THE SECRETARY COWERED beside the obnoxiously ornate executive’s desk, behind which sat Jon Merryfield, his back to an arched leaden window whose panes were warped, so the view of the town green was slightly distorted.
The woman glanced at Merryfield.
“Take the morning off, Cheryl,” Merryfield said.
“Do you want me to call anyone?” she said.
“It’s fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“We close in a half hour anyway. I’ll be all right.”
The woman nodded at Merryfield and slipped past Victor. At the door, she glanced back quickly, then shut the door, her footsteps hurrying away on the other side.
Victor stepped toward the desk. The scene of the town green behind Merryfield’s expansive desk shifted through the vast window with each step. The sun was low, shadows deepening.
Before Victor was halfway across the room, Merryfield said, “Close enough.”
Victor thought about going straight for him, but stopped himself. He needed to keep his composure. For Brad’s sake.
Merryfield folded his hands behind his head and turned his chair side to side, the arrogant bastard. “Well?” he said. His voice flat. Dead.
“You know why I’m here.”
“Do I?”
“I know you did it,” Victor said.
“I did it? I think it was you who did it.”
“I’m not talking about that.”
“About what?”
“That.”
“That?” Jon laughed a cold, heartless laugh.
“I know what you did,” Victor said.
Jon spread his arms wide. “Oh, well, guilty then.”
“I know.”
“Aren’t we the detective.”
“You killed that girl.”
Jon laughed again, dramatically, and shook his head. “Just for the entertainment of it: Why would I want to do that?”
“You know why.”
“Refresh my memory.”
“You goddamn well know.”
“Careful. Taking the Lord’s name in vain. I hear he takes issue with that. I think I ought to be told what my motive is, since I surely can’t think of it myself.”`
“You know.”
“Can’t say I do.”
“For God’s sake.”
“God’s got nothing to do with this. You’re regressing, Coach. You sound like a crazy man. Clarify your point.”
Coach. Being called Coach by him scalded Victor. “Goddamn you.”
“No. Goddamn you.”
“I’m sorry,” Victor said.
“Yes. You are.” Merryfield flicked his fingers at his tie, as if brushing away crumbs.
“My son doesn’t deserve this,” Victor said.
“Who of us deserves anything we get?”
“He’s got his whole future ahead of him.”
“Didn’t we all.”
“I said, I’m sorry, for what happened.”
“It didn’t happen. It was done. By you.”
Victor felt the pleading in his voice and was sickened by it. He needed to stay strong. In control. “I think they’ll convict Brad if he goes to trial.”
“I know they will.” Merryfield’s eyes flashed with, what? Uncertainty? Fear? Some understanding? There was a change there for sure. Realization.
“I can’t let that happen,” Victor said. “I’m going to the police. I’m going to tell them your motive. I’ve learned a thing or two about the law.”
“I’m sure they’ll arrest me right away. Except, I was with my wife in a restaurant near capacity.” He straightened his tie, but that look flashed again. Realization.
Merryfield leaned back in his chair and looked straight at Victor. He smiled. Smug and sinister. “They’ll see you for what you are. A sad, sick, desperate father trying to keep his son out of prison by any means. A drowning man grasping for a life jacket that isn’t there. Your son is going to prison.” Jon locked his fingers together and pointed his index fingers at Victor as if the fingers were a pistol. “And you can’t stop it. Not even your God. You know why? Brad killed that girl. And if he didn’t, I know one thing for certain. I didn’t kill her.” He crossed his arms, a smile of supreme satisfaction oozing across his face. “It will sink in after a while. Just how powerless you are. And, you’ll just have to live with it. Being powerless. Like we all do.”
Victor stepped toward him; perhaps there was only one way after all to get to him.
“One more step,” Merryfiled said, “And I’ll knock your teeth in and beat the living fuck out of you and throw you out the fucking window. I’ll tell them you attacked me. Cheryl will attest to your crazed behavior.”
Vic squeezed his hands into fists.
Merryfield stood. Victor was fit for his age. But Merryfield was the younger man by far. A fit, broad man. No boy.
Victor stepped back and opened the door. “We’ll see,” he said, and left.
FROM THE WINDOW, Jon watched as Victor stood under a street lamp and stared up toward the building. Jon poured himself a double of bourbon. Let him go to the police, Jon thought. Let him pour his guts out. It won’t hurt me. He has no proof. I’ll deny it. And they will never believe him.
