Billy Summers

The anchors hand it over to a correspondent standing across the street from Hoff’s home, an expensive crib that is still several rungs below Nick’s rented McMansion on the grandiosity ladder. The correspondent is a leggy blonde who looks like she might have gotten out of journalism school the week before. She explains that Kenneth Hoff has been ‘positively linked’ to the Remington 700 rifle that was used to kill Joel Allen. This is in addition to plenty of other links to the presumed assassin, who has now been ‘positively identified’ as William Summers, a Marine veteran of the Iraq war and winner of several medals.

Bronze Star and Silver Star, Billy thinks. Also a Purple Heart with a star on the ribbon, indicating not just one wound suffered in battle but two. He can understand them not wanting to do that particular rundown. He’s the villain of the piece, so why muddle things up with a heroic background? Muddling things up is for novels, not news reports.

There are side-by-side pictures. One is the photo Irv Dean took of him at the Gerard Tower security stand on his first day as the building’s resident writer. The other shows him as a new recruit, looking both solemn and goofy in his jarhead haircut. It was taken on Photo Day. In it he looks even younger than the blonde correspondent. Probably he was. They must have gotten it from some Marine archive, because Billy had no family to give a copy to on Family Day.

Local police believe that Summers may have fled the city, the correspondent says, and because he may also have fled the state, the FBI is now on the case. With that the blonde sends it back to the studio, where the anchors next display a picture of Giorgio Piglielli, and yes, they give his mob nickname, as if Georgie Pigs is an alias he might be traveling under. He’s been linked to organized crime operations in Las Vegas, Reno, Los Angeles, and San Diego, but hasn’t yet been apprehended. The subtext is that if you see a middle-aged Italian guy who goes 370, possibly wearing alligator shoes and drinking a milkshake, get in touch with your local law enforcement.

So, Billy thinks. Hoff is dead, Giorgio is almost certainly dead, and Nick’s alibied up the ying-yang. Which makes me the last melon in the patch, the last pea in the pod, the last chocolate in the box, pick your metaphor.

After an ad for some wonder pill with about two dozen possible side effects, some lethal, there are more interviews with his neighbors on Evergreen Street. Billy gets up to turn off the TV, then sits down again. He flew under false colors and hurt these people. Maybe he deserves to watch and listen as they express that hurt. And their bewilderment.

Jane Kellogg, the block’s resident alcoholic, doesn’t seem a bit bewildered. ‘I knew there was something wrong with him the first time I saw him,’ she says. ‘He had shifty eyes.’

Bullshit you did, Billy thinks.

Diane Fazio, Danny’s mom, shares how horrified she was when she found out they had allowed their children to spend time with a cold-blooded killer.

Paul Ragland marvels about how smooth he was, how natural. ‘I really thought Dave was the real deal. He seemed like a totally nice guy. It sort of proves that you can’t trust anybody.’

It’s Corinne Ackerman who says the one thing everyone else seems to have ignored. ‘Of course it’s terrible, but that man he shot wasn’t going to court for shoplifting, was he? From what I understand he was a stone killer. If you ask me, David saved the county the cost of a trial.’

God bless you, Corrie, Billy thinks, and actually finds his eyes are welling up, as if it’s the end of a Lifetime channel movie where everything comes out right. Always supposing your concept of right includes a dose of vigilante justice … and in cases like Joel Allen’s, Billy has no problem with that.

Before moving on to the traffic (still slow because of police checkpoints, sorry folks) and the weather (turning colder), there’s a final item in the courthouse assassination story, and Billy has to smile. The reason Sheriff Vickery was initially cut out of the investigation isn’t because he skedaddled when his prisoner was shot, leaving only his ridiculous Stetson behind, or not just because of that. It’s because he brought his prisoner up the courthouse steps instead of through the employees’ door further down. There was initial suspicion that he might have been part of the plot. He has since convinced them otherwise, probably admitting that he wanted the press coverage.

And I could have made the shot either way, Billy thinks. Hell, I could have made it in the rain, unless it was a deluge out of Genesis.

He turns off the television and goes into the kitchen to inspect his stock of frozen dinners. He’s already thinking about what he’ll write tomorrow.

CHAPTER 13

1

Three days pass in a dream of Fallujah.