Velocity

“Where were you parked?”

“At the tavern.”

“An envelope?”

“No.”

“You see anyone watching you? I mean, when you took it out from under the wiper and read it.”

“Nobody.”

“What do you make of it?”

“That was my question to you,” Billy reminded him.

“A prank. A sick joke.”

Staring at the ominous lines of type, Billy said, “That was my first reaction, but then…”

Lanny stepped sideways, aligning himself with new hay bales faced with full-figure drawings of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. “But then you ask yourself What if…?”

“Don’t you?”

“Sure. Every cop does, all the time, otherwise he ends up dead sooner than he should. Or shoots when he shouldn’t.”

Not long ago, Lanny had wounded a belligerent drunk who he thought had been armed. Instead of a gun, the guy had a cell phone.

“But you can’t keep what-ifing yourself forever,” he continued. “You’ve got to go with instinct. And your instinct is the same as mine. It’s a prank. Besides, you’ve got a hunch who did it.”

“Steve Zillis,” said Billy.

“Bingo.”

Lanny assumed an isosceles shooting stance, right leg quartered back for balance, left knee flexed, two hands on the pistol. He took a deep breath and popped Elmer five times as a shrapnel of blackbirds exploded from the elms and tore into the sky.

Counting four mortal hits and one wound, Billy said, “The thing is…this doesn’t seem like something Steve would do—or could.”

“Why not?”

“He’s a guy who carries a small rubber bladder in his pocket so he can make a loud farting sound when he thinks that might be funny.”

“Meaning?”

Billy folded the typewritten message and tucked it in his shirt pocket. “This seems too complex for Steve, too…subtle.”

“Young Steve is about as subtle as the green-apple nasties,” Lanny agreed.

Resuming his stance, he spent the second half of the magazine on Bugs, scoring five mortal hits.

“What if it’s real?” Billy asked.

“It’s not.”

“But what if it is?”

“Homicidal lunatics only play games like that in movies. In real life, killers just kill. Power is what it’s about for them, the power and sometimes violent sex—not teasing you with puzzles and riddles.”

Ejected shell casings littered the grass. The westering sun polished the tubes of brass to a bloody gold.

Aware that he hadn’t quelled Billy’s doubt, Lanny continued: “Even if it were real—and it’s not—what is there to act upon in that note?”

“Blond schoolteachers, elderly women.”

“Somewhere in Napa County.”

“Yeah.”

“Napa County isn’t San Francisco,” Lanny said, “but it’s not unpopulated barrens, either. Lots of people in lots of towns. The sheriff’s department plus every police force in the county together don’t have enough men to cover all those bases.”

“You don’t need to cover them all. He qualifies his targets—a lovely blond schoolteacher.”

“That’s a judgment,” Lanny objected. “Some blond schoolteacher you find lovely might be a hag to me.”

“I didn’t realize you had such high standards in women.”

Lanny smiled. “I’m picky.”

“Anyway there’s also the elderly woman active in charity work.”

Jamming a third magazine in the pistol, Lanny said, “A lot of elderly women are active in charities. They come from a generation that cared about their neighbors.”

“So you aren’t going to do anything?”

“What do you want me to do?”

Billy had no suggestion, only an observation: “It seems like we ought to do something.”

“By nature, police are reactive, not proactive.”

“So he has to murder somebody first?”

“He isn’t going to murder anyone.”

“He says he will,” Billy protested.

“It’s a prank. Steve Zillis has finally graduated from the squirting-flowers-and-plastic-vomit school of humor.”

Billy nodded. “You’re probably right.”