Dust to Dust

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 anyone until I resolve this. Tyler won’t like it, but he was a minor too. It’s his grandfather they need to put in jail.”
    Light was starting to filter through