Velocity

Valis were working together. They were each other’s alibi. Gotta go.”
    Billy remembered to press END before dropping Lanny’s phone.
    He still had Lanny’s pistol and Taser. He threaded the Wilson Combat holster onto his belt.
    From the closet in his bedroom, he snared a sport coat, shrugged into it to conceal the pistol as best he could.
    He slipped the Taser in an inner coat pocket.
    What had Steve been doing here in the afternoon? By then he would have known that his mentor had been outed, the collection of hands and faces discovered. He might even suspect that Valis was dead.
    Billy remembered finding the light on in the study. He went in there, all the way behind the desk this time, and found the computer in sleep mode. He hadn’t left it on.
    When he moved the mouse, a document appeared. Can torture wake the comatose? Her blood, her mutilation will be your third wound.
    Billy flew through the house. He leaped off the back-porch steps, stumbled when he landed, and ran.
    Night had fallen. An owl hooted. Wings against the stars.
     
     
     

Chapter 76
     
    At 9:06 the guest parking lot in front of Whispering Pines contained only one car. Visiting hours ended at nine.
    They hadn’t locked the front door yet. Billy pushed inside, crossed to the main nurses’ station.
    Two nurses were behind the counter. He knew them both. He said, “I made arrangements to stay—”
    The overhead lights went out. The parking-lot lights died, too. The main hall was almost as black as a lava pipe.
    He left the nurses in confusion and followed the corridor toward the west wing.
    At first he hurried, but within a dozen steps, in the dark, he collided with a wheelchair, grabbed at it, felt the shape of it.
    From the chair, a frightened old woman said, “What’s happening, what’re you doing?”
    “It’s all right, you’ll be okay,” he assured her, and went on.
    He didn’t move as fast now, arms in front of him like a blind man feeling for obstructions.
    Wall-mounted emergency lights flickered on, then off, pulsed again and died.
    An authoritative male voice calmly called out, “Please stay in your rooms. We will come to you. Please stay in your rooms.”
    The emergency sconces tried to function again. But they pulsed at one-third brightness, and erratically.
    These flares and leaping shadows were disorienting, but Billy could see well enough to avoid the people in the halls. Another nurse, an orderly, an elderly man in pajamas, looking bewildered…
    A fire alarm issued an electronic ululation. A recorded voice began to give evacuation instructions.
    A woman in a walker intercepted Billy as he approached her, plucked at his sleeve, seeking information.
    “They’ve got it under control,” he assured her as he hurried past.
    He turned the corner into the west wing. Just ahead, on the right. The door stood open.
    The room was dark. No auxiliary sconce in here. His own body blocked what little light pulsed in from the west hall.
    Slamming doors, a cacophony of slamming doors, which weren’t doors at all, but his heart.
    He felt his way toward the bed. He should have reached it. He went two steps farther. The bed wasn’t here.
    He pirouetted blindly, sweeping his arms through the air. All he found was the barstool.
    Her bed was on wheels. Someone had moved her.
    In the hallway again, he looked left, looked right. A few of the ambulatory patients had come out of their rooms. A nurse was marshaling them for an orderly exit.
    Through the dance of light and shadow, Billy saw a man pushing a bed at the far end of the hall, moving fast toward a flashing red EXIT sign.
    Dodging patients, nurses, phantoms of shadow, Billy ran.
    The door at the end of the hall banged open as the man slammed the bed through it.
    A nurse grabbed Billy by the arm, halting him. He tried to pull loose, but she had a grip.
    “Help me roll some of the bedridden out of here,” she said.
    “There’s no fire.”
    “There must be. We’ve got to evacuate them.”
    “My wife,” he declared, though he and Barbara had never married, “my wife needs help.”
    He tore loose of the nurse, nearly knocking her off her feet, and hurried toward the flashing exit sign.
    He shoved through the door, into the night. Dumpsters, cars and SUV’s in a staff parking lot.
    For a moment, he didn’t see the man, the bed. There. An ambulance waited thirty feet away, to the left, its engine running. The wide rear door stood open. The guy with the bed had almost