Down Time

by Barry Lyga

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2018 by Barry Lyga

  Cover design by Cindy Joy. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: August 2018

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  ISBN: 978-1-5387-1523-9 (ebook)

  E3-20180711-JV-PC

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Begin Reading

  Newsletters

  Whenever he traveled—whether on business or, as now, for pleasure—Billy Dent fretted about his son, Jasper. In an ideal world, Billy would never be more than shouting distance from the boy, who—at age ten—was beginning to chafe at such parental attention. Billy knew this was natural, the course of maturity and development. Children should crave separation from their parents, else what’s the whole wide world for?

  But he was a parent—a father—and he trusted only himself with the well-being of his child. Leaving Jasper with Billy’s own mother was a compromise made necessary by life itself.

  Sometimes a man just had to go away. No two ways about it.

  Billy worked hard. He had stresses in his life that most people couldn’t understand. And so, every now and then, he needed a vacation.

  You never know what will happen when you go somewhere new.

  Someone—maybe a victim, maybe a family member, he couldn’t remember—had told him that once, and he hated it because it was true, and Billy hated being out of control, hated being out of his comfort zone.

  So he took his vacations reluctantly. He loved his boy and he loved his work and he felt ill at ease sleeping in a bed not his own, under a roof not his own. A man’s home is his castle, the old saying went, and while Billy knew that to be claptrap and nonsense, the fact was he felt safer and more competent and just more stable in his house than anywhere else in the world.

  But life didn’t give a good goddamn about your personal safety or comfort. Life loved nothing more than dragging you outside into the squinting light and harsh air.

  As long as Billy lived in this world, as Billy’s father was wont to say, he had to abide by it.

  For the most part.

  “Give Daddy a hug,” he told Jasper. The boy stood sullen in the corner, not reacting, not moving, just glaring at Billy with those hazel eyes, so unlike Billy’s own blue. A spasm of fatherly pride rippled through him—that sort of unearthly contempt wasn’t a natural thing in a boy so young. It had to be taught. It had to be implanted. Billy was as proud of Jasper’s aloofness as a rookie farmer is of his first sprout.

  From the kitchen came the sound of Billy’s mother clattering the pans. She was going to make pasta, and it would take her at least five minutes of fussing and fretting to realize she needed a pot, not a pan. Something was wrong with her brain, Billy knew. It didn’t surprise him, but it did occasionally catch him off guard. Billy had a single terror in the whole wide world, and that was losing his own mind.

  He would keep an eye on his mother. He would have to. Sometimes old folks just went a bit loopy, but sometimes they snapped like rubber bands, rotten and overstretched.

  “Be good for Gramma,” he said sternly, tousling his boy’s hair. Jasper snorted something that could have been disgust or annoyance.

  At such a provocation, Billy’s own father would have paused his own life long enough to whup the living hell out of Billy or his sister, Samantha.

  Billy was not his father. Billy was stronger. He allowed Jasper his acting out, his attempts at rebellion. At the end of the day, push come to shove, the boy knew who was boss. Who ruled the roost.

  “I love you,” he told Jasper. “Be good,” he said again, and then he called out a farewell to his mother, still grumbling and a-noising in the kitchen.

  Outside on the stoop, he took a deep breath and sighed.

  You’re a good father, he reminded himself, and he thought of the last woman he’d killed, which always bucked up his mood. Then he climbed into his Jeep and drove.

  When he traveled for pleasure, Billy always made certain to go somewhere far, somewhere that required flight. He didn’t like flying—the forced closeness to others, the intimacy of a colonoscopy (along with most of the smell). But these were the sacrifices one made for one’s livelihood and for one’s art. It would be surpassing strange, he surmised, for a man of his age and circumstances to never have boarded—not once—an airplane or traveled a distance for pleasure. He couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion. Not from the locals, the yammering neighbors, those bleating sheep with nothing on their minds but one instant to the next. Not from the bastard cops or the government or whoever might be watching.

  Someone was always watching, Billy knew. It was his burden to make sure they watched but never saw.

  And so he flew, building a false profile of himself, fabricating an identity he didn’t recognize, one that would appear “normal” and “safe” to those around him. Outside Billy, he thought of him. A different person. A different skin inhabited by the real deal.

  Now he permitted himself to become a bit player in the security theater of the TSA at the airport, suppressing chuckles at their ineptitude and blindness. He was a white man solidly in his thirties in the United States of America in the glorious twenty-first century; as long as he smiled, he was invisible, intangible. A ghost to those seeking wrongdoers and potential terror.

  The flight was, of course, jam-packed. Billy managed to find room for his bag in the overhead compartment. He refused to check baggage. He wouldn’t have some random prospect pawing through his personal belongings. No, sir. That would not happen on Billy’s watch.

  The previous year, on his self-mandated vacation, he’d watched as some unfortunate ahead of him in the security line had been pulled aside, her suitcase opened in full view of God and the rabble, her clothing sifted and searched. Billy decided then and there that, were he subjected to such an indignity, he would have no choice but to burn that suitcase and everything in it. There could be no other solution.

