Velocity

the bag by the back door.
    He got a clean glass. From the jug on the table, he poured a few ounces of warm Coke.
    With exercise, the ache in his hand had grown worse. He took one tablet of Cipro, one of Vicodin.
    He decided to eradicate all evidence of his friend’s drinking binge. The house should offer nothing unusual for the police to contemplate.
    When Lanny went missing long enough, they would come here to knock, to look through the windows. They would come inside. If they saw that he’d been pouring down rum, they might infer depression and the possibility of suicide.
    The sooner they leaped to dire conclusions, the sooner they would search the farther reaches of the property. The longer that the trampled brush had to recover, the less likely they would ever focus on the securely covered lava pipe.
    When all was neat and when the garbage bag of evidence was tied shut, when only Ralph Cottle remained to be attended, Billy used his cell phone to call the back bar number at the tavern.
    Jackie O’Hara answered. “Tavern.”
    “How’re the pigs with human brains?” Billy asked.
    “They drink at some other joint.”
    “Because the tavern is a family bar.”
    “That’s right. And always will be.”
    “Listen, Jackie—”
    “I hate ‘listen, Jackie.’ It always means I’m going to be screwed.”
    “I’m going to have to take off tomorrow, too.”
    “I’m screwed.”
    “No, you’re just melodramatic.”
    “You don’t sound that sick.”
    “It’s not a head cold. It’s a stomach thing.”
    “Hold the phone to your gut, let me listen.”
    “Suddenly you’re a hardass.”
    “It doesn’t look right, the owner working the taps too much.”
    “The place is so busy, Steve can’t handle a midnight crowd by himself?”
    “Steve isn’t here, just me.”
    Billy’s hand tightened on the cell phone. “I drove past earlier. His car was parked out front.”
    “It’s a day off for Steve, remember?”
    Billy had forgotten.
    “When I couldn’t get a temp to fill your shift, Steve came in from three to nine to save my ass. What’re you doing out driving around when you’re sick?”
    “I was going to a doctor’s appointment. Steve could only give you six hours?”
    “He had stuff to do before and after.”
    Like kill a redhead before, nail Billy’s hand to a floor after.
    “What did the doctor say?” Jackie asked.
    “It’s a virus.”
    “That’s what they always say when they don’t know what the hell it really is.”
    “No, I think it’s really a forty-eight-hour virus.”
    “As if a virus knows from forty-eight hours,” Jackie said. “You go in with a third eye growing out of your forehead, they’ll say it’s a virus.”
    “Sorry about this, Jackie.”
    “I’ll survive. It’s just the tavern business, after all. It’s not war.”
    Pressing END to terminate the call, Billy Wiles felt very much at war.
    On a kitchen counter lay Lanny Olsen’s wallet, car keys, pocket change, cell phone, and 9-mm service pistol, where they had been since the previous night.
    Billy took the wallet. When he left, he would also take the cell phone, the pistol, and the Wilson Combat holster.
    From the items in the bread drawer, he selected half a loaf of whole wheat in a tie-top plastic bag.
    Outside, standing at the eastern end of the porch, he threw the slices of bread onto the lawn. The morning birds would feast.
    In the house once more, he lined the empty plastic bag with a dishtowel.
    A gun case with glass doors stood in the study. In drawers under the doors, Lanny kept boxes of ammunition, four-inch aerosol cans of chemical Mace, and a spare police utility belt.
    On the belt were pouches for backup magazines, a Mace holder, a Taser sleeve, a handcuff case, a key holder, a pen holder, and a holster. It was all ready to go.
    From the belt, Billy removed a loaded magazine. He also took the handcuffs, a can of Mace, and the Taser. He put those items in the bread bag.
     
     
     

Chapter 56
     
    Quick winged presences, perhaps bats feeding on moths in the first hour of Thursday morning, swooped low through the yard, past Billy, and climbed. When he followed the sound of what he could not see, his gaze rose to the thinnest silver shaving of a new moon.
    Although it must have been there earlier, making its way west, he had not noticed this fragile crescent until now. Not surprising. Since nightfall, he’d had little time for the sky, his attention grimly earthbound.
    Ralph Cottle, limbs