“I don’t know what it is with the birds.” Reluctantly, Billy fished the note from his pocket and gave it to Lanny. “One hour.”
“That’s all I need. I’ll call you.”
As Lanny turned away, Billy put a hand on his shoulder, halting him.
“What do you mean you’ll call? You said you’d bring Palmer.”
“I’ll call you first, as soon as I’ve figured out how to tweak the story to give myself cover.”
“ ‘Tweak,’” Billy said, loathing the word.
Falling silent, the circling sea gulls wheeled away toward the westering sun.
“When I call,” Lanny said, “I’ll tell you what I’m gonna tell Palmer, so we’ll be on the same page. Then I’ll go to him.”
Billy wished that he had never surrendered the note. But it was evidence, and logic dictated that Lanny should have it.
“Where are you going to be in an hour—at Whispering Pines?”
Billy shook his head. “I’m stopping there, but only for fifteen minutes. Then I’m going home. Call me at my place. But there’s one more thing.”
Impatiently, Lanny said, “Midnight, Billy. Remember?”
44
“How does this psycho know what choice I make? How did he know I went to you and not to the police? How will he know what I do in the next four and a half hours?”
No answer but a frown occurred to Lanny.
“Unless,” Billy said, “he’s watching me.”
Surveying the vehicles in the parking lot, the tavern, and the arc of embracing elms, Lanny said, “Everything was going so smooth.”
“Was it?”
“Like a river. Now this rock.”
“Always a rock.”
“That’s true enough,” Lanny said, and walked away toward his patrol car. Mother Olsen’s only child appeared defeated, slump-shouldered and baggyassed.
Billy wanted to ask if everything was all right between them, but that was too direct. He couldn’t think of another way to phrase the question. Then he heard himself say, “Something I’ve never told you and should have.”
Lanny stopped, looked back, regarding him warily.
“All those years your mom was sick and you looked after her, gave up what you wanted… that took more of the right stuff than cop work does.”
As though embarrassed, Lanny looked at the trees again and said almost as if discomfited, “Thanks, Billy.” He seemed genuinely touched to hear his sacrifice acknowledged.
Then as if a perverse sense of shame compelled him to discount, if not mock, his virtue, Lanny added, “But all of that doesn’t leave me with a pension.”
Billy watched him get in the car and drive away.
In a silence of vanished sea gulls, the breathless day waned, while the hills and the meadows and the trees gradually drew more shadows over themselves. On the farther side of the highway, the forty-foot wooden man strove to save himself from the great grinding wheels of industry or brutal ideology, or modern art.
45
Barbara’s face against the dimpled background of the pillow was Billy’s despair and his hope, his loss and his expectation.
She was an anchor in two senses, the first beneficial. The sight of her held Billy fast and stable whatever the currents of a day.
Less mercifully, every memory of her from the time when she had been not just in the quick of life, but also vivacious, was a link of chain enwrapping him. If she sank from coma into full oblivion, the chain would pull taut, and he would sink with her into the darkest waters.
He came here not only to keep her company in the hope that she would recognize his presence even in her internal prison, but also to be taught how to care and not to care, how to sit still, and perhaps to find elusive peace. This evening, peace was more elusive than usual.
His attention shifted often from her face to his watch, and to the window beyond which the acid-yellow day soured slowly toward a bitter twilight.
46
He held his little notebook. He paged through it, reading the mysterious words that she had spoken.
When he found a sequence that particularly intrigued him, he read it aloud:
“—soft black drizzle—”
“—death of the sun—”