  But they’d not chosen him then, as they did not choose him now. He sailed through the security checkpoint with a smile on his lips and amused contempt in his heart.

  As always, he sat on the aisle, affording himself at least a modicum of freedom from the useless sack of flesh beside him. He spent most of the flight with his eyes closed, feigning sleep, all the while indulging in the luxury of imagining himself with a blade and a hatchet, running up and down the aisle.…

  Up and down… Up and down…

  Plane, landed. Car, rented. Billy flashed an extraspecial smile at the woman at the rental counter—she was plain and knew it—and miraculously received an upgrade to a sportier model. It was the sort of car Billy disdained, but Outside Billy would be expected to be thrilled, so he gabbled about how great the car was and jauntily saluted the counter prospect as he drove off.

  His hotel was part of a larger resor
t on the beach, given the ill-conceived name Castle by the Sea. It was a neo-Gothic monstrosity, all towers and gables done in pastel colors, as though the architect had thrown a blood clot in his brain halfway through designing it and no one had dared to gainsay him. The place reeked of bad taste and ill intent, but Billy swallowed his bile and pretended enthusiasm and gee-whiz joy as he checked in.

  “One key or two, Mr. Dent?”

  Billy never understood why hotels offered two keys to someone checking in alone, but he suspected a nefarious reason. He declined the second key, as always.

  The (solitary) keycard to his room bore a garish logo for a local pizza place. Everyone was trying to control his mind. He made sure to put the card facedown on the desk when in his room.

  He spent the first day of his vacation on the beach, baking his flesh like the prospects did, desperately chasing some insane ideal of attractiveness at the expense of their own free time and health. He debated letting himself burn—returning to the Nod tan was mandatory, to prove he’d gone away; progressing to a nice red sunburn would solidify Outside Billy’s hapless single-dad image—but he decided he didn’t want to suffer through it. So he dutifully applied sunscreen every hour like clockwork and stared at the gadget he’d brought with him. It was new, something called a Kindle, and you could read books on it or you could do as Billy had done and put your own documents on it. He’d put his notes for his next prospect on it. He was a meticulous man, with a memory that was pure Kodak, but even he needed to write some things down. He figured the Kindle gadget was better than loose scraps of paper.

  Might as well make use of his baking time.

  Measure twice, cut once, went the adage. It was the closest Billy came to religion. It was his Gospel. He never took a prospect until he’d planned every movement down to the inch, every pause down to the heartbeat. That was how he’d hit triple digits and managed not to get caught, even in an era of technology that followed you like a lonely roadside puppy.

  So absorbed was he in his reading and conjuring that he didn’t notice a shadow flit over him until a Frisbee whuffed softly into the sand at his feet. He glanced up just in time to behold a fetching woman in a pink bikini dash up to him.

  “Sorry!” she called. “Sorry!”

  “Nothing to apologize for,” he drawled, taking her in from the safety of his sunglasses.

  Easily ten years his junior, ripe in the fullness of youth the way only girls in their twenties could be. Breasts just slightly out of proportion for her frame, one buttock nearly completely exposed by a hitch in her bikini bottom. Hair red like a road flare.

  There was something about a redhead in pink, Billy had to admit.

  “Did I hit you?” she asked, sweeping that crimson mop out of her eyes. She favored him with a smile that was pure strawberries and cream, bright red lips against dazzling white teeth. Her chest heaved lightly from her chase of the Frisbee, a trickle of perspiration wending its way down her throat toward her cleavage.

  Billy grinned lazily. “Not at all.” He allowed himself to enjoy the view as she stooped for the disc.

  It had been a while. Since he’d had a woman.

  “Is that one of those Kindle things?” she asked, popping up and leaning toward him, casting her shadow over him. Without waiting for an answer, she went on: “What are you reading?”

  Billy tilted the Kindle toward his chest, obscuring the screen. “Fantasy,” he replied.

  “Like Lord of the Rings?”

  “Not quite as epic,” he confessed.

  She shrugged and laughed. “Enjoy!” she said, and trotted off.

  Billy watched her go.

  He sighed.

  He looked at the Kindle again.

  That evening, he forced himself to eat in the hotel restaurant, though he’d have preferred room service, then forced himself to sit in the hotel bar and pretend to enjoy a soccer game on the giant TV hanging from one wall.

  Solitude meant the world to him. He couldn’t tolerate being among the prospects any longer than necessary.

  But Outside Billy needed to be seen.

  He nursed a Coke and grenadine, his default beverage when in a drinking establishment. He never drank alcohol.

  Never.

  Never.

  Not ever.

  That stuff couldn’t be trusted. Billy needed his wits about him. Always, always his wits about him.

  So he sat and drank what would appear to be a something-and-Coke to anyone watching, and he ruminated on his past and his future, the two tied up in the figure of his son, Jasper.

