Velocity (18 page)

chapter 37

ALTHOUGH HE WORE HIS UNIFORM, WITHOUT
hat, the sheriff less resembled an officer of the law than he did a politician. Because his was an elected position, he was in fact both cop and pol.

Barbered to the point of affectation, shaved as smooth as a glass peach, teeth veneered to white perfection, features suitable for a Roman coin, he looked ten years younger than he was—and ready for the cameras.

Although Palmer sat at a reading table, neither a magazine nor a newspaper, nor a book, lay in front of him. He looked like he knew everything already.

Palmer did not get up. Billy remained standing.

“How’re things up in Vineyard Hills?” Palmer asked.

“Lots of vineyards and hills,” Billy said.

“You still tending bar?”

“There’s always a need. It’s the third oldest profession.”

“What’s second, after whores?” Palmer asked.

“Politicians.”

The sheriff seemed to be amused. “Are you writing these days?”

“A little,” Billy lied.

One of his published short stories had featured a character who was a thinly veiled portrait of John Palmer.

“Doing some research for your writing?” Palmer asked.

From where the sheriff sat, he had a direct view of the computer at which Billy had been working, although not of its screen.

Maybe Palmer had a way of finding out what Billy had been doing at the work station. A public computer might keep a record of a user’s keystrokes.

No. Probably not. Besides, there were privacy laws.

“Yeah,” Billy said. “Some research.”

“Deputy of mine saw you parking in front of Harry Avarkian’s office.”

Billy said nothing.

“Three minutes after you left Harry’s, the time on your parking meter ran out.”

That might be true.

Palmer said, “I put two quarters in for you.”

“Thanks.”

“The window’s busted out of your driver’s door.”

“A little accident,” Billy said.

“It’s not a code violation, but you ought to get it fixed.”

“I’ve got an appointment on Friday,” Billy lied.

“This doesn’t bother you, does it?” the sheriff asked.

“What?”

“You and me talking like this.” Palmer surveyed the library. No one was close to them. “Just the two of us.”

“It doesn’t bother me,” Billy said.

He had every right and reason to walk away. Instead he stayed, determined not to give even the appearance of intimidation.

Twenty years ago, as a fourteen-year-old boy, Billy Wiles had endured interrogations conducted in such a way that they should have destroyed John Palmer’s law-enforcement career.

Instead, Palmer had been promoted from lieutenant to captain, later to chief. Eventually he had campaigned for the office of sheriff and had been elected. Twice.

Harry Avarkian had a succinct explanation for Palmer’s ascent and claimed that he had heard it from deputies in the department: Shit floats.

“How’s Miss Mandel these days?” Palmer asked.

“The same.”

He wondered if Palmer knew about the 911 call. Napolitino and Sobieski had no reason to file a report on it, especially since it had been a false alarm.

Besides, the two sergeants worked out of the St. Helena substation. While Sheriff Palmer toured throughout his jurisdiction, his office was here in the county seat.

“What a sad thing that was,” Palmer said.

Billy did not reply.

“At least for the rest of her life, she’ll get the best care, with all that money.”

“She’s going to get well. She’ll come out of it.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Yes.”

“All that money—I hope you’re right.”

“I am.”

“She ought to have a chance to enjoy all that money.”

Stone-faced, Billy gave no slightest sign that he understood Palmer’s pointed implication.

Yawning, stretching, so relaxed and casual in his chair, Palmer probably saw himself as a cat toying with a mouse. “Well, people are going to be happy to hear that you’re not burnt out, that you’re writing a little.”

“What people?”

“People who like your writing, of course.”

“Do you know any of them?”

Palmer shrugged. “I don’t move in those circles. But I’m pretty sure about one thing….”

Because the sheriff wanted to be asked
What?,
Billy didn’t ask.

Off Billy’s silence, Palmer said, “I’m pretty sure your mom and dad would be so proud.”

Billy walked away from him and out of the library.

After the air conditioning, the summer heat assaulted him. He felt as though he were suffocating when he inhaled, as if strangling when he exhaled. Or maybe it wasn’t the heat, but the past.

chapter 38

SPEEDING NORTH ON ROUTE 29, OUT OF SUN
and into sun, with the famous and fertile valley narrowing imperceptibly at first and then perceptibly, Billy worried about protecting Barbara.

The trust fund could hire around-the-clock security for the duration, until Billy found the freak or until the freak finished him. Money was no issue.

