hope it was the right thing, calling you, but…” Her sentence trailed off.
Diane could see Kathy had been crying. Her nose and eyes were red and puffy. She sniffed and put a tissue to her nose and led them to the living room, where a young man was standing near the couch that sat under the front window. He had been looking out. Even though the drapes were drawn, there was a slight part where he had held them open. He had been crying too. His tanned face was puffy like his mother’s. Diane tried to remember his name-Colton.
Colton was a tall, lanky young man. Diane did the math. He would be twenty-three. He looked both younger and older. In his face and manner he could still be a teenager. But not in his eyes. They were older. He had dark hair cut short, and light brown eyes. He wore jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt with CALIFORNIA BERKELEY printed across the front.
“Please, sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?” said Kathy.
Both Diane and Kingsley declined. They sat beside each other on the couch by the front window. Diane felt the pressure of her gun under her jacket.
“My son came in late last night. I didn’t know he was coming until he called me to pick him up at the airport.” Kathy Nicholson sat down in a chair with a sigh. Her son stood beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “This is just the most, the most terrible thing. I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” Colton said. “I need to go over and talk to Marsha and her family. I have to do this, Mom.”
“Why don’t you tell us first,” suggested Diane.
Colton nodded. “Okay.” He pulled the other stuffed chair closer to his mother and sat down. “It’s about El Carruthers. That guy in prison? He didn’t kill her.”
Chapter 57
Tears spilled onto Colton’s cheeks. “I was only fourteen. Do you know how young that is?”
“He had just turned fourteen,” said Kathy.
“Mother, please. This is hard enough,” he said. “Tyler Walters was my best friend.”
He stood up and walked around and rested his forearms on the back of the chair, as if he couldn’t sit down, but needed to be propped up.
“Mother told me what happened with that girl, Stacy Dance, Ryan Dance’s little sister. She told me how Marsha Carruthers has been acting-the anger and the drinking. I got afraid for Mother. She didn’t know what really happened, and it’s gotten so mixed up.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” suggested Diane.
He nodded. “I’m not sure what the beginning is anymore,” he said.
His mother sobbed into her handkerchief.
“Just start from the first thing you remember,” said Kingsley.
“I was in my room listening to NSYNC, and Tyler came to my window and knocked. I let him climb in. He was really upset. He kept pacing and saying, ‘Oh, man, oh, man. I really did it this time.’ ”
Colton paused and looked away from Diane and Kingsley, his face screwed up into a grief-stricken mask.
“He was only a kid like me. He told me he had just killed El-Ellie Rose. I thought he was kidding. I mean, who comes in and says they just killed someone? He said he’d been wanting her for a long time but he couldn’t get her alone. She kept avoiding him. He had told me already that one day he was going to jump her and I told him he couldn’t do that. He didn’t listen to me.”
Colton Nicholson sat back down in the chair. His mother reached over and touched his hand.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he whispered. “Tyler said she started screaming and he put a hand over her mouth. Tyler was really strong. His grandfather made him work out all the time.”
Diane thought that was a strange way of putting it, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“Everett Walters, Tyler’s grandfather, took him to some hookers as a birthday present when he turned thirteen,” continued Colton. “Tyler said his grandfather told them to make a man out of him. After that, he was kind of crazy, if you know what I mean. At the time, I was really interested in hearing about his experience with the hookers, but it kind of scared me too. His grandfather scared me. He encouraged Tyler to be a bully at school. He got into trouble more than once for it. He kept telling Tyler he had to be a man. That’s hard when you are just thirteen.”
Colton paused again and put his head in his hands. He straightened up after a moment and continued. “He said he did it to her. He said his grandfather was right-she was better than a hooker. But she bit him and started screaming, and he choked her. He said she was in the woods in back of his house, that he had covered her body with branches. I told him he had to go tell his father. He shook his head and said he was going to tell his grandfather, that he would know what to do.”
“Did he?” asked Kingsley.
Colton nodded. “Yes. When it was all done, Tyler was calm about it all. He said his grandfather fixed everything. He told me never to tell anyone. If I did, his grandfather would kill me. He wasn’t threatening me or anything. It was just a fact. He said he didn’t tell his grandfather I knew because he would have killed me. I believed him. I was scared.”
Colton waited a moment. His eyes were glossy with tears. He had been living with this for nine years, dreading every time he came home. Diane couldn’t blame him, even though he should have come forward much earlier.
“That man Dance is innocent. Tyler’s grandfather, Everett Walters, framed him. Tyler said Dance was some no-account and it didn’t matter. But Mother tells me that someone killed his sister, that she was trying to free her brother. I know it was Everett Walters who did it.”
“What about Tyler?” said Diane. “You don’t think he could have killed Stacy Dance?”
“El was an accident. He wouldn’t kill somebody on purpose.”
“He raped Ellie Rose on purpose,” said Kingsley.
“Don’t you think I know that? El was my friend too. I told Tyler he needed to talk to a counselor or something, but-he was all different after he met his grandfather. Tyler’s grandfather wasn’t always in the picture. He and Tyler’s grandmother divorced when Tyler’s father, Gordon Walters, was a kid, and she got custody and raised him in another state without Everett. Everett had businesses here in Georgia and didn’t travel, I guess. Anyway, Tyler said Everett didn’t try to see his son, Gordon, growing up and regretted it. Everett Walters sought his son out when Tyler was a kid-it was several years after Gordon Walters moved back to Georgia.”
“Why did he wait?” asked Kingsley.
Colton shrugged. “I think Everett read something about Gordon in the newspaper-when he became head of oncology or something-realized that that was his son.” He shrugged again. “Wendy hated Everett, but Gordon, Dr. Walters, was happy to have his father back in his life. Wendy said Gordon had blinders on when it came to his father. But she did too. She had no idea about the things that Everett was teaching Tyler. She sure didn’t know about the hookers. She’d have had a fit. Tyler said that his mother and father argued about Everett a lot. Everett had no respect for women and that included Wendy. Gordon was so clueless about his father. But, to be fair, he did work all the time.”
Colton talked to them for an hour. It was sometimes disjointed and Diane had to make the connections in the right sequence. She imagined he was about talked out. He and his mother had apparently talked all night. He stood and looked at his mother.
“I have to tell Dr. and Mrs. Carruthers what really happened. They deserve to know. Then I’m going to get you to move out to California with me. You don’t need to live here any longer. Not across the street from the Walters. Not after today.”
Mrs. Nicholson looked at Diane and Kingsley. “What will happen to Colton? What will the police do?”
“He will have to answer questions,” said Diane. “Get a good lawyer to go with him to the police station. He was a minor and he was scared. He didn’t have anything to do with what happened to Ellie Rose until after the fact. But he still needs to have a lawyer with him.”
“Oh God,” she wimpered.
“Mother, this has defined my life for nine years. My childhood ended that day. I can’t have a relationship with