  Jasper.

  The boy had been a mistake. An accident. Or so he’d thought. Janice had gotten pregnant deliberately, even though they’d agreed early on that their lifestyle precluded children. Billy had, at first, been outraged when she’d told him.…

  No, that wasn’t true. Outraged was too small a word to contain the fury he’d felt. The mingled betrayal and rage and righteous anger.

  And then she’d told him… She’d told him why—

  “Is this seat taken?”

  Billy blinked and looked over to his right. He couldn’t believe he’d been caught off guard like that. No prospect could sneak up on him, and yet here it had happened. Here it—

  “Hello again,” he said with instant, easy charm.

  Frisbee Girl from the beach smiled at him and slid onto the stool next to him. “Well, this is a coincidence. Are you stalking me?” she asked with mock seriousness.

  Billy allowed himself a genuine, from-the-gut laugh. An experienced stalker, he’d never once been asked the question. Mostly because no one had ever realized he was stalking them until circumstances made that information obvious and moot.

  “I was here first,” he pointed out.

  “True.” She signaled for the waiter and ordered a frozen margarita.

  He didn’t care for aggression and forwardness in a woman—found it offensive and disconcerting—but he was playing Outside Billy now. And he had to admit he had a liking for redheads. Along with the hair usually came creamy white skin, like a fine Brie. He didn’t bother wondering if she was a natural redhead—her approach to him meant he was fated to find out.

  “How’s your fantasy coming along?” she asked, and Billy mentally tsked at her brazenness.

  “I’ll get around to finishing it someday.” Someday was thirty-seven days away, according to the time line he’d drawn up. In thirty-seven days, Rhoda McClellan of East Lansing, Michigan, would know the joy and the pleasure of Billy’s depredations, as well as the limits of her own mortal flesh.

  “Last fantasy I read was Harry Potter,” she admitted. “I can’t get into anything magical these days. It’s all romance novels now. Am I supposed to admit that?”

  Outside Billy couldn’t tell the woman off or get up and leave. Outside Billy, when confronted with a beautiful, younger woman, would stick around and see what developed.

  “You can admit whatever you want. Think of me as a priest.”

  She pouted at that. “Priest?”

  “Maybe Episcopalian,” he allowed, grinning.

  “I’m Nadine,” she said, taking a sip of her drink as the bartender slid it toward her. “And you are Father…?”

  “Billy.”

  “And do you always take off your wedding band before you head to the bar, Billy?”

  Her eyes danced as she said it, saucy, proud of herself for noticing, daring him to be flustered, to deny. It was a game to her, he realized, a stupid, insipid game she played to make herself feel better and more important than she was.

  He glanced at his left hand, as though seeing it for the first time. Sure enough, a noticeable, slightly smooth ring marked his recently removed wedding band. A single day’s tanning hadn’t sufficed to obliterate the evidence. Maybe that was a metaphor for something.

  “Just stopped wearing it recently,” he told her. “Took me a while.”

  “Divorced?”

  He shook his head and grimaced. “Just up and
gone.”

  It wasn’t what she was expecting. It wasn’t part of the game. He was supposed to be a cad, whoring around on his wife. Or a recently divorced sad sack. Either one would charge her up and rev her engine. Either one would jump-start the thrill that would put her on her back, legs open.

  This wasn’t part of the game. Until now.

  “What do you mean?”

  Billy sighed expansively, as though depressed by and simultaneously resigned to his own story. “Woke up one morning, and she was gone. Just…” He whistled, short and sharp. “Gone. Like a magic trick. No forwarding number, no address, no good-bye letter. Poof.” He mimed blowing dandelion fluff into the breeze.

  Nadine’s eyes widened. “Are you kidding me? She left you all alone?”

  “Would I kid about something like that? Didn’t leave me alone, though. She left me with our boy, Jasper.”

  “She left her son?” As though that were the worst crime Nadine could imagine. Billy had imagined—and perpetrated—much, much worse.

  But he was Outside Billy, so he nodded slowly and sadly. “Yeah. ’Bout two years now. Just got to the point where I could take the ring off. Everyone kept tellin’ me it was time. ‘She ain’t coming back, Billy.’ ‘Move on, Billy.’” He smiled ruefully. “So I figured I’d take it off, get out of town…”

  “Wow. That’s crazy. I can’t believe it. That’s just crazy.”

  Billy conjured his words, crafted them with care, molding them into a knife. He jammed them into her chest, just under the sternum, straight into her juicy young heart:

  “Well, and the hell of it is, tomorrow woulda been our anniversary.”

  Nadine gasp-frowned precisely as he knew she would, that combination of sympathy and shock that so few women knew how to suppress.

  Billy had handily won the game. Everything else was just theater.

  Janice.

  Janice was gone.

  His beautiful Janice.

  His Ugly J.

  She was gone.

  It was true, what he’d told Nadine. All of it was true, but all of it was not all of it.

  Janice was gone, yes. She’d vanished one day.