Will paced frantically across the green shag carpet in my living room. I’d known him his whole life, and I’d never seen him so wildly upset. His easy smile was gone. His nose ran, and he wiped it on his sweatshirt. His breathing came so fast that he looked like he needed a paper bag to stop hyperventilating. The kid who liked everybody, whose approach to life was as mellow as an Eagles song, was melting down in front of us.

“Will, sit,” I told him.

He didn’t. He kept pacing. After I repeated it twice more, Ajax stopped the boy in the middle of the room and took him by the shoulders. “Sit.”

Will slumped onto the sofa, with his face in his hands. I sat next to him. As Will tried to catch his breath, I murmured to Ajax, “An arrest warrant for Jay? Did you know anything about this?”

“It must be Jerry. He wants the Brink case closed. I heard about the interview at the school, Jay going ballistic, talking about wanting his father dead. Combine that with everything else, and Jerry probably thinks they can make the charge stick.”

“He didn’t do it!” Will gasped again.

I took hold of his meaty shoulder. I’d babysat for him when he was a boy, but this kid was practically twice my size. “Will, tell me what’s going on. What happened?”

“Darrell came to my dad’s house. He was going to arrest Jay for murder. That’s crazy! I went and listened at the stairs and heard my dad talking to him. He said Darrell was using intimidation to get Jay to confess to something he didn’t do. But Darrell said he had no choice, and he had to bring him in. So my dad came upstairs to get Jay. He was already gone.”

“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.