Chapter Twenty-Five

I take another sip of coffee as I again mull the possibility of Billy's mother being the killer. Detective Palmer is right that Mrs. Barringer fits all the characteristics of Billy's killer. It's the likelihood of it that continues to keep me from reaching that conclusion.

No, the Barringers weren't the best parents in the world. Blake Barringer was present but absent. One of those very smart men who could never quite get out of his head and engage with the rest of the world. I honestly can't think of a single time we spoke to each other one-on-one, despite having had ample opportunity.

I talked much more to Billy's mother, who was different in her own way. Even when I was a boy, Mary Ellen Barringer struck me as fragile. I once overhead my mother refer to her as "Nervous Nellie." Uncharitable, but accurate. She always looked slightly spooked, like at any moment she expected to see a ghost.

Detective Palmer wasn't there when Mary Ellen Barringer dragged Andy into the yard, begging me to remember anything more about that night. She didn't see Mrs. Barringer looking wraithlike in her nightgown and mismatched socks. Didn't feel her shockingly strong grip on my shoulders as she tried to shake the memories out of me.

That was a woman turned mad with grief, not guilt. It eventually got so bad that Mrs. Barringer had to be institutionalized not long after they left Hemlock Circle. A few years after that, Mr. Barringer died and teenage Andy was sent off to foster care.

Then again, maybe it was the opposite. Maybe guilt had driven Mrs. Barringer mad, and instead of trying to get me to remember, what she had really wanted was for me to reveal how much I knew.

Before she leaves, I ask Detective Palmer what the next steps are in Billy's case. It's not promising. With Mary Ellen Barringer's condition being what it is, there's not a whole lot they can do. Detective Palmer tells me she plans to visit Mrs. Barringer at the state hospital, even though doctors have warned her that she'll be unresponsive.

"So we might never know who killed Billy?" I say.

"Never say never," Detective Palmer says. "But at this point, it doesn't seem likely. Unless someone else emerges as a viable suspect, we might have to resign ourselves to never knowing what really happened."

Once the detective leaves, I go back upstairs and pick the notebook up off the floor. It's still open to the page Billy had written on.

HAKUNA MATATA DUDE

I know it was Billy because I never shared his last words to me with anyone. Not Russ, or my parents, or the police. Not even Claudia. It remained a secret because I wanted to keep something of Billy all to myself.

Just to be certain, I check the trail cam app on my phone, hoping it might have snapped a picture of the culprit as he emerged from the woods and crossed to the house. But most of the photos taken during the night are of me and Fritz Van de Veer talking in the yard. The ones in which we're absent show no shadow or specter or even a normal human being. Just a lone deer nibbling the grass at five in the morning.

Since the trail cam provided no guidance, I cross the hall to my old bedroom and open up Billy's copy of The Giant Book of Ghosts, Spirits, and Other Spooks. I find the page with Billy's handwriting in the margin and check it against what's in my notebook. It's not quite a match, but close enough that one could reasonably assume the words in the book and my notebook were written by the same person.

Now that I know Billy's not confined to the woods, I look for him everywhere on the way back to my new bedroom. In the shadow behind the door. In the darkness under the bed. After a thorough search that turns up nothing, I drop onto the edge of the bed and stare at the notebook. It makes me think about The Dream and how this last go-round had been the same as all the others except for that extra millisecond in which I saw a blur of motion just beyond the gash in the tent.

A blur that I assume is Billy's killer. That's the conclusion this new version of The Dream and Billy's message in my notebook, so much more invasive than a baseball in the yard, seem to be pointing to.

That I really did see Billy's killer.

Just a glimpse.

Was it Mrs. Barringer? Possibly. Detective Palmer certainly seems to believe it, even though it's a suspicion she'll likely never be able to prove. That might be fine for a state police detective with no personal connection to the crime, but for me it's unacceptable. I've spent thirty years aching for the truth, not sleeping, being startled awake by The Dream when I do. I refuse to exist that way for thirty more.

There's also Billy to think about. Is it possible for his spirit to find peace if his killer's identity is never revealed? My guess is no, hence the increased intensity of his messages.

Billy no longer needs me to play detective.

He needs me to remember.

As I continue to stare at Billy's message, with its series of triangular A's, I can think of only one way to make that happen.

A half hour later, I'm showered, dressed, and parked outside Russ's store, which has been open for all of a minute. Russ spots me from the registers as soon as I enter and rushes over.

"Hey, Jen called me. You kind of freaked her out this morning. Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," I say as I keep walking deeper into the store.

Russ trails after me. "So there was no break-in?"

"It was all a big misunderstanding."

"Then what are you doing here?"

I stop at the campsite display in the center of the store. It's still so early that Russ hasn't had time to turn on the bells and whistles that made it so charming. No cricket sounds chirping from the fake rock. No fan blowing cellophane flames in the firepit.

"I want to buy that tent," I say.