Javi watched Billy chew on the inside of his lip. “Did Drew threaten to tell your parents you’d left him alone?” he asked. “You were already in trouble, weren’t you, Billy?”
“How did you know—”
“He’s a teenager,” Diggs said. “He’s always in trouble.”
“And he was at a party,” Lara broke in again and leaned forward. “You know that. There were people there, other kids who saw him. His friends. His girlfriend.”
“Allison, right?” Javi asked. “Unfortunately she didn’t see Billy that night, did she, Billy? You didn’t answer her texts either.”
Billy shrugged uncomfortably, still twisting his hands together on the table. “I… I lost my phone,” he said. “That’s all.”
“I know,” Javi said. He put his fingers on the evidence bag sitting on the table and tipped it up. The phone slid out. “We found it. Or rather Deputy Witte did.”
Cloister’s reluctance was obvious as he shifted his weight in the chair, but he did his part. “It was down by the road,” he said. “Where we lost Drew’s trail.”
The phone lay on the table, scratched and battered. Lara relaxed her hand, slid it off Billy’s shoulder, and visibly shifted her body away from him. Billy reached for the phone, but Javi blocked him.
“Is there anything you want to tell us?”
“Ilostit,” Billy said. He looked to Javi first and then swung his eyes to Lara, and his voice cracked. “Mom, I lost it. I swear.”
This time it was Diggs’s hand on Billy’s shoulder. It looked manicured and elegant against the scruffy, gray, too-well-loved band shirt. “I think that’s enough questions,” he said. “Unless you want to make this official, Agent Merlo, we’ll be leaving.”
“Is that your phone?” Lara asked. Her voice cracked, and tension pulled the cords in her neck into taut lines under her skin. “Billy. Is that your phone?”
“I… I don’t know,” Billy stammered. The need to answer her outweighed the pressure of Diggs’s hand on his shoulder. “I don’t know where it went, Mom. I lost it.”
Lara cupped her trembling hands over her mouth and pressed her knuckles so hard against her lips that they left white divots in the skin. “What did you do?” she breathed.
“Nothing!”
Billy reached for her, and she cringed back from him and slapped his hand away. “If you did something, you tell them now,” she said. Her voice shuddered up in pitch. “You tell them where my baby is.”
Diggs talked over both of them. “You say nothing, William,” he said. He swung his attention to Javi and narrowed his blue eyes as he stated firmly, “This interview is suspended, Agent Merlo. My client isn’t saying anything more.”
“Yes he is,” Lara said. “He’s going to tell them why his phone was there. He’s going to tell them what happened. I want to know.”
“I don’t work for you, Doctor Hartley,” he said. “I work for Billy, and until I have a chance to discuss this with him, it isn’t in his best interests to talk to you. So, are we free to leave or not?”
Javi inclined his head. “For now.”
Diggs shushed Billy before he could spill anything else and hurried him out of the room. “Mom?” Billy protested over his shoulder. His voice got more panicked and rose over Diggs’s quiet instructions. “Mom, I didn’t do anything.”
Across the table Lara turned her whole body away from him. Her shoulders looked sharp enough to scrape as she hunched in on herself.
“Lara,” Javi said gently, and she didn’t correct him. “Do you think Billy could have done something to his brother?”
She sniffed. The corners of her mouth turned down, and she wiped her finger over her upper lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “He never used to be…. He’s just gotten soangry.”
Cloister leaned over the table but hunched down to look smaller. “Apparently Drew was saying that it might be the last year you went to the Retreat, and it was because of Billy?”
“No. Not just Billy,” she said. “I want to move to San Diego this summer, get Billy into a new environment, but Ken wanted to wait until Christmas. He didn’t want to upset his father.”
The bitterness in her words had taken a long time to get there—more than the few months between summer and now. Before they could ask any other questions, Ken burst into the room.
“Our lawyer says we shouldn’t be talking to you,” he said. He grabbed Lara’s arm and pulled, but she didn’t move. “Lara. It’s time to go.”
“It’s his phone,” she said. “He wasn’t at the party, and it’s his phone, Ken. My baby is out there somewhere, and Billy—”
