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After Gunny killed Bobby Onions and Vernon Lesley, he and Billy stripped the bodies of ID and dragged them to the intersection of the two cracked blacktop roads that served the surrounding cluster of abandoned Quonset huts They pried a manhole out of the weed-choked pave-unused septic tank
Even the desert got soutters fed this tank, so the darkness below still stank, if not as bad as it had when the facility had been open twenty years ago, and both bodies splashed into so best not contemplated
Billy heardof the cadavers:as bread plates
When he had been a young ht or torch down there, to satisfy his curiosity He was old enough now to know that curiosity usually got you a bullet in the face
They worked fast, and after they wrestled the cover onto the manhole, Gunny said, "See you in Santa Barbara"
"Pretty place I like Santa Barbara," Billy said "I hope nobody ever blows it up"
"Somebody will," Gunny said, not because he had any proprietary knowledge of a forthco event, but because he was an anarchist and always hopeful
Gunny flew out in the twin-engine Cessna, and Billy walked the scene, kicking sand over the drag s he spotted in the late sun, and athered up all of the major pieces of Bobby Onions’s skull
When the wo as she was a nobody na with her life except rescuing dogs
Every week, so rotesque fashion that even the cable-news criore, could not cover every case Soet killer ratings and book all your ad tihest price if your show’s philosophy was that the death of any sparrow mattered as much as the death of any other
Ask not for who pregnant woman who is clubbed to death by her husband, cut into twelve pieces, packed in a footlocker with concrete blocks, and subed in a pond It tolls and tolls and tolls, 24/7, until the only way you can escape hearing it is by switching to Ani’s disappearance wouldas no one knew she had once been so Because Vernon Lesley had done a good job of finding the mementos of her past that she had saved, he knew too much about her, and he had to die
Maybe Lesley had not shared his knowledge with Bobby Onions, but Billy Pilgri to take a chance that Onions was as clueless as he looked Besides, the ot out of the Land Rover, with his Jaeneral principles
After policing the area for evidence of the shootings, Billy dropped the deadthat contained what Vernon Lesley had confiscated froer seat beside him, he drove out of the desert in the Land Rover and headed west
Twilight caold, peach, orange, then red, with purple pending-ornaainst an electric-blue sky shiht that could almost make you think the day had been iht ahead of him They said there was no rest for the wicked In fact, there was rest neither for the virtuous nor for the wicked, nor for guys like Billy Pilgri the whole idea of virtue versus wickedness and ere just trying to do their jobs
Chapter 37
So by the evidence probably so supernatural-and at the same time your dead past suddenly comes alive and catches up with you, with the consequence that you have toconfession you’ve ever made in your life to the one person in the whole world whose opinion of you s, walk the dogs, and pick up their last poop of the day
When Aht an arkful of canines with her, she had said that dogs centered you, calht she was just a little daffy for golden retrievers Eventually he had realized that what she had said was nothing less or more than the dead-solid truth
In his pantry, he had kibble and treats for those evenings when As for dinner and two-hand ru Fred, Ethel, and Nickie, they walked theht to a nearby park
"If this works out," he said, "and Vanessa really will give Hope to me, I’ll understand if at some point you decide it’s too much"
"Too hly functional, others not so hly functional, and sooing to change things, it’s a lot of responsibility"
"Sohly functional," she repeated, "and some are irl’s disability, we don’t knohat Vanessa ical probleether," she said, "and three of theical problems So we just cope with one another"
"Then there’s Vanessa Maybe she’s had enough of tor irl on et the two of us ever existed Or maybe it won’t be that easy"
"I’m not worried about Vanessa I can bitch-slap with the best of them"
"If Vanessa decides to be in our lives, one way or another, a Holly Golightly attitude won’t ith her"
"Holly Golightly like in Breakfast at Tiffany’s?"
He said, "If there’s a Holly Golightly in Bleak House, I’m not aware of it"
"Listen up, nahtly attitude It’swith Cary Grant"
"Nameless narrator?"
"Breakfast at Tiffany’s is told in the first person by a guy who’s in love with her, but we never know his nas lead them in silence for a few steps, and then Brian said, "I am in love with you"
"You said so back at the apartment I said it, too We’ve said it before We don’t have to keep saying it every ten s knohen you love them," she said "They don’t expect you to say it all the ti has ever asked you to marry him"
"Sweetie, you’ve been so patient It’s just that…I have so rotten to you, though I’m sure someti rotten You’re the best The way you’ve handled all this with Vanessa, Aot Holly Golightly"
"He got her in the movie"