Billy's Bones (25 page)

“You want lunch?” Tom asked.

“I want you to see if you can talk to Tracy for a minute. Her car’s here.”

“What for?”

“She went to school with me, so maybe she’ll remember… this kid.”

“I thought you were starting to remember him,” Tom said.

Kevin shook his head. “I remember his face. And now the name sounds familiar. But nothing else. I want to know if Tracy remembers him. Maybe she’ll know if his family is still in town.” It was obvious Kevin was feeling overwhelmed at the moment. Tom would have preferred they deal with this later, when Kevin was in a better state of mind, but if this was what Kevin wanted….

“Are you sure you’ll be all right while I’m inside?”

“I’m not fuckin’ five years old. I just need to be by myself for a bit.”

Tom left him there and went into the diner. As usual, the place was busy, but he was able to find a booth near the front window where he could keep an eye on the parking lot. He felt like an overprotective mother, but he knew he would be fretting too much about what Kevin might be doing if he couldn’t see the truck.

“What’s going on?” Tracy’s voice cut through his thoughts, startling him.

He turned to find her standing by the table, one arm on her hip. She was looking out the window too, right at the truck. “Why is Kevin sitting out there by himself?” she asked.

“He, um… he’s not feeling well. But he wanted me to see if I could talk to you for a moment.”

“You’re not gonna order nothing?”

“Um… no, I guess not.”

She wrinkled her nose as she turned her gaze on Tom and gave him a sardonic smile. “I’m beginning to think his crazy is contagious, and you’re starting to catch it.”

“Maybe.” Tom had to admit he felt foolish, if not exactly crazy.

“Well, what did you need to talk to me about? It’s pretty busy.”

Tom shrugged. “Kevin wanted me to ask you if you remembered a friend of his from his childhood—a boy with black hair and brown eyes. His name was Billy Sherrell.”

Tracy slipped into the booth opposite him and frowned in concentration. “Billy Sherrell….” She was distracted by the bell on the door as a family entered the diner. “I don’t know, hon. Tell you what, leave me your number, and I’ll call you if I remember anything.”

W
HEN
they got home, Kevin brought Shadow out to pee, and it took every ounce of Tom’s self-restraint not to follow them. But nothing dramatic occurred. Kevin complained about being tired a short time later and went upstairs to nap for a couple of hours. During that time, Tom did a quick search on the name “Billy Sherrell,” using “Billy,” “Bill,” “William,” and even “Will,” as well as several spelling variations on the last name and trying to limit it to New Hampshire. The search turned up nothing interesting.

Kevin woke and had a cup of coffee. By nightfall, he seemed to be back to his normal self, wrestling with the dog and helping Tom measure one of the upstairs rooms to calculate how many bookshelves they could fit in there to make a library.

Tom wasn’t sure if it would be a good idea to bring up Billy, so he avoided the subject. It was Kevin who asked, while they were sitting in the hot tub, looking up at the peaceful, starry sky overhead. “Do you think I’m capable of killing someone?”

“You’re the only one who can answer that,” Tom said and then kicked himself for being so cautious with the way he worded things. It was his training as an analyst. Of course he didn’t believe Kevin was capable of it.

Before he could qualify himself, Kevin said with a sour expression, “I didn’t ask you if I did it. I asked you if you
think
I could do it.”

“No, Kevin. I don’t think you’re capable of killing someone.”

Kevin looked contemplative, watching the stars in silence for a long time before saying, “It sure is hard for me to imagine.”

“Yes,” Tom said, reaching out to take his hand under the water, “it is. And we don’t know what happened. If you’re sure the boy you’ve been seeing in your dreams is Billy Sherrell—”

“I am.”

“Then that’s one piece of the puzzle. But Billy may still be alive somewhere. We’ll find out.”

“If he’s dead,” Kevin said quietly, “I may be the only person who knows what happened to him.”

“Whatever it is locked away in your unconscious,” Tom said, “we’ll get to it. Just give it time.”

His cell phone rang, interrupting the conversation. He climbed out of the tub to retrieve it from his pants pocket while Kevin watched him curiously. The name on the display was “Tracy Kimball.”

“You remember that boy you asked me about today?” Tracy asked when Tom answered.

“Of course.”

“Well, I talked to Lee about it, and between the two of us, we were able to piece some of it together. Now, it was a long time ago, hon, so we can’t be sure if our memories are 100 percent. I’m still trying to figure out why Kevin wanted to know what
I
remembered about
his
friend.”

“Because, apart from Billy’s name and face, he can’t remember anything.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, but eventually Tracy said, “What we recall was that Billy was kind of a strange kid, kind of an outsider, and not a nice kid. If you tried to say ‘hello’ to him, he’d just tell you to fuck off—pardon my French. Everyone knew his father was an alcoholic, so we figured he had a rough time at home. Billy came into school with bruises on his face sometimes, but back then… well, too many people pretended not to notice that sort of thing.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Anyway, somehow he and Kevin became friends. I have no idea how they started hanging out together, but they were pretty inseparable for a while. Then one day Billy didn’t show up at school. That was the last anyone ever saw of him. A cop showed up in our homeroom class and asked everybody if we’d seen him, but nobody had. Not even Kevin. And that was pretty much it.”

“Did you hear anything about the police questioning his father?”

“I suppose I might have. Everyone was convinced the guy got drunk and took one swing too many at his kid. But nobody could prove anything.”

“I couldn’t find anyone named Sherrell living near here,” Tom said.

“He left town after a while. I remember hearing that everyone was avoiding him and some of the stores wouldn’t even serve him anymore, so I can see why he would. Not that I have any sympathy for the bastard if he really did kill his kid. As far as I know, nobody ever saw him again.”

