Velocity

47
     
    Four hours of sleep facilitated by Vicodin and Elephant beer had not been sufficient rest.
    More than twelve active hours had passed since Billy had rolled out of bed. He still had physical resources, but the wheels of his mind, so long racing, were not spinning as fast as they had been, as fast as he needed them to spin.
    Confident that the Explorer did not look like the death wagon that it was, he stopped at a convenience store. He bought Anacin for a swelling headache and a package of No-Doz caffeine tablets.
    He’d eaten two English muffins for breakfast and later a ham sandwich. He was in a calorie deficit, and shaky.
    The store offered vacuum-packaged sandwiches and a microwave in which to heat them. For some reason, just the thought of meat stirred a billowing sensation in his stomach.
    He bought six Hershey’s bars for sugar, six Planters Peanut Bars for protein, and a bottle of Pepsi to wash down the No-Doz.
    Referring to all the candy, the cashier said, “Is it Valentine’s Day in July or something?”
    “Halloween,” Billy said.
    Sitting in the SUV, he took the Anacin and the No-Doz.
    On the passenger’s seat lay the newspaper he’d bought in Napa. He’d not yet found time to read the story about the Winslow murder.
    With the newspaper were a few Denver Post articles downloaded from the library computer. Judith Kesselman, gone missing forever.
    As he ate a Hershey’s bar, a Planters, he read the printouts. University, public, and police officials were quoted. Everyone except the police expressed confidence that Judith would be found safe.
    The cops were guarded in their statements. Unlike the academics, bureaucrats, and politicians, they avoided bullshit. They were the only ones who sounded as if they truly cared about the young woman.
    The officer in charge of the investigation was Detective Ramsey Ozgard. Some of his colleagues called him Oz.
    Ozgard had been forty-four at the time of the disappearance. At that point in his career, he’d received three citations for bravery.
    At fifty, he was probably still on the force, a likelihood supported by the only other personal information about him in the articles. When he was thirty-eight, Ramsey Ozgard had been shot in the left leg. He had been approved for permanent disability. He had turned it down. He did not limp.
    Billy wanted to talk to Ozgard. To do so, however, he could not use his real name or his phone.
    As the candy, Pepsi, and No-Doz began to lubricate the flywheels of his mind, Billy drove to Lanny Olsen’s place.
    He did not park at the church and walk from there, as he’d done before. When he arrived at the isolated house at the end of the lane, he drove across the ascending backyard, past the pistol range with the hay-bale-and-hillside backstop.
    Lawn gave way to wild grass, to brambles and sparse brush. The terrain grew stony and furrowed.
    He stopped two-thirds of the way up the slope, put the Explorer in park, and engaged the emergency brake.
    He could have benefited from the headlights. This high on the hillside, however, they could be seen from the residences down near the county road.
    Worried about attracting attention and inspiring curiosity, he switched off the lights. He killed the engine.
    On foot, using a flashlight, he quickly found the vent hole, twenty feet from the SUV.
    Before vineyards, before the arrival of Europeans, before the ancestors of American Indians had crossed a land or ice bridge from Asia, volcanoes shaped this valley. They had defined its future.
    The old Rossi winery, now the aging cellars for Heitz, and other buildings in the valley were built of rhyolite, the volcanic form of granite, quarried locally. The knoll on which the Olsen house stood was largely basalt, another volcanic stone, dark and dense.
    When an eruption is exhausted, it sometimes leaves lava pipes, long tunnels through surrounding stone. Billy didn’t know enough volcanology to conclude whether the dormant vent on this knoll was such a pipe or was a fumarole that had expelled fiery gases.
    He knew, however, that the vent was four feet wide at the mouth—and immeasurably deep.
    This property was intimately familiar to Billy, because when he had been fourteen and alone, Pearl Olsen had given him a home. She never feared him, as some had. She knew the truth when she heard it. Her good heart opened to him, and in spite of her recurring cancer, she raised him as if he were her son.
    The twelve-year difference in Billy’s age