Stay calm.
Ethan marched up the driveway toward the open detached garage. Billy sat on a stool, staring at a piled mix of rusted metal and shiny chrome, his back to Ethan. The sculpture looked like a two-headed robot with mismatched serving spoons as hands.
Ethan had spent most of the night rehearsing this confrontation, watching darkness dissolve to dawn in Sadie's secret apartment. Every variation had ended with violence in his imagination.
You must stay calm.
When Ethan cleared the length of the house, Billy must have heard him coming. He twisted around on his stool. His eyes widened and he knocked the stool over when he stood.
The sound of the stool hitting the ground reminded Ethan of the sound the pile of scrap metal had made when Lazaro threw Billy into it. It was a satisfying sound, like the electric crunch of a guitar riff.
You can scare him, but you must not hurt him.
“What do you want?” Billy asked, backing deeper into the garage.
“I think you know,” Ethan said. He stopped at the garage's gaping mouth, arms at his sides, hands open and relaxed.
Only a pair of bulbs lit the inside of the garage, most of the illumination coming through the open door. As Billy retreated from the natural light, shadows curled around his eyes, his lips, his nose, like he was putting on a mask.
“I already told you all I know.”
Ethan shook his head. “You didn't tell me half of it.”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“Graham.”
Still shuffling back, Billy tripped on a bicycle tire, recovered his balance at the last minute. A scythe of his long hair cut across his face.
“Whatever he told you, it's bullshit.”
“Why would he lie?”
“'Cause he's a loser. Nobody likes him.”
Ethan took one step into the garage.
“Then you were using him.”
“I didn't have anything to do with him. He's making all that stuff up.”
“What stuff?”
“That stuff about me and him. I'm not a fag. He's the fag.”
A plume of heat billowed up from the bottom of Ethan's gut all the way into his face. The edges of his vision turned red.
Calm.
“I never said anything about that.”
Billy stuttered. “Well, I know that's what he's saying.”
“Do I look stupid to you, Billy?” Ethan asked while taking another step forward.
The boy inched away, but came against the workbench along the garage's back wall. No more room to retreat.
“You probably know I'm a teacher at the high school. I spend every day with kids your age, some of them giving me one line of bull or another to save their grade or avoid detention. Don't you think, by now, I would recognize a 'dog ate my homework' when I see one?”
“Leave me alone. I didn't do anything wrong.”
“You need to stop lying to me, Billy.”
“I'm not lying.”
“Alison found out about you and Graham. After you blew off my son, with no regard for his feelings, what did you do with my daughter?”
“Nothing. She just kept screaming at me.”
“You were worried she'd talk about your relationship with Graham.”
Spittle flung off his lips. “It wasn't a relationship.”
Ethan moved in until he stood next to Billy's sculpture.
“Did it start off with a punch just to shut her up, to make her stop yelling at you?”
“I already told you, I never laid a hand on her. I loved her.”
“What about Graham? What was he?”
Billy's eyes narrowed. A wicked smirk creased his face.
“A halfway decent fuck.”
To hell with calm. Ethan lost it, charged at the kid without thinking. He grabbed a fist full of Billy's t-shirt and jerked him forward, brought his face right up to his own.
“You did more than kill my daughter. You wrecked my whole family. My son is devastated. He blames himself for what you did.”
Billy gritted his teeth.
“I didn't do anything. And you can't prove shit.”
“Graham left you with her. You were the last person with my daughter.”
“No, I wasn't.”
Ethan shook him. “Don't lie to me.”
“Do you even know Alison? Do you have a clue what she was like? A hypocrite and a slut.”
Ethan slapped Billy across the face.
Billy stumbled back against the workbench, his cheek where Ethan hit him bright red. He reached behind him and snatched a wrench off the bench. He raised his hand wielding the wrench over his head and swung his arm down.
Ethan tried to catch Billy's hand on the downswing, but missed. The wrench glanced the side of his head and cut a hot path along his scalp.
Billy swung again crosswise.
This time Ethan blocked with his forearm, taking the blow above the wrist. Pain buzzed up his arm and into his elbow. He staggered out of Billy's reach before the kid could swing a third time.
“Is that how you killed my daughter?”
Billy threw the wrench at Ethan. The tool went wide and clanged against the sculpture. A hunk of chrome from what looked like a piece of a car bumper fell loose from the sculpture's torso.
“I didn't kill her. She left. She told me she didn't need me to get laid. That's the last time I saw her.”
Ethan cradled his arm. “You're lying.”
“She told me she had another boyfriend. That's exactly how she put it. 'I got another boyfriend. I don't need you to get laid.'“
“Stop talking about her like that.”
Billy snorted. “Now I see where she gets it from. You come here acting like you have all the answers, but you don't know shit. You're as much a hypocrite as she was.”
Ethan moved forward.
Billy grabbed a large screwdriver from the bench. “I'll fuck you up, you come any closer to me.”
“Fine,” Ethan said. “You can deal with the police.”
“Sure. You call them up. I'll tell them all about how you assaulted a minor.”
The garage seemed to grow darker even as the light bulbs appeared to burn brighter. Ethan realized a cloud must have drifted in front of the sun, blocking the natural light coming through open door. Without the sun's warmth, the air blowing in felt especially cool.
“When I can prove what you've done, I don't think they'll believe much of what you have to say.”
“You've got the wrong boyfriend, man. Go find the guy she went to see after she was done yelling at me.”
“I assume you have no idea who this guy is.”
He shrugged. “She never said.”
“Convenient.”
“Not my fault you can't keep tabs on your own kids.” He pointed with the screwdriver. “Now get the hell out of here before I yell for my mom.”
Ethan's arm and head throbbed. Getting bested by a kid half his age had sapped the fight out of him. A small part of him wished Lazaro was with him; just beat the confession out of the boy like Laz had wanted to the first time. He held no conviction behind the wish. The kid had got the better of him because Ethan didn't have the mean streak to follow through with his threats. Maybe that's why he'd been so desperate to move away from his old life. He didn't have what it took to survive in that environment. Eventually, someone like Lazaro would have challenged him, and Ethan would have lost.
Moving hadn't changed the rules, though. Ethan ending up losing anyway. Didn't matter where you lived. When it came to protecting those you cared about, it took a little bit of a mean streak, a willingness to do worse than what was done to you.
It was a philosophy his father would have agreed with.
Ethan walked away down the driveway.
The clouds split and the sky brightened, but Ethan could not feel the sunlight through his cold skin.
Halfway back to Sadie's apartment, he realized Billy might have been telling the truth, at least some version of it.
Three, maybe four, people all claimed to have seen Alison the night of her murder. Rain had said that Alison had come on one of her secret visits to her mother that night. Graham and Billy had both been with her at the roller rink. And the possible forth was whatever witness Staver and Randy claimed to have placing Graham and Alison together.
The witness could still be Billy. The kid could be trying to focus attention on Graham. But by placing Graham with Alison the night of her murder, he put himself there too. If the cops somehow knew Billy was a boyfriend of Alison's, surely they would suspect him on general principal. Would Billy risk such suspicion if he were guilty?
A possible fifth person also existed if Ethan wanted to believe Billy's claim that Alison left him to visit another “boyfriend.”
Bottom line, Ethan had a rough idea with whom and where Alison had been the night she was killed, but he didn't have when, specifically. He needed a timeline.
Unfortunately, part of nailing down that timeline meant talking to Rain.