Chapter Seventeen
REED WASfeeling cooperative for the first and probably only time in Cloister’s acquaintance with the grasping ex-hippie. When they asked he was only too glad to let them use his office. He would probably have preferred to stay and watch the interview, but Javi coldly but politely closed the door in his face.
Like the linen clothes, the office reflected Reed’s public persona of aging hippy. The sofa was worn, the fabric threadbare on the arms and along the front of the cushions, and the desk was a repurposed kitchen table with graffiti scarred into the wooden surface. The top-of-the-line safe and the glossy curve of the MacBook Pro charging on the filing cabinet were the only things out of place.
Those and the people.
Billy sat in the corner of the battered couch and picked nervously at the stuffing with his fingernail while his parents hovered and Diggs talked with quiet intensity to all three.
“How did you convince Billy to talk to us?” Javi asked Cloister as he grabbed his elbow and pulled him into the corner.
“I asked him to.”
Javi hissed out a sigh between his teeth. “Did you threaten or intimidate him in any way?” he asked. “He’s not a suspect anymore, but with J.J. involved, weneedto stick to—”
Two hours before or two hours later, and Cloister would have let the comment roll off his back. He knew what he looked like. Back home there were plenty of men who looked like him. Between fifteen and seventy-five, the Witte men looked like bad news, and Cloister hadn’t fallen far from the family bad-apple tree. Javi had just picked the wrong time for that particular criticism while Cloister’s skin was still raw from those old truths.
“You’re the one who wanted me to talk to the kid,” he growled, and he could feel the rasp of it in his throat. “Don’t complain about it now that I have.”
Javi narrowed his eyes but let it go. He turned his back on Cloister and looked at Diggs.
“Well?” he said. “Do you have any objections to us speaking to your client?”
“Plenty,” Diggs said. He smirked acknowledgment of the pun as he made it. The flicker of shared, dry amusement between him and Javi made Cloister clench his jaw. Diggs didn’t even acknowledge his presence as he went on. “But on the understanding he isn’t a suspect, and since both he and his family insist, I suppose I have to allow it. However, if I don’t like the direction this conversation is going… that could change.”
Javi grabbed Reed’s office chair, pulled it from behind the desk, sat down in it, and leaned forward. His shirt pulled tight over his shoulders as he rested his elbows on his knees and linked his hands together in front of him. Hunched against the arm of the couch, Billy tensed visibly. Lara reached for his arm, hesitated, and then completed the gesture.
“So talk,” Javi said.
The calm direction made Billy, braced for interrogation, blink in confusion. He licked his dry lips and glanced at Cloister, clearly seeking some sort of support. Cloister didn’t know what he had left to offer, but he gave Bourneville a nudge with his knee. She got up, padded over, and put her chin on Billy’s knee. He grabbed a handful of her ruff and seemed to soak up confidence from the coarse fur and warm weight of the dog.
“I was supposed to be meeting a girl,” he said.
“Allison,” Lara said. “You told us….”
Color crawled up Billy’s throat and picked out the scabs and spots of encroaching puberty. He swallowed hard, and his Adam’s apple bobbed jerkily under his skin.
“No, she was someone I met online,” he said. “We were going to… she said she wanted to do… y’know.”
He trailed off awkwardly, still flushed miserably up to his ears. Despite the obviously exhausted fear that dragged at Lara, she reacted to the familiar fear of internet predators. She slapped Billy’s shoulder.
“You were going to meet someone you met online? What have I told you about that? You don’t know who they really are, what they really are. Just because they say something, doesn’t mean that it’s true. They could be anyone. They could be—” She stopped suddenly and pressed her fingers against her trembling lips. Her horrified eyes sought out Javi as her voice spiraled up, shrill and scared. Ken put his hand on her shoulder, but she ignored him. “Do you think that’s what happened? Did thispersonthat Billy was talking to, this pervert, did they take Drew?”
“We don’t know anything yet, Lara,” Javi said as he raised his hands in a stilling gesture. “Let Billy finish. Who was this girl? And how long had you been talking to her?”
“Bri,” Billy said. Despite everything that had happened, a dreamy, lovelorn expression swam across his face as he said her name. “We were both into geocaching, y’know, like treasure hunting. She kept beating me, like all the time, and then we started talking online. We… she didn’t have anything to do with this. I… Mom was right. It was my fault.”
The sound of Lara’s indrawn breath was sharp. A hard look from Javi made her bite her lip, fold the full curve of it between her teeth, and hold her tongue. She clenched her hand into a fist on her knee, and her fingers dug into the flesh through her trousers.
“Why?” Javi asked patiently.
Billy looked down and stared intently at his hands as he petted Bourneville. She was panting patiently, not relaxed, but easygoing.
“I was supposed to meet Bri that night,” he said, not looking up. “I know I was dating Allison, but… Bri is beautiful and smart, and I just wanted to meet her. She told me that she’d come to the party, that we could meet there. Drew wanted to come with me. Healwayswanted to come with me. I told him not to. I told him that he couldn’t, and that he was a stupid little kid….”
There were tears in his eyes and snot wet on his upper lip. “I didn’tknow,”he said desperately. The tears dripped down onto Bourneville’s head, leaving wet commas on her fur and making her ears twitch. “How could I have known? He should have stayed at the cabin. He should have been okay.”
“Did you meet Bri?” Cloister asked. The scrape of his voice sounded harsh as it cut over Billy’s muttered confession.
