Velocity

that’s what the freak was doing.
    The call to 911 certainly seemed to signify that intention. It had drawn Billy to the attention of the sheriff’s department in a context that they would remember… and wonder about.
    Now Billy combined all three documents and printed them on a single sheet of paper: Because I, too, am a fisher of men. Cruelty, violence, death. Movement, velocity, impact. Flesh, blood, bone. My last killing: midnight Thursday. Your suicide: soon thereafter.
    With scissors, Billy trimmed out the block of text, intending to fold it and put it in his wallet, where he would have it for easy review.
    As he finished, he realized that this paper appeared identical to that on which he had received the first four messages from the killer. If the diskette in Cottle’s hands had been prepared on this computer, perhaps the first four notes had been composed here as well.
    He exited Microsoft Word, and then entered the software again. He called up the directory.
    The list of documents was not long. He had used this program solely for writing fiction.
    He recognized the key words of the titles of his single novel and of the short stories that he had completed, as well as those of stories never finished. Only one document was unfamiliar to him: Death.
    When he loaded that document, he discovered the text of the first four messages from the freak.
    He hesitated, remembering procedures. Then he rattled the keys, summoning the date when the document had been first composed, which turned out to be 10:09 A.M. the previous Friday.
    Billy had left for work fifteen minutes earlier than usual that day. He had swung by the post office to mail some bills.
    The two notes left on his windshield, the one taped over the Explorer’s ignition, and even the one he’d found on his refrigerator this same morning had been prepared on this computer more than three days before the first had been delivered, before the nightmare had begun Monday evening.
    If Lanny had not destroyed the first two notes to save his job, if Billy had offered them to the police as evidence, sooner or later the authorities would have checked this computer. They would have reached the inescapable conclusion that Billy himself had written the notes.
    The freak had prepared for all contingencies. He was nothing if not thorough. And he had been confident his script would play out as he had intended.
    Billy deleted the document titled Death, which might still be used as evidence against him, depending on how events unfolded from here on.
    He suspected that deleting it from the directory did not remove it from the hard disk. He would have to find a way to ask someone who was a computer maven.
    When he shut down the computer, he realized that he had still not heard the patrol-car engines start up.
     
     
     

Chapter 33
     
    Peeling the shade aside at a study window, Billy discovered the driveway empty in the streaming sunshine. He had become so absorbed with the diskette that he had not heard the car engines start. The sergeants had gone.
    He had expected to discover another challenge on the diskette: a choice between two innocent victims, a short deadline for making a decision.
    No doubt another one would come soon, but for now he was free to deal with other urgent business. He had plenty of it.
    He went to the garage and returned with a length of rope and one of the polyurethane drop cloths with which he covered furniture when he had repainted the interior of the house in the spring. He unfolded this tarp on the study floor in front of the desk.
    After wrestling Cottle’s body out of the knee space and dragging it around the desk, he rolled it onto the drop cloth.
    The prospect of turning out the dead man’s pockets disgusted him. He got on with it, anyway.
    Billy wasn’t looking for planted evidence that would incriminate him. If the freak had salted the corpse, he had been subtle about it; Billy would not find everything.
    Besides, he intended to dispose of the body in a place where it would never be found. For that reason, he was unconcerned about leaving fingerprints on the plastic sheeting.
    The suit coat had two inner pockets. In the first, Cottle had kept the pint of whiskey that he had spilled. From the second, Billy extracted a pint of rum, and returned it.
    In the two outer pockets of the coat were cigarettes, a cheap butane lighter, and a roll of butterscotch Life Savers. In the front pants pockets, he found sixty-seven cents in coins, a deck