Forty-Eight

"I have a question," another woman in the library said, "about this whole trigger warning thing people have been talking about. Like, you're supposed to warn people ahead of time if there's something in what they're about to read or see that they might find upsetting, but how are you supposed to know what might upset a person? I mean, everybody's bothered by something. I don't like to read anything where animals are hurt, but I'm not expecting something on the title page that says, oh, watch out, this is coming. What do you think?"

I said, "What?"

I was ever so slightly distracted.

Billy Finster was standing at the back of the room. Except it couldn't be Billy Finster, because Billy Finster was dead. So either Marta was investigating the death of someone she thought to be Billy Finster, or this guy grinning at me was not, and never had been, Billy Finster.

He made a small come-hither gesture with his index finger. Like, Hey, buddy, we need to talk.

"Mr. Boyle? Do you want me to repeat the question?"

I looked at the woman who'd been talking.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I have to go."

I walked slowly toward the back of the library, catching curious reactions from the crowd as I passed. Like, I was just going to walk out on them? Yes, that's exactly what I was going to do.

As I walked past Herb, he said under his breath, "I want to talk to you."

I ignored him and went face-to-face with my blackmailer and whispered heatedly, "Who the fuck are you?"

He reared back slightly. Quietly, he said, "We should take this outside. Betting you have questions."

We exited the room and started walking down the hall toward the main entrance. Behind us, I heard Herb, who had stepped out of the library, call out: "Boyle. Boyle!"

My blackmailer and I rounded a corner and as we passed an open classroom I steered him inside. I closed the door behind us. We were in a chemistry class. Raised desks with stools, a chart of the periodic table on the wall.

"What the fuck is going on?" I asked.

He smiled. "Okay, so you've figured out I'm not Billy." He extended a hand. "I'm Stuart. Pleased to meet you."

I didn't take his hand.

He took in the room, shook his head. "I fuckin' hated chemistry class. Flunked it." He took a breath. "Flunked pretty much everything, you wanna know the truth. Hate schools. Didn't want to do this here. Was heading for your place, saw you leave, followed you. What was that meeting all about?"

"Who are you, Stuart?" I asked, wanting to bring him back on track.

"Billy's friend. Well, I was Billy's friend, until what happened to him. That was fucking wild, right? Listen, don't look so pissed. I'm here with good news. Well, good news and bad news."

I was simmering. "Why don't you give me the bad news first."

Stuart thought about that and shook his head. "No, it makes more sense to start with the good news, which is that I'm no longer interested in getting your ten grand. Consider it forgotten. Wiping the slate clean. No hard feelings, okay?"

"What's the rest of it?" I asked.

"You're not quite off the hook. I know you killed Billy."

"I did not kill Billy."

"Sure looks that way to me. Way I see it, you're the most likely suspect. I mean, come on, didn't it ever cross your mind to kill me? So you went to see Billy and offed him before you realized you'd made a mistake, that you got the wrong guy. You shoot him in the back? Did you even get a look at him? Anyway, when I tell the police what I know, that he was blackmailing you, they'll put it together."

"If you think I did do it, you should be more scared of me right now."

"What are you gonna do?" He looked around. "Hit me with a beaker?"

"I didn't kill Billy," I said. "But I have a pretty good idea who did."

Stuart's eyebrows popped. "Oh?"

"Two people—a man and a woman—went into his garage. There was a whole lot of shouting. They took off. I went in after, and he was dead."

"Oh, so you were watching the place again? Didn't learn your lesson from the first time? That looks very bad for you. Very, what's the word, incriminating. The police'll be interested to know you were there."

He was wrong thinking I'd murdered Billy, but he was right that he could do me a world of harm if he told the police I'd had a reason to want him dead. One anonymous call would do it. And who would believe my story? About this mysterious Stuart who'd pretended to be Billy who'd been putting the squeeze on me for something I hadn't done. How crazy was all that going to sound?

But even before I could contemplate what fate might be awaiting me, I wanted to know why Stuart had gone after me in the first place.

"Why me?" I said. "Why pretend to be Billy? Why threaten to expose me for something I didn't do to you?"

"Not to me," he said. "To Billy."

"I never did anything to him."

Stuart nodded thoughtfully, then looked chagrined. "I might have gotten it wrong."

"Gotten what wrong?"

"There was this thing on the news," he said. "About that guy who was going to blow up the school. Billy's watching, and he goes, oh, that's my school, and he's looking at the TV and he's like, there's that perv who liked to touch my dick when I was on the wrestling team. I look and I see you, and then I found your picture with the team in Billy's yearbook and put it together."

"Who else was on the TV?" I said.

Stuart's brow wrinkled as he tried to recall. "Bunch of people standing around outside the school after the police got there. But I got a better look at you than anyone else." He shrugged. "Billy might have meant one of the others."

