Velocity

stiffened at inconvenient angles by rigor mortis, wrapped in a blanket because no plastic drop cloth could be found, held in a bundle by Lanny’s entire collection of neckties—three—did not drag easily across the sloped yard to the brush line.
    Cottle had said that he was nobody’s hero. And certainly he had died a coward’s death.
    He had wanted to live even his shabby existence because—What else is there?—he could not imagine that something better might be his to strive for, or to accept.
    In the moment when the blade slipped between his ribs and stopped his heart, he would have realized that while life could be evaded, death could not.
    Billy felt a certain solemn sympathy for even this man, whose despair had been deeper than Billy’s and whose resources had been shallower.
    And so when the brush and brambles snared the soft blanket and made dragging the body too difficult, he picked it up and hauled it across his shoulder, without revulsion or complaint. Under the burden, he staggered but didn’t collapse.
    He had returned minutes earlier to remove, once again, the lid from the redwood frame. The open vent waited.
    Cottle had said there wasn’t one world but a billion, that his was different from Billy’s. Whether that had been true or not, here their worlds became one.
    The bundled body dropped. And hit. And tumbled. And dropped. Into the dark, the vacant into the vacant.
    When silence endured, suggesting that the skeptic had reached his deep rest with the good son and the unknown woman, Billy shoved the cover into place, used his flashlight to be sure the holes were aligned, and screwed it down once more.
    He hoped never to see this place again. He suspected, however, that he would have no choice but to return.
    Driving away from the Olsen house, he did not know where to go. Eventually he must confront Steve Zillis, but not at once, not yet. First he needed to prepare himself.
    In another age, men on the eve of battle had gone to churches to prepare themselves spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. To incense, to candlelight, to the humility that the shadow of the redeemer pressed upon them.
    In those days, every church had been open all day and night, offering unconditional sanctuary.
    Times had changed. Now some churches might remain open around the clock, but many operated according to posted hours and locked their doors long before midnight.
    Some withheld perpetual sanctuary because of the costs of heat and electricity. Budgets trump mission.
    Others were plagued by vandals with cans of spray paint and by the faithless who, in a mocking spirit, came to copulate and leave their condoms.
    In previous ages of rampant hatred, such intolerance had been met with resolve, with teaching, and with the cultivation of remorse. Now the clerical consensus was that locks and alarms worked better than the former, softer remedies.
    Rather than travel from church to church, trying their doors and finding only sanctuary by prior appointment, Billy went where most modern men in need of a haven for contemplation were drawn in post-midnight hours: to a truck stop.
    Because no interstate highways crossed the county, the available facility, along State Highway 29, was modest by the standards of the Little America chain that operated truck stops the size of small towns. But it featured banks of fuel pumps illuminated to rival daylight, a convenience store, free showers, Internet access, and a 24/7 diner that offered fried everything and coffee that would stand your hair on end.
    Billy didn’t want the coffee or cholesterol. He sought only the bustle of rational commerce to balance the irrationality with which he’d been dealing, and a place so public that he would not be at risk of attack.
    He parked in a space outside the diner, under a lamppost of such wattage he could read by the light that fell through the windshield.
    From the glove box, he took foil packets of moist towelettes. He used them to scrub his hands.
    They had been invented to mop up after a Big Mac and fries in the car, not to sterilize the hands after disposing of corpses. But Billy wasn’t in a position—or of a mind—to be fussy.
    His left hand, nailed and unpaled, felt hot and slightly stiff. He flexed it slowly, gingerly.
    Because of the Vicodin, he felt no pain. That might not be good. A growing problem with the hand, not sensed, might manifest in a sudden weakness of grip at the very moment in the evolving crisis when strength was