Dust to Dust

do you think this is about?” asked Kingsley.
    “Something to do with that house over there,” said Diane, gesturing with her head toward the Carruthers’ house.
    The lights were burning inside the Nicholson residence. They walked up to the door and rang the bell. Kathy must have been waiting at the door, for it opened immediately.
    “Oh, thank you for coming. I just don’t know what to do and, and, well, you seemed so nice.” She paused. “I 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