“I think that’s true. And something to think about. But that’s only part of your disconnect. I’ve been thinking about this quite a lot.”
Answering the persistent question: the doctor is an obsessive wrestler for his inmate patients, and not a morose-housewife daydreamer.
“I looked at your PD record. Not a single disciplinary problem in your career. No citizen complaints. Not one.”
A certain resident of 8248 Homewood in Beacon Hill mighthave a say about that, but she’s no longer able to fill out the paperwork.
“You saw terrible things in your job and you couldn’t react. Abuse, murder, predators, cruelty, right?”
A shrug.
“Tell me about some.”
“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.”