Murder Suicide by Keith Ablow Page A

off his headgear.
    The boy took one step closer and fired a right that landed squarely on Billy’s shoulder, knocking him sideways.
    "He’s stronger than you are," Donovan called out to Billy.  "Keep moving."
    Billy glanced at Donovan and started dancing again.  But he couldn’t tolerate being called weak, much less thinking of himself that way.  He stopped, took a step toward his opponent and planted his feet.  Just as he did, he got hit with a left hook to his nose.  Blood streamed down over his lips.
    "I told you to move," Donovan said.  "You can’t go toe-to-toe with him."
    Something new came into Billy’s eyes.  The strategic vision, the search for an opening, was gone, replaced by something that looked like pure hatred.  It was as though tasting blood had tapped something primitive and hardwired in him.  He held his gloves down by his waist and took another step toward his opponent.  The boy threw a straight right that would have ended the fight had it landed, but Billy leaned way back, and it brushed his chin.  Then Billy descended like a storm, firing rights and lefts with the ferocity of a street fighter.  Some of his punches were wild, but enough connected with the boy’s shoulders, head and neck to leave him wobbly.
    "Back to your corners," Donovan yelled.  "We’re all done."  He climbed into the ring.
    Clevenger started over.
    Billy threw a left hook that missed and a powerful right cross that crushed into the boy’s left ear.
    The kid stooped to one knee.
    "I said stop!" Donovan yelled, louder this time.  He pushed Billy back toward the ropes.  "When I tell you we’re done, we’re done.  You got it?"
    Billy rubbed his gloves into his eyes, like a little boy waking up from a dream.  "Sorry," he said.  He touched one glove to his nose, stared at his blood.
    "Take a shower and cool off, for Christ’s sake," Donovan said.  He turned and headed over to the other boy, who was back on his feet, but still shaky.
    Billy looked down at Clevenger, standing by the side of the ring.
    "Get dressed," Clevenger said.  "I’ll take you home."
    Donovan walked over to Clevenger as Billy headed to the locker room.  "He’s got the gift, Doc.  He could go pro some day, if he wants it bad enough.  He’s just got to learn to keep himself under control."
    "Yes, he does."
    "Because someone with more of an eye than Nicky would have laid him out when he started throwin’ wild in there."
    Donovan seemed to worry about Billy’s loss of control for a very different reason than he was.  "He wasn’t able to back off when you told him to, either," he said.
    "That, I wouldn’t pay much mind.  These kids work up a head of steam, they can’t turn it off.  That comes with age and experience."
    "Let’s hope," Clevenger said.
    "I’ve been at this game a long time," Donovan said.  He slapped Clevenger’s shoulder and walked off toward the locker room.
    Clevenger started back toward the entrance, checking out the other kids sweating through their workouts.  He would have liked to believe Donovan was right, that Billy was no different than they were, that the brakes on his eighteen-year-old nervous system just slipped sometimes.  But Clevenger knew more about Billy than Donovan did.  He knew Billy’s history of violence outside the ring, the times he had left kids bleeding on the pavement, with broken jaws and concussions.
    He knew something else about Billy, because he knew it about himself.  When you are the target of a brutal father, that brutality leeches into your own psyche.  Conservation of energy rules the mind as it does the planets.  Absorbing a man’s rage means literally that.  You can either feel it and fight to cleanse yourself of it, or you can try to ignore it, in which case it will grow stronger and stronger, until — whether through depression or aggression — it commandeers every corner of your soul.
    As Clevenger waited in the truck for Billy, his mind wandered back to Grace