“Gone?” Ajax asked.
Will looked down at his lap. “I told him to climb out the window. He ran away. I don’t know where he is now.”
“That was foolish, Will,” I said. “Running makes Jay look guilty, and it puts him in danger, too. You should have trusted your dad. He’ll figure out how to make this all go away.”
Will shook his head frantically. “No. Dad doesn’t know what’s going on, and Jay refuses to tell him.”
“Tell him what?”
“About Sunday night,” Will said. “Jay’s lying about what happened. I keep telling him to come clean, but he won’t do it. He’d rather risk going to prison for killing his dad than tell the truth. Well, I’m done with that. I’m not going to let him protect me anymore.”
Ajax finally sat down, too. “Protect you? What the hell, Will? Did you have something to do with Gordon’s death?”
But I knew Ajax had it all wrong. This had nothing to do with Gordon.
“Jay wasn’t home on Sunday night, was he?” I said.
Without looking up, Will shook his head.
“Where was he?” I asked quietly.
“With me.”
“Where?”
“My dad’s trailer in the woods.”
“All night?”
“Yeah. All night.”
Ajax still didn’t get it. “What were you guys doing, some kind of Ursulina hunt?”
“No,” Will murmured. “I mean, yeah, I’d told Jay about the Ursulina. I even got him Ben’s book, because he thought the whole thing was wild, like maybe the beast was real or something. That’s why we picked my dad’s trailer. It was kind of a dare to see if we could stay there all night.”
“You could have just said that,” I suggested. “You didn’t have to admit what was really going on.”
“No. People would have guessed the truth. I already see the looks at school. I hear the talk.” He looked at me with a silent plea to say it for him.
“The two of you are... gay?” I said with a little hesitation, in case I’d guessed wrong. But I didn’t think I had.
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“Is that why Jay’s been protecting you? To keep the secret?”
“Yeah.”
Ajax’s face darkened, first with surprise and then disgust. If I’d given him a thousand guesses, he wouldn’t have gotten it himself. He got up, saying something I won’t repeat. Regardless, the slur hit Will like a blow to the face, and he knew perfectly well that more were coming. Every day of his life, wherever he went, people around here would know who he was. This wasn’t the kind of story that could be contained, not in Black Wolf County.
“Does your father know?” I asked.
“Not yet. I guess I have to tell him now.”
“I know Norm. He’ll be okay with it.”
Will shook his head. “Don’t be so sure.”
“Jay wanted to keep this hidden?” I asked.
“Yeah, but not for himself. He didn’t want to out me. I told him we should come forward and admit it, but he knew what it would be like for me if people knew. He could go back to Milwaukee, and I’d be stuck here. But I’m not going to let him get arrested when I know he’s innocent. He was with me Sunday night. All night. He has an alibi. He didn’t kill his father.”
“Were Gordon’s problems with Jay about him being gay?”
“Oh, yeah. Gordon couldn’t deal with it. His son being gay made him less of a man. He actually said that, you know? That’s why Gordon took him out of school in Milwaukee. He thought it was the school that had turned him gay. He figured, bring him here, he’ll meet a nice blond girl.” Will gave a sour laugh. “Instead, he met a nice blond boy.”
I noticed Ajax standing in the shadows on the far side of my living room. He didn’t say another word; he didn’t even look at Will. His revulsion ran deep. I’d like to tell you that he was an exception around here, but the truth is, he was the rule. You could be a lot of things in this part of the world and people wouldn’t care, but being gay wasn’t one of them. This was the end of Will Foltz, popular kid and football star.
“Gordon found out about you and Jay?” I asked.
“Yeah. He caught us together. Honestly, it was stupid. I should have stopped Jay, but he wanted to do it in Gordon’s office. I think it was his way of throwing it all in his father’s face, you know? That’s how his fingerprints got there. Because we were there. In bed. Gordon came back while we were in the middle of things, and he practically had a stroke. That’s why he was so crazy for my dad to keep me away from Jay. It didn’t have anything to do with the lawsuit. He made that up. He wasn’t going to admit what was really going on.”
Just like that, in the middle of Will’s story, Ajax left the room. He didn’t say a word to either of us. He didn’t look at me or Will, he just left. Seconds later, I heard my front door slam. The whole house shook on its foundation. Outside, Ajax’s car squealed away.
“He’s going to tell everybody, isn’t he?” Will said.
I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t do that. Will wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. He knew the score. In a few hours, the news would be all over town. His life as he knew it was over.
“I don’t care,” he insisted, wiping his face. “Let them find out. Let them all find out. Jay’s innocent. I don’t care what happens to me.”
Chapter Seventeen
By noon the next day, Will was in the hospital.
It happened between the first and second period classes. Eight other boys jumped him as he was getting books from his locker. It took that many kids to overpower Will, who fought back and landed plenty of blows before they were able to pin him to the ground and begin beating on him. A couple dozen other teens stood and watched and cheered them on. The attack went on for almost ten minutes before two teachers finally intervened and were able to pull the kids away.
By the time Darrell and I reached the school, an ambulance had already taken Will to the neighboring county, which was where the nearest hospital was located. We arrested three teens who bore the bruises and black eyes of Will fighting back. They refused to identify any of the other teens who’d been involved, and none of the kids who’d watched in the hallway would talk to us, either. Even the teachers claimed to have not seen who else had taken part.
I had to leave the interview room rather than listen to the questioning, because I was sickened by what I heard. I knew these teens, and I knew their parents. Before that day, I would have called them good kids, funny, athletic, even a little naive about the ways of the world. These same teens had set upon a boy who’d been one of their heroes, and there was absolutely no regret in their eyes. They thought that they were the real victims, that Will had made fools of them, gulled them into being friends with a pervert. That was actually the mildest of the words they used to describe him.
There would be no legal consequences for what they did. I knew that. We’d arrested them, but the county prosecutor would make it all go away. Even in the unlikely event that the case made it to court, the judge would give them a stern lecture and set them free. There would be nothing on their records. Nothing that would follow them around for the rest of their lives.
I went back to my desk, but I could hear the other deputies talking about it. Laughing, making jokes. Ajax was among them. Ajax, who’d probably gone straight to the 126 from my house and started the rumors flying. He’d known exactly what would happen to Will as soon as the news got out, but he didn’t care. I couldn’t even look at him. It sickened me to think I’d actually felt a physical attraction to this man. I sat at my desk for a while and tried to block it all out, but I realized I needed to get away from there. I grabbed my coat and left, feeling as if their voices were chasing me out the door.