T
OM
watched Kevin closely for his reaction after explaining everything Tracy had relayed. But Kevin simply frowned and looked frustrated.

“Some of it sounds familiar,” he said at last. “But I don’t
feel
it. It’s like I’m hearing about things that happened to other people, and I wasn’t even there.” Then he gave a long sigh and said, “There’s no way around it. I’m going to have to listen to that goddamn song.”

Twenty-Four

“Y
OU
need to remember, Kevin,” Sue told him, “that any memories that surface when you hear the song… they’re just memories. They happened a long time ago, and they can’t hurt you anymore.”

“Sure,” Kevin replied, though he didn’t sound convinced. Memories had
already
been hurting him. He’d taken a sedative before the session—a prescription Sue had asked Mark Belanger to write out for Kevin since he didn’t have a primary care physician—but he was clearly still agitated. He was clutching Tom’s hand so tightly Tom was starting to lose feeling in his fingers.

“You’re safe here. And we can stop any time you tell me to turn the music off.”

That wouldn’t stop the flood of memories, Tom knew—and he was sure Kevin knew as well—but at least it was some amount of control.

“Can I hold the remote, then?” Kevin asked, a slight smile quirking up one corner of his mouth.

“Certainly.”

Sue handed the remote to him, and Kevin looked at it for a long time before sighing and saying, “All right. Fuck it.”

He pressed Play and the song “Kyrie” by Mr. Mister began to play on Sue’s stereo system.

Stark, New Hampshire, 1987—Billy

B
ILLY
S
HERRELL
was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to eleven-year-old Kevin Derocher. He was strong and tough; he didn’t take shit from anybody. And somehow, despite the fact that Kevin didn’t feel at all strong and tough, that most of the time he felt frightened and overwhelmed, Billy had picked him—and no one else—for a friend. Perhaps it was because Billy had seen Kevin eating alone every day in the cafeteria and something in him had responded to his isolation. One day Billy simply set his tray down on the table across from Kevin at lunchtime and said, “I’m gonna sit here.”

And that was it. They found a common interest in
The Karate Kid
and thought it would be cool to learn karate and go to Japan. They also liked a lot of the same music. It wasn’t long before they were always together at lunch, and Billy started waiting after school for Kevin to catch up and walk home with him.

Mr. Sherrell frightened Kevin. The man was usually passed out drunk on the living room couch whenever Kevin stopped by Billy’s house. He worked at the Berlin paper mill, and his usual routine after coming home from work was to drink himself into oblivion. On the rare occasions when he was awake, he was usually snarling at his son and calling him “faggot” for no particular reason.

“I fucking hate him,” Billy told Kevin once, when they’d escaped from the tirade into Billy’s room. “I wish he’d pass out and never wake up again.”

Kevin had almost said, “I hate my dad too,” but he couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud. He didn’t have any right to hate his father. It wasn’t like his dad ever hit him or anything.

K
EVIN
was never quite certain how things turned sexual between him and Billy. It might have been his doing. Lately, once or twice a week, he’d been waking up in the morning with wet spots on his sheets. He knew what it was. He’d seen his father make messes like that more times than he could remember. It was feeling good to touch himself and make it happen on purpose, so he finally understood why his father liked it so much. But he kept it secret from his father. He didn’t want to be forced to do it with him.

He did tell Billy about it, though.

“Yeah,” Billy said with a soft laugh, keeping his voice down, as if afraid his own father might overhear, “that happens to me too sometimes.” He was referring to the waking up in a wet spot part. He didn’t know about touching himself.

Despite being tough and a little scary, it turned out Billy knew very little about sex. For the first time since they’d met, Kevin was the one who knew everything. He didn’t tell Billy
how
he knew, but he explained how they could make it happen on purpose, instead of just when they were asleep. And when Billy wanted to try it together, Kevin didn’t object.

For the first time in his life, Kevin enjoyed doing something sexual. And apparently, so did Billy because he kept wanting to do it whenever they had time alone together. When Kevin taught him how to kiss, Billy liked that too. And Kevin was happier than he’d ever been in his life.

Until the night of the storm.

I
T
WAS
already beginning to rain as they walked to Billy’s house that Wednesday afternoon. Their relief at getting in out of the storm was short-lived, however. Mr. Sherrell was tearing around the house, pulling out drawers in the kitchen and dumping the contents on the floor like a madman. When he saw the boys, he rushed up to Billy and belted him upside the head.

“Where the fuck is my new jackknife, you little faggot?”

Kevin couldn’t stop himself from shrieking when Billy got hit, but Billy just gritted his teeth and glared back at his father. “How the fuck should I know?”

Mr. Sherrell growled and took another swing at his son, but Billy was prepared this time and ducked out of the way.

“I paid good money for that knife. You tell me where it is, or so help me I’ll knock your fucking head off!”

“You probably got drunk and forgot where you put it!”

Mr. Sherrell made another lunge for him, but Billy dodged and shoved him hard, knocking him onto the floor. The man was a lot bigger than Billy, but he must have been drunk, as usual.

“I’m gonna kill you for that! And your little faggot girlfriend!”

Billy grabbed Kevin’s shirt and pulled him out the front door. They ran as fast as they could in the rain until Kevin thought his sides would burst, but Mr. Sherrell didn’t bother chasing after them. When Billy finally allowed them to slow down and look back, there was no sign of his father.

“Jesus!” Billy gasped. But then he grinned at Kevin and drew a large jackknife out of his pants pocket. He tossed it in his hand triumphantly, while Kevin stared in shocked admiration.

“You
did
take it!”