Page 106 of I Will Ruin You

We exited the room and started walking down the hall toward the main entrance. Behind us, I heard Herb, who had stepped out of the library, call out: “Boyle. Boyle!”

My blackmailer and I rounded a corner and as we passed an open classroom I steered him inside. I closed the door behind us. We were in a chemistry class. Raised desks with stools, a chart of the periodic table on the wall.

“What the fuck is going on?” I asked.

He smiled. “Okay, so you’ve figured out I’m not Billy.” He extended a hand. “I’m Stuart. Pleased to meet you.”

I didn’t take his hand.

He took in the room, shook his head. “I fuckin’ hated chemistry class. Flunked it.” He took a breath. “Flunked pretty much everything, you wanna know the truth. Hate schools. Didn’t want to do this here. Was heading for your place, saw you leave, followed you. What was that meeting all about?”

“Who are you, Stuart?” I asked, wanting to bring him back on track.

“Billy’s friend. Well, I was Billy’s friend, until what happened to him. That was fucking wild, right? Listen, don’t look so pissed. I’m here with good news. Well, good news and bad news.”

I was simmering. “Why don’t you give me the bad news first.”

Stuart thought about that and shook his head. “No, it makes more sense to start with the good news, which is that I’m no longer interested in getting your ten grand. Consider it forgotten. Wiping the slate clean. No hard feelings, okay?”

“What’s the rest of it?” I asked.

“You’re not quite off the hook. I know you killed Billy.”

“I did not kill Billy.”

“Sure looks that way to me. Way I see it, you’re the most likely suspect. I mean, come on, didn’t it ever cross your mind to kill me? So you went to see Billy and offed him before you realized you’d made a mistake, that you got the wrong guy. You shoot him in the back? Did you even get a look at him? Anyway, when I tell the police what I know, that he was blackmailing you, they’ll put it together.”

“If you think I did do it, you should be more scared of me right now.”

“What are you gonna do?” He looked around. “Hit me with a beaker?”

“I didn’t kill Billy,” I said. “But I have a pretty good idea who did.”

Stuart’s eyebrows popped. “Oh?”

“Two people—a man and a woman—went into his garage. There was a whole lot of shouting. They took off. I went in after, and he was dead.”

“Oh, so you were watching the place again? Didn’t learn your lesson from the first time? That looks very bad for you. Very, what’s the word, incriminating. The police’ll be interested to know you were there.”

He was wrong thinking I’d murdered Billy, but he was right that he could do me a world of harm if he told the police I’d had a reason to want him dead. One anonymous call would do it. And who would believe my story? About this mysterious Stuart who’d pretended to be Billy who’d been putting the squeeze on me for something I hadn’t done. How crazy was all that going to sound?

But even before I could contemplate what fate might be awaiting me, I wanted to know why Stuart had gone after me in the first place.

“Why me?” I said. “Why pretend to be Billy? Why threaten to expose me for something I didn’t do to you?”

“Not to me,” he said. “To Billy.”

“I never did anything to him.”

Stuart nodded thoughtfully, then looked chagrined. “I might have gotten it wrong.”

“Gotten what wrong?”

“There was this thing on the news,” he said. “About that guy who was going to blow up the school. Billy’s watching, and he goes, oh, that’s my school, and he’s looking at the TV and he’s like, there’s that perv who liked to touch my dick when I was on the wrestling team. I look and I see you, and then I found your picture with the team in Billy’s yearbook and put it together.”

“Who else was on the TV?” I said.

Stuart’s brow wrinkled as he tried to recall. “Bunch of people standing around outside the school after the police got there. But I got a better look at you than anyone else.” He shrugged. “Billy might have meant one of the others.”