sat in the back seat with Charlotte and Emily, holding their hands. She was emotionally incapable of letting go of them just yet.
        Marty followed an indirect route across Mission Viejo, initially stayed off main streets as much as possible, and successfully avoided the police. Block after block, Paige continued to study the traffic around them, expecting the battered Buick to appear and try to force them off the pavement. Twice she turned to look out the rear window, certain that the Buick was following them, but her fears were - never realized.
        '- When Marty picked up the Marguerite Parkway and headed south, Paige finally asked, "Where are we going?"
        He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. "I don't know. Just away from here. I'm still thinking about where."
        "Maybe they would've believed you this time."
        "Not a chance."
        "People back there must've seen the Buick."
        "Maybe. But they didn't see the man driving it. None of them can back up my story."
        "Vic and Kathy must've seen him."
        "And thought he was me."
        "But now they'll realize he wasn't."
        "They didn't see us together, Paige. That's what matters, damn it!
        Someone seeing us together, an independent witness."
        She said, "Charlotte and Emily. They saw him and you at the same time."
        Marty shook his head. "Doesn't count. I wish it did. But Lowbock won't put any stock in the testimony of little kids."
        "Not so little," Emily piped up from beside Paige, sounding even younger and tinier than she actually was.
        Charlotte remained uncharacteristically quiet. Both girls were still shivering, but Charlotte had a worse case of the shakes than did Emily.
        She was leaning against her mother for warmth, her head pulled turtlelike into the collar of her coat.
        Marty had the heater turned up as high as it would go. The interior of the BMW should have been suffocatingly hot. It wasn't.
        Even Paige was cold. She said, "Maybe we should go back and try to talk sense to them anyway."
        Marty was adamant. "Honey, no, we can't. Think about it.
        They'll sure as hell take the Beretta. I shot at the guy with it.
        From their point of view, one way or another, there's been a crime, and the gun was used in the commission of it. Either somebody really attempted to kidnap the girls, and I tried to kill him. Or it's still all a hoax to sell books, get me higher on the bestseller list. Maybe I hired a friend to drive the Buick, shot a bunch of blanks at him, induced my own kids to lie, now I'm filing another false police report."
        "After all this, Lowbock won't still be pushing that ridiculous theory."
        "Won't he? The hell he won't."
        "Marty, he can't."
        He sighed. "Okay, all right, maybe he won't, probably he won't."
        Paige said, "He'll realize that something a lot more serious is going on-"
        "But he won't believe my story either, which I've got to admit sounds nuttier than a giant-size can of Planters finest. And if you'd read the piece in People… Anyway, he'll take the Beretta. What if he discovers the shotgun in the trunk?"
        "There's no reason for him to take that."
        "He might find an excuse. Listen, Paige, Lowbock's not going to change his mind about me that easily, not just because the kids tell him it's all true. He'll still be a lot more suspicious of me than of any guy in a Buick he's never seen. If he takes both guns, we're defense less.
        Suppose the cops leave, then this bastard, this look-alike, he walks into the house two minutes later, when we don't have anything to protect ourselves."
        "If the police still don't believe it, if they won't give us protection, then we won't