Dean Koontz - Velocity

“Until when?”

“I took her home a little after one o’clock.”

“And came back here.”

“Yeah.”

“And put on a porno flick of a guy whipping a woman.”

“All right. I know what I am, but I also know what I can be.”

Billy went to the nightstand and picked up the phone. It had a long cord. He brought it to Zillis. “Call her.”

“What, now? Billy, it’s after three in the morning.”

“Call her. Tell her how much you enjoyed the evening, how very special she is. She won’t mind if you wake her up for that.”

259

“We don’t have that kind of relationship yet,” Zillis worried. “She’s gonna think this is weird.”

“You call her and let me listen in,” Billy said, “or I jam this pistol in your ear and blow your brains out. What do you think?”

Zillis’s hands shook so badly that he misdialed twice. He got it right the third time.

Hunkering beside his captive, the muzzle of the pistol pressed against Zillis’s side so he wouldn’t get a half-wise idea, Billy listened to Mandy Pollard answer the phone and express surprise at hearing from her new beau at that hour.

“Don’t worry about it,” Mandy told Zillis. “You didn’t wake me. I was just lying here staring at the ceiling.”

Zillis’s voice had a tremor, but Mandy might easily have assumed he was nervous about calling at this late hour and about expressing his affection more directly than perhaps he had done previously.

For a few minutes, Billy listened to them recap the night—their dinner, the drive—and then he gestured at Zillis to wrap it up.

Mandy Pollard had spent the evening with this man, and she was not some half-cracked thrill seeker who knowingly hung out with bad boys. Having dinner with Mandy, Steve Zillis could not have been the freak who propped Ralph Cottle’s corpse on Lanny’s living room sofa and nailed Billy’s hand to the hallway floor.

260

Chapter 65

Slipping the pistol into the holster at his hip, Billy said, “I’m going to leave you handcuffed to the bed.”

Steve Zillis looked relieved at the holstering of the weapon, but remained wary.

Billy tore the phone cord out of the wall and out of the phone, knotted it, and put it in his bread bag. “I don’t want you calling anyone until you’ve had plenty of time to cool down and to think about what I’m going to say.”

“You’re really not gonna kill me?”

“I’m really not. I’ll leave the handcuff key on a counter in the kitchen.”

“All right. The kitchen. But how’s that gonna help me?”

“After I’m gone, you can work the mattress and the box springs off the frame. It’s held together by nuts and bolts, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. But—”

“You can work the nuts with your fingers.”

“Maybe they’re rusted—”

“You only moved in six months ago. They haven’t rusted in six months. If they’re tight, torque the sections of the frame, try to wrench a little play into the connections. You’ll figure it out.”

“I can figure that out, sure, but I still can’t figure why the hell you did this. You can’t believe I killed Judith Kesselman, like you said. I know you can’t believe that. What was this?”

Putting the can of Mace in the bread bag, Billy said, “I’m not going to explain, and you don’t want to know. Believe me, you don’t.”

“Look at me here,” Zillis whined. “My eyes still sting. I’m sitting in a puddle, for God’s sake. This is humiliating. You hit me with that gun, you cut my scalp, you hurt me, Billy.”

“It could have been worse,” Billy assured him. “It could have been a whole lot worse.”

261

Choosing to interpret those words as a threat, Zillis became placating. “All right. Okay. I hear you. I’m cool.”

“Depending on how tight the bolts are, you’ll need at least an hour, probably two, to get loose of the bed. The cuff key will be in the kitchen. After you use it, start packing.”

Zillis blinked. “What?”

“Call Jackie, tell him you’re quitting.”

“I don’t want to quit.”

“Get real, Steve. We aren’t going to see each other every day. Not with what I know about you and not with what you know about me. You’re going to move on.”

“Where?”

“I don’t care where. Just not in Napa County.”

“I like it here. Besides, I can’t afford to move right now.”

“Go to the tavern Friday night to get your last paycheck,” Billy said. “I’ll leave an envelope for you with Jackie. It’ll contain ten thousand in cash. That’ll get you started somewhere.”

“I did nothing, but my whole life gets turned upside down? This isn’t fair.”

“You’re right. It isn’t fair. But it’s the way it is. Your furniture isn’t worth crap. You can junk it. Pack the personal stuff and be out of town by Friday night.”

“I could call the cops, I could press charges.”

“Really? You’d want the cops to see the scene of the crime, have them tramping through here, with the bondage pornos, those mannequins in the next room?”

Although still scared, Zillis found sufficient self-pity to pout. “Who died and made you God?”

Billy shook his head. “Steve, you’re pathetic. You’ll take the ten thousand, be glad you’re alive, and get out. Plus one more thing—don’t ever call Mandy Pollard again.”

“Wait a minute. You can’t—”

“Don’t call her, don’t see her. Not ever.”

“Billy, she could make all the difference for me.”

“She’s a nice girl. She’s a decent girl.”

262

“That’s what I mean. I know I could clean up my act if she—”

“A good woman can turn a man around,” Billy said. “But not a man who’s as far down the rathole as you are. If you call her or see her, even just once, I’ll know. And I’ll find you. You believe that?”

Zillis said nothing.

“And if you touch her,” Billy said, “so help me God, I’ll kill you, Steve.”

“This is 50 not right,” Zillis said.

“Do you believe me? You better believe me, Steve.”

When Billy put his hand on the grip of the holstered pistol, Zillis said,

“Hey. All right. I hear you.”

“Good. I’m leaving now.”

“This place sucks anyway,” Zillis said. “Wine country is just another word for farm. I’m not a farm boy.”

“No, you’re not,” Billy said from the doorway.

“There’s no action around here.”

“There’s no zing,” Billy agreed.

“Screw you.”

Billy said, “Happy trails, Kemosabe.”

263

Chapter 66

By the time that he’d driven only half a mile from Zillis’s place, Billy had the shakes so bad that he had to pull to the curb, put the Explorer in park, and get control of himself.

Under pressure, he had become the thing he most despised. For a while, he had become John Palmer.

Paying Zillis ten thousand bucks didn’t make Billy any less like Palmer, either.

When the shakes subsided, he didn’t put the SUV in gear because he didn’t know where to go from here. He felt that he was at a brink. You don’t drive over a brink.

He wanted to go home, but nothing there would help him work out a solution to this puzzle.

He wanted to go home just to be home. He recognized the familiar reclusive urge. Once home, he could sit at his carving bench with the blocks of oak, and the world could go to Hell.

Except this time, he would go to Hell with it. He could not take Barbara home with him, and if he left her alone and in jeopardy, he would have trashed his only excuse for living.

Events had thrust him into action, into the rush of life, yet he felt isolated and beyond desperation.