Billy Summers

Billy wakes again at 6:00 a.m. The news is now showing a sketch of Giorgio, which Billy thinks is extremely good and attributes to the keen observational skills of Irv Dean, the security guard and ex-cop.

Billy continues to write but decides to abandon the pretense of false names. He describes his early experiences in the Marines. When training to shoot, Billy is teamed up with Rudy “Taco” Bell. Billy is identified as a talented shooter.

It is 2003 and Billy is stationed in Ramadi. He is still paired with Taco, his “spotter.” Lieutenant Colonel Jamieson watches Billy shoot and takes him to a nearby mosque, which has speakers fitted to its dome that broadcast anti-American sentiments. Billy protests that they are not to target religious sites, but Jamieson says that if Billy hits the speaker and not the dome, they have not transgressed the rule. Billy does as he is ordered, but as they drive away, he sees that the local people are disgusted at what he has done and consider it an affront to their religion. He feels ashamed and thinks that it is this sort of action that has poisoned the goodwill of the local population.

It is March 2004, and Billy is stationed at Camp Baharia, two miles outside Fallujah. He is playing poker when he hears gunfire. A group of Blackwater contractors have been ambushed, their bodies mutilated and put on display. Billy is asked by a man named Foss (at first, Billy mistypes the name as “Hoff”) to shoot the person who they believe set the contractors up for the ambush. This is a local man named Ammar Jassim; he owns a shop where Taco and Billy have played video games.

Taco and Billy disguise the shooting outpost as a construction site and set up a rifle and an M151, known as the Spotter’s Friend, behind a sand guard. Billy thinks about whether a reader would need an explanation of what an M151 is but decides that since he is his only reader, he doesn’t need to explain. Billy shoots the target dead. He is nearly killed by return fire but spots a baby shoe on the ground and stoops to pick it up just as a bullet strikes the place where his head had been. The baby shoe becomes a lucky talisman that Taco tells him he should keep with him.

Returning to the present, Billy turns on the TV news. Hoff has been implicated in Allen’s murder, and there is speculation that his own death was not suicide after all. David Lockridge has been revealed to be a cover for William Summers. Billy watches as his neighbors on Evergreen Street are interviewed but can’t bear to watch for long.

Billy remains in hiding. He writes and exercises. Regretting that he has no weapons to defend himself, he checks the upstairs apartment, speculating that Don Jensen is the kind of man who might keep a gun. He finds one but leaves it in place, reassured to know he can reach it if he needs to.

An unexpected turn of events disrupts Billy’s plan to lay low before tracking Nick down. Late at night, a van drives by on the deserted street outside. Three men get out and, laughing, dump a girl who appears to be hurt or intoxicated on the side of the road. It is pouring rain and bitterly cold. The van drives away, leaving the girl exposed and apparently unconscious. Fearing that if she dies the police will come knocking and discover him, he carries her inside. She has clearly been sexually assaulted. She vomits but doesn’t smell of alcohol, so Billy speculates that she was drugged. He discovers from her ID that her name is Alice Reagan Maxwell and that she is 21 years old and from Kingston, Rhode Island. He removes the SIM card from her phone and hides the phone.

Alice’s presence makes Billy vulnerable to discovery, and it occurs to him that it would be simpler if she dies than if she regains consciousness. He checks that she is breathing and leaves her sleeping in his bed. He sleeps on the couch. He wakes to find her standing over him holding a paring knife.

Alice wants to know what happened and asks Billy if he raped her. He explains, but she remains suspicious, asking why he didn’t take her to the hospital. He claims that he thought she needed sleep rather than medical treatment.

He asks her to tell him what she remembers. As she recounts her story, she begins to have a panic attack. He places a damp washcloth across her face to help her control her breathing, a trick he remembers from his time in the Marines. She tells him that she is a student and part-time barista in a café near the courthouse. She met a man named Tripp Donovan (she knows he is 24 because of his social media accounts) at work and went on a couple dates with him. The previous night she went to his apartment. There she met his roommates, Hank Flanagan and Jack Martinez. Tripp made her a gin and tonic, after which her memory becomes hazy.

Billy puts his Dalton Smith disguise on. When Alice sees him, she admits that she has already recognized him as the shooter from the TV news. He tells her he will go to the nearest drugstore, where he will buy her the morning-after pill and underwear. She suggests that he adds a sweatshirt to his disguise, observing that overweight people often try to hide their stomachs beneath baggy clothing. He hopes she won’t run away and expose him and is encouraged by her help with his disguise. She is still there when he returns and asks if she can stay with him while she recovers.

As she sleeps, Billy writes about his time in Fallujah. He recalls how Clay “Pill” Briggs had many remedies with which he helped his comrades, including damp washcloths for panic attacks. When someone was injured in an explosion and refusing morphine, Clay convinced him to sing to relieve the pain. They all sang “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” and as the injured man opened his mouth, the medic dropped the morphine tablets in.

Billy and Alice watch The Blacklist on Netflix and discuss his plans to stay in hiding for a few more days.

Billy dreams about Fallujah and the death of Albie Stark behind an overturned taxi in Iraq; he remembers the sound of Albie’s dying breaths. He wakes to the rasping sound of Alice having another panic attack. He tells her to sing “Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” They then discuss why he killed Joel Allen. He tells her the story, but he calls Nick “Benjy Compson,” fearing that knowing Nick’s identity might put her in danger.

Alice asks Billy to get more groceries since they are running low. She tells him to take an umbrella because his wig will be obvious if it gets wet in the rain. He tells her about Stockholm Syndrome, advising her to tell the police that she was afraid to leave if they find her there. When he returns, she is not in the house. He thinks she has gone to turn him in, but he soon finds a note telling him that she is outside. He finds her cleaning the grill in a borrowed raincoat. She cooks pork chops and makes a salad.

Alice says she is bored and asks for something to read. It occurs to Billy that she could read what he has been writing, giving him an unexpected audience for his story. He thinks again about the M151 and whether he should have explained how it worked. She is moved to tears by his story, and he is proud that his work touched her. She asks lots of questions but none about the M151; instead, she wants to know more about the people. Her enthusiasm spurs him to continue writing. He stops before an episode that he calls the “Funhouse,” which he finds too daunting to write about.

He agrees with Alice that the men who hurt her are “bad” and should be punished. He won’t kill them because he believes he will be able to teach them a lesson and change their ways.