HAT KID GIVES me the creeps,” MacNeil told Gray as he stood outside the interrogation room watching a tearful Billy Wyatt give Joe Torello the details surrounding his father’s “accidental” death. They’d picked the boy up that morning and brought him in for questioning, accompanied by Caroline. “I can’t believe she hasn’t called the family lawyer yet.”

Folding his arms over his chest, Gray contemplated Caroline’s somewhat surprising behavior. “I think she’s feared Billy had something to do with his father’s death from that day in my office when he called Wyatt for us. She looked shocked and a little sickened by his ad-lib performance. Later, when I told her the button found at the well was the same as the ones on Mitchell Wyatt’s coat, she accepted that very quickly. She didn’t ask me if we’d made sure, or checked all of his other clothes for identical buttons, or any of the questions you’d expect her to ask. Caroline has been on Chicago’s best-dressed list several times; she knows handmade buttons are very unusual.”

“I still can’t figure out why she hasn’t called a lawyer yet.”

Gray thought about that for a moment. “She loved William, and she loves Billy. I think she figures her only chance of saving her son is to make him tell the truth and get it off his chest. The family lawyer is Henry Bartlett, and she knows Bartlett will do whatever Cecil tells him to do. Cecil would tell him to shut Billy up and then find a way to get him off.”

“I don’t know how she can stand to be in the same room with the kid.”

“That’s easy. She’s blaming herself for not realizing how much damage Mitchell Wyatt’s presence in the family was doing to her son.”

In the interrogation room, Torello handed Billy a pen and a tablet of paper. “Before you write it all down, let’s go over everything one more time to make sure we’re all clear.”

Caroline was standing behind Billy, her hands protectively on his shoulders. “Does he have to go through it all again? Can’t he just write it down?”

In response, Torello looked at the kid. “One more time, from the top.”

The fourteen-year-old rubbed his eyes with his palms and said shakily, “I went out to the farm with my dad, just like we planned to do that weekend. I thought we might scare up some quail on the Udall place, so I took the shotgun from the house. While we were walking, my dad told me he was going to sell our farm to the developer who’d bought Udall’s. We started arguing. I told him he couldn’t do that, and then—”

“Why did you think he couldn’t do that?”

“Because the farm was supposed to be mine!” Billy said fiercely, his meek attitude vanishing. “My grandpa Edward always said it would be mine someday, but he forgot to leave it to me in his will.”

“Okay, and then what happened?”

“My dad and I were arguing, and I was so upset that I wasn’t looking where I was going. I tripped and the gun went off.” Reaching for a box of tissues on the table, he scrubbed at his eyes. “My dad was only a few feet in front of me when he fell. I tried to give him CPR, but there was a big hole in his chest, and I got blood all over me, and I freaked out. I was scared my mom would never forgive me and I’d go to jail. The old well was just a few feet away, so I pulled the cover off of it, and I... I... You know the rest.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I dragged my dad over to it, and pushed him down the hole; then I threw the shotgun in after him.”

Caroline lifted one hand from his shoulder and briefly covered her eyes while a visible tremor shook her entire body.

“What about fingerprints on the shotgun?” Torello prompted. “What did you do about those?”

“Oh, yeah. I wiped them off on my jacket before I threw the gun down the well.”

“Then what?”

“I went back to the house, but then I started thinking I’d done the wrong thing. I should have called an ambulance and the police, so I called Grandpa Cecil, and I told him what had happened. I asked him what I should do. He told me to sit still and not call anyone until he got there. It took him a long time, because it had started to snow.”

“What did Cecil do when he arrived?”

“He-He told me nothing could help my dad anymore, and that we had to think about saving me and sparing my mom. He said my dad wouldn’t want me to go to jail for an accident, and that my mom would never get over it if she knew how my dad died. He said he’d tell the cops I spent the weekend with him instead of going up to the farm with my dad.”

“What about your father’s vehicle? How did it end up being abandoned twenty-five miles away from the farm?”

