Page 113 of I Will Ruin You

Lucy had the bag halfway down the stairs. Unable to wheel it, she was moving it one step at a time, holding it by the top handle.

“Billy was already dead, and the bag was there,” I said, more to myself than to Stuart. “And you left with it.”

“Could she be any slower?” Stuart said, watching Lucy descend the stairs.

Something wasn’t tracking. When I was watching the house, and those two showed up, the bag wasn’t there, so Billy had to already be dead. Shouts of “Where is it?” had been between themselves, not between them and Billy.

If Stuart was to be believed, someone else had visited the garage before either he or the couple in the black car had gotten there, and that person—or persons—had killed Billy. I could think of only one other person who’d been there that evening.

Bonnie.

No, couldn’t be Bonnie. She’d told me what had happened, and I believed her.

Maybe the answer was coming our way. Lucy had reached the bottom of the stairs and went back to wheeling, instead of carrying, the bag. She pulled it as far as the truck’s passenger door.

“Here you go,” she said. “I don’t think I can lift it into the back.” She tilted her head toward the pickup’s empty bed.

“Can’t go back there,” he said derisively. “Go over some railroad tracks and it’ll fly out.” He opened the door and slid out, keeping the gun on me. There was some space between the seat and the back of the cab. Stuart tipped the seat forward, grabbed the bag, and stowed it.

He moved in to give Lucy a quick kiss, but she pulled back, like you might if someone with the Ebola virus tried to embrace you.

“Okay, not pushin’ it,” Stuart said. “All in good time.”

He got into the truck and slammed the door shut. He smiled at Lucy and said, “See ya later, babe.”

“Goodbye, Stuart,” she said.

Fifty-Two

Marta didn’t want to have to wait for Bonnie, but there was no way she could hop into her unmarked car and go racing off down the street, siren wailing and lights flashing, without her. She waited while Bonnie ran next door to the neighbors’ house and told a startled Jill at the door that she needed her to watch Rachel.

“There’s been a shooting at the school!” she said breathlessly, and as she ran to get into the front seat of Marta’s cruiser, Jill beelining it for Bonnie’s house, she added, “Don’t tell Rachel!”

Marta had the car in gear before Bonnie had the door closed.

“It’s him, oh God, I know it’s him,” Bonnie said.

Marta, keeping her voice as calm as possible, said, “We don’t know, Bonnie. We don’t know anything yet.”

“He didn’t answer his phone!”

“He might not be able to get to it,” Bonnie said. “He could have muted it.”

A block away from Lodge High School they saw the kaleidoscope of flashing lights. Several marked cruisers and ambulances had swarmed the area. Marta had taken the call only eight minutes earlier, but the shooting itself must have occurred sometime within the last half hour. There would have been initial calls—probably several—to 911, then cars would have been dispatched to the scene, and as soon as word got back that someone had been shot, the call had gone out to Marta.

She could think of nothing comforting to say to her sister. The truth was, she expected the worst. She didn’t quite have a handle on the extent of the mess in which Richard was entangled, but these kinds of things often got worse before they got better.

The cruiser screeched to a halt by one of the marked cruisers. As Marta got out she said to Bonnie, “Stay here!”

She ran to the center of the school parking lot, illuminated by tall fixtures overhead, where the attention was focused. She pushed her way through a small crowd of civilians, yelling at them to “Get back!” as she did so, until the scene opened up for her. There were three uniformed officers there, two men and one woman, holding out their arms so no one would get too close to the body on the ground.

Marta hadn’t even had a second to take a close look at who it was when she heard a scream behind her.

It was Bonnie.

“Oh God, no!” she said, and before she could get any closer, Marta threw her arms around her to hold her back. Bonnie was able to look over her shoulder, see the dead man splayed out on his back on the pavement.

“It’s not him,” Bonnie whispered into her sister’s ear. “It’s not Richard.”