Velocity

lazy he had been.
    In retrospect, Billy heard markedly greater desperation in his friend’s voice than he had heard at the time: I never really wanted this life… but the thing is… whether I wanted it or not, it’s what I’ve got now. It’s all I have. I want a chance to keep it.
    Even most good men had a breaking point. Lanny might have been closer to his than Billy could have known.
    The wall clock showed 8:09.
    In less than four hours, regardless of the choice that Billy made, someone would die. He wanted this responsibility off his shoulders.
    Lanny was supposed to call him by 8:30.
    Billy had no intention of waiting. He snatched the handset from the wall phone and keyed in Lanny’s personal cell-phone number.
    After five rings, he was switched to voice mail. He said, “This is Billy. I’m at home. What the hell? What’ve you done? Call me now.”
    Instinct told him not to attempt to reach Lanny through the sheriffs-department dispatcher. He would be leaving a trail that might have consequences he could not foresee.
    His friend’s betrayal, if that’s what it was, had reduced Billy to the cautious calculations of a guilty man, although he had done nothing wrong.
    A transient sting of mingled pain and anger would have been understandable. Instead, resentment swelled in him so thick, so quick, that his chest grew tight and he had difficulty swallowing.
    Destroying the notes and lying about them might spare Lanny dismissal from the force, but Billy’s situation would be made worse. Lacking evidence, he would find it more difficult to convince the authorities that his story was true and that it might shed light on the killer’s psychology.
    If he approached them now, he risked looking like a publicity seeker or like a bartender who sampled too much of his wares. Or like a suspect.
    Riveted by that thought, he stood very still for a minute, exploring it. Suspect.
    His mouth had gone dry. His tongue cleaved to his palate.
    He went to the kitchen sink and drew a glass of cold water from the tap. At first he could barely choke down a mouthful, but then he drained the glass in three long swallows.
    Too cold, drunk too fast, the water wrung a brief sharp pain from his chest, and washed nausea through his gut. He put the glass on the drainboard. He leaned over the sink until the queasiness passed.
    He splashed his greasy face with cold water, washed his hands in hot.
    He paced the kitchen. He sat briefly at the table, then paced some more.
    At 8:30, he stood by the telephone, staring at it, although he had every reason to believe that it would not ring.
    At 8:40, he used his cell phone to call Lanny’s cellular number, leaving the house phone open. He got voice mail again.
    The kitchen was too warm. He felt stifled.
    At 8:45, Billy stepped outside, onto the back porch. He needed fresh air.
    With the door wide open behind him, he could hear the telephone if it rang.
    Indigo in the east, the sky overhead and to the west trembled faintly with the iridescent vibrations of an orange-and-green sunset.
    The encircling woods bristled dark, growing darker. If a hostile observer had taken up position in that timber, crouching in ferns and philodendrons, none but a sharp-nosed dog could have known that he was out there.
    A hundred toads, all unseen, had begun to sing in the descending gloom, but in the kitchen, past the open door, all was silent.
    Perhaps Lanny just needed a little more time to find a way to tweak the truth.
    Surely he cared about more than himself. He could not have been reduced so totally, so quickly, to the most base self-interest.
    He was still a cop, lazy or not, desperate or not. Sooner than later he would realize that he couldn’t live with himself if, by obstructing the investigation, he contributed to more deaths.
    The ink-spill in the east soon saturated the sky overhead, while in the west, all was fire and blood.
     
     
     

Chapter 9
     
    At 9:00, Billy left the back porch and went inside. He closed the door and locked it.
    In just three hours, a fate would be decided, a death ordained, and if the killer followed a pattern, someone would be murdered before dawn.
    The key to the SUV lay on the dinette table. Billy picked it up.
    He considered setting out in search of Lanny Olsen. What he had thought was resentment, earlier, had been mere exasperation. Now he knew real resentment, a dark and bitter brooding. He badly wanted confrontation. Preserve me from the enemy who has something to