“It was so weird. Sober, he was a terror. Drunk, he was fine. He’d never beat me or hit my mother. We wanted him to drink. Then he was nice.”
“And you’re nice when you don’t drink, but bad when you do.”
“Yeah. What’s that called? Ironic?” Merritt smiles at this, but inside he is cautious. He has no idea where the doctor is going and needs to keep his arms wrapped protectively around the Truth, keeping it tucked out of sight.
“Did you and your mother try to get him drunk?”
“We had to. If he wasn’t... numb, I guess you’d say, if he wasn’t numb he could snap. That story I started to tell you—” Merritt says this before thinking. The doctor looks at him. He doesn’t know how to retreat. “I was nineteen. At Henderson Fabrications. I’d worked overtime.”
The doctor is frowning, like this is somewhat familiar.
Merritt grins and nods, fixing up the narrative for the doctor, but within him he boils. The one thing he’s telling the doctor that’s true and important, and goddamn Sigmund Freud here just doesn’t get it.
“I’d work overtime. I was putting myself through college and needed the shift differential. He thinks I’ve been screwing around and he’s going to whip me.” He doesn’t bother with explaining his father’s odd term, “crowning about.” He keeps the smile stoked up. “Nineteen! And he takes his belt off.” Merritt fixes up an astonished voice. “And you know what his concession to kindness was? To use the end without the buckle. He tells me to turn around. He’s going to whip me on the ass.”
“Nineteen, really?” Then Dr. Evans looks at the clock that is not the Water Clock; these hands never stop moving. And then back to Merritt. “Ah, but I see our time is up, Jon. Hold on to that memory. It might be a good one to explore.”
Without a thought, Merritt snaps like a tensioned wire. He rises fast and grabs his chair and flings it against the wall. He lunges forward, well within the doctor’s sphere of personness, and leans toward him screaming, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!”
And Jon Merritt realizes he’s about to find out what happens when the panic button gets slapped.
72
They were fording the river.
The bottom was sandy and firm, and treading forward they moved as quickly as one could through the stubborn aquatic resistance. They were about halfway to the other shore when Shaw looked back. A trio broke from the woods behind them. It was Bee and probably Dad. With them was a skinny woman of about thirty, haggard, with a ponytail, shiny from the long absence of shampoo. She wore gray sweats and a Santa Claus T-shirt. All held pistols. They were moving cautiously to the riverbank.
Noticing Shaw, Parker and Hannah, they began shooting as they pressed forward, bullets flying mostly into the woods and water. None was trained, and helping the inaccuracy, they’d probably been indulging in their own product.
Shaw, Parker and Hannah dropped below the surface. Gripping their arms, Shaw muscled them toward the far shore, now about forty feet away.
Then thirty...
The tweakers were firing randomly, generally near the place where their prey had submerged, though one bullet shot through the water near Shaw’s head and the shock wave slapped hard.
Twenty...
The riverbed began to rise and soon they were on the muddy shore. “Stay low!” Shaw was dragging them with him. Hannah gave a yelp at his tight grip. He didn’t release it.
On this side of the river there was a low bank, which they had to climb, exposing them to more gunfire, but the shots continued to land short or long. Beyond the bank’s crest was a tall wall of marsh grass, white, beige and pale green. They pushed through it and stumbled into the soupy ground.
The gunfire ceased.
Shaw looked back and saw the tweakers standing in a circle talking among themselves. Another woman, older, fifties, approached. She was in a red and white gingham blouse and bulky jeans. She strode from the woods, carrying a long gun. The matriarch of the family, her angry lope suggested.
Bee was pointing toward the woods where Shaw and the other two now hid. One word from Gingham Woman shut him up. She spoke to Dad and the younger woman, maybe her daughter, and together they turned away and vanished into the forest, headed to their trailers or shacks, and the lab.
Hannah said, “You called the deputy. Let’s wait here.”
“No. We can’t risk it. I told her we’re going to Millton. We can meet her there.” He gestured around him. “This terrain, we can get there in three, four hours.”
He looked at Bee’s phone. The screen was blank. The unit might dry out and power up, though his experience was that, despite what YouTubers promised, mobiles rarely worked after a dunking. Besides, he was sure that even if the cell revived, it would be locked.
“Let’s get going.”
As he and Hannah started forward, Parker muttered something Shaw didn’t catch. He turned back. The woman said in a weak voice, “I don’t think I can.”
Hannah gasped, “Mom!”
“I mean,” Parker whispered, “I can try. But...” She held up a hand covered in blood.
One of the tweakers had shot accurately after all.
73
Yet again his ex and daughter had gotten away.
As the two triggermen burned the camper of the private eye, or whatever the man with the motorcycle was, the three had escaped north on foot, through the woods. The two pursuers would be searching the surface roads to Millton. Merritt himself was following on foot, trying to pick up their trail in the forest.
Where are you?
Goddamn it, Allison!
He found he was moving quickly, not paying attention to the noise he was making. He supposed that stalking your prey required silence. But he didn’t care. He had a gun, he had ammunition and he was mad.
No sin is worse than betrayal.
Looking at the ground, he saw no sign of anyone having passed by. Maybe there were broken branches and overturned stones that were a road map pointing him to where they were. But he’d been a city detective. He could read concrete and asphalt and hardwood and carpet and smears revealed by alternative light sources. Not this, not here.
Still, there could be little doubt where they were heading — north to Millton. Any other destination would have meant a trek of twenty, thirty miles. And the path he was on was the straightest line to that dingy town.
Where was it exactly from here? He pulled out his phone and loaded the map.
It was because he was looking down that, as he walked out of a stand of pine saplings, he nearly ran into a pale young man hugging a garbage bag in his skinny arms.
Both stopped fast.
Merritt moved first, drawing the pistol and aiming.
“No!” the kid cried. “Not again.”
No idea what that meant.
“Drop the bag.”
He complied, looking around. A desperate gaze in his eyes.
It meant he’d have kin or friends nearby.
Keeping that in mind.
“Turn. Your back to me.”
He did and Merritt pulled a gun from the kid’s back pocket. A revolver. An old Colt. Embarrassing for a drug runner, having a piece like this. Any cooker or supplier worth his salt would have at least a Glock, if not a big showy chrome SIG.
“Walk forward. The bushes.”
He headed into a cul-de-sac of foliage.
“Stop.”
He stopped.
“Can I turn around?”
“Why not? If you want to.”