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The ht had been Giselle Winslow’s murderer Billy had no proof, but no doubt, either Maybe he would call this evening, too If Billy could speak to hi learned

Billy was under no illusion that such a monster could be charmed into chattiness Neither could a homicidal sociopath be debated, nor persuaded by reason to spare a life

Hearing the ht prove valuable Ethnicity, region of origin, education, approxie, and more could be inferred froly reveal some salient fact about himself One clue, one small bud of information that blossomed under deter credible to take to the police

Confronting Lanny Olsen et Billy out of the box in which the killer had put hiboard

The previous evening, in a nervous moment, he had lowered the shades at all the s This , before breakfast, he had raised those in the kitchen Now he lowered thelanced at the phone

Intending to sit at the table, he put his right hand on the back of a chair, but he didn’t ranite floor at his feet He kept an ilossy, spotless The blackness under his feet appeared to have no substance, as if he were standing on air, high in the night itself, with five less

He pulled the chair out froot to his feet

Under these circumstances, Billy Wiles had no idea how to act, what to do The sih he had not been doing much else for years

Because he hadn’t eaten dinner, he went to the refrigerator He had no appetite Nothing on those cold shelves appealed to hiboard

He went to the phone and stood staring at it

He sat at the table Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still After a while, he went to the study, where he spent soarchitectural ornaments at a corner worktable

He collected several tools and a chunk of white oak fro a cluster of acanthus leaves He returned with them to the kitchen

The study had a telephone, but Billy preferred the kitchen this evening The study also had a comfortable couch, and he worried that he would be tempted to lie down, that he would fall asleep and not be awakened by the killer’s call, or by anything, ever

Whether or not this concern was realistic, he settled at the dinette table with the wood and the tools

Without a carver’s vise, he could work only on the finer details of the leaves, which was engraving work akin to scrimshaw The blade scraped a hollow sound from the oak, as if this were bone, not wood At ten minutes past ten o’clock, less than two hours before the deadline, he abruptly decided that he would go to the sheriff

His house was not in any township; the sheriff had jurisdiction here The tavern lay in Vineyard Hills, but the toas too small to have its own police force; Sheriff Palmer was the law there, too

Billy snared the key froboard, opened the door, stepped onto the back porch--and halted If you do go to the police, I will kill a young mother of two

He didn’t want to choose He didn’t want anyone to die

In all of Napa County, theremothers with two children Maybe a hundred, two hundred, maybe more

Even with five hours, they couldn’t have identified and alerted all the possible targets They would have to use the ht take days

Noith less than two hours, nothing substantive would be done TheyBilly

The young mother, obviously preselected by the killer, would be murdered

What if the children awakened? As witnesses, they ht be eliminated The ht air, a musky smell wafted from the rich layers of mast on the woodland floor and drifted from the trees to the porch Billy returned to the kitchen and closed the door

Later, whittling leaf details, he pricked a thuet a Band-Aid The puncture was small; it should close quickly

When he nicked a knuckle, he re to bother attending to it He worked faster, and didn’t notice when he sustained a third tiny cut

To an observer, had there been one, it h Billy wanted to bleed

Because his hands re The wood soaked up the blood

In time, he realized that the oak had co and put aside the blade

He sat for a while, staring at his hands, breathing hard for no reason In tiain when he washed his hands at the sink

At 11:45, after patting his hands dry on a dishtowel, he got a cold Guinness and drank it from the bottle He finished it too fast Five minutes after the first beer, he opened a second He poured it in a glass to encourage himself to sip it and make it last

He stood with the Guinness in front of the wall clock

Eleven-fifty Countdown

As much as Billy wanted to lie to hiht The choice is yours Even inaction is a choice The ht If the hoain, the ht and see the dawn

Billy was part of it now He could deny, he could run, he could leave hisshades down for the rest of his life and cross the line from recluse to hermit, but he could not escape the fundamental fact that he was part of it

The killer had offered him a partnership He had wanted no part of it But now it turned out to be like one of those business deals, one of those aggressive stock offers, that writers in the financial pages called a hostile takeover He finished the second Guinness as ht arrived He wanted a third And a fourth

He told himself he needed to keep a clear head He asked himself why, and he had no credible answer

His part of the business was done for the night He hadht, except that without the beer, Billy wouldn’t be able to sleep He ain His hands ached Not fro clutched the tools too tightly Frorip

Without sleep, he wouldn’t be ready for the day ahead Withwould come news of another corpse He would learn wholass in the sink He didn’t need a glass any the beer last Each bottle was a punch, and he wanted nothing more than to knock hi room and sat in his recliner He drank in the dark