He rolled Barbara’s bed aside.
On the ground, Steve was twitching, saying, “Unnn, unnn, unnn,” in a bad imitation of an epileptic fit.
Billy zapped him again with the Taser, then pocketed it.
He grabbed the freak by his belt, by the collar of his shirt, hauled him off the blacktop. He didn’t think he had the strength to lift and shove Zillis into the back of the ambulance, but panic flushed him with adrenaline.
301
The knuckles of the freak’s right hand rapped uncontrollably against the floor of the ambulance, as did the back of his skull.
Billy slammed the door, seized the foot rail of Barbara’s bed, and pushed her toward Whispering Pines.
When he was less than ten feet from the door, it opened, and an orderly appeared, leading a patient in a walker.
“This is my wife,” Billy said. “I got her out. Will you look after her while I help some others?”
“It’s covered,” the orderly assured him. “I better get her a safe distance if there’s fire.”
Urging the man in the walker to keep pace with him, the orderly pushed Barbara away from the building but also away from the waiting ambulance. When Billy got behind the wheel and pulled the driver’s door shut, he heard the freak drumming his heels against something and making strangled noises that might have been fractured curses.
Billy didn’t know how long the effect of a Tasering lasted. Maybe he was wrong to pray for convulsions, but he did.
He found the brake release, the gear shift, and he pulled around to the front of the building. He parked beside his Explorer.
People were coming out of the building, into the parking lot. They were too busy to wonder about him.
He transferred the cooler with the severed hands to the ambulance and then got away from there. He went two blocks before he could locate the switch for the emergency beacons and the siren.
By the time he passed the fire trucks, coming out from Vineyard Hills, the ambulance was in full flash and voice.
He figured the more he called attention to himself, the less suspicious he appeared. He broke every speed limit going through the northeast end of town, and turned due east on the state route that led to the Olsen house. When he was two miles out of town, with vineyards to both sides of the road, he heard the freak muttering more coherently and banging around back there, evidently trying to get up.
Billy pulled to the shoulder of the road, parked, but left the beacons flashing. He climbed between the seats, into the back.
302
On his knees, clutching the bracketed oxygen cylinder, Zillis wanted badly to get to his feet. His eyes were bright, like those of a coyote at night. Billy zapped him again, and Zillis flopped, twitched, but a Taser wasn’t a deadly weapon.
If he shot the freak, blood might spray over all the life-support equipment, an ungodly mess. And evidence.
On the wheeled stretcher were two thin foam pillows. Billy grabbed both. Flat on his back, rolling his head from side to side, Zillis had no muscle control whatsoever.
Billy dropped on his chest with both knees, driving the breath out of him, cracking more than one of his ribs, and shoved the pillows over his face. Although the freak fought for life, he fought ineffectively. Billy almost couldn’t finish it. He made himself think about Judith Kesselman, her lively eyes, her elfin smile, and he wondered if Zillis had shoved a spear-point iron stave into her, whether he had cut off the top of her skull while she was alive and handed it to her as a drinking cup. Then it was over.
Sobbing but not for Zillis, he climbed once more behind the steering wheel. He drove onto the highway.
Two miles from the turnoff to the Olsen place, Billy killed the emergency beacons and the siren. He slowed below the speed limit.
Because the alarm at Whispering Pines had been false, the fire-department crew would not linger. By the time he eventually returned the ambulance, the staff parking lot would be deserted again.
He had left his power screwdriver at home. He was pretty sure that Lanny owned one. He would borrow it. Lanny wouldn’t care.
As he reached the house, he saw the sickle moon, a little thicker this night than last, and the silver blade perhaps somewhat sharper.
303
All year, the valley is home to rock doves and to band-tailed pigeons, to the song sparrow and to the even more musical dark-eyed junco. The long-winged, long-tailed falcons known as American kestrels also stay the year. Their distinctive plumage is bright and cheerful. Their shrill, clear call sounds like killy-killy-killy-killy, which should not be pleasing to the ear, but is.
Billy bought a new refrigerator. And a microwave.
He knocked down a wall, combining his study with the living room because he had plans to use the space differently from the way it had been used before.
After choosing a cheerful butter-yellow color, he repainted every room. He threw out the carpets and furniture, and purchased everything new, because he didn’t know where the redhead might have been sitting or lying when she had been strangled or otherwise dispatched.
He considered razing the house and rebuilding, but he realized that houses are not haunted. We are haunted,
