Thirty

I drove.

I drove through downtown Milford. I drove across the bridge into Stamford. I drove around aimlessly for maybe half an hour while I rehearsed in my head what I was going to say to my blackmailer.

Something along the lines of this:

Do what you want, Billy. I don't care. I won't be blackmailed. You know it's not true. I'll just have to roll with whatever happens. If someone really did do this to you, you have my sympathies. I was willing to help you, hold whoever did it to account, but I won't let you smear me with a lie.

Yeah, something like that.

What I needed from him was an acknowledgment that he was lying, that he knew I'd never assaulted him back when he was a Lodge student, that his only goal was getting some money out of me.

And I would record it all on my phone.

I'd pulled over at one point and done a practice run. Opened up the Voice Memos app and slipped the phone down into the front pocket of my sport jacket. Put on the car radio, said a few words of my own, then checked to see whether the phone had picked it all up.

Perfectly.

If he said the things I needed him to say, and if he went through with his threat, I'd have something to play for the police.

Sure, if I'd been smarter, I'd have brought in the police—or, more specifically, my sister-in-law—from the get-go. But now I was determined to solve this problem on my own. I needed to restore my honor and this was the only way I could think to do it.

The persistent throbbing on the side of my head was a reminder that maybe this confrontation warranted being armed with more than a recording app. I didn't own a gun and had never wanted to, and now was not the time to find one and learn how to use it. But that didn't mean I had to go into this empty-handed.

So when I spotted a Dick's Sporting Goods store, I pulled into the parking lot and went inside. Found my way to the aisle where they kept the baseball bats.

I hadn't owned a bat since I was a kid, and was taken aback by the selection, and the prices. Some of them were going for up to four hundred dollars. But I found a Rawlings made out of maple that went for about eighty bucks that I believed was up to the job.

Paid for it in cash and tossed it onto the front seat of the car.

It was time.