What choice was there? He wanted to get out. Fighting would keep him in.
So he dropped to the wet concrete and covered his head. He could take a beating like a man—
Take the blows.
Take the belt.
The belt...
And suddenly, he’s surprised to realize that just this once he doesn’t want to deceive the doctor. “Hey, you know, there’s something I’m thinking of. This time I was nineteen.”
The doctor is looking his way, nodding.
“I was working overtime for money for school and I got home after second shift and my father had this tantrum. He thought I’d been out, crowning around. That’s what he called it when you screwed around with girls, smoking, having a beer. ‘Crowning.’ I told him I put in for overtime. For the shift differential. But he didn’t believe me. And, okay, I’m nineteen, remember? He stands up and starts to take his belt off and—”
“Oh, say, Jon. I see our time is up. That sounds like something we should explore.” He flips the tablet screen, queuing up the next hopeless patient.
Merritt is furious. His anger is fundamental. In his soul. But he lets it go and smiles and says, “Sure thing, Doctor. See you next week.”
And as he leaves he’s thinking it was probably a good idea to end it there. If he’d continued down that road the façade of charm might have cracked and certain facts might have spilled out.
Among them the capital-TTruth: that the agreeable patient with the 1 p.m. slot is in fact a murderer. And he’s not talking attempt. The real thing.
Now, in a cell of a different sort, the River View Motel, Jon Merritt shut the light out, nearly knocking the flimsy thing over. He set the alarm on his phone and lay back in bed. Not washing up, not peeing, not brushing his teeth.
All he was thinking at the moment was that he hoped to hear another cry of horn from a tug or a riverboat. It was something superstitious. The more horns, the luckier the lucky man would be.
Over the next few minutes he collected two, one loud, one barely audible, and then sleep took him.
35
At 11 p.m....
Colter Shaw was back in another windowless office within the security department of Harmon Energy Products.
He was not alone. Sonja Nilsson sat beside him at a long desk on which were dozens of computer monitors and keyboards.
Shaw was on the phone with Detective Dunfry Kemp.
Never antagonize law enforcers...
But it was hard to keep the frustration from his voice. “Well, Detective, all respect. Now it’s overt. He was inside the house. He tossed it, looking for where Allison’s gone.”
“You saw him?”
“I saw the mess he made. And a homeless man saw him leave. I’ve got the number.”
“A homeless man has a phone?”
“You want it?”
A pause. “And you were in the house yourself, Mr. Shaw?”
“State Penal Code 224.655. It’s an affirmative defense when one enters upon a premises without permission to save the life of others.”
“You looked that up.”
“I did.”