Velocity

hand.
    Besides, as he read about it in the newspaper for the second time, he was reminded of something other than the note taped to his refrigerator. The mannequin with six hands.
    With the fists at the ends of its arms, it had held steak knives that were rammed into its throat.
    Its feet had been replaced with hands, the better to grip the spear-point iron stave with which it abused itself.
    A third pair of hands had been severed from a donor mannequin. They sprouted from the breasts of the six-handed specimen as if it were an obscene depiction of the Hindu goddess Kali.
    Although the three other mannequins in that room had featured the usual number of hands, the one with six suggested Zillis might have a hand fetish.
    In the photos on the covers of those pornographic videos, the women’s hands had often been restrained. With handcuffs. With rope. With tightly cinched leather straps.
    The fact that a hand had been harvested from Giselle Winslow seemed meaningful if not damning.
    Billy was reaching. Stretching. He didn’t have enough rope to fashion a legitimate noose for Steve Zillis. Have I not extended to you the hand of friendship? Yes, I have.
    Gross, juvenile humor. Billy could see Zillis smirking, could hear him saying those very words. He could hear them said in that cocky, jokey, performing-bartender voice.
    Suddenly it seemed that so much of Zillis’s act at the tavern involved his hands. He was unusually dexterous. He juggled the olives and other items. He knew card tricks, all sleight-of-hand. He could “walk” a coin across his knuckles, make it disappear.
    None of this helped Billy tie a better noose.
    Soon it would be two o’clock. If he was going after Zillis, he preferred to do it under the cover of darkness.
    The liquid bandage on the puncture wounds in his hand had been put to a thorough test. It had cracked at the edges, frayed.
    He opened the bottle and painted another layer over the first, wondering if it was significant that the promised second wound had been a nail through his hand.
    If he went after Zillis, he would first have a conversation with him. Nothing more. Nothing worse. Just a serious talk.
    In case Zillis was the freak, the questions would have to be asked at the point of a gun.
    Of course, if Zillis proved to be just a sick creep but not a killer, he would not be understanding; he would be pissed. He might want to press charges for forced entry, whatever.
    The only way to keep him quiet might be to intimidate him. He wouldn’t likely be intimidated unless Billy hurt him seriously enough to get his attention and unless he believed that he would be hurt even worse if he called the police.
    Before he went after Zillis, Billy had to be sure that he had the capacity to assault an innocent man and brutalize him to keep him silent.
    He flexed and opened his slightly stiff left hand. Flexed and opened.
    Here was a choice not entirely forced upon him: He could put himself in a position where he might have to hurt and intimidate an innocent man—or delay, think, wait for events to unfold, and thereby possibly place Barbara in greater danger. The choice is yours.
    It always had been. It always would be. To act or not to act. To wait or to go. To close a door or open one. To retreat from life or to enter it.
    He did not have hours or days to analyze the quandary. Anyway, given time, he would only get lost in the analysis.
    He sought wisdom learned from hard experience and applicable to this situation, but he found none. The only wisdom is the wisdom of humility.
    In the end, he could make his decision based on nothing more than the purity of his motive. And even the full truth of motive might not be known.
    He started the engine. He drove away from the truck stop.
    He couldn’t find the moon, that thinnest palest sliver of a moon. It must have been at his back.
     
     
     

Chapter 60
     
    At 2:09 A.M., Billy parked on a quiet residential street, two and a half blocks from Steve Zillis’s house.
    The lower limbs of Indian laurels hung under the streetlights, and across the lamp-yellowed sidewalks, leaf shadows spilled like a treasure of black coins.
    He walked unhurriedly, as if he were a lifelong insomniac who regularly went strolling in these dead hours.
    The windows of the houses were dark, the porch lights off. No traffic passed him.
    By now the earth had given back a lot of the stored heat from the day. The night was neither hot nor cool.
    The twisted neck of the bread bag was