There is a smell about him. Merritt can’t quite place it. In his chair, across from Merritt’s, Dr. Evans sits forward. He has explained that he will always remain outside Merritt’s “sphere of personness.”
This is a psychological thing, it seems, intended to demonstrate that the physician is attentive to the patient but doesn’t make him uncomfortable.
Sphere of personness...
Merritt would simply say “his space.” But then, he doesn’t have the medical degree.
The distance between the two is also a security measure, considering what many of Dr. Evans’s patients are here for.
Murder.
Attempted murder.
Grievous bodily harm...
The room bears little resemblance to a traditional therapist’s digs. No couch, no armchair, no box of Kleenex, no diplomas, no framed pictures or posters carefully picked to cause the patients no offense.
The doctor is jotting notes on a tablet, not with a pen or pencil. Apparently there was an incident a few years ago—though, luckily, the ER doc up the hall managed to save one of the psychiatrist’s eyes.
A wireless panic button sits on the table next to Dr. Evans’s chair. It’s not red. Merritt has wondered how many demons descend if the doc pushes it.
Has he ever?
“Let’s just chat, shall we, Jon?” The man is only half here. Distracted.
And what is that smell?
Merritt is all smiles and cooperation. “Sure, I guess. About what?”
“Anything that comes to mind. How you’re feeling about being here.”
Did he really ask that?
But again the smile.
“Your childhood.”
“Oh, sure.”
Just wanting the minutes to go by quickly, he begins to ramble about growing up in Ferrington. Telling stories good and stories bad and stories traumatic and stories affirming. Some are even true.
He’s careful about what he says, though. Dr. Evans, of the curious scent, may be sharper than he seems and is looking for tells, like a carny mind reader, that will lead him to a secret about Jon Merritt that Jon Merritt does not want him to know.
Merritt thinks of the secret simply as the “Truth” about him. With a capitalT.
As he talks, staying far, far from the Truth, he notices that the doctor’s gaze strays around the room, often ending up on the window. The thick glass opens onto the yard. But it’s a prison; there is no view.
Merritt wonders if the doctor’s inattention is due to the fact that he is wrestling obsessively with diagnoses and treatment plans in order to cure his prisoner-patients.
Or if the man doesn’t give a shit about them and is daydreaming of hearing out housewives from the Garden District, who might be depressed or tightly wound, but never sociopathic and homicidal.
Jon Merritt now left the medical center behind and moved through the parking lot in a taut lope. He was six foot two inches but tended to walk stooped over, which made him appear to be a predatory animal. He climbed into his big Ford and in twenty minutes he was slicing through a commercial row south of downtown.
This was a neighborhood familiar to him. He’d spent plenty of hours on these streets. Here you could get the nails tipping your fingers and toes polished to gems, your car repaired, your hair extended, your baldness covered. You could buy electronics, toys, sundries, pay-as-you-go phones, used furniture, appliances big and appliances small, all off-brand and cheap and with short life spans.
You could also rent a girl or boy or combination of both for an hour or two, transactions that Merritt was also familiar with.
He cruised up the street toward the Kenoah until he came to the River View Motel. Ferrington spawned lodgings like this—one-story structures of pastel shades, well overdue for new paint, some bulbs of the neon signage dark, the parking lots weedy. The vending machines were bulletproof.