In another age, men on the eve of battle had gone to churches to prepare themselves spiritually, intellectually, emotionally. To incense, to candlelight, to the humility that the shadow of the redeemer pressed upon them. In those days, every church had been open all day and night, offering unconditional sanctuary.
Times had changed. Now some churches might remain open around the clock, but many operated according to posted hours and locked their doors long before midnight.
Some withheld perpetual sanctuary because of the costs of heat and electricity. Budgets trump mission.
Others were plagued by vandals with cans of spray paint and by the faithless who, in a mocking spirit, came to copulate and leave their condoms. In previous ages of rampant hatred, such intolerance had been met with resolve, with teaching, and with the cultivation of remorse. Now the clerical consensus was that locks and alarms worked better than the former, softer remedies.
Rather than travel from church to church, trying their doors and finding only sanctuary by prior appointment, Billy went where most modern men in need of a haven for contemplation were drawn in post-midnight hours: to a truck stop.
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 pumps illuminated to rival daylight, 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 with which 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 lamppost of such wattage he could read by the light that fell through the windshield.
225
From the glove box, he took foil packets of moist towelettes. He used them to scrub his hands.
They had been invented to mop up after a Big Mac 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. That might not be good. A growing problem with the hand, not sensed, might manifest in a sudden weakness of grip at the very moment in the evolving crisis when strength was needed.
With warm Pepsi, he washed down two 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 compensate somewhat for too little sleep, but too much might 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 prime suspect. His only suspect.
The evidence against Zillis seemed overwhelming. Yet it was all circumstantial.
That did not mean the case was unsound. Half or more of the convictions obtained in criminal courts were based on convincing webs of circumstantial evidence, and far less than one percent of them were miscarriages of justice. Murderers did not obligingly leave direct evidence at the scenes of their crimes. Especially in this age of DNA comparison, any felon with a TV could catch the CSI shows and educate himself in the simple steps that he must take to avoid self-incrimination.
Everything from 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 Palmer, now the sheriff, then an ambitious young lieutenant bucking for a promotion to captain.
226
The night that Billy had made an orphan of himself, the truth had been horrific but clear and easily determined.
227
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 dream into another that is less pleasing.
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 his mother and father, rising from downstairs, so loud that the intervening floor hardly muffles them.
Our myths are rich with enchanters and enchantresses: sea nymphs that sing sailors onto rocks, Circe turning men into swine, pipers playing children to their doom. They are metaphors for the sinister secret urge 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 common in this house, but neither are they rare. Usually disagreements remain quiet, intense, and brief. If bitterness lingers, it is expressed in sullen silences that in time heal, or seem to. Billy does not think of his parents as unhappy in marriage. They love each other. He knows they do.
Barefoot, bare-chested, in pajama bottoms, waking 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 mother oscillates between benign neglect and raptures of maternal love that are as genuine 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.
