“No, not at the end.”
“So you don’t make mistakes?”
“Not like that.”
“You never shot anyone who didn’t have a gun in his hand, is that what you’re saying?”
“No, because that’s not true either.”
There was a silence then, until Aimee Price put her hands to her forehead and gave a growl of frustration.
“Some of that is none of my business,” she said. “I’m sorry. Again.”
“I’m asking you questions. I don’t see why you can’t ask some back. You frowned when I mentioned Daniel Clay’s name, though. Why?”
“Because I know what people say about him. I’ve heard the stories.”
“And you believe them?”
“Somebody betrayed Andy Kellog to those men. It wasn’t a coincidence.”
“ Merrick doesn’t think so either.”
“Frank Merrick is obsessed. Something inside him broke when his daughter disappeared. I don’t know if it makes him more dangerous or less dangerous than he was.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Not much. You probably know all that you need to about his conviction, the stuff in Virginia: the killing of Barton Riddick, and the bullet match that linked Merrick to the shooting. It doesn’t interest me a great deal, to be honest. My main concern was, and remains, Andy Kellog. When Merrick first began forming some kind of bond with Andy, I thought what most people would: you know, a vulnerable younger man, an older, harder prisoner, but it wasn’t like that. Merrick really seemed to be looking out for Andy as best he could.”
She had begun to doodle on the legal pad on her lap as she spoke. I don’t think she was even fully aware of what she was doing. She didn’t look down at the pad as the pencil moved across it, and she didn’t look at me, preferring instead to gaze out at the cold winter light beyond her window.
She was drawing the heads of birds.
“I heard that Merrick got transferred to the Supermax just so he could stay close to Kellog,” I said.
“I’m curious to know the source of your information, but it’s certainly right on the money. Merrick got transferred, and made it clear that anyone who messed with Andy would answer to him. Even in a place like the Max, there are ways and means. Except the only person from whom Merrick couldn’t protect Andy was Andy himself.
“In the meantime, the AG’s office in Virginia began setting in motion indictment on the Riddick killing. It rattled on and on, and as the date of Merrick ’s release from the Max approached, the papers were served and he was notified of his extradition. Then something peculiar happened: another lawyer intervened on Merrick ’s behalf.”
“Eldritch,” I said.
“That’s right. The intervention was troublesome in a number of ways. It didn’t seem like Eldritch had ever had any previous contact with Merrick, and Andy told me that the lawyer had initiated the contact. This old man just turned up and offered to take on Merrick ’s case, but from what I found out later, Eldritch didn’t seem to specialize in any kind of criminal work. He did corporate stuff, real estate, all strictly white-collar, so he was an unusual candidate for a crusading attorney. Nevertheless, he tied Merrick’s case in with a challenge to bullet matching being assembled by a group of liberal lawyers, and turned up evidence of a shooting involving the same weapon used to kill Riddick, but committed while Merrick was behind bars. The Feds began to backtrack on bullet matching, and Virginia came to the realization there wasn’t enough evidence to get a conviction on the Riddick shooting, and if there’s one thing a prosecutor hates to do, it’s to pursue a case that looks like it’s doomed from the start. Merrick spent a few months in a cell in Virginia, then was released. He’d served his full sentence in Maine, so he was free and clear.”
“Do you think he regretted leaving Andy Kellog in the Max?”
“Sure, but by then he seemed to have decided that there were things he needed to do outside.”
“Like find out what had happened to his daughter?”
“Yes.”
I closed my notebook. There would be other questions, but for now I was done.
“I’d still like to talk to Andy,” I said.
“I’ll make some inquiries.”
I thanked her and gave her my card.
“About Frank Merrick,” she said, as I was about to leave. “I think he did kill Riddick, and a whole lot of others too.”
“I know his reputation,” I said. “Do you believe Eldritch was wrong to intervene?”
“I don’t know why Eldritch intervened, but it wasn’t out of a concern for justice. He did some good though, even inadvertently. Bullet matching was flawed. The case against Merrick was equally flawed. If you let even one of those slip by, then the whole system falls apart, or crumbles a little more than it’s crumbling already. If Eldritch hadn’t taken the case, maybe I would have sought a pro hac vice order and taken it myself.” She smiled. “I stress ‘maybe.’”
“You wouldn’t want Frank Merrick as a client.”
“Even hearing that he’s back in Maine makes me nervous.”
“He hasn’t tried to contact you about Andy?”
“No. You have any idea where he’s staying while he’s up here?”
It was a good question, and it set off a train of thought. If Eldritch had provided Merrick with a car, and perhaps funds too, he might also have supplied a place for him to stay. If that was the case, there might be a way to find it, and perhaps discover more about both Merrick and Eldritch’s client.
I stood to leave. At the door of her office, Aimee Price said: “So Daniel Clay’s daughter is paying you to do all this?”
“No, not this,” I said. “She’s paying me to keep her safe from Merrick.”
“So why are you here?”
“For the same reason that you might have taken on Merrick’s case. There’s something wrong here. It bothers me. I’d like to find out what it is.”
She nodded. “I’ll be in touch about Andy,” she said.
Rebecca Clay called me, and I updated her on the situation with Merrick. Eldritch had informed his client that he would be unable to do anything for him until Monday, when he would petition a judge if Merrick continued to remain in custody without charge. O’Rourke wasn’t confident that any judge would allow the Scarborough cops to continue to hold him if he had already spent forty-eight hours behind bars, even allowing for the fact that the letter of the law entitled them to keep him for a further forty-eight.
“What then?” asked Rebecca.
“I’m pretty certain that he’s not going to bother you again. I saw what happened when they told him he was going to be locked up for the weekend. He’s not afraid of jail, but he is afraid of losing his freedom to search for his daughter. That freedom is now tied up with your continued well-being. I’ll serve him with the court order upon his release, but, if you’re agreeable, we’ll keep an eye on you for a day or two after he’s released, just in case.”
“I want to bring Jenna home,” she said.
“I wouldn’t advise that just yet.”
“I’m worried about her. This whole business, I think it’s affecting her.”
“Why?”
“I found pictures in her room. Drawings.”
“Drawings of what?”
“Of men, men with pale faces and no eyes. She said that she’d seen them or dreamed them, or something. I want her close to me.”
I didn’t tell Rebecca that others had seen those men too, myself included. It seemed better to let her believe for now that they were a product of her daughter’s troubled imagination, and nothing more.
“Soon,” I said. “Just give me a few more days.”
Reluctantly, she agreed.
That evening, Angel, Louis, and I had dinner at Fore Street. Louis had gone to the bar to examine the vodka options, leaving Angel and me to talk.
“You’ve lost weight,” said Angel, sniffing and snowing fragments of tissue on the table. I had no idea what he had been doing in Napa to contract a cold, but I was pretty certain that I didn’t want him to tell me. “You look good. Even your clothes look good.”