Billy paused to wipe his eyes again, but they looked dry to Gray. “Grandpa Cecil said it would be better if the cops thought my dad wasn’t at the farm when he disappeared. That way, they wouldn’t search as hard up there and maybe find the old well. Grandpa Cecil said I should drive my dad’s car and follow him down the highway until he found a good place to leave it.”

“You’re only fourteen. Do you know how to drive?”

Billy shot him a disdainful look. “I’ve been driving up at the farm since I was twelve. Driving on the highway when it was snowing wasn’t easy, but I did as good as my dad could have done.”

On the other side of the two-way glass, MacNeil grimaced and looked at Gray. “That kid is a total sociopath.”

“We’re almost done, Billy,” Torello said encouragingly. “Now, let’s skip ahead two months to January. The search for your father has been called off, no one is looking around at the farm for him anymore, but you went to see Mr. Elliott and told him you heard Mitchell Wyatt pretending to your mom that he’d never been at the farm. You knew that would make us suspect him, and it would also renew our interest in searching the farm again. Why did you open up that can of worms when you’d gotten away with everything already?”

“Because the developer who bought the Udall place came to see my mom about buying our farm. While he was there, he said they were starting to break some ground and they were going to put a stone wall up on the property line. I knew they’d find the old well, because it was right there.”

“Okay, so you were thinking. You were using your head,” Torello said as if that was a compliment. “You figured they’d find your father’s body, so you tore a button off Wyatt’s coat, drove up there yourself one day, and planted the button under the well cover where it would be found.”

Billy nodded, looking flattered by Torello’s comments.

“But what made you decide to try to pin everything on Mitchell Wyatt?”

“Because,” Billy said, his face contorting with rage, “that fucking bastard was acting like he belonged in our family. He was stepping into my father’s place, and my mom was letting him do it. He was staying at our house, looking after my mom, hanging around her. I was supposed to be the man of the family, but she was asking him for advice, not me. He even advised her to sell the farm.

“My grandpa Cecil was acting just like her about Mitchell. I used to be Grandpa’s favorite. He always said we were a lot alike, but all he cared about was Mitchell after my dad died. He started ignoring me, and then I heard him tell Mom that he wanted to introduce everyone to Mitchell at his birthday party. He said she had to be there, so that everyone would know she’d accepted him into the family, too.”

“Okay, Billy. I’m satisfied that you’re telling the whole truth and you’ve got all your facts straight. There’s a tablet and a pen. Go ahead and write everything down just the way you told it to me. You want a Coke or anything?”

“I want a Dr Pepper,” Billy announced, reaching for the tablet.

“How about some chili-cheese Fritos to go with that?”

“Yeah, that would be good. How did you know?”

Torello said nothing, but when he turned away, he sent a meaningful glance toward the two-way mirror. In the last two weeks, they’d canvassed every gas station and convenience store between Chicago and the farm, knowing that Cecil would probably have needed to stop at some point. A clerk in a gas station/convenience store recognized Billy’s photograph. Cecil had sent Billy in with cash to pay for the gasoline so there’d be no credit card record, but while he was inside, Billy decided to pick up a Dr Pepper and his favorite snack food. When the clerk told him she carried only regular Fritos, he’d called the store “a dump” and her “a bumpkin.”

“I can already hear the kind of defense the family is going to stage for this kid,” MacNeil said in resigned disgust. “For starters, they’ll argue that we have no jurisdiction because the crime occurred outside Cook County. He’s fourteen, so he’ll be tried as a juvenile, and once the Wyatt lawyers get into the act, they’ll persuade the mother to let them claim that little Billy was secretly abused by his daddy. Hell, Cecil is an old man with heart trouble. If he dies before this goes to trial, they’ll change their story and it will turn out that Cecil killed William.”

“Not if I can get to Cecil and make him see reason,” Gray said, turning away and starting down the hall. “I’m going to pay a call on him right now, and I want you along for effect.”