Dean Koontz - Velocity

An hour previously, at 1:44, the killer had rung Billy from this house. The phone company would have a record of that brief call.

Perhaps the police would think it proved Billy couldn’t have been here at the time of the murder.

More likely, they would suspect that Billy himself had placed the call to an accomplice at his house for the misguided purpose of trying to establish his presence elsewhere at the time of the murder.

Cops always suspected the worst of everyone. Their experience had taught them to do so.

At the moment, he couldn’t think of anything to be done about the phonecompany records. He put it out of his mind. More urgent matters required his attention. Like finding the corpse, if one existed.

He didn’t think he should waste time searching for the killer’s two notes. If they were still intact, he would most likely have found them on the table at which Lanny had been drinking or on the counter with his wallet, pocket change, and cell phone.

The flames in the den fireplace, on this warm summer night, led to a logical conclusion about the notes.

Taped to the side of a kitchen cabinet was a cartoon hand that pointed to the swinging door and the downstairs hallway.

At last Billy was willing to take direction, but a shrinking, anxious fear immobilized him.

65

Possession of a firearm and the will to use it did not give him sufficient courage to proceed at once. He did not expect to encounter the freak. In some ways the killer would have been less intimidating than what he did expect to find.

The bottle of rum tempted him. He had felt no effect from the three bottles of Guinness. His heart had been thundering for most of an hour, his metabolism racing.

For a man who was not much of a drinker, he’d recently had to remind himself of that fact often enough to suggest that a potential rummy lived inside him, yearning to be free.

The courage to proceed came from a fear of failing to proceed and from an acute awareness of the consequences of surrendering this hand of cards to the freak.

He left the kitchen and followed the hall to the foyer. At least the stairs were not dark; there was light here below, at the landing, and at the top. Ascending, he did not bother calling Lanny’s name. He knew that he would receive no answer, and he doubted that he could have found his voice anyway.

Chapter 12

Opening off the upper hallway were three bedrooms, a bathroom, and a closet. Four of those five doors were closed.

On both sides of the entrance to the master bedroom were cartoon hands pointing to that open door.

Reluctant to be herded, thinking of animals driven up a ramp at a slaughterhouse, Billy left the master bedroom for last. He first checked the hall bath. Then the closet and the two other bedrooms, in one of which Lanny kept a drawing table.

Using the dishtowel, he wiped all the doorknobs after he touched them. With only the one space remaining to be searched, he stood in the hall, listening. No pin dropped.

66

Something had stuck in his throat, and he couldn’t swallow it. He couldn’t swallow it because it was no more real than the sliver of ice sliding down the small of his back.

He entered the master bedroom, where two lamps glowed.

The rose-patterned wallpaper chosen by Lanny’s mother had not been removed after she died and not even, a few years later, after Lanny moved out of his old room into this one. Age had darkened the background to a pleasing shade reminiscent of a light tea stain. The bedspread had been one of Pearl Olsen’s favorites: rose in color overall, with embroidered flowers along the borders. Often during Mrs. Olsen’s illness, following chemotherapy sessions, and after her debilitating radiation treatments, Billy had sat with her in this room. Sometimes he just talked to her or watched her sleep. Often he read to her. She had liked swashbuckling adventure stories. Stories set during the Raj in India. Stories with geishas and samurai and Chinese warlords and Caribbean pirates. Pearl was gone, and now so was Lanny. Dressed in his uniform, he sat in an armchair, legs propped on a footstool, but he was gone just the same. He had been shot in the forehead. Billy didn’t want to see this. He dreaded having this image in his memory. He wanted to leave. Running, however, was not an option. It never had been, neither twenty years ago nor now, nor any time between. If he ran, he would be chased down and destroyed. The hunt was on, and for reasons he didn’t understand, he was the ultimate game. Speed of flight would not save him. Speed never saved the fox. To escape the hounds and the hunters, the fox needed cunning and a taste for risk. Billy didn’t feel like a fox. He felt like a rabbit, but he would not run like one. The lack of blood on Lanny’s face, the lack of leakage from the wound suggested two things: that death had been instantaneous and that the back of his skull had been blown out. No bloodstains or brain matter soiled the wallpaper behind the chair. Lanny had not been drilled as he sat there, had not been shot anywhere in this room.

As Billy had not found blood elsewhere in the house, he assumed that the killing occurred outside.

Perhaps Lanny had gotten up from the kitchen table, from his rum and Coke, half drunk or drunk, needing fresh air, and had stepped outside. Maybe he realized that his aim wouldn’t be neat enough for the bathroom and therefore went into the backyard to relieve himself.

The freak must have used a plastic tarp or something to move the corpse through the house without making a mess.

67

Even if the killer was strong, getting the dead man from the backyard to the master bedroom, considering the stairs, would have been a hard job. Hard and seemingly unnecessary.

To have done it, however, he must have had a reason that was important to him.

Lanny’s eyes were open. Both bulged slightly in their sockets. The left one was askew, as if he’d had a cast eye in life.

Pressure. For the instant during which the bullet had transited the brain, pressure inside the skull soared before being relieved.

A book-club novel lay in Lanny’s lap, a smaller and more cheaply produced volume than the handsome edition of the same title that had been available in bookstores. At least two hundred similar books were shelved at one end of the bedroom.

Billy could see the title, the author’s name, and the jacket illustration. The story was about a search for treasure and true love in the South Pacific. A long time ago, he had read this novel to Pearl Olsen. She had liked it, but then she had liked them all.

Lanny’s slack right hand rested on the book. He appeared to have marked his place with a photograph, a small portion of which protruded from the pages.

The psychopath had arranged all of this. The tableau satisfied him and had emotional meaning to him, or it was a message—a riddle, a taunt. Before disturbing the scene, Billy studied it. Nothing about it seemed compelling or clever, nothing that might have excited the murderer enough to motivate him to put forth such effort in its creation.

Billy mourned Lanny; but with a greater passion, he hated that Lanny had been afforded no dignity even in death. The freak dragged him around and staged him as if he were a mannequin, a doll, as if he had existed only for the creep’s amusement and manipulation.

Lanny had betrayed Billy; but that didn’t matter anymore. On the edge of the Dark, on the brink of the Void, few offenses were worth remembering. The only things worth recalling were the moments of friendship and laughter. If they had been at odds on Lanny’s last day, they were on the same team now, with the same and singular adversary.

Billy thought he heard a noise in the hall.

68

Without hesitation, holding the revolver in both hands, he left the master bedroom, clearing the doorway fast, sweeping the .38 left to right, seeking a target. No one.