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One of the most effective of these ploys is to make Billy into a "busboy"

A public defender arrives at the holding facility in Napa only to discover that because of lius reasons, his client has been a, he hears that a regrettable mistake has been made: The boy has actually been taken to St Helena In St Helena, they send the attorney chasing back to Napa

Further a suspect, a vehicle sometimes has mechanical proble on the required repairs

During these two and a half days, Billy passes through a blur of drab offices, interrogation rooms, and cells Always, his emotions are raw, and his fears are as constant as his ular, but the worst moments occur in the patrol car, on the road

Billy rides in back, behind the security barrier His hands are cuffed, and a chain shackles his cuffs to a ring bolt in the floor

There is a driver who never has a thing to say In spite of regulations forbidding this arrangement, John Palmer shares the backseat with his suspect The lieutenant is a big man, and his suspect is a fourteen-year-old boy In these close quarters, the disparity in their sizes is of itself disturbing to Billy In addition, Palmer is an expert at intimidation Ceaseless talk and questions are punctuated only by accusing silences By calculated looks, by carefully chosen words, by ominous mood shifts, he wears on the spirit as effectively as a power sander wears on wood

The touching is the worst

Palmer sits closer some tiht want to sit to a girl, his left side pressed to Billy’s right He ruffles Billy’s hair with patently false affection He rests one big hand on Billy’s shoulder, now on his knee, now on his thigh

"Killing theood reason, Billy If your father molested you for years and your mother knew, no one could blame you"

"My father never touchedhe did?"

"I’ to be asha you since you were little That makes you a victim, don’t you see? And even if you liked it--"

"I wouldn’t like it"

"Even if you did like it, you’ve no reason to be ashamed" The hand on the shoulder "You’re still a victim"

"I’m not I wasn’t Don’t say that"

"Sos to defenseless boys, and soh "But that makes the boy no less innocent, Billy The sweet boy is still innocent"

Billy alentle touching and the insinuation are worse than a blow because it see fails

On more than one occasion, Billy nearly confesses just to escape therhythms of Lieutenant John Palins to wonder why… After he put an end to his , why had he called the police instead of ja the muzzle of the revolver in his ood work of the medical exahts of other officers who have let Palmer whip the case as he wishes The evidence indicts the father; none points to the son

The only print on the revolver is one of Billy’s, but one clear fingerprint and a partial pal to Billy’s father

The killer swung the lug wrench with his left hand Unlike his father, Billy is right-handed

Billy’s clothes wereA back-spray of blood stippled the sleeves of his father’s shirt Clawing, she had tried to fend off her husband His blood and skin, not Billy’s, were under her fingernails

In tin, and another is fired When the smoke dissipates, Lieutenant John Pale

Billy considers accusing the lieutenant, but fears testifying and,in court Prudence suggests withdrawal

Stay low, stay quiet, keep it simple, don’t expecton eventuallyin with Pearl Olsen, theof one deputy and the mother of another

She makes the offer to rescue Billy from the li, he knows instinctively that she will always be no h he is only fourteen, he has learned that harmony between reality and appearance ines, and is a quality he may hope to foster in hihts of the truck stop, outside the diner, Billy Wiles ate Hershey’s, ate Planters, and brooded about Steve Zillis The evidence against Zillis, while circu that John Pal Billy

Nevertheless, he worried that he ainst an innocent eneral condition of Zillis’s house proved he was a creep and perhaps even deranged, but none of it proved he had killed anyone

Billy’s experience at the hands of Pal to turn up one case-fortifying fact, even so as thin as the wisp of crescent moon above the diner, Billy picked up the paper that he had bought in Napa and had heretofore had no tie story about Giselle Winslow’s murder

Crazily, he hoped that the cops had found a cherry stem tied in a knot near the corpse

Instead, what leaped at him from the article, what flew at him as quick as a bat to a moth, was the fact that Winslow’s left hand had been cut off The freak had taken a souvenir, not a face this time, but a hand

Lanny had not mentioned this But when Lanny had driven into the tavern parking lot as Billy took the second note off the Explorer’s windshield, Winslow’s body had only recently been found Not all of the details had yet been shared on the sheriffs-department hotline

Inevitably, Billy reerator seventeen hours earlier and that he had secreted in his copy of In Our Tie warned him that "An associate of mine will come to see you at 11:00 Wait for him on the front porch"

In memory, he could see the last two lines of that note, which had been baffling at the tiry Have I not extended to you the hand of friendship? Yes, I have

Even on first reading, those lines had seeed him to accept that he was hopelessly outclassed

Somewhere in his house, the severed hand awaited discovery by the police

Chapter 59

A man and woman, a trucker couple in jeans and T-shirts and baseball caps--his said PETERBILT; hers said ROAD GODDESS--came out of the diner The man probed his incisors with a toothpick, while the woman yawned, rolled her shoulders, and stretched her arms From behind the wheel of the Explorer, Billy found hi how small they were, how easily one of them could be hidden In the attic Under a floorboard Behind the furnace In the back of a closet In the crawlspace under one of the porches, front or back Perhaps in the garage, in a workshop drawer Preserved in formaldehyde or not If one victim’s hand had been secreted on his property, why not a part of another victim, too? What had the freak harvested from the redhead, and where had he put it? Billy was tehly froht and all of thehorrors

And if he did not find the afternoon in the search, as well? How could he not?

Once the quest had begun, he would be corail

According to his atch, it was 1:36 AM, Thursday ht lay little ht Thursday

Already Billy was functioning on caffeine and chocolate, Anacin and Vicodin If he spent his day in a frantic search for body parts, if by twilight he had neither identified the freak nor gotten any rest, he would be physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted; in that condition, he would not be a reliable guardian for Barbara