The Killing Vision - By Will Overby Page 0,13

tearing off the sheet and folding it into the pocket of his pants. “I’ll give you a call. Take you up on that pool offer.”

“Sounds good,” she said.

By the time he returned to the truck, his zipper was just about bursting open. He drove to a secluded spot in town and took care of himself. It was quick. There might be a no-smoking rule for the company truck, but nothing said he couldn’t jack off in it.

And as he thought about it now, about the orange swimsuit that barely concealed Missy’s golden curves, he felt himself grow stiff again. Ignoring it, he pulled the tarp back over the Mustang and closed up the barn.

He was just crossing the yard toward the house when Derek came flying up the driveway and roared to a halt on his four-wheeler. “You better slow down,” Wade told him. “You’ll end up in orbit.”

Derek grinned at him and hopped off the Yamaha, running a shirtsleeve across his sweaty forehead. “Ready for dinner,” he said.

“Where you been?”

Derek shrugged. “Just toolin’ around. Went through the woods into town, went by Chad’s house to see if he was home.”

“Was he?” Chad was Derek’s best friend—just about his only friend, so far as Wade knew. They hung out together sometimes, went camping out in the woods behind the barn, fishing down at the creek—all the shit boys usually do.

“Nope. His mom said he’d gone off with his dad somewhere.”

Wade grunted as they stepped up on the porch and he opened the back door. “You be careful riding that thing in town. It’s illegal, you know.”

“I didn’t get on the streets,” Derek said. “I went the back way, up through the woods, then through the park right up to his back door.”

“Still,” said Wade, “I don’t want to have to come bail you out of jail.”

“You think Chad could help us with the Mustang?” Derek asked.

“I don’t know,” Wade told him. “I was hopin’ just you and me would work on it. Maybe Joel.”

Derek nodded and slipped into the kitchen. “That’s cool.”

Inside, Marla stood at the stove, frying hamburger patties in an iron skillet. Derek peeked at them, then bounded off toward the living room.

Wade looked at her. “Hey,” he said.

She turned toward him and gave him an empty gaze, then turned back to the skillet. “Hey.”

SATURDAY, JULY 7

5:24 AM

Halloran came slowly awake in the early gray light, coming out of a dream in which Sarah Jo McElvoy’s mother was chasing him through the darkness of an inner-city alley. She was screaming at him. “You bastard! Look what you did to my daughter! My beautiful daughter!” He turned and saw that she was wielding an ax, and he knew she intended to kill him with it. He had just reached the dead end of the alley and had turned to brace himself for the blow when he discovered that Mrs. McElvoy had turned into Sarah Jo. Not the smiling, fresh-faced Sarah Jo from the photographs, but the rotted, blackened corpse from the morgue. She shuffled toward him, like something from a bad horror movie, her hair slimy and dripping, her eyes white and glazed, her skin a yellowish green. She was wearing the purple shirt with the cat on it, and the rest of her body was bare. “See me?” she said in a voice that sounded like dry leaves crunching together. “See me?”

At that point he became aware of the weight of the covers on his chest, and the purring cat by his face. He opened his eyes toward the blank ceiling. Mel meowed softly, then stretched. Halloran glanced over at him. “Hello, you stupid cat.”

He yawned and lay there silently, remembering the dream, listening to the voice still echoing through his head. See me? He shivered, pulling the sheet up to his neck. Where the hell had that come from? He closed his eyes trying to summon back his sleep, but beside him, Mel had decided it was bath time and was noisily licking and purring.

Halloran pulled himself out of bed, pulled a pair of boxers out of the bureau drawer and padded nude across the hall to the bathroom. He took a long, loud piss, watching himself in the mirror as he did so, noticing how his stomach, once lean and flat, had begun to pooch over the last couple of years. It was what his late dad had referred to as “Dicky-do Disease,” because, he said, “My belly hangs out farther than my dicky do.”

He pulled