Page 131 of I Will Ruin You

“You talked me into it,” I said.

Trent said, “Back in a sec.”

He stepped off the deck and headed for a metal garden shed located in the back corner of the yard. I decided to accompany him. As we walked across the yard, I said, “I’m worried that if I take a leave of absence, in about a week I’ll be bored anyway and want to come back.”

“Maybe,” he said. “So ask for three weeks or something like that. Honestly, I think you should take the rest of the semester.”

We’d reached the shed. He slid a metal door to one side and we stepped in. It was crammed full of gardening and other implements. Various rakes and shovels hung from hooks on the wall. Two battery-operated weed trimmers. I was guessing one had conked out and Trent bought a backup. There was yet another barbecue in here, the lid and supporting structure rusted with age. Bags of fertilizer and topsoil. A wheeled spreader for distributing grass seed or weed killer.

And three lawnmowers.

There were two gas-powered ones tucked toward the back that didn’t look to have been used lately, and an electric one within reach. A coiled extension cord lay on the floor next to it.

My eyes were on the lawnmowers. I couldn’t stop looking at them.

“You know me,” Trent said. “Like Melanie said. Something breaks down, I just buy a new one. Gotta admit, I’m a bit of a hoarder. I never get rid of the old stuff. I have this delusion that one day I’ll get around to fixing it. Oh, here we go.”

He’d found the new barbecue brush, still in its cardboard packaging, the price tag still dangling from it, hanging from a nail tapped into the wall.

I wasn’t aware Melanie had followed us out.

“Here you are, Richard,” she said, and I turned around to see her standing there with a beer in her hand, beads of moisture bubbled on the cold bottle.

I guess she must have seen what had caught my attention and laughed.

“I guess it’s no wonder that sad boy was always calling Trent the lawnmower man.”

Sixty-Three

“You’re right, I’ve explained this,” Marta said. “That wasn’t my gun I was holding when I shot at the woman. The car was coming at me. I dived. My gun fell out of my hand. I couldn’t find it. It was dark. This Andrea woman was running away, was armed, had already tried to shoot me, she was a risk to anyone she might encounter, and I needed to pursue her. Bonnie—my sister—told Mr. Wakely to give me his weapon.”

“Tell us about Mr. Wakely,” Barnes said.

“He’s the principal at Lodge High. He was at the school when Stuart Betz shot the teacher, Mr. Willow. I’d been at Bonnie’s house when the call came in that there’d been a shooting there. And of course my sister was worried it was her husband who’d been shot, so we raced to the school. Once we all knew more, Mr. Wakely offered to drive Bonnie home.”

“Go on.” Dinkins, the Internal Affairs guy, this time.

“This is all in my report on—”

“Go on,” he said again.

“On their way, Bonnie received a text she believed was from her husband, saying he was at Walnut Beach. We converged on the site. The rest you know.”

The chief was nodding slowly. “I know you’ve been waiting for a ballistics report on the Finster shooting, whether it was a match to anything else. That happened this morning. It landed on my desk before it went to you, and when I saw it, I thought, what the hell is going on?”

Marta didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “The day Mark LeDrew came to the blow up the school, Wakely acknowledged he kept a gun locked in his desk, in case a shooter ever came through the doors. He had it out, was ready to use it on LeDrew, but didn’t when he saw the dynamite, the guy’s thumb on that button.” She paused. “Jesus Christ.”

“What?” asked the chief.

“He didn’t want to hand it over,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“When Bonnie was telling him to give me the gun, he didn’t want to,” Marta said. “He had to be thinking, if it got fired, there’d be a ballistics test...”

She stood.

“Are we done here?” she asked Barnes and Dinkins.