Victor looked up at the window now. Could he see Jon? Jon had no idea.
Victor had a hand at the inside of his thigh, as if pointing at something as he stared up at the window. He pointed at Jon, then to his own thigh.
And Jon knew Victor had proof. It would hurt him. It would ruin him, if the police believed Victor. Jon could not let Victor get to the police. He needed to stop him.
But Victor was already gone.
Jon poured himself a double of bourbon at his office’s wet bar and knocked it back. Poured another.
He sat at his desk and opened his laptop, a headache hammering at his temples as
he clicked on the e-mail, the sensation of being watched washing over him.
The e-mail subject line was the same five words as one of the voice mail messages:
You Should Have Helped Me
The e-mail itself read:
Last chance. Meet me. Tonight. Same Place. 7 pm.
Agree to confess.
Or I go to the cops myself.
He had to decide what to do.
Victor was sniffing around and threatening, too.
How could Jon explain it all to the cops without giving up the ugly truth?
Fear lurched in him. He needed to take control, as he’d always done. No emotion had ever helped him, save one: rage. He felt it pushing from inside him, ridding the fear and devouring each cell until he was the incarnation of perfect, crystalline, contained rage. He welcomed it. He would hone it and use it as a spear.
The sender of the e-mail was weak. Soft. He’d chosen to curl up and wither. Chosen to be a victim. Chosen his plight. His destiny. Merryfield would not be dragged into this weakling’s world. He would not wallow. He would not allow the coward to get away with this. He would never confess. Or be coerced. He would not be defined by acts over which he had had no control.
There had to be a way out of this.
Then, it struck him. He saw his way out. The only way.
His cell phone rang. Bethany. She’d called five times in hour before Victor had arrived. He’d let the phone ring.
He let it ring now, poured a bourbon and drank it.
He wanted to answer the phone, but he could not bring himself to do it.
Not until he finished what had been started.
His wife seemed more distant to him than ever. She seemed not to exist at all. He did not carry her in his heart. He thought of her, but he did not feel for her. He carried no one in his heart. He never had. He felt for no one. Except for himself. Ever since what had happened to him in the cage.
It had not been until he’d met Bethany his last year of law school that he’d felt any desire for intimacy. Many times when he was an undergrad and as a law student, girls had flirted with him. He’d deflected their advances. They’d mistaken his indifference and fear for shyness, or perhaps quiet confidence, and been even more drawn to him. Asked him out. He’d declined.
Perhaps it had been the enlivening spring weather that day.
He’d been dozing on the steps of the rotunda, soaking up the April sun in a rare moment of leisure he’d granted himself, when a wayward Frisbee sailed into his face from the Lawn. He’d sprung awake, discombobulated and ready to strike out at whatever had assailed him, his nose and lips bloodied. Instead he’d seen the most open and cheery face he’d ever encountered, just a nose away from his own face. Her smile swallowed him whole.
Instead of apologizing, the girl had said, “Got yah.” And instead of toadying over his bloody nose, she’d snatched up the Frisbee and skipped off down the steps, yelling over her shoulder, “Watch where you doze!”
He’d seen her again a week later in the outdoor amphitheater. Again he’d been dozing, this time to be awakened by something softly tapping his nose. He’d awakened with a start to see her smiling down at him, the sun behind her making a halo around her lustrous hair. She’d been tapping the same Frisbee on the bridge of his nose. “Thought you’d found a safe place to doze, did you?”
A tugging desire overcame him, an urgent force he’d never known. “What’s that look?” she’d said, smiling.
“What look?”
“I know that look. Boy oh boy, do I.”
They’d strolled back to her studio apartment near the medical center, wending their way past the serpentine brick walls envisioned by Jefferson, the tulip trees exploding with cotton-candy blossoms that perfumed the sweet, sunny air abuzz with the hum of busy honeybees.
In the shadows of a hickory-tree grove, a young disheveled student who’d looked like he’d had a long, rough night had slipped past them on the narrow walk, and upon seeing Jon and the girl, perhaps recognizing the lightness in their carriage, had nodded knowingly.
