Page 61 of The Overnight Guest

“Okay, okay!” Cutter cried out. “Ethan had a thing for that Allen kid. He was all over her that day.”

Levi removed his foot from Cutter’s wrist and pulled him up by the collar of his shirt.

“You can’t do that shit,” Cutter exclaimed, his eyes wide. “You’re not supposed to do that!”

“What else?” Levi asked, ignoring Cutter’s protests.

“Ethan hated his parents. Hated them. Said he wished they were dead,” Cutter said, sliding his arm across his dripping nose.

“So Ethan said he wanted his parents dead?” Levi asked. “He told you that?”

Cutter nodded. “He couldn’t stand it in that house. He couldn’t wait to be rid of them. He told me.”

“You better not be lying to me, Brock,” Levi said as he pulled him from the hog barn.

“I’m not. I promise,” Cutter insisted.

“When was the last time you saw Ethan, Josie, and Becky?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know, after dinner. Around six or so. We went shooting,” Cutter said.

“Shooting?” Levi asked. This was the first he heard of this.

“Yeah, just at targets, though. It was nothing. We shot a few rounds and I went home.”

“But you were driving around after midnight, why?” Levi asked.

“I don’t know, I was just bored,” Cutter said. Levi grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and started dragging him back toward the hog barn. “Okay, okay,” Cutter said, twisting away from his grasp. “After Ethan’s dad made him walk home for not handing over the shotgun, I met up with him. We drove around, went to Burden because Ethan wanted to talk to that old girlfriend of his.”

“Kara Turner?” Levi clarified.

“Yeah. We stopped to see Kara and her dad was pissed. Then we drove around for a while, shot a few more shells, then I dropped him off at the top of the lane and left.”

“What time was this?” Levi asked as they moved into the shade of a gnarled crab apple tree. The fallen ones squished beneath their feet, emitting a smell more like rotten cabbage than apples.

Cutter gnawed at his lip. “I don’t know, around eleven, I guess. I’m not sure.”

“I stopped you at about one, Brock,” Levi reminded him. “What were you doing for the next two hours?”

Cutter’s shoulders sagged. He knew he was caught. Levi crossed his arms and waited.

“I wasn’t ready to go home yet, so I drove around some more and then parked.” Cutter reached up and plucked a crab apple from the limb above him, rolled it around in his fingers. “I smoked a little bit. Listened to music.” Levi didn’t ask him what he was smoking.

“Where’d you park?” Levi asked, swiping the apple from Cutter’s fingers.

“I don’t know, some gravel road,” Cutter said. “Can I go now?”

“No,” Levi said shortly. “You can tell me what you saw while you were sitting on that gravel road. What you saw that made you tear down the road at ninety miles an hour.”

“I didn’t see anything, I swear,” Cutter insisted. Levi stared him down. “I heard the shots, okay,” Cutter said, his voice thick with emotion. “A bunch of them. And I thought,he did it, he really did it.Then I sat there for a long time, trying to tell myself that I was wrong, but then I heard more shots and got scared and left. I drove around some more completely freaked out and then you stopped me.”

“Okay, good,” Levi said, clapping Cutter on the shoulder. “Now, don’t you feel better telling me the truth?” Cutter looked like he didn’t but nodded.

“Now what?” Cutter asked. “Can I go now?”

“Sorry,” Levi said, tossing the apple to the ground. “Now you get to tell me the whole story all over again. From the beginning.”

Josie heard the click of the car door opening and peeked up from her spot on the floor to see a deputy and her grandfather. “It’s safe to come out now. She’s gone.”

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