“He finished by strangling her with a pair of her pantyhose.”
Billy’s legs felt weak. He leaned against the Explorer. He could not speak.
“Her sister found her just two hours ago.”
Lanny’s gaze remained fixed on the folded sheet of paper in Billy’s hand.
“The sheriff’s department doesn’t have jurisdiction down there,” Lanny continued. “So it’s in the lap of the Napa police. That’s something, anyway. That gives me breathing space.”
Billy found his voice, but it was rough and not as he usually sounded to himself. “The note said he’d kill a schoolteacher if I didn’t go to the police, but I went to you.”
“He said he’d kill her if you didn’t go to the police and get them involved.”
“But I went to you, I tried. I mean, for God’s sake, I tried, didn’t I?”
Lanny met his eyes at last. “You came to me informally. You didn’t actually go to the police. You went to a friend who happened to be a cop.”
“But I went to you,” Billy protested, and cringed at the denial in his voice, at the self-justification.
Nausea crawled the walls of his stomach, but he clenched his teeth and strove for control.
“Nothing smelled real about it,” Lanny said.
“About what?”
“The first note. It was a joke. It was a lame joke. There isn’t a cop alive with the instinct to smell anything real in it.”
“Was she married?” Billy asked.
A Toyota drove into the lot and parked seventy or eighty feet from the Explorer.
In silence they watched the driver get out of the car and go into the tavern. At such a distance, their conversation couldn’t have been overheard. Nevertheless, they were circumspect.
Country music drifted out of the tavern while the door was open. On the jukebox, Alan Jackson was singing about heartbreak.
“Was she married?” Billy asked again.
“Who?”
“The woman. The schoolteacher. Giselle Winslow.”
“I don’t think so, no. At least there’s no husband in the picture at the moment. Let me see the note.”
Withholding the folded paper, Billy said, “Did she have any children?”
“What does it matter?”
“It matters,” Billy said.
He realized that his empty hand had tightened into a fist. This was a friend standing before him, such as he allowed himself friends. Yet he relaxed his fist only with effort.
“It matters to me, Lanny.”
“Kids? I don’t know. Probably not. From what I heard, she must have lived alone.”
Two bursts of traffic passed on the state highway: paradiddles of engines, the soft percussion of displaced air.
In the ensuing quiet, Lanny said plaintively, “Listen, Billy, potentially, I’m in trouble here.”
“Potentially?” He found humor in that choice of words, but not the kind to make him laugh.
“No one else in the department would have taken that damn note seriously. But they’ll say I should have.”
“Maybe I should have,” Billy said.
Agitated, Lanny disagreed: “That’s hindsight. Bullshit. Don’t talk like that. We need a mutual defense.”
“Defense against what?”
“Whatever. Billy, listen, I don’t have a perfect ten card.”
“What’s a ten card?”
“My force record card, my performance file. I’ve gotten a couple negative reports.”
“What’d you do?”
Lanny’s eyes squinted when he took offense. “Damn it, I’m not a crooked cop.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“I’m forty-six, never taken a dime of dirty money, and I never will.”
“All right. Okay.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Lanny’s pique might have been pretense; he couldn’t sustain it. Or perhaps some grim mind’s-eye image scared him, for his pinched eyes widened. He chewed on his lower lip as if gnawing on a disturbing thought that he wanted to bite up, spit out, and never again consider.
Although he glanced at his wristwatch, Billy waited.
“What’s true enough,” Lanny said, “is I’m sometimes a lazy cop. Out of boredom, you know. And maybe because…I never really wanted this life.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations,” Billy assured him.
“I know. But the thing is…whether I wanted this life or not, it’s what I’ve got now. It’s all I have. I want a chance to keep it. I gotta read that new note, Billy. Please give me the note.”
Sympathetic but unwilling to yield the paper, which was now damp with his own perspiration, Billy unfolded and read it.
If you don’t go to the police and get them involved, I will kill an unmarried man who won’t much be missed by the world.
If you do go to the police, I will kill a young mother of two.
You have five hours to decide. The choice is yours.
On the first reading, Billy comprehended every terrible detail of the note, yet he read it again. Then he relinquished it.
Anxiety, the rust of life, corroded Lanny Olsen’s face as he scanned the lines. “This is one sick son of a bitch.”
“I’ve got to go down to Napa.”
“Why?”
“To give both these notes to the police.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Lanny said. “You don’t know that the second victim’s going to be in Napa. Could be in St. Helena or Rutherford—”
“Or in Angwin,” Billy interrupted, “or Calistoga.”
Eager to press the point, Lanny said, “Or Yountville or Circle Oaks, or Oakville. You don’t know where. You don’t know anything.”
“I know some things,” Billy said. “I know what’s right.”
Blinking at the note, flicking sweat off his eyelashes, Lanny said, “Real killers don’t play these games.”
“This one does.”
Folding the note and tucking it in the breast pocket of his uniform shirt, Lanny pleaded, “Let me think a minute.”
Immediately retrieving the paper from Lanny’s pocket, Billy said, “Think all you want. I’m driving down to Napa.”
“Oh, man, this is bad. This is wrong. Don’t be stupid.”
“It’s the end of his game if I won’t play it.”
“So you’re just going to kill a young mother of two. Just like that, are you?”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Then I’ll say it again. You’re going to kill a young mother of two.”
Billy shook his head. “I’m not killing anyone.”