Velocity

handle of the knife. Around the point of penetration, dark blood soaked the lightweight summer suit jacket, but the stain wasn’t as large as he would have expected.
    The killer had finished Cottle with a single thrust. He’d known precisely where and how to slip the thin blade between the ribs. The heart had stopped within a beat or two of being punctured, which minimized the bleeding. Cottle’s hands lay in his lap, one upturned and the other cupped against it, as if he’d died while applauding his killer. Mostly concealed, something was captured between the hands. When Billy pinched a corner of the object and pulled it free of the dead man’s grasp, he discovered a computer diskette: red, high density, the same brand that he had used in the days when he had worked at his computer. He studied the body from different angles. He turned slowly in a full circle, surveying the bathroom for any clues the killer might have left either intentionally or inadvertently. Sooner than later, he should probably go through Cottle’s coat and pants pockets. The diskette gave him an excuse to postpone that unpleasant task. In the study, after putting the revolver and the diskette on the desk, he removed the vinyl cover from his shrouded computer. He had not used the machine in almost four years. Curiously, he had never unplugged it. He supposed this might be an unconscious expression of his stubborn—if fragile—hope that Barbara Mandel might one day recover. In his second year of college, when he realized that not much of what he learned there would help him become the writer he wanted to be, he had dropped out. He had done manual labor of various kinds, writing diligently in his spare time. At twenty-one, he had taken his first bartending job. The work had seemed ideal for a writer. He saw story material in every barfly. Patiently developing his talent, he sold more than a score of well-received short stories to a variety of magazines. When he was twenty-five, a major publisher had wanted to collect them in a book. The book sold modestly but earned critical praise, suggesting that bartending would not forever be his primary occupation.
    When Barbara came into Billy’s life, she provided not merely encouragement but also inspiration. Just by knowing her, by loving her, he found a truer and clearer voice in his prose.
    He wrote his first novel, and his publisher responded to it with excitement. The revisions suggested by the editor were minor, a month’s work.
    Then he lost Barbara to the coma.
    The truer and clearer voice in his prose had not been lost with her. He could still write.
    The desire to write, however, slipped away from him, and the will to write, and all interest in storytelling. He no longer wanted to explore the human condition in fiction, for he had too much hard experience of it in reality.
    For two years, his publisher and editor were patient. But the month’s work on his manuscript had become to him more than a lifetime of labor. He could not do it. He repaid the advance and canceled the contract.
    Switching on this computer, even just to review what the killer had left in Ralph Cottle’s hands, felt like a betrayal of Barbara, although she would have disapproved of—even mocked—such thinking.
    He was a little surprised when the machine, so long unused, at once came to life. The screen brightened, and the operating-system logo appeared as the simulated harp strings of the signature music issued from the speakers.
    The computer might have been used more recently than he thought. The fact that the diskette was the same brand as the unused diskettes in one of his desk drawers suggested that it was in fact one of his and that the freak had composed his latest message at this keyboard.
    Oddly enough, he was creeped out by this realization even more than he had been when he’d found the corpse in his bathroom.
    Long unseen yet familiar, the software menu appeared. Because he had written his fiction in Microsoft Word, he tried it first.
    That choice proved correct. The killer had written his message in Word, as well; and it loaded at once.
    The diskette contained three documents. Before Billy could review the text, the telephone rang.
    He figured it must be the freak.
     
     
     

Chapter 26
     
    Billy picked up the phone. “Hello?”
    Not the freak. A woman said, “To whom am I speaking?”
    “To whom am I speaking? You called me.”
    “Billy, that sounds like you. This is Rosalyn Chan.”
    Rosalyn