Velocity

tried to make a child of him. He ground the pain between his teeth, ground it so hard that his molars creaked in his jaws.
    The nail did not creak in the wood, however, and it seemed that he would lose his teeth before extracting that spike. Then it moved.
    Between his pinched thumb and finger, the nail loosened, not much but perceptibly. As it moved in the wood of the floor, it moved also in the flesh of his hand.
    Pain was a light. Like chain lightning, it flared within him, flashed and flared.
    He felt the shank grinding against bone. If the nail had cracked or chipped a bone, he would need medical attention sooner than later.
    Although air-conditioned, the house had not previously seemed cold. Now sweat seemed to turn to ice on his skin.
    Billy worked the nail, and the light of pain inside him grew brighter, brighter, until he thought that he must be translucent now, that the light would be visible, shining forth from him, if anyone but Cottle were there to see.
    Although the odds were against a random nail finding a joist, this one had pierced not merely the flooring and the subflooring but also hard timber. The first grim truth of desperation roulette: You play the red, and the black comes up.
    The nail came loose, and in a rush of triumph and rage, Billy almost threw it away from him, into the living room. Had he done so, he would have had to go find it because his blood was on the shank.
    He put it on the floor beside the hole that it had made.
    The blaze of pain darkened to throbbing embers, and he found that he could get to his feet.
    His left hand bled from the entry and exit points, but not in a gush. He had been pierced, after all, not drilled, and the wound was not wide.
    Cupping his right hand under his left to avoid dripping blood on the hallway runner and the flanking wood floor, he hurried into the kitchen.
    The killer had left the back door open. He wasn’t on the porch, probably not in the yard, either.
    At the sink, Billy cranked a faucet and held his left hand under the spout until it grew half numb from the cold water.
    Soon the stream of blood diminished to an ooze. Pulling paper towels off a dispenser, he wound several layers around his hand.
    He stepped onto the back porch. He held his breath, listening not for the killer but for approaching sirens.
    After a minute, he decided there had not been a 911 call this time. The freak, the performer, prided himself on his cleverness; he would not repeat a trick.
    Billy returned to the front of the house. He saw the photograph, which the killer had thrown in his face and which he had forgotten, and he plucked it off the hallway floor.
    She was a pretty redhead. Facing the camera. Terrified.
    She would have had a nice smile.
    He had never seen her before. That didn’t matter. She was somebody’s daughter. Somewhere people loved her. Waste the bitch.
    Those words, echoing in memory, nearly dropped Billy to his knees.
    For twenty years, his emotions had not merely been restrained. Some of them had been denied. He had allowed himself to feel only what seemed safe to feel.
    He had permitted himself anger only in moderation, and he had not indulged hatred whatsoever. He had been afraid that by admitting to one drop of hatred, he might unleash furious torrents that would destroy him.
    Restraint in the face of evil, however, was no virtue, and to hate this homicidal freak was no sin. This was a righteous passion, more vehement than abhorrence, brighter even than the pain that had seemed to make of him an incandescent lamp.
    He picked up the revolver. Leaving Cottle to his own devices in the living room, Billy climbed the stairs, wondering if when he returned he would find the dead man still on the sofa.
     
     
     

Chapter 54
     
    In Lanny’s bathroom medicine cabinet, Billy found alcohol, an unopened package of liquid bandage, and an array of pharmacy bottles with caps that all warned CAUTION! NOT CHILD RESISTANT.
    The nail, having been clean, had not itself been an agent of infection. But it might have carried bacteria from the surface of the skin into the wound.
    Billy poured alcohol in his cupped left hand, hoping it would seep into the puncture wound. After a moment, the stinging began.
    Because he had been careful not to flex his hand more than necessary, the bleeding had already nearly stopped. The alcohol did not restart it.
    This was imperfect sterilization. He had neither the time nor the resources to do a better job.
    He painted liquid