Ejecting the spent magazine from his pistol, Lanny said, "You should have been here yesterday. I head-shot twelve Road Runners in a row, not a wasted round."

Billy said, "Wile E. Coyote would've been thrilled. You ever shoot at ordinary targets?"

"What would be the fun in that?"

"You ever shoot the Simpsons?"

"Homer, Bart-all of them but Marge," Lanny said. "Never Marge."

Lanny might have gone to art school if his domineering father, Ansel, had not been determined that his son would follow him into law enforcement as Ansel himself had followed his father.

Pearl, Lanny's mother, had been as supportive as her illness allowed. When Lanny was sixteen, Pearl had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Radiation therapy and drugs sapped her. Even in periods when the lymphoma was controlled, she did not fully regain her strength.

Concerned that his father would be a useless nurse, Lanny never went away to art school. He remained at home, took up a career in law enforcement, and looked after his mother.

Unexpectedly, Ansel was first to die. He stopped a motorist for speeding, and the motorist stopped him with a .38 fired pointblank.

Having contracted lymphoma at an atypically young age, Pearl lived with it for a surprisingly long time. She had died ten years previously, when Lanny was thirty-six.

He'd still been young enough for a career switch and art school. Inertia, however, proved stronger than the desire for a new life.

He inherited the house, a handsome Victorian with elaborate millwork and an encircling veranda, which he maintained in pristine condition. With a career that was a job but not a pa.s.sion, and with no family of his own, he had plenty of spare time for the house.

As Lanny shoved a fresh magazine in the pistol, Billy took the typewritten message from a pocket. "What do you make of this?"

Lanny read the two paragraphs while, in the lull of gunfire, blackbirds returned to the high bowers of nearby elms.

The message evoked neither a frown nor a smile from Lanny, though Billy had expected one or the other. "Where'd you get this?"

"Somebody left it under my windshield wiper."

"Where were you parked?"

"At the tavern."

"An envelope?"

"No."

"You see anyone watching you? I mean, when you took it out from under the wiper and read it."

"n.o.body."

"What do you make of it?"

"That was my question to you," Billy reminded him.

"A prank. A sick joke."

Staring at the ominous lines of type, Billy said, "That was my first reaction, but then..."

Lanny stepped sideways, aligning himself with new hay bales faced with full-figure drawings of Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. "But then you ask yourself What if... ?"

"Don't you?"

"Sure. Every cop does, all the time, otherwise he ends up dead sooner than he should. Or shoots when he shouldn't."

Not long ago, Lanny had wounded a belligerent drunk who he thought had been armed. Instead of a gun, the guy had a cell phone.

"But you can't keep what-ifing yourself forever," he continued.

"You've got to go with instinct. And your instinct is the same as mine. It's a prank. Besides, you've got a hunch who did it."

"Steve Zillis," said Billy.

"Bingo."

Lanny a.s.sumed an isosceles shooting stance, right leg quartered back for balance, left knee flexed, two hands on the pistol. He took a deep breath and popped Elmer five times as a shrapnel of blackbirds exploded from the elms and tore into the sky.

Counting four mortal hits and one wound, Billy said, "The thing is... this doesn't seem like something Steve would do-or could."

"Why not?"

"He's a guy who carries a small rubber bladder in his pocket so he can make a loud farting sound when he thinks that might be funny."

"Meaning?"

Billy folded the typewritten message and tucked it in his shirt pocket. "This seems too complex for Steve, too... subtle."

"Young Steve is about as subtle as the green-apple nasties," Lanny agreed.

Resuming his stance, he spent the second half of the magazine on Bugs, scoring five mortal hits.

"What if it's real?" Billy asked.

"It's not."

"But what if it is?"

"Homicidal lunatics only play games like that in movies. In real life, killers just kill. Power is what it's about for them, the power and sometimes violent s.e.x-not teasing you with puzzles and riddles."

Ejected sh.e.l.l casings littered the gra.s.s. The westering sun polished the tubes of bra.s.s to a b.l.o.o.d.y gold.

Aware that he hadn't quelled Billy's doubt, Lanny continued: "Even if it were real-and it's not-what is there to act upon in that note?"

"Blond schoolteachers, elderly women."

"Somewhere in Napa County."

