Velocity

Even if the killer was strong, getting the dead man from the backyard to the master bedroom, considering the stairs, would have been a hard job. Hard and seemingly unnecessary.

To have done it, however, he must have had a reason that was important to him.

Lanny’s eyes were open. Both bulged slightly in their sockets. The left one was askew, as if he’d had a cast eye in life.

Pressure. For the instant during which the bullet had transited the brain, pressure inside the skull soared before being relieved.

A book-club novel lay in Lanny’s lap, a smaller and more cheaply produced volume than the handsome edition of the same title that had been available in bookstores. At least two hundred similar books were shelved at one end of the bedroom.

Billy could see the title, the author’s name, and the jacket illustration. The story was about a search for treasure and true love in the South Pacific.

A long time ago, he had read this novel to Pearl Olsen. She had liked it, but then she had liked them all.

Lanny’s slack right hand rested on the book. He appeared to have marked his place with a photograph, a small portion of which protruded from the pages.

The psychopath had arranged all of this. The tableau satisfied him and had emotional meaning to him, or it was a message—a riddle, a taunt.

Before disturbing the scene, Billy studied it. Nothing about it seemed compelling or clever, nothing that might have excited the murderer enough to motivate him to put forth such effort in its creation.

Billy mourned Lanny; but with a greater passion, he hated that Lanny had been afforded no dignity even in death. The freak dragged him around and staged him as if he were a mannequin, a doll, as if he had existed only for the creep’s amusement and manipulation.

Lanny had betrayed Billy; but that didn’t matter anymore. On the edge of the Dark, on the brink of the Void, few offenses were worth remembering. The only things worth recalling were the moments of friendship and laughter.

If they had been at odds on Lanny’s last day, they were on the same team now, with the same and singular adversary.

Billy thought he heard a noise in the hall.

Without hesitation, holding the revolver in both hands, he left the master bedroom, clearing the doorway fast, sweeping the .38 left to right, seeking a target. No one.

The bathroom, closet, and other bedroom doors were closed, as he had left them.

He didn’t feel a pressing need to search those rooms again. He might have heard nothing but an ordinary settling noise as the old house protested the weight of time, but it almost certainly had not been the sound of a door opening or closing.

He blotted the damp palm of his left hand on his shirt, switched the gun to it, blotted his right hand, returned the gun to it, and went to the head of the stairs.

From the lower floor, from the porch beyond the open front door, came nothing but a summer-night silence, a dead-of-night hush.

13 (#ulink_90d3ec98-3eed-5b11-a8a5-19310aadbe94)

As he stood at the head of the stairs, listening, pain had begun to throb in Billy’s temples. He realized that his teeth were clenched tighter than the jaws of a vise.

He tried to relax and breathe through his mouth. He rolled his head from side to side, working the stiffening muscles of his neck.

Stress could be beneficial if you used it to stay focused and alert. Fear could paralyze, but also sharpen the survival instinct.

He returned to the master bedroom.

Approaching the door, he suddenly thought body and book would be gone. But Lanny still sat in the armchair.

From a tissue box on one of the nightstands, Billy plucked two Kleenex. Using them as an impromptu glove, he moved the dead man’s hand off the book.

Leaving the book on the cadaver’s lap, he opened it to the place that had been marked by the photograph.

He expected sentences or paragraphs to have been highlighted in some fashion: a further message. But the text was pristine.

Still using the Kleenex, he picked up the photo, a snapshot.

She was young and blond and pretty. Nothing in the picture gave a clue to her profession, but Billy knew that she had been a teacher.

Her killer must have found this snapshot in her house, down in Napa. Before or after finding it, he brutally beat the beauty out of her.

No doubt the freak had left the photograph in the book to confirm for the authorities that the two murders had been the work of the same man. He was bragging. He wanted the credit that he had earned.

The only wisdom we can hope to acquire is the wisdom of humility…

The freak hadn’t learned that lesson. Perhaps his failure to learn it would lead to his fall.

If it was possible to feel genuinely heartbroken over the fate of a stranger, the photo of this young woman would have done the job had Billy stared at it too long. He returned it to the book and closed it in the yellowing pages.

After putting the dead man’s hand atop the book, as it had been, he wadded the two Kleenex in his fist. He went into the bathroom that was part of the master suite, pushed the plunger with the Kleenex, and then dropped them into the whirling water in the toilet bowl.

In the bedroom, he stood beside the armchair, not sure what he should do.

Lanny did not deserve to be left here alone without benefit of prayer or justice. If not a close friend, he had nevertheless been a friend. Besides, he was Pearl Olsen’s son, and that ought to count for a lot.

Yet to phone the sheriff’s department, even anonymously, and report the crime might be a mistake. They would want an explanation for the call that had been placed from this house to Billy’s place soon after the murder; and he still had not decided what to tell them.

Other issues, things he didn’t know about, might point the finger of suspicion at him. Circumstantial evidence.

Perhaps the ultimate intention of the killer was to frame Billy for these murders and for others.

Undeniably, the freak saw this as a game. The rules, if any, were known only to him.

Likewise, the definition of victory was known only to him. Winning the pot, capturing the king, scoring the final touchdown might mean, in this case, sending Billy to prison for life not for any rational reason, not so the freak himself could escape justice, but for the sheer fun of it.

Considering that he could not even discern the shape of the playing field, Billy didn’t relish being interrogated by Sheriff John Palmer.

He needed time to think. A few hours at least. Until dawn.

“I’m sorry,” he told Lanny.

He switched off one of the bedside lamps and then the other.

If the house glowed like a centenarian’s birthday cake through the night, someone might notice. And wonder. Everyone knew Lanny Olsen was an early-to-bed guy.

The house stood at the highest and loneliest point of the dead-end lane. Virtually no one drove up here unless they were coming to see Lanny, and no one was likely to visit during the next eight or ten hours.

Midnight had turned Tuesday to Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday were Lanny’s days off. No one would miss him at work until Friday.