But this wasn’t a big city. The phone book didn’t contain page after page of ads for private-security firms.

Explaining to the guards why they were needed would be risky. The whole truth would tie Billy to three murders for which he was most likely being set up to take the fall.

If he withheld too much of the truth, the guards wouldn’t know what they were up against. He would be jeopardizing their lives.

Besides, most security guards around these parts were former police officers or current cops who were moonlighting on their off hours. Many of them had worked—or still did work—for or with John Palmer.

Billy didn’t want Palmer hearing about Barbara being watched over by hired bodyguards. The sheriff would wonder. He would have questions.

After a few years during which he had stayed under Palmer’s radar, he was now on the scope again. He dared not draw more attention to himself.

He couldn’t ask friends to help him stand watch over Barbara. They would be at great risk.

Anyway, he didn’t have close friends whom he’d be comfortable approaching. The people in his life were largely
acquaintances.

He had managed things that way. There is no life that is not in community. He knew this. He knew. Yet he had done no proper sowing and now had no harvest.

The wind at the broken window spoke chaos to him.

In the hours of Barbara’s greatest danger, he alone would have to protect her. If he could.

She deserved better than him. With his history, no one in need of a guardian would turn to him first, or second, or at all.

My last killing: midnight Thursday.

If Billy read the freak correctly—and he was all but certain that he did—Barbara’s murder would be the climax on which the curtain of this cruel “performance” would be rung.

Your suicide: soon thereafter.

Tomorrow evening, long before midnight, he would station himself at her bedside.

This evening, he could not be with her. The urgent tasks on his agenda would probably keep him busy until dawn.

If he was wrong, if her murder was to be a second-act surprise, this sunny valley, for him, would become henceforth as dark as the vacant interstellar spaces.

Driving faster, borne forward by a longing for redemption, with sunlight slanting from his left and with the valley’s great monument, Mount St. Helena, ahead and seeming never to grow nearer, Billy used his cell phone to call Whispering Pines, pressing 1 and holding to speed dial.

Because Barbara had a private room with an attached half-bath, the usual visiting-hour rules did not apply. With advance approval, a family member might even stay overnight.

He hoped to stop at Whispering Pines on his way home and arrange to stay with Barbara from Thursday evening at least through Friday morning. He had conceived a cover story that might be accepted without suspicion.

The receptionist who answered his call informed him that Mrs. Norlee, the manager, would be in meetings until five-thirty but would be able to see him then. He took the appointment.

Shortly before four o’clock, he arrived home, half expecting to see patrol cars, a coroner’s van, county deputies in number, and Sergeant Napolitino on the front porch, standing over a rocking chair in which Ralph Cottle’s corpse sat, unwrapped. But all was quiet.

Instead of using the garage, Billy parked in the driveway, toward the back of the house.

He went inside and searched every room. He found no indications of an intruder having been here during his absence.

The corpse still lay cocooned behind the sofa.

chapter 39

ABOVE THE MICROWAVE OVEN, BEHIND A PAIR
of cabinet doors, a deep space contained baking sheets, two perforated pizza pans, and other narrow items stored vertically. Billy took the pans out—and the removable rack in which they stood—and put them in the pantry.

At the back of the now empty space was an electric outlet with two receptacles. A plug filled the bottom receptacle, and the cord disappeared through a cut-out in the rear wall of the cabinet.

The plug powered the microwave. Billy pulled it.

Standing on a stepladder, using a power drill, he bored a hole in the floor of the upper cabinet, through the ceiling of the oven. This ruined the microwave. He didn’t care.

He used the drill bit as if it were a power file, simultaneously drawing it around the perimeter of the bore and pumping it up and down, widening the hole. The noise was horrendous.

A faint smell of scorched insulation arose, but he completed the job before the frictional heat grew to be a problem.

He cleaned the debris out of the microwave. He put the videocam inside.

After inserting the output jack of a video-transmission cable into the camera, he shoved the other end through the hole that he had drilled in the ceiling of the oven. He did the same with a pronged-at-both-ends power cord.

In the cabinet that previously held baking pans, Billy placed the video-disk recorder. Following printed instructions, he jacked the free end of the transmission cable into the recorder.

He plugged the camera power cord into the upper receptacle in the outlet at the back of the cabinet. The recorder took the lower receptacle into which the microwave had been plugged.

He loaded a seven-day disk. He set the system per instructions and switched it on.

