Twisted

there. He must’ve stolen one. I can prove it—I called you about it.”
    “I know that, Mrs. Ashberry. But you said nothing was missing.”
    “I didn’t check the clubs. I didn’t think to.”
    Ron swallowed. “You think I’d be stupid enough to kill that boy after I called the police and after I threatened him in front of witnesses?”
    The sheriff said, “People do stupid things when they’re upset. And they sometimes do some pretty smart things when they’re pretending they’re upset.”
    “Oh, come on, Sheriff. With my own golf club?”
    “Which you were planning to send to the bottom of fifty feet of water and another five of mud. By the way, whether it’s yours or not, that club’s got your fingerprints all over it.”
    “How did you get my prints?” Ron demanded.
    “The Ebbers’. The boy’s closet door and some coffee cup you smashed up. Now, Ron, I want to ask you a few more questions.”
    He looked out the kitchen window. He happened to catch sight of the juniper bush. He said, “I don’t think I want to say anything more.”
    “That’s your right.”
    “And I want to see a lawyer.”
    “That’s your right too, sir. If you could hold out your hands for me, please. We’re gonna slip these cuffs on and then take a little ride.”

    Ron Ashberry entered the Montauk Men’s Correctional Facility as an instant hero, having made such a great sacrifice to save his little girl.
    And the day that Gwen gave that interview on Channel 9, the whole wing was in the TV room, watching. Ron sat glumly in the back row and listened to her talk with the anchorwoman.
    “Here was this creep who’d stolen my underwear and’d taken pictures of me on my way home from school and in my swimsuit and everything. I mean, he was like a real stalker . . . and the police didn’t do anything about it. It was my father who saved me. I’m, like, totally proud of him.”
    Ron Ashberry heard this and thought just what he’d thought a thousand times since that night in April: I’m glad you’re proud of me, baby. Except, except, except . . . I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Harle Ebbers.
    Just after he’d been arrested, the defense lawyer had suggested that maybe Doris was the killer though Ron knew she wouldn’t have let him take the blame. Besides, friends and neighbors confirmed that she’d been on the phone with them, asking about Ron’s whereabouts, at the time of the boy’s death. Phone records bore this out too.
    Then there was Harle’s father. Ron remembered what the man had told him earlier that evening. But Ron’s tearing out of the driveway caused such a stir in the Ebbers’ neighborhood that several snooping neighbors kept an eye on the house for the rest of the evening and could testify that neither husband nor wife had left the bungalow all night.
    Ron had even proposed the theory that the boyhad killed himself. He knew Ron was out to get him and, in his psychotic frame of mind, Harle wanted to retaliate, get back at the Ashberry family. He’d stolen the golf club and wandered to the train track, where he’d beat himself silly, flung the club toward the lake and crawled onto the tracks to die. His defense lawyer gave it a shot but the DA and police laughed at that one.
    And then in a flash, Ron had figured it out.
    The brother of the girl in Connecticut! The girl who’d been the previous victim. Ron envisioned the scenario: the young man had come to Locust Grove and had stalked the stalker, seeking revenge both for his sister and for the beating he himself had taken. The brother—afraid that Harle was about to be sent back to the safety of the hospital—decided to act fast and had broken into the work shed to get a weapon.
    The DA hadn’t liked that theory either and went forward with the case.
    Everyone recommended that Ron take a plea, which he finally did, exhausted with protesting his innocence. There was no trial; the judge accepted the plea and sentenced him to twenty years. He’d be eligible for parole in seven. His secret hope was that the boy in Connecticut would have a change of heart and confess. But until that day Ron Ashberry would be a guest of the people of the State of New York.
    Sitting in the TV room, staring at Gwen on the screen, absently playing with the zipper of his orange jumpsuit, Ron was vaguely aware of a nagging thought. What was it?
    Something that Gwen had said to the interviewer a moment earlier.
    Wait . . .
    What pictures of her in her