People like these were mosquitoes. All it took was a slap, and they were gone.
Merritt walked west toward the Fourth Street Bridge. The city’s paint jobs had been haphazard, both the original sickly green and more recent darker versions of a similar hue. Much rust too. He crossed on the sidewalk, which was edged with a ten-foot chain-link barrier. The fencing had been added some years ago after the bridge had become a popular site for suicides. This was curious since the distance from bridge to water was about fifty feet. You couldn’t work up lethal velocity in that distance. The deaths—mostly laid-off workers—came from drowning.
Merritt had run some of these cases as a rookie. He thought if he ever wanted to take his life it would be by firearm, not the suffocation of drowning, especially in this toxic soup.
The autumn moon was a disk camouflaged by haze—some smoke, some pollution. This was Ferrington. Better than when Merritt was a teenager, his father working in one of the plants that spewed whatever it was the towers spewed. He’d heard it was just heated air; the poisons were treated into nothingness within the factory. That was a lie, of course.
Across the river was a faded billboard.
Ferrington Makes, the World Takes.
Beneath the slogan was painted a parade of industrial items. Merritt had no idea what exactly they were. Metal parts, tubes, tanks, boxes, controllers. Ferrington was not known for consumer products.
Merritt came to a commercial strip on Fourth, most of the offices dark, but he passed a storefront that was still inhabited. He stepped into an alleyway across the street and checked his gun. Soon this office too went dark. A short man in his forties but with prematurely gray hair stepped outside. He was in a suit and a shortovercoat and carrying a briefcase. He locked the door and walked north, his gait a waddle. Merritt stepped from the alley and followed, twenty feet behind him.
They covered a block in tandem, when he heard a car bleat and saw the lights flash their brief inanimate welcome. Merritt moved in quickly.
The man climbed into the driver’s seat and slammed the door. Before he started the engine, Merritt approached and rapped on the window. He stood tall so his face wasn’t visible and held his police ID against the glass.
The window came down.
“Officer, can I—”
Instantly Merritt reached in, pressed the passenger-side lock and ripped the door open, pulling out his pistol. He dropped into the seat and swung the gun into the face of David Stein, Allison’s lawyer.
The man’s shoulders slumped and he shook his head. “Jon, Christ.”
“Shh.” Merritt rolled the window up.
“What’s this getting you? Just a shitload of trouble. I never did anything to you.”
Merritt shivered in rage at those words.
Stein backed down. “I’m sorry, Jon. I was just doing—”
“Shh.” Merritt pulled on his seatbelt. He said, “Keep yours off, start the car and drive where I tell you.”
“Jon—”
“Straight. Left on Monroe.”
Grimacing in disgust, the lawyer did as told.
Merritt cocked the gun, drawing a gasp from the lawyer, and rested the muzzle against his neck.
This message was:Drive slowly. He didn’t need to add that the road surfaces of Ferrington were in such sad shape that any kind of heroic maneuver would in all likelihood not end well for him.
32
At 11 p.m....
The receptionist stepped out the front door of the Safe Away shelter.
The dark-haired woman was slimmer than Moll remembered, though just as top heavy. He could tell because her black leather jacket was close-fitting.
She walked away from the door and lit a cigarette, the smoke vanishing fast on this cool windy night. Hiking a gym bag higher on her shoulder she made a cell phone call and had a conversation.
There were four cars parked in the lot. Moll wondered which was hers. He hoped it was the white Camry, easier to follow.