Jason Pinter - The Guilty

A twinge of panic began to rise in William's gut. He walked faster. Began to sweat. He didn't like this. Didn't like people looking at him. So far he had survived by blending in, looking like every other young punk in this city that people were happy to dismiss. But now there was recognition, and from random people on the goddamn street.

William passed a small bodega. He thought about stopping for a pack of gum, just to calm his nerves. He went over.

Debated getting a pack of cigarettes, too. People avoided smokers. He tried to remember how much money was in his wallet. Then he looked at the newspapers.

They were neatly arranged under triangular metal paperweights. The headline of the New York Gazette read The Face

Of Sorrow. It ran beside a picture of Cindy Loverne crying at her husband's funeral. A picture alongside it showed Mya

Loverne, taken the day before he'd thrown her from the roof.

She was smiling in the pic. The caption read Injured Daughter

Hanging On.

William smiled. Looked like the girl could make it. Wasn't that from Rocky?

If she lives, she lives. If she dies…

Then the smile faded. The pit in his stomach opened up, and he felt a wave of nausea overcome him. Then the nausea turned to anger, the anger turned to hate, and he ripped the paper from the kiosk.

It was the New York Dispatch. The page one headline read:

The Face Of Evil?

There was a photo on the front page. He recognized it. He hadn't seen the photo in years, but knew exactly when it was taken. Clearly visible in the photo were three men and a woman.

One of the men was his father.

The other man was Pastor Mark Rheingold.

The woman was his mother, Meryl, and she was reaching for the pastor, preparing for a deep embrace. William's father looked on in joyous approval.

And in the background William recognized himself, just four years ago, staring at his mother and her lover as they mocked their family name.

William H. Bonney would never have stood for that.

And so neither would William Henry Roberts.

Despite the newsprint, the tiny pixels, William saw the anger in his eyes. He remembered setting fire to the house, the fire that claimed the lives of his father, sister, mother and his mother's God-fearing lover.

They were the same eyes he was showing to the world right now.

Millions seeing his face in black and white.

Millions recognizing him on the street.

His heart beating faster than it had since the night he sent a bullet through Athena Paradis's head, William Henry

Roberts turned and sprinted down the street.

He couldn't waste any more time. He had to find her.

It was only a matter of time before somebody recognized him and called the cops. Tried to end his crusade before he was ready.

Amanda Davies had to die before that happened.

Louie Grasso picked up the phone. He gently placed the receiver to his ear and wondered if there was anywhere near this godforsaken building he could grab a shot of whiskey to throw in his coffee. If the rest of the day went the way his first half an hour did, he'd quit his job by noon. He'd been working the lines at the Dispatch for nearly seven years and had weathered complaints and grievances from all walks of life. Never, though, had he heard such anger due to a story. Goddamn Paulina Cole, at some point she was going to get them all killed.

Louie took a breath, said, " New York Dispatch, how may

I direct your call?"

"You have two choices," said the man with the Southern twang on the other end. "You can either put this shithead Ted

Allen on the phone or that sassy bitch Paulina Cole. Your choice, either one will do, but I'm not hanging up until one of those worthless dung heaps is on the line."

Louie recited what his boss had told him to after the first barrage of calls came in.

"Any complaints you have regarding Ms. Cole's article in today's edition should be addressed in the form of a typewritten letter or e-mail directed to the New York Gazette public relations department. Your concerns are duly noted. They will be responded to either individually or as a whole."

"Listen, I got my whole extended family just waiting to call in as soon as I hang up, and my grandma Doris is ready to hop on the plane and whack Allen upside the head. So I'll fill out your stupid forms, but I hope you're ready to repeat those directions another few thousand times this morning. So 'duly note' my ass."

Louie sighed as the line went dead. He drained his coffee and picked up another one of the dozen lines that hadn't stopped flashing in hours.

" New York Dispatch, how may I direct your call?"

Paulina had just hung up the phone when James Keach appeared in the doorway. Sweat was streaking down his face, and his work shirt looked several different shades of blue.

"This is not the time, James."

"I need to know what to do. People are calling me asking for a statement. Some guy from the Associated Press, another one from the Times. I don't know how they got my number."

"Our company directory isn't a secret. What are you telling the people who call?"

"I've been hanging up on them."

"Good," she said. "You say one word to anyone who doesn't work inside this building I'll roast your nads in my

Foreman Grill. Now get."

Keach disappeared.

Paulina turned back to her computer. Her inbox had three hundred new messages, and another ten were appearing every minute. They all bore colorful subject headings like you're wrong and eat shite and die and does your mother know you lie for a living?

Never in her career had Paulina witnessed such an onslaught of offended readers, and that was counting the time they ran a still photo from Pamela Anderson's sex tape with her nipples blocked out. Hundreds of angry readers were calling in, demanding her head, and every new message was directed at the story she'd written for today's Dispatch. The story Henry Parker had dropped on her lap. That sneaky shit knew it would provoke this response. He wanted that story to run, but didn't want the Gazette to go through exactly what the Dispatch was right now. She'd have to remember to send him a cyanide fruitcake for Christmas.

Once the brushstrokes are painted, the picture becomes clear as a Midwestern day. One hundred and twenty-seven years ago, a lie was told, and that lie has been perpetuated for generations by deluded, smallminded townfolk whose entire lives and economies live and die on the wings of a myth. Once you know the truth of Brushy Bill Roberts's identity as Billy the Kid, once you know how William Henry Roberts burned his house down with his family inside, once you know that

William's mother had an affair with a millionaire man of God (with his father's blessing, no less), you know that a hundred years too late, the truth has come to collect its revenge.

Soon the facts will prove that William H. Bonney did not die in 1881 in Fort Sumner, New Mexico. He and his bloodline lived on. This country has been living in denial for years. And it is because of this veil of ignorance that nine people are dead, with another young woman fighting for her life.

If there is any justice in the world, if the truth is regulated at all, then the entire citizenry of New Mexico, Texas and all those who convinced themselves that the nightmare was over will wake up to the violent reality and confront a demon who manifested himself right here, today.

Never had Paulina seen such an outraged reaction from a

"concerned" group of citizens. But to her surprise, many of the protesters were from far outside the delusions of Texas and New Mexico, and the sandblasted states who perpetrated the myth. She'd only received about twenty messages from

Fort Sumner, ten or so from Hico and Lincoln County, but the vast majority were from New Yorkers, Californians. She had even received harsh rebukes from several members of