I tried to think back to what had been going on after the police arrived. It was all something of a blur. I was in shock. I remembered that at one point we moved outside, all of us, and that there was a TV news crew out on the street beyond the yellow police tape. I did remember one thing for sure. I remember Ronny was out there, being more or less interrogated by Trent about that goddamn door not shutting properly.

"Yeah, so, whatever," Stuart said. "That's why they put erasers on pencils, right? And, you know, you killing Billy, makes me think it all works out in the end."

"I told you. I didn't do it. It was those two people who came earlier." And even though I probably knew the answer, I had to ask: "Why'd you do it in the first place? Blackmail me?"

Stuart looked at me like I was an idiot. "Uh, the money? Fucking Billy was making out like a bandit doing his thing. I had to find some action of my own."

"I could have known it wasn't you. Remembered Billy from school."

"Thought about that," Stuart said. "But it had been a few years, and we both kind of looked alike, you know. Lucy, Billy's wife? She called us two peas in a pod."

"Boyle!"

Herb, out in the hall, calling my name. He must have missed seeing us duck into this classroom and was hunting me down.

"Look," I said, trying to sound reasonable, "we're done, okay? I didn't do it, you had the wrong guy."

"I didn't get to the bad news yet," Stuart said. "Although, depending on how you look at it, it's good news, too."

I waited.

"I'm willing to, like you say, be done with all this. I just have one favor I'd like you to do for me before we go our separate ways."

"A favor."

He nodded.

"Nothing big. I need you to deliver something for me. Do an exchange. Not a big deal. A few minutes and you're done."

"You got something to return at Walmart?"

Stuart smiled. "That's funny. You're a funny guy, Mr. Boyle. No, what I need you to do is just a little more complicated."

My stomach began turning over. I had an inkling where this was going. That man and woman who came to Billy's. They'd been looking for something, and they appeared to have left empty-handed. Why did I have a feeling Stuart had it? And, given that he didn't care about my ten thousand dollars anymore, was willing to exchange it for a significant amount of money?

Why didn't he want to do the deal himself? I had a pretty good idea. He could end up dead.

"I don't want any part of this," I said. "Get yourself somebody else. Make your anonymous call to the police. I'll take my chances."

"I was afraid you might see it that way," Stuart said. He reached behind his back for something tucked under his jacket.

A gun.

"This change your mind?"

He took a step back so there was room to point it right at me.

"Christ, put that away," I said. Would he shoot me right here in the school? Maybe. I couldn't make a run for it. I'd have a bullet in my back before I got to the door.

"So. Willing to do a guy a solid?"

"Okay," I said. "Whatever you want."

"That's good, that's good. So we're going to walk out of here and head out the main door. My truck's out there. I'm gonna give you the keys"—and he dug into his pocket and handed them to me—"so you can do the driving."

I took them.

"And don't do anything crazy on the way, because I might just lose it and start firing, you know."

"Understood."

"Take out your phone and power it off."

Slowly, I reached into my jacket, took out the phone, and did as he asked. He motioned for me to hand it over, and I did.

"Okay," Stuart said. "Let's go."

He held the gun down at his side, tight to his leg, where it was not immediately visible. When we came out of the room, farther up the hallway people were starting to drift out of the library meeting.

"Quickly," Stuart whispered, nudging me toward the main entrance.

We both walked briskly. As we passed a trash bin, Stuart tossed my phone into it. We were outside in no time. It was fully dark now, the school parking lot illuminated by towering lampposts.

"That way," he said, giving me a shove, making a sniffing noise.

I saw his truck on the far side of the lot, the same one he'd been driving when he showed up at the end of my driveway... how many days ago? Time seemed to have lost all meaning lately.

Someone shouted, "There you are, you son of a bitch."

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Herb running across the parking lot. I stopped, turned around, and raised a hand.

"Go back, Herb."

He stopped about ten feet from me. He gave Stuart one quizzical glance, then looked back at me and said, "I guess you feel pretty clever, dumping that shit on me."

"Herb," I said calmly, "this is not the time. We can talk about this tomorrow."

"No, we can talk about this now," he said. "Okay, so maybe I poked the bear here, put an idea into that woman's head. But you had it coming. You screwed me over, and I warned you, I warned you I wouldn't take it."

"Man, you need to back off and get the fuck out of here," Stuart said, the gun still at his side.

"Who the hell are you?" Herb asked.

"Herb," I said one more time, "for your own good, I'm telling you to walk away now, and if you want to ream me out tomorrow, then by all means."

Now it was Stuart who was looking at Herb quizzically, as though he had seen him before.

"I know you?" Stuart asked.

And I thought: He saw him on the news.

"I never met you in my life," Herb snapped. "And I'm not talking to you."

"Yeah, well, we're not talking to you anymore, either," Stuart said. Then he raised his weapon and shot Herb in the neck.