They drove out of Library Lane, passing Billy at the entrance to Tinker Street. Joe rolled his window all the way open. "Hey, Billy. Want a lift?"
"Quack. You want me to miss my shower?"
As they drove through town, Patrick said, "I met him this morning in the News Shop. Quite a character."
"Yeah, we go way back," Joe said. "Used to take me pickerel fishing,
Billy did—one of my heroes. He just got out of the slammer."
"What did he do?"
"One of the state cops, Dusty Rhodes, drove his cruiser into Billy's driveway to check him out for something or other, about three in the morning. The way Billy tells it, he woke up with a headache listening to a siren. He looked out his upstairs bedroom window. 'That damn flashing light hurt my eyes,' Billy said. So he shot it out with a 30-30. Dusty arrested him for assault with a deadly weapon, and the judge asked him what he had to say for himself. 'Your Honor,' Billy said, 'Assault? Do you think if I'd wanted to hit Dusty, I'd have missed him?' The judge gave him six months."
"He seems like a good guy," Patrick said.
"He is. That's the Merrill's road, there."
Patrick thanked Joe and walked fifty yards through trees to a rambling house with clapboard siding stained brown. There was a second smaller house, or studio, some distance behind and to the right. A green Cadillac, at least ten years old, gleamed in front of the house. Patrick knocked on the screen door. A woman with a heart shaped face, wheat colored hair, and clear blue-green eyes answered his knock.
"Yes?"