When he closed the door of the microwave oven, the inner surface of the view window pressed against the rubber rim of the camera’s lens hood. The videocam was aimed across the kitchen at the back door.

With the oven light off, Billy could see the camera inside only if he put his face very close to the view window. The freak would not discover it unless he decided to make microwave popcorn.

Because the window contained a fine screen laminated between layers of glass, Billy didn’t know if the camera would have a clear view. He needed to test it.

The pleated shades were drawn over all the kitchen windows. He raised them, and he turned on the overhead lights.

He stood just inside the back door for a moment. Then he crossed the room at an unhurried pace.

The recorder featured a mini screen for quick review. When Billy climbed the stepladder and replayed the time-lapse recording, he saw a darkish figure. As it crossed the room, resolution improved, and he could recognize himself.

He did not like watching himself. Ashen, sullen, and uncertain, full of determined action but with halting purpose.

In fairness to himself, the image was black-and-white, and a little grainy. His apparent lurch was merely the effect of time-lapse recording.

Allowing for all of that, he still saw an unconvincing figure: shape and shading, but no more substance than an apparition. He appeared to be a stranger in his own home.

He reset the machine. He closed the cabinet doors and put away the stepladder.

In the bathroom, he changed the dressing on his brow. The hook wounds were angry red, but no worse than before.

He changed into a black T-shirt, black jeans, black Rockports. Sunset was less than four hours away, and when twilight passed, Billy would need to move as inconspicuously as possible in a hostile night.

chapter 40

GRETCHEN NORLEE FAVORED SEVERE DARK
suits, wore no jewelry, combed her hair straight back from her forehead, regarded the world through steel-framed eyeglasses—and decorated her office with plush toys. A teddy bear, a toad, a duck, a Knuffle Bunny, and a midnight-blue kitten were arranged on shelves in a collection that consisted primarily of dogs that greeted visitors with a brightness of unfurled pink-and red-velvet tongues.

Gretchen managed the 102-bed Whispering Pines Convalescent Home with military efficiency and maximum compassion. Her warm manner belied the gruffness of her hard-edged voice.

She embodied no greater contradictions than any person who found temporary balance in this most temporary world. Hers were just more immediately visible, and more endearing.

Leaving her desk to signal that she viewed this as a personal consideration rather than as a business matter, Gretchen sat in a wingback chair catercorner to the chair in which Billy sat.

She said, “Because Barbara occupies a private room, she may have company outside normal visiting hours without inconveniencing other patients. I see no problem, though family usually stay overnight only when a patient has just returned from a hospital transfer.”

Although Gretchen had too much class to express her curiosity directly, Billy felt obliged to satisfy it with an explanation, even though every word he told her was a lie.

“My Bible-study group has been discussing what scripture says about the power of prayer.”

“So you’re in a Bible-study group,” she said as if intrigued, as if he was not a man whom she could easily picture in such a pious pursuit.

“There was a major medical study that showed when friends and relatives actively pray for a sick loved one, the patient more often recovers, and recovers more quickly.”

That controversial study had provided gas to inflate barroom debates when it had hit the newspapers. Recollection of all that boozy blather, not an earnest Bible-study group, had inspired Billy to concoct this cover story.

“I think I remember reading about it,” Gretchen Norlee said.

“Of course I pray for Barbara every day.”

“Of course.”

“But I’ve come to see that prayer is more meaningful when it involves some sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice,” she said thoughtfully.

He smiled. “I don’t mean to slaughter a lamb.”

“Ah. That will please the janitorial staff.”

“But a prayer before bed, however sincere, is no inconvenience.”

“I see your point.”

“Surely prayer will be more meaningful and effective if it comes at some personal cost—like at least the loss of a night’s sleep.”

“I’ve never thought of it that way,” she said.

“From time to time,” Billy said, “I’d like to sit with her all night in prayer. If it doesn’t help her, it’ll at least help me.”

Listening to himself, he thought that he sounded as phony as a TV evangelist proclaiming the virtue of abstinence upon being caught naked with a hooker in the back of his limo.

Evidently, Gretchen Norlee heard him differently from how he heard himself. Behind her steel-rimmed spectacles, her eyes were moist with sympathy.

His newfound slickness dismayed Billy, and worried him. When a liar became too skilled at deception, he could lose the ability to discern truth, and could himself be more easily deceived.

He expected there might be a price for playing a nice woman like Gretchen Norlee for a fool, as there was a price for everything.