Chapter Sixteen

Will paced frantically across the green shag carpet in my living room. I’d known him his whole life, and I’d never seen him so wildly upset. His easy smile was gone. His nose ran, and he wiped it on his sweatshirt. His breathing came so fast that he looked like he needed a paper bag to stop hyperventilating. The kid who liked everybody, whose approach to life was as mellow as an Eagles song, was melting down in front of us.

“Will, sit,” I told him.

He didn’t. He kept pacing. After I repeated it twice more, Ajax stopped the boy in the middle of the room and took him by the shoulders. “Sit.”

Will slumped onto the sofa, with his face in his hands. I sat next to him. As Will tried to catch his breath, I murmured to Ajax, “An arrest warrant for Jay? Did you know anything about this?”

“It must be Jerry. He wants the Brink case closed. I heard about the interview at the school, Jay going ballistic, talking about wanting his father dead. Combine that with everything else, and Jerry probably thinks they can make the charge stick.”

“He didn’t do it!” Will gasped again.

I took hold of his meaty shoulder. I’d babysat for him when he was a boy, but this kid was practically twice my size. “Will, tell me what’s going on. What happened?”

“Darrell came to my dad’s house. He was going to arrest Jay for murder. That’s crazy! I went and listened at the stairs and heard my dad talking to him. He said Darrell was using intimidation to get Jay to confess to something he didn’t do. But Darrell said he had no choice, and he had to bring him in. So my dad came upstairs to get Jay. He was already gone.”

“Gone?” Ajax asked.

Will looked down at his lap. “I told him to climb out the window. He ran away. I don’t know where he is now.”

“That was foolish, Will,” I said. “Running makes Jay look guilty, and it puts him in danger, too. You should have trusted your dad. He’ll figure out how to make this all go away.”

Will shook his head frantically. “No. Dad doesn’t know what’s going on, and Jay refuses to tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“About Sunday night,” Will said. “Jay’s lying about what happened. I keep telling him to come clean, but he won’t do it. He’d rather risk going to prison for killing his dad than tell the truth. Well, I’m done with that. I’m not going to let him protect me anymore.”

Ajax finally sat down, too. “Protect you? What the hell, Will? Did you have something to do with Gordon’s death?”

But I knew Ajax had it all wrong. This had nothing to do with Gordon.

“Jay wasn’t home on Sunday night, was he?” I said.

Without looking up, Will shook his head.

“Where was he?” I asked quietly.

“With me.”

“Where?”

“My dad’s trailer in the woods.”

“All night?”

“Yeah. All night.”

Ajax still didn’t get it. “What were you guys doing, some kind of Ursulina hunt?”

“No,” Will murmured. “I mean, yeah, I’d told Jay about the Ursulina. I even got him Ben’s book, because he thought the whole thing was wild, like maybe the beast was real or something. That’s why we picked my dad’s trailer. It was kind of a dare to see if we could stay there all night.”

“You could have just said that,” I suggested. “You didn’t have to admit what was really going on.”

“No. People would have guessed the truth. I already see the looks at school. I hear the talk.” He looked at me with a silent plea to say it for him.

“The two of you are . . . gay?” I said with a little hesitation, in case I’d guessed wrong. But I didn’t think I had.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Is that why Jay’s been protecting you? To keep the secret?”

“Yeah.”

Ajax’s face darkened, first with surprise and then disgust. If I’d given him a thousand guesses, he wouldn’t have gotten it himself. He got up, saying something I won’t repeat. Regardless, the slur hit Will like a blow to the face, and he knew perfectly well that more were coming. Every day of his life, wherever he went, people around here would know who he was. This wasn’t the kind of story that could be contained, not in Black Wolf County.

“Does your father know?” I asked.

“Not yet. I guess I have to tell him now.”

“I know Norm. He’ll be okay with it.”

Will shook his head. “Don’t be so sure.”

“Jay wanted to keep this hidden?” I asked.

“Yeah, but not for himself. He didn’t want to out me. I told him we should come forward and admit it, but he knew what it would be like for me if people knew. He could go back to Milwaukee, and I’d be stuck here. But I’m not going to let him get arrested when I know he’s innocent. He was with me Sunday night. All night. He has an alibi. He didn’t kill his father.”

“Were Gordon’s problems with Jay about him being gay?”

“Oh, yeah. Gordon couldn’t deal with it. His son being gay made him less of a man. He actually said that, you know? That’s why Gordon took him out of school in Milwaukee. He thought it was the school that had turned him gay. He figured, bring him here, he’ll meet a nice blond girl.” Will gave a sour laugh. “Instead, he met a nice blond boy.”

I noticed Ajax standing in the shadows on the far side of my living room. He didn’t say another word; he didn’t even look at Will. His revulsion ran deep. I’d like to tell you that he was an exception around here, but the truth is, he was the rule. You could be a lot of things in this part of the world and people wouldn’t care, but being gay wasn’t one of them. This was the end of Will Foltz, popular kid and football star.

“Gordon found out about you and Jay?” I asked.

“Yeah. He caught us together. Honestly, it was stupid. I should have stopped Jay, but he wanted to do it in Gordon’s office. I think it was his way of throwing it all in his father’s face, you know? That’s how his fingerprints got there. Because we were there. In bed. Gordon came back while we were in the middle of things, and he practically had a stroke. That’s why he was so crazy for my dad to keep me away from Jay. It didn’t have anything to do with the lawsuit. He made that up. He wasn’t going to admit what was really going on.”

Just like that, in the middle of Will’s story, Ajax left the room. He didn’t say a word to either of us. He didn’t look at me or Will, he just left. Seconds later, I heard my front door slam. The whole house shook on its foundation. Outside, Ajax’s car squealed away.

“He’s going to tell everybody, isn’t he?” Will said.

I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t do that. Will wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. He knew the score. In a few hours, the news would be all over town. His life as he knew it was over.

“I don’t care,” he insisted, wiping his face. “Let them find out. Let them all find out. Jay’s innocent. I don’t care what happens to me.”