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"trying to ease his way sober and avoid a hangover"

"Is that the trick?" Napolitino asked

Billy said, "It’s one of them"

"It’s nice and cool in there"

"Cool helps, too," Billy said

"Rosalyn said you lost your air conditioning"

Billy had forgotten that little lie, such a small filament in his enormous patcheb of deceit

He said, "It conks out for a few hours, then it coain I don’t know if maybe it’s a compressor problem"

"Toazing out across the valley "Better get a repairman if they aren’t already booked till Christmas"

"I’ to have a look at it myself a little later," Billy said "I’ around in machinery until you’re full sober"

"I won’t I’ll wait"

"Especially not electrical equip to eat That’ll help Maybe it’ll even help my stomach" Napolitino finally looked at Billy "I’m sorry to have kept you out here in the sun, with your headache and all" The sergeant sounded sincere, conciliatory for the first ti as the ’syour job I’ve already said six ways I’m an idiot There’s no other way to say it I’m really sorry to have wasted your time"

"We’re here ‘to serve and protect’" Napolitino smiled thinly "It even says so on the door of the car"

"I liked it better when it said ‘the best deputies h frouely annoyed look fro off and switch to food"

Billy nodded "You’re right"

As he walked to the house, he felt they atching him He didn’t look back His heart had been relatively calain He couldn’t believe his luck He feared that it wouldn’t hold On the porch, he took his watch off the railing, put it on his wrist He bent down to pick up the pint bottle He didn’t see the cap It must have rolled off the porch or under a rocker

At the table beside his chair, he dropped the three crackers into the empty Ritz box, which for a while had held the 38 revolver He picked up the glass of cola

He expected to hear the engines of the patrol cars start up They didn’t Without glancing back, he carried the glass and the box and the bottle inside He closed the door and leaned against it

Outside, the day reines silent

Chapter 31

Sudden superstition warned Billy that as long as he waited with his back against the door, Sergeants Napolitino and Sobieski would not leave Listening, he went into the kitchen He dropped the Ritz box in the trash can

Listening, he poured the last ounce of whiskey from the bottle into the sink, and then chased it with the cola in the glass He put the bottle in the trash, the glass in the dishwasher

When by this tinawed at hily claustrophobic Perhaps because he knew that it contained a corpse, it see to the di room, sorely tempted to put up one of the pleated shades, all of theeants to think that he raised the shades to watch them and that their continued presence worried hie of one of the shades back frole to see the driveway

Billy ain, and saw the twoat Napolitino’s car, where he’d left them Neither deputy directly faced the house

They appeared to be deep in conversation They weren’t likely to be discussing baseball

He wondered if Napolitino had thought to search the orking shop for the half-cut, one-by-six walnut plank with the knothole The sergeant would not have found that length of lumber, of course, because it did not exist When Sobieski turned his head toward the house, Billy at once let go of the shade He hoped that he had been quick enough

Until they were gone, Billy could do nothing other than worry With everything he had to fret about, however, it was odd that his all-enveloping fog of anxiety quickly condensed upon the bizarre idea that Ralph Cottle’s body no longer lay under the desk in the study, where he had left it To have moved the cadaver, the killer would have had to return to the house while both of the deputies had been speaking with Billy in the driveway, before he himself had returned to the house The freak had proved his boldness; but this would have been recklessness if not the worst temerity If the corpse had been moved, however, he would have to find it He couldn’t afford to wait until it turned up by surprise in an inconvenient and incri moment

Billy withdrew the 38 revolver from under the sofa cushion When he broke out the cylinder and checked to be certain all six rounds hole and loaded, he assured hin of creeping paranoia

He followed the hallway as the disquiet that rang softly along his nerves quickened and, by the time he crossed the threshold into the study, swelled into clamorous alarm

He shoved the office chair out of the way

Embraced on three sides by the knee space, in the soft folds of his baggy and ruged inside its shell

Even ined that he would ever be relieved to find a corpse in his house