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Because no interstate highways crossed the county, the available facility, along State Highway 29, was modest by the standards of the Little America chain that operated truck stops the size of small towns But it featured banks of fuel puht, a convenience store, free showers, Internet access, and a 24/7 diner that offered fried everything and coffee that would stand your hair on end

Billy didn’t want the coffee or cholesterol He sought only the bustle of rational commerce to balance the irrationality hich he’d been dealing, and a place so public that he would not be at risk of attack He parked in a space outside the diner, under a laht that fell through the windshield

Frolove box, he took foil packets of moist towelettes He used them to scrub his hands

They had been invented toMac and fries in the car, not to sterilize the hands after disposing of corpses But Billy wasn’t in a position--or of a mind--to be fussy

His left hand, nailed and unpaled, felt hot and slightly stiff He flexed it slowly, gingerly

Because of the Vicodin, he felt no pain Thatprobleht rip at the very th was needed

With warm Pepsi, he washed doo more Anacin, which had some effect as an anti-inflammatory Motrin would have been better, but what he had was Anacin

The right dose of caffeine could coht fray the nerves and compel him to rash action He took another No-Doz anyway

Busy hours had passed since he had eaten the Hershey’s and the Planters bars He ate another of each

While he ate, he considered Steve Zillis, his priainst Zillis see Yet it was all circumstantial

That did not mean the case was unsound Half or more of the convictions obtained in cri webs of circumstantial evidence, and far less than one percent of thely leave direct evidence at the scenes of their crie of DNA comparison, any felon with a TV could catch the CSI shows and educate himself in the simple steps that hefrom antibiotics to zydeco had its downside, however, and Billy knew too well the dangers of circumstantial evidence He reminded himself that the problem had not been the evidence The problem had been John Pal lieutenant bucking for a proht that Billy had made an orphan of himself, the truth had been horrific but clear and easily determined

Chapter 57

From a dream erotic, fourteen-year-old Billy Wiles is awakened by raised voices, angry shouting

At first he is confused He seems to have rolled out of a fine drea

He pulls one pillow over his head and buries his face in a second, trying to press himself back into the silken fantasy

Reality intrudes Reality insists

The voices are those of hisfro floor hardly muffles them

Our myths are rich with enchanters and enchantresses: sea nychildren to their dooe to self-destruction that has been with us since the first bite of the first apple Billy is his own piper, allowing himself to be drawn out of bed by the dissonant voices of his parents

Arguments are not coreeers, it is expressed in sullen silences that in time heal, or seem to Billy does not think of his parents as unhappy in e They love each other He knows they do

Barefoot, bare-chested, in paja as he walks, Billy Wiles follows the hallway, descends the stairs…

He does not doubt that his parents love him In their way His father expresses a stern affection His lect and raptures of enuine as they are overdone The nature of his mother’s and father’s frustrations with each other has always remained mysterious to Billy and seemed to be of no consequence Until now

By the tiht of the kitchen door, Billy is iainst his will--or is he?--in the cold truths and secret selves of those whoined that his father could contain such fierce anger as this Not just the savage volu tone and the viciousness of the language reveal a long-si resentment boiled down to a black tar that provides the ideal fuel for anger His father accuses his mother of sexual betrayal, of serial adultery He calls her a whore, calls her worse, graduating fro room, where Billy is immobilized by revelation, his mind reels at the accusations hurled at his mother His parents have seemed to him to be asexual, attractive but indifferent to such desires

If he had ever wondered about his conception, he would have attributed it to marital duty and to a desire for fa than the accusations are his es, which reveal his father to be both a ethan what is directed at her, she scorns her husband, and e and drives hiests hand to face with force

She cries out in pain but at once says, "You don’t scare s shatter, crack, clatter, ricochet--and then co ferociousness of sound

She screa roo at his father to stop, but his father does not appear to hear hinize his presence

His father is enthralled by, hypnotized by, possessed by the hideous power of the bludgeon that he wields It is a long-handled lug wrench On the floor, Billy’s devastated er able to screa on the kitchen island A hammer A butcher knife A revolver

His father appears to have arranged these murderous instruments to intimidate his ht that he was a coward, fatuous and ineffectual A coward he surely is, taking a lug wrench to a defenseless woed his capacity for evil

Seizing the revolver, gripping it with both hands, Billy shouts at his father to stop, for God’s sake stop, and when his warning goes unheeded, he fires a shot into the ceiling

The unexpected recoil knocks back through his shoulders, and he staggers in surprise

His father turns to Billy but not in a spirit of sub wrench is an avatar of darkness that controls the man at least as much as he controls it

"Whose seed are you?" his father asks "Whose son have I been feeding all these years, whose little bastard?"

Impossibly, the terror escalates, and when he understands that he er once, squeezes twice, a third ti with the recoil

Two misses and a chest wound

His father is jolted, stumbles, falls backward as the bullet pins a boutonniere of blood to his breast

Dropped, the lug wrench rings against--and cracks--the tile floor, and after it there is noand his mother’s muted expressions of misery

And then she says, "Daddy?" Her voice is slurred, and cracked with pain

"Daddy Tom?"

Her father, a career Marine, had been killed in action when she was ten Daddy Tom was her stepfather