Velocity. Part 36

Those rooms faced each other across the hall. As Billy recalled, the one on the left was the bathroom, Zillis's bedroom on the right.

Judging by pitch and timbre, not by content, he thought there were two voices, one male and one female.

He held the Mace in his right hand, thumb under the safeguard, squarely on the b.u.t.ton trigger.

Instinct whispered that he should trade the Mace for the pistol. Not every instinct was more reliable than reason.

If he started by shooting Zillis, he had nowhere to go. He must first disable him, not wound him.

Moving along the hall, he pa.s.sed the make-believe abattoir where the mannequins sat in bloodless mutilation.

The better he could hear them, the more the voices had a make-believe quality, too. They were actors sharing a bad performance. A vaguely tinny quality suggested they issued from the speakers of a cheap TV.

The woman suddenly cried out in pain, but sensuously, as if her pain were also her pleasure.

Billy had nearly reached the end of the hall when Steve Zillis exited the bathroom, to the left.

Barefoot, bare-chested, wearing pajama bottoms, he was scrubbing his teeth with a brush, hurrying to see what was on the television in the bedroom.

His eyes widened when he spotted Billy. He spoke around the toothbrush: "What the fuh-"

Billy Maced him.

Police Mace is highly effective up to a distance of twenty feet, although fifteen is ideal. Steve Zillis stood seven feet from Billy.

Mace in the mouth and in the nose will somewhat inhibit an attacker. You can stop him hard and fast only if you squirt him liberally in the eyes.

The stream doused both eyes, point-blank, and also hosed his nostrils.

Zillis dropped the toothbrush, covered his eyes with his hands, too late, and turned blindly away from Billy. He collided at once with the end wall of the hallway. Making a desperate wheezing sound, he bent over, retching, and spewed gobs of toothpaste foam as if he were a rabid dog.

The burning in his eyes was h.e.l.lacious, his pupils open so wide that he could see only a fierce blurred brightness, not even the form of his a.s.sailant, not even a shadow. His throat also burned with the chemical that had gone down by way of his nose, and his lungs tried to reject every tainted breath that he drew.

Billy went in low, grabbed the cuff of a pajama leg, and jerked the man's left foot out from under him.

Clawing the air in search of a wall, a doorway, something that would offer support, finding nothing, Zillis dropped hard enough to make the floorboards vibrate.

Between gasps and wheezes, between fits of choking, he shrieked about his eyes, the pain, the stinging brightness.

Billy drew the 9-mm pistol and rapped him along the side of the head with the barrel, just hard enough to hurt.

Zillis howled, and Billy warned, "Quiet down, or I'll hit you again, harder."

When Zillis cursed him, Billy rapped him with the gun once more, not as hard as promised, but that got the idea across.

"All right," Billy said. "Okay. You're not going to see well for twenty minutes, half an hour-"

Still inhaling in rapid shallow pants, exhaling in shudders, Zillis interrupted Billy: "Jesus, I'm blind, I'm-"

"It was just Mace."

"What're you nuts?"

"Mace. No permanent damage."

"I'm blind," Zillis insisted.

"You stay there."

"I'm blind."

"You're not blind. Don't move."

"s.h.i.+t..."

A thread of blood unraveled from Zillis's scalp. Billy hadn't hit him hard, but the skin had broken.

"Don't move, listen to me," Billy said, "cooperate, and we'll get through this, it'll be all right."

He realized that he was already comforting Zillis as if the man's innocence were a foregone conclusion.

Until now, there had seemed to be a way to do this. A way to do it even if Steve Zillis turned out not to be the freak, and to walk away with minimal consequences.

In his imagination, however, the opening encounter had not been this violent. A spritz of Mace. Zillis at once disabled, obedient. So easy in the planning.

They had hardly begun, and the situation seemed out of control.

Striving to sound confident, Billy said, "You don't want to be hurt, then just lie there till I tell you what to do next."

Zillis wheezed.

