Mr. Murder [antikvár]

One"I need "Leaning back in his comfortable leather office chair, rocking gently, holding a compact cassette recorder in his right hand and dictating a letter to his editor in New York, Martin Stillwater suddenly realized he was repeating the same two words in a dreamy whisper." I need I need I need "Frowning, Marty clicked off the recorder.His train of thought had clattered down a siding and chugged to a stop. He could not recall what he had been about to say.Needed what?The big house was not merely quiet but eerily still. Paige had taken the kids to lunch and a Saturday matinee movie.But this childless silence was more than just a condition. It had substance. The air felt heavy with it.He put one hand to the nape of his neck. His palm was cool and moist. He shivered.Outside, the autumn day was as hushed as the house, asif all of southern California had been vacated. At the only window of his second-floor study, the wide louvers of the plantation shutters were ajar. Sunlight slanted between angled slats, imprinting the sofa and carpet with narrow {red-gold stripes as lustrous as fox fur; the nearest luminousribbon wrapped one corner of the U-shaped desk. I need Instinct told him that something important had hap-pened only a moment ago, just out of his sight, perceived subliminally.He swiveled his chair and surveyed the room behind him. Other than the fasciae of coppery sunshine interleaved with louver shadows, the only light came from a small desk lamp with a stained-glass shade. Even in *that gloom, however, he could see he was alone with his^books, research files, and computer.Perhaps the silence seemed unnaturally deep only because the house had been filled with noise and bustle since Wednesday, when the schools had closed for the Thanksgiving holiday. He missed the kids. He should have gone to the movie with them. I need . . .The words had been spoken with peculiar tensionan| longing.Now an ominous feeling overcame him, a keen sense; of impending danger. It was the premonitory dread which characters sometimes felt in his novels, and which he always struggled to describe without resorting to cliches| He had not actually experienced anything like it in years, not since Charlotte had been .seriously ill when she was four and the doctor had prepared them for thq possibility of cancer. All day in the hospital, as his little girl had been wheeled from one lab to another for tests, all that sleepless night, and during the long days that followec^ before the physicians ventured a diagnosis, Marty felt haunted by a malevolent spirit whose presence thickened