sorry,” he told Lanny.
He switched off one of the bedside lamps and then the other.
If the house glowed like a centenarian’s birthday cake through the night, someone might notice. And wonder. Everyone knew Lanny Olsen was an early-to-bed guy.
The house stood at the highest and loneliest point of the dead-end lane. Virtually no one drove up here unless they were coming to see Lanny, and no one was likely to visit during the next eight or ten hours.
Midnight had turned Tuesday to Wednesday. Wednesday and Thursday were Lanny’s days off. No one would miss him at work until Friday.
Nevertheless, one by one, Billy returned to the other upstairs rooms and switched off those lights as well.
He doused the hall lights and went down the stairs, uneasy about all the darkness at his back.
In the kitchen, he closed the door to the porch and locked it.
He intended to take Lanny’s spare key with him.
As he went forward once more through the first floor, he turned off all the lights, including the ceramic gas-fueled logs in the den fireplace, using the barrel of the handgun to flip the switches.
Standing on the front porch, he locked that door as well, and wiped the knob.
He felt watched as he descended the steps. He surveyed the lawn, the trees, glanced back at the house.
All the windows were black, and the night was black, and Billy walked away from that closed darkness into an open darkness under an India-ink sky in which stars seemed to float, seemed to tremble.
He walked briskly downhill along the shoulder of the lane, ready to take cover in the roadside brush if headlights appeared.
Frequently, he glanced back. As far as he could tell, no one followed him.
Moonless, the night favored a stalker. It should have favored Billy, too, but he felt exposed by the stars.
At the house with the chest-high fence, the half-seen dog once more raced back and forth along the pickets, beseeching Billy with a whimper. It sounded desperate.
He sympathized with the animal and understood its condition. His plight, however, and his need to plan left him no time to stop and console the beast.
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