Dean Koontz - Velocity

“Shit, yeah, how could I not hear you?”

“You understand me?”

“I’m blind here, I’m not deaf.”

Billy stepped into the bathroom, switched off the water running in the sink, and looked around.

He did not see what he needed, but he saw something that he did not want to see: his reflection in the mirror. He might have expected to look frantic, even dangerous, and he did. He might have expected to look scared, and he did. He would not have expected to see the potential for evil, but he did.

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Chapter 61

On the bedroom TV, a naked man in a black mask lashed a woman’s breasts with a cluster of leather straps.

Billy switched off the TV. “I’m thinking about you handling the lemons and limes you slice for drinks, and I want to puke.”

Lying disabled in the hall past the open door, Zillis either didn’t hear him or pretended that he didn’t.

The bed did not have a headboard or a footboard. The mattress and box springs sat on a wheeled metal frame.

Because Zillis didn’t bother with such niceties as bedspreads and dust ruffles, the frame of the bed was exposed.

Billy took the handcuffs from the bread bag. He locked one of the bracelets to the bottom rail of the bed frame.

“Get up on your hands and knees,” he said. “Crawl toward my voice.”

Remaining on the hall floor, breathing easier but still noisily, Zillis spat vigorously on the carpet. His flooding tears had carried the Mace to his lips, and the bitter taste had gotten in his mouth.

Billy went to him and pressed the muzzle of the pistol to the nape of his neck. I.

Zillis became very still, wheezing softly.

Billy said, “You know what this is?”

“Man.”

“I want you to crawl into the bedroom.”

“Shit.”

“I mean it.”

“All right.”

“To the bottom of the bed.”

Although the only light in the room issued from a dim bedside lamp, Zillis squinted against a stinging, blinding brightness as he crawled to the bed.

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Billy had to redirect him twice. Then: “Sit on the floor with your back against the foot of the bed. That’s good. With your left hand, feel beside you. A set of handcuffs is hanging from the bed rail. There you go.”

“Don’t do this to me, man.” Zillis’s eyes watered copiously. Fluid bubbled in his nostrils. “Why? What is this?”

“Put your left wrist in the empty bracelet.”

“I don’t like this,” Zillis said.

“You don’t have to.”

“What’re you going to do to me?”

“That depends. Put it on now.”

After Zillis fumbled with the cuff, Billy leaned in to test the double lock, which was secure. Zillis still couldn’t see well enough to strike out or to make a play for the gun.

Steve could drag the bed around the room if he wanted. He could overturn it with effort, dump the mattress and the box springs, and patiently dismantle the bolted frame until he could slide the cuff free. But he couldn’t move fast. The carpet looked filthy. Billy wouldn’t sit or kneel on it. He went to the dinette alcove off the kitchen and returned with the only straight-backed chair in the house. He stood it in front of Zillis, out of his reach, and sat down.

“Billy, I’m dying here.”

“You aren’t dying.”

“I’m scared about my eyes. I still can’t see.”

“I want to ask you some questions.”

“Questions? Are you crazy?”

“I half feel like it,” Billy admitted.

Zillis coughed. The single cough became a fit of coughing, which became a fearsome choking. He wasn’t faking any of it.

Billy waited.

When Zillis could speak, his voice was hoarse, and it shook: “You’re scaring the shit out of me, Billy.”

“Good. Now I want you to tell me where you keep your gun.”

“Gun? What do I need with a gun?”

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“The one you shot him with.”

“Shot him? Shot who? I didn’t shoot anybody. Jesus, Billy.”

“You shot him in the forehead.”

“No. No way. Not me, man.” His eyes swam with tears induced by the Mace, so they could not be read for deception. He blinked and blinked, trying to see. “Man, if this is some half-assed joke—”

“You’re the joker,” Billy said. “Not me. You’re the performer.”

Zillis didn’t react to the word.

Billy went to the nightstand and opened the drawer.

“What’re you doing?” Zillis asked.

“Looking for the gun.”

“There isn’t ‘the a gun.”

“There wasn’t one earlier, when you weren’t here, but there will be now. You’ll keep it close to you.”

“You were here earlier?”

“You wallow in every kind of filth, don’t you, Steve? I wanted to shower in boiling water after I left.”

Billy opened the door on the bottom of the nightstand, rummaged inside.

“What’re you going to do if you don’t find a gun?”

“Maybe I’ll nail your hand to the floor and cut your fingers off one by one.”

Zillis sounded as if he was about to start crying for real. “Oh, man, don’t say crazy shit like that. What did I do to you? I didn’t do anything to you.”

Sliding open the closet door, Billy said, “When you were at my place, Stevie, where did you hide the severed hand?”

A groan escaped Zillis, and he began to shake his head: no, no, no, no. The closet shelf over the hanging clothes lay just above eye level. As Billy felt along the shelf for the gun, he said, “And what else did you hide in my place? What did you cut off the redhead? An ear? A breast?”

“This doesn’t compute,” Zillis said shakily.

“Doesn’t it?”

“You’re Billy Wiles, for God’s sake.”

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Returning to the bed, searching for the gun, Billy felt between the mattress and the box springs, which he wouldn’t have had the stomach to do if he hadn’t been wearing the gloves.

“You’re Billy Wiles,” Zillis repeated.

“Which means what—that you didn’t think I’d know how to take care of myself?”

“I didn’t do anything, Billy. I didn’t.”

Going around to the other side of the bed, Billy said, “Well, I know how to take care of myself, all right, even if I don’t exactly ring the bell on the zing meter.”

Recognizing his own words, Zillis said, “I didn’t mean anything by that. You think that was an insult? I didn’t mean it that way.”

Billy searched between mattress and box springs again. Nothing.

“I say things, Billy. You know how I am. I’m always joking. You know me. Hell, Billy, I’m an asshole. You know I’m an asshole, all the time talking, half the time not listening to myself.”

Billy returned to the chair and sat again. “Can you see me better, Stevie?”

“Not much, no. I need some Kleenex.”

“Use the bed sheet.”

With his free hand, Zillis pawed loose the thin blanket tucked into the foot of the bed. He freed a corner of the sheet, mopped his face with it, blew his nose.

Billy said, “Do you have an ax?”

“Oh, God.”

“Do you own an ax, Stevie?”

“No.”

“Be truthful with me, Stevie.”

“Billy, don’t.”

“Do you own an ax?”

“Don’t do this.”

“Do you own an ax, Stevie?”

“Yes,” Zillis admitted, and a sob of dread escaped him.

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“You’re either one hell of an actor or you’re really just poor dumb Steve Zillis,” Billy said, and it was the latter possibility that had begun to worry him.

Chapter 62

“When you’re chopping the mannequins in the backyard,” Billy asked, “do you dream that they’re real women?”

“They’re just mannequins.”

“Do you like to chop watermelons because they’re red inside? Do you like to see the red meat explode, Stevie?”