He checks his phone and sees he’s gotten a text alert from the newspaper. Warehouse fire in Cody, a four-alarm job. Looking out the window, Billy can see a pillar of black smoke. He doesn’t know where Ken Hoff got his information, but it was bang on the money.
It’s now seven-thirty, and he is as ready as he can be. As ready as he needs to be, he hopes. He sits down in the chair where he has done his writing, hands clasped loosely in his lap, and waits. As he waited in Fallujah, high up and across the river from the Internet café run by the Arab who tattled on the Blackwater contractors and set off a firestorm. As he did on a dozen rooftops, listening to gunfire and garbage bags rattling in palm trees. His heartbeat is slow and regular. There are no nerves. He watches the traffic pick up on Court Street. Soon all the parking spaces will be full. He watches customers enter the Sunspot Café. A few sit outside, where Billy sat months ago with Ken Hoff. A Channel 6 news truck comes lumbering up the street, but it’s the only one. Either the warehouse fire has drawn away the others, or Joel Allen isn’t a big priority. Probably both, Billy thinks. He waits. The time passes. It always does.
5
The Business Solutions crew starts arriving at ten to eight, some carrying go-cups. They’ll be hard at it by eight-fifteen, dunning folks who are over their heads in debt, translucent shades dropped over the big windows to discourage them from looking away from their work for even a few seconds. Some stop on their way to the lobby doors to stare at the pillar of black smoke rising over the courthouse from out Cody way. Colin White is among them. No coffee in a go-cup for him; he’s got a can of Red Bull. Today he’s wearing tie-dyed bellbottoms and a blaze orange T-shirt. Nothing like the outfit Billy’s hidden away, but in the confusion it shouldn’t matter.
More people arrive, but in this under-occupied building, not that many. Most are headed for the courthouse. At eight-thirty, Jim Albright and John Colton come down Court Street and cut across the plaza. They are carrying big boxy briefcases. And behind them, Phyllis Stanhope. Her fall coat has come out of its closet hibernation for the first time. It’s scarlet, making Billy think of Little Red Riding Hood. He has a brief and vivid memory of her looking down at him, urging him deeper as he brushes her nipples with his thumbs. He pushes it away.
There are twelve people on the fifth floor, not counting Billy himself – five in the lawyers’ office and seven in the accounting office. The people in the lawyers’ office may or may not hear the shot, but Billy is counting on them hearing the bang when the first flashpot goes off. There will be a short pause as they look at each other, asking what was that, and then they’ll hurry across the hall to the Crescent Accounting Service, because those are the windows facing Court Street. By then the second flashpot will have gone off. They’ll crowd together and look out, trying to decide what has happened and what they should do. Go down or stay put? There will be differing opinions. He thinks it may be as long as five minutes before they decide to go down, because they have a high vantage point and all the hoohaw is either across the street, at the courthouse, or up on the corner at the news and stationery store. Billy won’t need five minutes. Three should do it, maybe only two.
His phone chimes with another news push. The warehouse fire has spread to a nearby storage facility, and fire crews from other districts are on their way. Route 64 will be closed until at least noon. Motorists are advised to use State Road 47A. At five to nine, another push announces that the fire is being brought under control. So far there are no reported injuries or fatalities.
Billy is now sitting in front of the window with the Remington across his knees. The day is clear as a bell, the rain Nick fretted about hasn’t happened, the breeze is no more than a refreshing breath, the Channel 6 film crew is all set and ready to record for News at Noon, so where is the star of the show? Billy expected Allen to be delivered in a county sheriff’s vehicle rather than in the perp bus, and on the dot of nine, at which time he’d be escorted to a holding room until the judge was ready for him, but it’s now five past and there’s no sign of any official vehicle arriving from the county jail on Holland Street.
Ten past and still nothing. The breakfast crowd at the Sunspot is clearing out. Soon the woman in charge, no longer sleepy-eyed, will take in the signboard with the breakfast specials and replace it with the one for the lunch specials.
Quarter past nine and the smoke billowing above the courthouse seems to be thinning. Billy is starting to wonder if there’s been a glitch. By twenty past he’s sure of it. Maybe Allen’s sick, or has made himself sick. Maybe somebody has attacked him in county. Maybe he’s in the infirmary, or even dead. Maybe he’s pretended to go mental in order to delay the arraignment. Maybe he actually has gone mental.