Page 134 of I Will Ruin You

“I never meant... he had a gun. I found him in the garage and asked him what the hell he was doing, putting you through that ordeal, what was he thinking? He said he had no idea what I was talking about, and we know now he really didn’t, but at the time... He grabbed the gun and started waving it around, threatening me, and what he didn’t know was, I had my own. Ever since Mark came to the school, I’d been pretty freaked out, was carrying it with me everywhere I went.”

“You killed Billy Finster,” I said.

“I ended up doing you a favor,” Trent said, and managed a wry smile. “I’m not expecting a thank-you or anything, but once he was dead, your problems kind of went away.”

That prompted a laugh from me. “Oh yeah, they just vanished. Everything’s been fucking great since then.”

“I’m sorry,” Trent said. “I’m sorry about all of it.”

“How many boys were there?” I asked. “How many did you take advantage of? How many did you assault?”

He couldn’t look me in the eye. “Not... that many. I tried to keep it under control.”

I thought back to that fateful Monday, how Trent had tried to get into position to shoot Mark LeDrew.

“You wanted to shoot Mark,” I said. “When you saw him, you had to have a pretty good idea what his grievance was. He had his list, but you had to rate pretty high on it.”

“No,” he said vehemently. “He could have killed all of us, if he’d had the chance. It wasn’t just about me.”

I thought I noticed some tiny movement, something out of the corner of my eye, on the floor behind Trent. It was there, and then it was gone.

“I don’t recall you ever filling in to oversee the wrestling team,” I said, taking a step closer to him.

“A few times,” he admitted. “When you, or Herb, weren’t available.”

“That was when you assaulted Billy. Was that a one-off? But with Mark there was more, wasn’t there?”

“He was kind of a lost kid,” Trent said. “I tried to help him. I tried to boost his confidence. Took him under my wing. His father didn’t give a shit about him. Had high expectations Mark couldn’t begin to meet. The boy was looking for a father figure and I wanted to be that for him.”

“You exploited that need.”

“I know... I know what I did was wrong, but I was good to him. I... I gave him work. Paid him well for looking after our place that summer. I... I came back a few weekends, alone, when I knew he would be there. So I could spend time with him. Mentor him.”

He said it like he almost believed it. I could guess other ways he boosted that boy’s confidence. With free beer, maybe, video games, companionship. All to get what Trent actually wanted. I took another step in his direction. We were no more than four feet apart now.

“Does Melanie know?” I asked, “About your extracurricular interests?”

I saw that movement again. I saw what it was.

He shook his head. “I’ve been a good husband to her. I’m a good father.”

“You’re a parasite,” I said. “You used your position of authority to exploit a student. Everything that’s happened, all of it, finds its way back to you. Your abuse of Mark, how it tormented him and drove him to consider something horrific. The subsequent mix-up that led to my blackmail, to Finster’s death, to Herb’s. All of it has its seeds in your sickness.”

Trent reached into his pocket and brought out a small handgun and pointed it at me. I was surprised to think the police had returned to him the weapon he’d let Marta use.

“It’s not the same one,” he said, as though reading my mind. “You know I like to have backups of pretty much everything.”

“What’s the plan, Trent? Kill me? Then Bonnie when she gets home? You going to kill Rachel? Will that cover your tracks? I doubt it. Like you said, you’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop. When they connect your gun to Finster’s death, it’ll be all over.”

Trent’s hand was shaking, but the gun was still leveled at me.

The thing that I’d seen was now crawling up his pant leg. A weird-looking bug. A three-inch-long stick with long, slender legs. Some kind of praying mantis, I thought. Its long legs were taking it higher and higher. I remembered Ginny putting it into a jar for Rachel when we went to visit.

“It’s mean to keep things locked up,” she’d said. “They should all be set free.”

“I could disappear,” Trent said.

“If you’re going to do that, you hardly need to kill me.”