"No. No one."

"No friend or member of the family?"

"No. Not even a dog. Sometimes I think about getting a dog, but I never do."

Scalpels were not sharper than Sergeant Napolitino's dark eyes. "Sir, if there's a bad guy in there-"

"No bad guy," Billy a.s.sured him.

"If someone you care about is being held in there under duress, the best thing you could do is tell me."

"Of course. I know that. Who wouldn't know that?"

The intense heat coming off the sun-hammered car made Billy half sick. His face felt seared. Neither of the sergeants appeared to be bothered by the broiling air.

"Under stress, intimidated," Sobieski said, "people make bad decisions, Billy."

"Sweet Jesus," Billy said, "I really made an a.s.s of myself this time, hanging up on 911, then what I said to Rosalyn."

"What did you say to her?" Napolitino asked.

Billy was certain they knew the essentials of what he had said, and he himself remembered every word with piercing clarity, but he hoped to convince them that he was too booze-confused to recall quite how he had gotten himself in this predicament.

"Whatever I said, it must have been stupid if I gave her the idea somebody might be giving me trouble. Duress. Man. This is way embarra.s.sing."

He shook his head at his foolishness, found a dry laugh, and shook his head again.

The sergeants just watched him.

"No one's here but me. No one's come around here in days. No one's ever here but me. I pretty much keep to myself, it's the way I am."

That was enough. He was perilously close to babbling again.

If they knew about Barbara, they knew how he was. If they didn't know about her, Rosalyn would tell them.

He had taken a risk by saying that n.o.body had visited in days. Rightly or wrongly, he'd felt that he should make a point of his reclusive life.

If someone in the nearest houses down-slope had seen Ralph Cottle walking up this driveway or had noticed him sitting on the porch, and if the sergeants decided to have a word with the neighbors, Billy would be caught in a lie.

"What happened to your forehead?" Napolitino asked.

Until that moment, Billy had forgotten about the hook wounds in his brow, but a low throbbing pain arose in them when the sergeant asked the question.

Chapter 29.

"Isn't that a bandage?" Sergeant Napolitino persisted.

Although Billy's thick hair fell over his forehead, it did not entirely conceal the gauze pads and adhesive tape.

"I had a little table-saw accident," Billy said, pleasantly surprised by the swiftness with which a suitable lie occurred to him.

"Sounds serious," Sergeant Sobieski said.

"It's not. It's nothing. I have a woodworking shop in the garage. I built all the cabinetry in the house. Last night, I was working on something, cutting a walnut one-by-six, and there was a knot in it. The blade cracked the knot, and a few splinters shot into my forehead."

"You could lose an eye like that," Sobieski said.

"I wear safety goggles. I always wear goggles."

Napolitino said, "Did you go to a doctor?"

"Nah. No need. Just some splinters. I dug 'em out with tweezers. h.e.l.l, the only reason I need a bandage is I did more damage with the tweezers, getting the splinters out, than they did going in."

"Be careful about infection."

"I soaked it with alcohol, hydrogen peroxide. Smeared Neosporin on it. I'll be all right. This kind of thing, it happens."

Billy felt that he had satisfied their concerns. To his ear, he didn't sound like a man under duress, with a life-or-death problem.

The sun was a furnace, a forge, and the heat coming off the car cooked him more effectively than a microwave oven might have done, but he was cool.

When the questioning took a negative and more aggressive turn, he didn't at once recognize the change.

"Mr. Wiles," said Napolitino, "did you then call information?"

"Did I what?"

"After you mistakenly dialed 911 and hung up, did you dial 411 as you had intended?"

"No, I just sat there for a minute thinking about what I'd done."

"You sat there for a minute thinking how you had mistakenly dialed 911?"

"Well, not a whole minute. However long it was. I didn't want to screw up again. I was feeling a little woozy. Like I said, my stomach. Then Rosalyn called me back."

"Before you could dial 411 for information, she called back."

"That's right."

"After your conversation with the 911 operator-"

"Rosalyn."

"Yes. After your conversation with her, did you then call 411?"

The telephone company imposed a 411 service charge for each call. If he had placed one, they would have a record of it.

"No," Billy said. "I felt like such a bonehead. I needed a drink."

The reference to a drink had come naturally, not as if he were trying to sell them on his supposed inebriation. He thought he had sounded smooth, convincing.

Napolitino said, "What number would you have asked for if you had called 411?"

Billy realized that these inquiries were no longer related to his welfare and safety. A veiled antagonism colored Napolitino's questions, subtle but unmistakable.

Billy wondered if he should openly acknowledge this development and question their intent. He didn't want to appear guilty.

"Steve," he said. "I needed Steve Zillis's number."