"You hear me?" Billy asked.

"s.h.i.+t, yeah, how could I not hear you?"

"You understand me?"

"I'm blind here, I'm not deaf."

Billy stepped into the bathroom, switched off the water running in the sink, and looked around.

He did not see what he needed, but he saw something that he did not want to see: his reflection in the mirror. He might have expected to look frantic, even dangerous, and he did. He might have expected to look scared, and he did. He would not have expected to see the potential for evil, but he did.

Chapter 61.

On the bedroom TV, a naked man in a black mask lashed a woman's b.r.e.a.s.t.s with a cl.u.s.ter of leather straps.

Billy switched off the TV. "I'm thinking about you handling the lemons and limes you slice for drinks, and I want to puke."

Lying disabled in the hall past the open door, Zillis either didn't hear him or pretended that he didn't.

The bed did not have a headboard or a footboard. The mattress and box springs sat on a wheeled metal frame.

Because Zillis didn't bother with such niceties as bedspreads and dust ruffles, the frame of the bed was exposed.

Billy took the handcuffs from the bread bag. He locked one of the bracelets to the bottom rail of the bed frame.

"Get up on your hands and knees," he said. "Crawl toward my voice."

Remaining on the hall floor, breathing easier but still noisily, Zillis spat vigorously on the carpet. His flooding tears had carried the Mace to his lips, and the bitter taste had gotten in his mouth.

Billy went to him and pressed the muzzle of the pistol to the nape of his neck. I.

Zillis became very still, wheezing softly.

Billy said, "You know what this is?"

"Man."

"I want you to crawl into the bedroom."

"s.h.i.+t."

"I mean it."

"All right."

"To the bottom of the bed."

Although the only light in the room issued from a dim bedside lamp, Zillis squinted against a stinging, blinding brightness as he crawled to the bed.

Billy had to redirect him twice. Then: "Sit on the floor with your back against the foot of the bed. That's good. With your left hand, feel beside you. A set of handcuffs is hanging from the bed rail. There you go."

"Don't do this to me, man." Zillis's eyes watered copiously. Fluid bubbled in his nostrils. "Why? What is this?"

"Put your left wrist in the empty bracelet."

"I don't like this," Zillis said.

"You don't have to."

"What're you going to do to me?"

"That depends. Put it on now."

After Zillis fumbled with the cuff, Billy leaned in to test the double lock, which was secure. Zillis still couldn't see well enough to strike out or to make a play for the gun.

Steve could drag the bed around the room if he wanted. He could overturn it with effort, dump the mattress and the box springs, and patiently dismantle the bolted frame until he could slide the cuff free. But he couldn't move fast.

The carpet looked filthy. Billy wouldn't sit or kneel on it.

He went to the dinette alcove off the kitchen and returned with the only straight-backed chair in the house. He stood it in front of Zillis, out of his reach, and sat down.

"Billy, I'm dying here."

"You aren't dying."

"I'm scared about my eyes. I still can't see."

"I want to ask you some questions."

"Questions? Are you crazy?"

"I half feel like it," Billy admitted.

Zillis coughed. The single cough became a fit of coughing, which became a fearsome choking. He wasn't faking any of it.

Billy waited.

When Zillis could speak, his voice was hoa.r.s.e, and it shook: "You're scaring the s.h.i.+t out of me, Billy."

"Good. Now I want you to tell me where you keep your gun."

"Gun? What do I need with a gun?"

"The one you shot him with."

"Shot him? Shot who? I didn't shoot anybody. Jesus, Billy."

"You shot him in the forehead."

"No. No way. Not me, man." His eyes swam with tears induced by the Mace, so they could not be read for deception. He blinked and blinked, trying to see. "Man, if this is some half-a.s.sed joke-"

"You're the joker," Billy said. "Not me. You're the performer."

Zillis didn't react to the word.

Billy went to the nightstand and opened the drawer.

"What're you doing?" Zillis asked.