Velocity

would remain calmer if he remembered his true purpose. His true purpose was not the endless cycle of idea and action, was not the preservation of his freedom or even his life. He must live that she could live, helpless but safe, helpless and sleeping and dreaming but subjected to no indignity, no evil.
    He was a shallow man. He had often proved that truth to himself.
    In the face of suffering, he had not possessed the strength of will to pursue his gift for the written word. He rejected the gift not just once but a damning number of times, for gifts conferred by the power that had conferred this one are perpetually offered and can come to nothing only if they are perpetually rejected.
    In his suffering, he had been humbled by the limitations of language, which he should have been. He had also been defeated by the limitations of language, which he should not have been.
    He was a shallow man. He did not have within him the capacity to care deeply about multitudes, to accept every neighbor into his heart without qualification. The power of compassion was in him merely an ability, and its potentiality seemed to be fulfilled by caring for one woman.
    Because of this shallowness, he believed himself to be a weak man, perhaps not as weak as Ralph Cottle, but not strong. He had been chilled but never surprised when the stewbum had said I see the way you’re a little like me.
    The sleeper, safe and dreaming, was his true purpose and also his only hope of redemption. For that, he must care and not care; he must be still.
    Calmer than when he had slammed the drawer, Billy reviewed the bathroom one more time. He saw no evidence of the crime.
    Time was still a river rushing, a spinning wheel.
    Hurriedly but thoroughly, he retraced the route along which he had dragged the dead man, searching for additional smears of blood like the one in the bathroom. He discovered none.
    Doubting himself, he quickly toured the bedroom, living room, and kitchen once more. He tried to see everything through the eyes of suspicious authority.
    Only the situation on the front porch remained to be set right. He had left that task for last because it was less urgent than the need to conceal the corpse.
    In case he didn’t have time to address the porch, he took from a kitchen cabinet the bottle of bourbon with which he had spiked his Guinness stout on Monday night. He swigged directly from the bottle.
    Instead of swallowing, he swished the whiskey between his teeth, around his mouth, as if it were mouthwash. The longer he held the alcohol, the more it burned his gums, tongue, cheeks.
    He spat it in the sink before he remembered to gargle.
    He rinsed his mouth with another swig but also let it churn in his throat for several seconds.
    With a wheeze but not a choke, he spat this second mouthful in the sink just as the expected knock came at the front door, loud and protracted.
    Perhaps four minutes had passed since he’d hung up the phone after his conversation with Rosalyn Chan. Maybe five. It felt like an hour; it felt like ten seconds.
    As the knock sounded, Billy turned on the cold water to wash the reek of booze out of the sink. He left it streaming.
    In the quiet after the knock, he capped the bourbon and returned it to the cabinet.
    At the sink once more, he cranked off the water as the knocking came again.
    Answering at once on the first knock might have made him seem anxious. Waiting for a third might make it appear as though he had considered not answering at all.
    Crossing the living room, he thought to examine his hands. He did not see any blood.
     
     
     

Chapter 28
     
    When Billy Wiles opened the front door, he found a sheriff’s deputy standing three cautious steps from the threshold and to one side. The cop’s right hand rested on the pistol in the swivel holster at his hip, rested there not as if he were prepared to draw it, but as casually as anyone might stand with a hand on his hip.
    Billy had hoped that he would know him. He didn’t.
    The officer’s badge featured a nameplate: Sgt. V. Napolitino.
    At forty-six, Lanny Olsen had held the same rank—deputy—at which he had entered service as a younger man.
    In his early twenties, V. Napolitino had already been promoted to sergeant. He had the well-scrubbed, clear-eyed, intelligent, and diligent look of a man who would make lieutenant by twenty-five, captain by thirty, commander by thirty-five, and chief before forty.
    Billy’s preference would have been a fat, rumpled,