"Yeah."

"Napa County isn't San Francisco," Lanny said, "but it's not unpopulated barrens, either. Lots of people in lots of towns. The sheriff's department plus every police force in the county together don't have enough men to cover all those bases."

"You don't need to cover them all. He qualifies his targets-a lovely blond schoolteacher."

"That's a judgment," Lanny objected. "Some blond schoolteacher you find lovely might be a hag to me."

"I didn't realize you had such high standards in women."

Lanny smiled. "I'm picky."

"Anyway there's also the elderly woman active in charity work."

Jamming a third magazine in the pistol, Lanny said, "A lot of elderly women are active in charities. They come from a generation that cared about their neighbors."

"So you aren't going to do anything?"

"What do you want me to do?"

Billy had no suggestion, only an observation: "It seems like we ought to do something."

"By nature, police are reactive, not proactive."

"So he has to murder somebody first?"

"He isn't going to murder anyone."

"He says he will," Billy protested.

"It's a prank. Steve Zillis has finally graduated from the squirting-flowers-and-plastic-vomit school of humor."

Billy nodded. "You're probably right."

"I'm for sure right." Indicating the remaining colorful figures fixed to the triple-thick wall of hay bales, Lanny said, "Now before twilight spoils my aim, I want to kill the cast of Shrek."

"I thought they were good movies."

"I'm not a critic," Lanny said impatiently, "just a guy having some fun and sharpening his work skills."

"Okay, all right, I'm out of here. See you Friday for poker."

"Bring something," Lanny said.

"Like what?"

"Jose's bringing his pork-and-rice ca.s.serole. Leroy's bringing five kinds of salsa and lots of corn chips. Why don't you make your tamale pie?"

As Lanny spoke, Billy winced. "We sound like a group of old maids planning a quilting party."

"We're pathetic," Lanny said, "but we're not dead yet."

"How would we know?"

"If I were dead and in h.e.l.l," Lanny said, "they wouldn't let me have the pleasure of drawing cartoons. And this sure isn't Heaven."

By the time Billy reached his Explorer in the driveway, Lanny Olsen had begun to blast away at Shrek, Princess Fiona, Donkey, and their friends.

The eastern sky was sapphire. In the western vault, the blue had begun to wear off, revealing gold beneath, and the hint of red gesso under the gilt.

Standing by his SUV in the lengthening shadows, Billy watched for a moment as Lanny honed his marksmanship and, for the thousandth time, tried to kill off his unfulfilled dream of being a cartoonist.

Chapter 3.

An enchanted princess, rec.u.mbent in a castle tower, dreaming the years away until awakened by a kiss, could not have been lovelier than Barbara Mandel abed at the Whispering Pines.

In the caress of lamplight, her golden hair spilled across the pillow, as l.u.s.trous as bullion poured from a smelter's cauldron.

Standing at her bedside, Billy Wiles had never seen a bisque doll with a complexion as pale or as flawless as Barbara's. Her skin appeared translucent, as though the light penetrated the surface and then brightened her face from within.

If he were to lift aside the thin blanket and sheet, he would expose an indignity not visited on enchanted princesses. An enteral-nutrition tube had been inserted surgically into her stomach.

The doctor had ordered a slow continuous feeding. The drip pump purred softly as it supplied a perpetual dinner.

She had been in a coma for almost four years.

Hers was not the most severe of comas. Sometimes she yawned, sighed, moved her right hand to her face, her throat, her breast.

Occasionally she spoke, though never more than a few cryptic words, not to anyone in the room but to some phantom of the mind.

Even when she spoke or moved her hand, she remained unaware of everything around her. She was unconscious, unresponsive to external stimulation.

At the moment she lay quiet, brow as smooth as milk in a pail, eyes unmoving behind their lids, lips slightly parted. No ghost breathed with less sound.

From a jacket pocket, Billy took a small wire-bound notebook. Clipped to it was a half-size ballpoint pen. He put them on the nightstand.

The small room was simply furnished: one hospital bed, one nightstand, one chair. Long ago Billy had added a barstool that allowed him to sit high enough to watch over Barbara.

Whispering Pines Convalescent Home provided good care but an austere environment. Half the patients were convalescing; the other half were merely being warehoused.