Billy Summers

Billy and Alice stay at Bucky’s cabin for some time—longer than Billy intended. He continues to write in the small wooden cabin and finds that someone has put the picture of the hedge animals back on the wall. He thinks that the animals have moved again and that the lions with red eyes have come closer to the front of the picture. He dismisses this thought as fantasy. As his writing progresses, he begins to think of it as a book. The plot catches up to the present, and Billy starts using aliases for his characters again.

When he has finished writing—concluding with the arrival at Bucky’s hideaway—Billy calls Georgie. He has a plan for Klerke and needs Giorgio’s information and connections. He intends to use Klerke’s sexual interest in young girls and Giorgio’s connections to people who have procured girls for him in the past. Giorgio insists that he had nothing to do with the little girl Klerke raped in Tijuana, but he also makes it clear that he worked for Klerke in full knowledge of his crimes.

Billy, Bucky, and Alice work on making Alice look as young as possible so that she can act as bait. They go shopping for new clothes and get her hair cut to resemble a high school girl. Bucky take photos of Alice, which Giorgio previously agreed to send to Klerke. They don’t send them until later when they are on their way to Klerke’s, but they hear quickly back that Klerke is interested.

While in touch with Giorgio, Billy asks about Frank’s injuries and is told that he is in a palliative care facility with an irrecoverable brain injury. His mother, Marge, is with him. Billy calls Nick and asks him to send money to Marge, letting her know that it is for Frank’s care. He tells Nick that it is Nick, not Billy, who is responsible for Frank’s injuries and that Billy did only what he had to.

Bucky gives Alice a small handgun and asks her to promise she will use it if she needs to.

This chapter is written as a chapter in Billy’s book. It opens with Alice reading the rest of what he has written while driving to Klerke’s. They talk about the future, and Alice suggests that she might go to college—not business school—when this is finished. Billy says he might try his hand at writing.

They check into a hotel, where Billy receives a package from Georgie containing a cannister of Carfentanil, a potent sleeping gas.

As arranged, on November 4, they drive to Klerke’s estate. Billy wears a disguise and introduces himself as Steve Byrne, cousin of an associate of Klerke’s. Klerke’s security notices a slight bulge in Billy’s jacket, and he is forced to leave his gun outside. The canister of sleeping gas is small enough to avoid detection.

As they approach the house, Billy tells Alice to stay behind him. He demands the money in advance and takes time to count it, beginning again when he is interrupted. Alice slips up and calls him Billy, at which point Klerke’s assistant, Peterson, draws his gun. Billy hits Peterson and sprays him with the sleeping gas. His drops his gun, which goes off as it hits the ground, alerting Klerke that something is wrong. He comes to the door. When he realizes what is happening, he retreats into the house, but Billy follows. While Billy confronts him, Alice appears and shoots Klerke. Afterward, she says it wasn’t her who did it, and Billy understands that she pulled the trigger in an uncontrollable rage.

Billy stops at the gate to collect his gun. Marge appears and shoots him. Billy shoots back. Marge dies and Billy is wounded. Billy and Alice leave the scene. They buy supplies and she helps him to clean his wound.

In a hotel that night, Billy writes a letter to Alice and leaves. In the letter, he says that he and Bucky are “bad men” and that she shouldn’t live with them. He tells her to go back to Bucky for help but not to stay. He gives her details of bank accounts she can use. He leaves her the thumb drive with his story on it but takes his laptop.

Alice is at Bucky’s house. Bucky has read the end of Billy’s story. He points out some logical problems—for example, if Billy took his laptop, then why does Alice still have it? If he wrote the letter before leaving for good, how is it included in the final chapter of this book? Nevertheless, he thinks it’s good. He says he can’t tell where Alice took over from Billy. He asks her to tell him what really happened.

It transpires that Billy’s wound was more serious than in Alice’s story. They drove together toward Bucky’s house; Billy wouldn’t seek medical help on the way because he didn’t want to risk linking Alice to Klerke’s murder. He rambled and raved, seeming to talk to people from his past, like Robin, a girl he was close to in foster care. He also seemed to think he was playing Monopoly on Evergreen Street again, and he talked to two boys called Derek and Danny. Derek was one of the children he knew when he was in Red Bluff, but Danny was not. This seems a possible reference to Danny Torrance, the boy in The Shining, who died as an adult at the Overlook in Doctor Sleep (2013). Billy knows he is going to die and tells Alice what her story framed as the contents of the letter. Bucky asks if Billy really said he (Bucky) was a bad man; Alice says that he did.

Billy is buried near Bucky’s house. Alice visits his grave and tells him that she is going to college to study English. She says that she didn’t tell him before because it felt beyond her, but Billy has given her the confidence to become a writer.