Murder Suicide by Keith Ablow

later."  He hung up.
    Clevenger took the Hanover Street Bridge out of Boston, got to the Somerville Boxing Club a few minutes early.
    Billy was sparring in the Spartan ring that took up half the place.  Exposed light bulbs burned overhead.  Fifteen or twenty other teenagers were hitting heavy bags, lifting weights and skipping rope at stations surrounding the ring.  The room had to be close to ninety degrees and smelled like it had absorbed the sweat of the hundreds of boxers who had trained there, some of them making Golden Gloves like Billy, one of them, Johnny Ruiz, ending up Heavyweight Champion of the World.
    Clevenger walked to the far corner of the room, leaned against the cinder block wall and watched Billy throwing jabs at his opponent, a shorter boy with massive shoulders who was backing away, covering up.
    "Measure him," trainer Buddy Donovan, sixty-something, with a right hook that could still snap a man’s neck, called to him from the side of the ring.  He was wearing a no-nonsense set of gray sweats with S.B.C. stenciled across the top.  "Pick your shots."  He spotted Clevenger, nodded at him.
    Clevenger nodded back, then watched Billy land a stiff right to his opponent’s jaw.  The kid looked like he was about to fall into the ropes, but caught himself at the last moment.
    No question, Billy could fight.  He was strong and lightning fast, with real reach.  He had worked his body until his torso looked like a suit of armor.  But he had more than muscle and reflexes.  He had a fighter’s instincts.  He could sense his opponent’s strategy and adjust, sense his weaknesses and exploit them.  He had studied the sport, read books on it, watched videos of the greats, again and again:  Marciano.  Liston.  Ali.  Frazier.  Foreman.  Leonard.
    It had been Billy’s idea to take up boxing, but Clevenger had encouraged him.  He figured it would be a good way for Billy to release some of his anger, so it wouldn’t spill out on the streets of Chelsea.
    He had adopted Billy two years before, after solving the murder of Billy’s infant sister on Nantucket.  With Billy’s history of drug abuse and assault, the police had focused on him as the lead suspect.  But Clevenger had proved them wrong.  By the time he finished working the case, Billy’s name had been cleared, and his father had been jailed.  His mother had been deemed an unfit parent.
    That left Billy free, and headed for foster care, until Clevenger stepped in.
    Clevenger watched Billy take a hard left to his forehead.  He shook it off, started to dance.  The bell rang, ending the round.
    "Don’t let him back you up, Nicky," Buddy Donovan called out to Billy’s opponent.  "You come in low, you keep coming."
    Billy spotted Clevenger.  "The doctor is in," he called out, walking to his corner.
    "Looking good," Clevenger said.
    Billy winked.
    The truth was Billy looked dangerous.  His long, dirty blond hair was done up in dreadlocks.  A tattoo across his back read, “Let It Bleed,” each green and black letter two inches high, the words inked across scars from the beatings he had taken from his father.
    Parenting Billy felt like holding his hand as he walked a tightrope over the flames of his tortured past.  Sometimes it seemed like he was pretty steady on his feet and making good progress.  Other times it seemed like he was destined to plummet into that hell, become part of it.
    The most worrisome thing was that he had no fear.  It had done him no good as a child to be scared; he got beaten, anyway.  And the capacity to be afraid is one of the main ingredients to being empathetic.  You have to be able to let yourself suffer, in order to imagine the pain of others.
    Donovan rang the bell for the next round.  Billy jogged to the center of the ring.  His opponent came toward him, hunched over, stalking.  Billy bounced foot-to-foot.  He waited until the boy was within reach, then delivered three quick left jabs that skipped