“Of the cases?”
He nods.
Where to start?
“The father on Monroe Street who raped his daughter. The husband on Prescott I cuffed with his wife’s blood still on his knuckles. The DUI’d businessman driving when he was 2.0 and knocked an elderly woman twenty yards into the middle of Ferris Street. The M.E. said she was dead before she hit the ground. The mother with a cigarette-burned baby in the ER swearing to me that the daughter did it herself.” His voice begins trembling, and by God, yes, he feels the anger now. “And the pricks — the suspects — come into court, and they’re: ‘Oh, sorry, it’s not my fault, you don’t understand.’ ”
He inhales to control the rage. “They say you get used to it. No. Never, never, never, not for me. I was on fire the whole time, from the scene to the arrest to booking to court.”
“And you handled it the way you should have. Professional. But that meant you put it all away. And there it sits. That fury. Just waiting for you to take a drink so it can escape.”
Jon barks the first laugh he’s ever uttered here that isn’t sarcastic or fake. “You planned that. The our-time-is-up thing.”
Dr. Evans smiles. “I had to see it. Had to see you angry. It didn’t work the first couple times — when I said our time was up at a critical point. And when I kept staring out the window, like I was lost in the ozone. Well, finally you blew. And I got a good look at the dynamics of your anger. And there’s more where that came from, a lot more.”
Jon hunches forward, breathing hard. He’s tired and he aches. He hasn’t been feeling well lately. The chair incident, a small thing physically, has exhausted him. Is he sick? He’ll check in to Med later.
The doctor continues. “Now, something else I’ve observed. You haven’t had a drinking problem all your life. It’s fairly recent. Something happened in the last few years to make it worse. A lot worse.”
Ah, the crosshairs scanning for the Truth like a sniper on the battlefield.
And Jon says, “Maybe.”
He is thinking the dots are connecting. The Truth — killing the meth head’s daughter. Then the drinking, more and more. Then the anger pouring out.
And flooding his life, sweeping away his wife and daughter and profession.
The doctor is looking at him with staunch patience.
But Jon Merritt is not prepared to reveal the secret that he is a murderer, the man who substituted the life of that girl in a Beacon Hill bungalow for his own.
Not yet.
The doctor seems to understand that this will be a conversation for another day. Perhaps with him, perhaps with someone else. The man seems satisfied to have gotten where they are.
He looks Jon up and down. “I don’t even think you like the taste of liquor.”
“You know, I really never did.”
Notes are tapped into the tablet.
“What have we learned today, Jon?”
“If I take a fucking drink, I’m going to get mad as shit.”
The doctor smiles. “My psychiatrist’s handbook couldn’t’ve put it any better.”
At this particular moment, however, in this backwoods cabin, what would soon be the bullseye of a deadly shooting gallery, it was the perfect time to take a fucking drink.
Which he now did again.
No, he didn’t like the taste, but the enemy was coming.
And he needed to be filled with rage, not reason.
He squinted into the night, noting that beside the deputy’s car a lush stand of brush that had not been moving a moment ago was moving now.
Jon Merritt aimed the shotgun at it and slowly squeezed the trigger.
89
“All that shooting!” Allison Parker said.
“Mom, shhh,” Hannah said, just as Shaw lifted his finger to his lips.
He motioned them along the road. He believed he’d counted four different weapons, in addition to the distinctive-sounding shotgun. So Marty Harmon had apparently called in additional guns. Shaw hadn’t thought that a likelihood, given the cell outage, but maybe Jacket or Suit had driven into a different zone and called for help.
And where was Jon Merritt now, and how was he faring against that firepower?
As if in answer, there was a lull in the shooting.
Then two more pistol shots.
And silence.
Another hundred yards and they were at the Buick. Colter Shaw quickly cleared it and the surrounding brush. He returned and covered Parker and Hannah as they walked to the vehicle. They got into the backseat. Before starting the engine, Shaw hit the accessory function and when the dash came alive, he quickly dimmed all the lights.
“Belts,” he said. It could be a rough ride, some possibly off road.
They all clicked in.
“Han,” Shaw said, subconsciously using her nickname. “Watch the ridge to the right. That’s where they’d be.”
She pressed her face against the window.
“You see anyone, tell me and move to the left side. You and your mother keep down.”
“Okay.”
“We move fast once I hit the ignition. Ready?”
The girl nodded. Parker did too. She winced. The meds were wearing off. She’d refused to take another one. It was just as well. Shaw would need her to be alert too.
Shaw pressed the start button and immediately slammed the shifter into drive, speeding onto the rough surface of the road. He drove fast but slower than he could have in full light; to the left were steep drop-offs to the stream or river that fed the lake behind the cabin.
There was, at least, no issue with directions; the cabin lay at the end of this lengthy dirt road, which would take them straight to a highway. Once there they’d be in Millton in ten minutes.
He listened again for gunfire.
Still nothing.
The shotgun had been the first weapon fired; Shaw suspected — hoped — that Merritt had surprised the party and taken one of them out. Was it one of the Twins? A creepier pair of men Shaw had never met. Who were the others? Dom Ryan’s crew, maybe.
“No one. So far,” Hannah said. Then she added softly, “There’s no more shooting.”
“He’s retreated,” Shaw said.
Hannah: “Or he’s killed all of them.” Her voice faded toward the end of the sentence.
Or...
Another half mile.
They entered under a canopy of trees. It was darker now. Shaw had to slow down.
Hannah said to her mother, “Daddy was saying something to me, at the cabin? Just before he left?”
“I saw.”
“About forgiveness.”
Did this have to do, Shaw wondered, with the woman’s keen fear: that Hannah would learn of what she’d done to her father?
“He wanted me to forgive him.”
“For what?”
“For hitting you with his gun that night in November. He said drinking wasn’t an excuse.”
“Did you?” Parker asked in a soft voice.
After a pause, Hannah said, “I don’t know what it really means when you say you forgive somebody. It’s, like, more complicated, isn’t it?”
“It is, yes,” Parker said.
“Well, I told him I forgave him.” The girl sighed, Shaw believed. She added, “You know, I thought you might’ve done it to yourself. To get him arrested. I’m sorry I thought that.”