In another minute, Jon had found himself naked in Bethany’s futon bed, surging forward into a new life, sloughing off the old skin to be reborn. The scent of her. The softness of her flesh. The taste. The heat. The hot sunlight pouring in the window above her futon, so their urgency and the strength of the sun left them bathed with a sheen of salty sweat. His new life was beginning. Until it wasn’t. Until at the critical moment, he’d thought of the face of the young student who had passed him on the serpentine walk, and he felt himself flag.
He’d collapsed with mortification and lay on his side, his back to her.
She’d laughed. He’d yanked away and grabbed a sheet to hide his flaccidness.
Wanting to end the humiliation, he’d tried to yank on his shorts and fallen over. She’d laughed again, an uproarious, excruciating laugh. “Where do you think you’re going?” she’d said.
He’d worked more desperately to worry into his clothes. She’d touched his arm. He’d yanked away. “What’s the matter?” she said.
That student, he’d thought. That young man.
“What gives?” she’d said.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Like I care?”
Of course she cares, he’d thought. She didn’t have to debase him more by patronizing him. All he’d wanted was to flee. He’d made a dreadful mistake. Thinking he’d outlived his past misgivings. Instead, it had sunk him under a torrent of vile images.
He tugged his T-shirt on over his head.
“Don’t be a dolt,” she scolded. She’d stood, naked, splendid in the sunlight playing in the downy hair of her belly. She’d grabbed the Frisbee from the desk and brandished it. “You want another whack?”
He’d tried to pull away, but she had his wrist in her hand, and held fast. She’d looked up into his eyes. “I don’t care. Hear me. I don’t fucking care. You know how many assholes I’ve fucked and it meant squat?”
She must have seen the aghast look on his face.
“That’s not what I mean.” She laughed. “OK. I’ve had my share. But, believe me. I’m a grad student. In two weeks it’s the real world. I don’t want just a fuck.”
He’d asked what she did want.
“A life. Family. We’re all fucked up. I am too, you know. You don’t have a corner on the market.”
She’d convinced him to stay; and much later managed to coax him through to a finish.
Still. That boy. That student in the shadows. What was it about him?
Later that week, Jon had been eating a burger at the White Spot when the student had strolled in and sat beside him on a stool. This time, he seemed vaguely familiar as he stared at Jon in the mirror behind the counter. “Jon?” he said, and spun his stool to face Jon.
“Yes,” Jon had said, perplexed, disoriented. He could not place the student.
“Randy,” the young man said.
“Sorry,” Jon had said. “Are we in a class together?”
The student had grimaced and gone pale as if Jon had just stuck a knife in his ribs. Except the kid didn’t seem like a student at all, Jon noted then. His hair was matted and greasy, not in the practiced manner of kids going grunge, but in a seedy, unwashed way of someone destitute. His teeth were bad; gray as dirty dishwater. And a top tooth was missing. The kid had a spacey look about him, too. A twitchiness.
“We have someone in common,” he’d said and laid his dirty hand on Jon’s wrist.
Jon stared at the bony hand. He’d wanted to pull away but was afraid he’d instigate the stranger into an outburst, or worse. The short, old black man behind the counter had given Jon a worried look that confirmed Jon’s apprehension was not unwarranted.
The stranger was unhinged and gave off an aura of insanity that made all those in his proximity anxious. The stranger slid his hand off of Jon’s wrist to sip his water, and the sour stench of the unwashed bloomed up from him, gaseous and repellent.
Jon seized the chance to get off his stool and pay his bill, having hardly touched his burger. He put a ten-spot on the counter and began to stalk away; but the dirty hand clutched his wrist again and squeezed, twisted the skin.
“Don’t you want to know who we have in common?” the stranger said.
Jon tried to prize his wrist free without making a scene, but the grip was like a talon.
“You should have helped me,” the stranger said. Then he grabbed Jon quickly by the hair and pulled Jon’s ear down to his foul mouth and whispered a word and shoved Jon away.
Jon had fallen against the table behind him and staggered outside, where the hothouse humidity of the Virginia spring had nearly knocked him down.
Then he’d run, the word that had been whispered in his ear burning like a corrosive acid.
Jon blinked now as a knock came at his office door.
He stared at the door. Victor? No. Victor would not knock.
The knock came again. Louder.
“Mr. Merryfield. It’s Detective Test. I know you are there and I’ve no intention of leaving.”