Velocity

discover evidence of perversity, kinky secrets.
    Because such care had been taken in their alteration, so much time expended, these mannequins seemed to represent more than that. This was an expression not of desire but of a ravenous craving, of a rapacious need that could never be fully satisfied.
    A second mannequin sat with its back to a wall, legs splayed. Its eyes had been cut out. Teeth had been inserted in their place.
    These appeared to be animal teeth, perhaps those of reptiles and perhaps real. Hooked fangs and snaggled incisors.
    Each tooth had been meticulously glued in the rim of the socket. Each cluster appeared to have been designed with much thought as to the most fearsome, bristling arrangement.
    The mouth had been cut open, carved wide. Wicked, inhuman teeth filled the mannequin’s maw.
    Like the petals of a Venus flytrap, the ears were rimmed with poised teeth.
    Teeth sprouted from the nipples and from the navel. A crafted vagina featured more fangs than the other orifices.
    Whether this macabre figure represented a fear of all-devouring womanhood, whether instead it was being devoured by its own hunger, Billy didn’t know, didn’t care.
    He just wanted to get out of here. He had seen enough. Yet he continued to look.
    The third mannequin also sat with its back to a wall. Its hands rested in its lap, holding a bowl. The bowl was actually the top of its skull, which had been sawn off.
    Photographs of male genitalia overflowed the bowl. Billy did not touch them, but he could see enough to suspect that every picture featured the same genitalia.
    A bouquet of similar photos, scores of them, bloomed from the top of the open skull. Still more blossomed from the mannequin’s mouth.
    Evidently Steve Zillis had spent a lot of time taking snapshots of himself from various angles, in various states of arousal.
    Billy’s latex gloves served a purpose besides guarding against leaving fingerprints. Without them, he would have been sickened by the need to touch doorknobs, light switches, anything in the house.
    The fourth mannequin had not yet been mutilated. Zillis probably hungered to get at her.
    During his shift at the tavern, drawing beers from the tap, telling jokes, doing his tricks, these were the thoughts behind the radiant smile.
    Steve’s bedroom proved to be as sparsely furnished as the rest of the house. The bed, a nightstand, a lamp, a clock. No art on the walls, no knickknacks, no memorabilia.
    The bedclothes were in disarray. One pillow lay on the floor.
    A corner of the room evidently served in place of a laundry hamper. Rumpled shirts, khakis, jeans, and dirty underwear were heaped as Steve had tossed them.
    A search of the bedroom and closet turned up another disturbing discovery. Under the bed were a dozen pornographic videos, the covers of which depicted naked women in handcuffs, in chains, some gagged, some blindfolded, cowering women threatened by sadistic men.
    These weren’t homemade videos. They were professionally packaged and probably available in any adult-video shop, whether brick-and-mortar or online.
    Billy put them back where he had found them, and he considered whether he had discovered enough to warrant calling the police.
    No. Neither the mannequins nor the pornography proved that Steve Zillis had ever harmed a real human being, only that he nurtured a sick and vivid fantasy life.
    Meanwhile, a dead man was wrapped for disposal and stowed behind the sofa in Billy’s house.
    If he became a suspect in the murder of Giselle Winslow in Napa or if Lanny Olsen’s body was found and Billy became a suspect in that murder, he would at the very least be put under surveillance. He would lose his freedom of action.
    If they found Cottle’s body, he would be arrested.
    No one would understand or believe the threat against Barbara. They would not take his warnings seriously. When you were a prime suspect, what the police wanted to hear from you was what they expected to hear from you, which was a confession.
    He knew how it worked. He knew exactly how it worked.
    During the twenty-four hours or the forty-eight hours—or the week, the month, the year—that it took to establish his innocence, if he ever could establish it, Barbara would be vulnerable, without a guardian.
    He had been drawn in too deep. Nobody could save him except he himself.
    If he found the face in a jar of formaldehyde and other grisly souvenirs, he might be able to nail Zillis for the authorities. But nothing