“Tell me,” she says, “does the name Ronald Springer mean anything to you?”
Ronald Springer. Now she really has thrown me off guard. “No,” I say. “Should it?” I ask. The police asked me about Ronald a few months ago. Schroder did. They asked if I had known him. If I had any idea what had happened to him. I told them I never knew him, and they seemed disappointed, but had no reason not to believe me. No reason, sure, but they still spent a few hours questioning me about him.
“It means nothing?”
“It means something,” I tell her, knowing I’ve already reacted to the name, knowing she’ll have been told about my previous interviews. “Detective Carl came to see me a while ago to ask if I had known him. Ronald went to my school.”
“Did you know him?”
“No. I knew who he was, but that was only after he was murdered. I could tell Schroder wasn’t expecting any connection, he was just hoping to wrap up a cold case, only I had nothing to do with it.”
“You’re positive?”
“Of course I’m positive.”
“So how is it you can be positive when you don’t remember killing any of these other people?” she asks.
“Because killing isn’t in my nature.”
“That’s a quick response,” she says.
I shrug. I don’t really know how to respond to it.
“Killing is in your nature,” she says. “You just don’t know you’re doing it. Which means it’s possible you did hurt Ronald and just don’t remember it. Ronald went missing the same month your auntie stopped raping you.”
“Raping?”
“That’s what she was doing, Joe,” she says, but I’m shaking my head.
“That’s the wrong word,” I tell her.
“What’s the right word then? Punishing you?”
“No. She was forgiving me. Forgiving me for breaking into her house.”
“Is that really how you see it, Joe?”
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
“You say you only knew of him after he was murdered,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“The police never said he was murdered. Ronald just disappeared. How would you know he was murdered?”
“It’s just an assumption,” I tell her, and I hate her for trying to fool me. “The police thought so. Everybody thought so. That’s what normally happens when people go missing, right?”
“Sometimes,” she says.
“Well if he wasn’t murdered, what then?”
“Tell me about Ronald.”
“There’s nothing to tell. He was a kid that nobody knew until he was mur . . . until he went missing, then people were figuring out who he was, then suddenly he’d been everybody’s best friend. People were going around school telling Ronald stories. There were rumors, right, that he had run away, that he had been abducted, that his parents had killed him. School was nearly over and the way people were talking, you’d think Ronald had been a hot topic since school started. It was weird. Knowing Ronald made you popular. I didn’t understand it. Ronald would have hated all of those guys. Every one of them.”
“You knew him, then?”
“No. I mean, I’d spoken to him a few times because we were in some of the same classes. But people gave him a hard time. They gave me a hard time too. We had that in common, I suppose.”
“Sounds like you knew him a little.”
“I mean we didn’t hang out. Maybe a few times at school we’d eat lunch together because neither of us really had any other friends.”
“Why did the other kids pick on him?”
“You know already,” I tell her. “If you’ve read about him.”
“Because he was gay,” she says.
I shrug. “It didn’t matter if he was gay or not, not for real,” I say, “but once people start throwing around labels like gay boy or serial killer, they stick. People need to be more careful with that kind of thing—but at that age nobody is.”
“How long had you known him?”
“For always. We started school together when we were five, so I’ve always known who he was.”
“Did you kill him, Joe?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Or you did, but can’t remember.”
“I guess that’s possible,” I say. “Why are you so interested in Ronald anyway?”
“Because your lawyer asked me to ask you about him. It seems the people prosecuting you have been looking into the case. We don’t know what their interest is, but they may introduce it at trial.”
I shake my head. “I liked Ronald,” I tell her. “I wouldn’t have hurt him.”
“How long were you friends?”
“We weren’t friends. I just knew who he was, and I liked him because he was the guy people teased, and you need kids like that in school so the rest of us are safe.”
“How long had you been having lunch with him?”
I shrug. I think about it. “A year. Maybe two. Not long. And it wasn’t every day.”
“Did you see him outside of school?”
“Never.”
“Did you used to think that he was attracted to you?”
I almost laugh at that. “What? No. No way. I’m not gay,” I tell her.
“That’s not what I asked,” she says. “I asked if you thought he liked you.”
“I’m sure he probably did. I was the only guy who talked to him that wasn’t giving him a hard time.”
“I mean, Joe, do you think he liked you in a sexual nature?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know where you’re going with any of this,” I say, “but I didn’t kill him. I don’t know what happened, and the prosecution can dig into it all they want because I had nothing to do with it. Can we move on?”
“No. Not yet. Tell me something else about Ronald. Tell me about the last time you saw him.”
“Jesus, why the hell is everybody hung up on Ronald? I’m telling you, I don’t know what happened to the guy.”
She stares at me and says nothing and I realize I’ve been shouting. I shake my head and I think about Ronald, and I picture him the way I saw him last. School wasn’t a whole lot of fun for either of us, and I imagine it’s like that for most people. We weren’t best friends, but he was a pretty good friend. He’d come around after school sometimes, we’d head down to the beach, sometimes mountain bike around the sand dunes, or climb trees in the park. We’d talk about the kind of stuff that sixteen-year-old boys talked about, except for women. We didn’t talk about them. I knew he was gay. When we were fifteen, though, he was so deep in the closet I’m sure he could taste Turkish delight. I knew he liked me. I didn’t mind—having a gay guy like you doesn’t make you gay, it just makes you feel flattered. Then things changed. The Big Bang happened, followed by two years of smaller bangs, and my friendship with Ronald got pushed aside. I saw him around at school, but I hardly spoke to him. I saw him getting a hard time, but that just meant things were easier for me, and now that I was paying off my bullies, life was actually pretty good. Except for the auntie-loving rape, as Ali would put it.
When my relationship with Auntie Celeste stopped, I started hanging out with Ronald again. Only things were different—I think the most awkward thing between us was the fact he didn’t want me hanging out with him anymore, but I’d still follow him around anyway. I knew he’d come around. After all, the guy had had a crush on me the previous year, and crushes like that don’t disappear. It only made sense he’d want to be my friend again. Truth is, him ignoring me annoyed me just as much as my auntie ignoring me. I felt abandoned all over.
I wanted to punish my auntie. Not for what she had done, but for finally making me enjoy it, and then for cutting off the supply. So when Ronald started rejecting me too—well, I didn’t just feel abandoned, but I felt angry too. The same anger I felt toward my auntie—only with Ronald I could do something about it.