"He is... ?"

"He's a bartender at the tavern."

"He covers your shift when you're sick?" Napolitino asked.

"No. He works the shift after mine. Why's it matter?"

"Why did you need to call him?"

"I just wanted to warn him that I was out, and when he came on he'd have a mess to clean up because Jackie would have been tending bar alone."

"Jackie?" Napolitino asked.

"Jackie O'Hara. He's the owner. He's covering my shift. Jackie doesn't continually tidy the work bar, the lower bar, like he should. The clutter and spills just build up till the guy following him needs like a frantic fifteen minutes to get the set-up workable again."

Every time Billy had to give a longer, more explanatory answer, he heard a shakiness arise in his voice. He didn't think that he was imagining it; he believed that the sergeants could hear it, too.

Maybe everyone sounded this way when talking to on-duty cops for any substantial length of time. Maybe uneasiness was natural.

A lot of gesturing was not natural, however, especially not for Billy. During his longer answers, he found himself using his hands too much, and he couldn't control them. Defensively, but trying to appear casual, he slipped his hands into the pockets of his chinos. In each pocket, his fingers found three .38 cartridges, spare ammunition. Napolitino said, "So you wanted to warn Steve Zillis he'd have a mess."

"That's right."

"You don't know Mr. Zillis's phone number?"

"I don't call him often."

They were not engaged in an innocent Q and A anymore. They had not descended to the level of an interrogation yet, but they were on the down escalator. Billy did not quite understand why this should be the case-except that perhaps his answers and his demeanor had not been as exculpatory as he had thought. "Isn't Mr. Zillis's number in the directory?"

"I guess so. But sometimes it's just easier to call 411."

"Unless you mistakenly dial 911," Napolitino said.

Billy decided that making no reply would be better than berating himself for idiocy, as he had done earlier. If the situation deteriorated to the point where they decided to search him, even just to pat him down, they would find the cartridges in his pockets. He wondered if he'd be able to explain the bullets with another facile and convincing lie. At the moment, he couldn't think of one. But he couldn't believe it would ever come to that. The deputies were here because they had been concerned that he might be in danger. He had only to convince them that he was safe, and they would leave. Something that he had said-or had not said-left them with lingering doubts. If he could only find the right words, the magic words, the sergeants would go away.

Now, here, he chafed again at the limitations of language.

As real as the change in Napolitino's att.i.tude seemed, a part of Billy argued that he was imagining it. The strain of disguising his anxiety had bent his perceptions, had made him a little paranoid.

He counseled himself to be still, to have patience.

"Mr. Wiles," said Napolitino, "are you absolutely sure that you yourself dialed 911?"

Although Billy could pa.r.s.e that sentence, he couldn't quite make sense out of it. He couldn't grasp the intention behind the question, and considering everything that he had told them thus far, he didn't know what answer they expected from him.

"Is there any possibility whatsoever that someone else in your house placed that call to 911?" Napolitino pressed.

For an instant Billy thought somehow they knew about the freak, but then he understood. He understood.

Sergeant Napolitino's question was phrased with an eye toward eventual legal challenges to police procedure. What he wanted to ask Billy was more direct: Mr. Wiles, are you holding someone in your house under duress, and did she get free long enough to dial 911, and did you tear the phone out of her hand and hang up, hoping a connection had not been made?

To ask the question more bluntly than he had done, Napolitino would first have had to inform Billy of his const.i.tutional right to remain silent and to have an attorney present during questioning.

Billy Wiles had become a suspect.

They were on the brink. A precipice.

Never had Billy's mind calculated options and consequences so feverishly, aware that every second of hesitation made him appear guiltier.

Fortunately, he did not have to counterfeit a flabbergasted expression. His jaw must have looked unhinged.

Not trusting his ability to fake anger or even indignation with any conviction whatsoever, Billy instead played his genuine surprise: "Good Lord, you don't think... You do think I... Good Lord. I'm the last guy I'd expect to be mistaken for Hannibal Lecter."

Napolitino said nothing.

Neither did Sobieski.

Their eyes were as steady as the axis of a spinning gyroscope.

"Of course you'd have to consider the possibility," Billy said. "I understand. I do. It's all right. Go inside if you want. Have a look around."

"Mr. Wiles, are you inviting us to search your house for an intruder or others?"

His fingertips resting on the cartridges in his pockets, his mind's eye resting on the shadowy form of Cottle in the knee s.p.a.ce of the desk...

"Search it for anything," he said affably, as if relieved to understand at last what was wanted of him. "Go ahead."

"Mr. Wiles, I am not asking to search your residence. You do see the situation?"

"Sure. I know. It's okay. Go to it."