Which was when I grabbed him. Yanked him from behind the desk and hit him so hard across the face that blood spurted from his nose immediately. Then I threw him back in his chair and came around the desk. Any self-confidence his hairdo gave him was gone. He started to whimper and to flutter his hands in front of his face for protection. I couldn't help myself. I grabbed him again and slapped him backhand across the face.
"I want to know what the hell's going on," I said.
"Stokes," he muttered.
"What about Stokes?"
"He's playing us off against each other."
"What the hell does that mean?" I said.
He sat in the chair trying to catch his breath and whimpering and finally he said, "Stokes is bleeding every one of us he can. He found out some things about Denny-and demanded money."
"What things?"
"I–I'm not sure."
"You're a goddamned liar."
"No, really I…"
I started toward him again, hating myself for the violence but unable to stop myself, when something hit me on the shoulder.
I groaned, turned to see Belinda Matson standing behind me.
"Leave him alone!" she cried. "He's suffered enough."
I looked at the bronze bookend she'd thrown at me.
The air of violence subsided as we all stood there glaring at each other, not quite knowing what to say.
I was still working on what Merle had said about Stokes, a man I planned to have a talk with as soon as possible.
"Stokes says the photograph you picked up at the duck pond shows that you killed Denny," I said to Merle.
Merle shook his head. "He knows better than that."
"Then you were there that night?"
He shrugged. "Sure I was. I'll even admit we had an argument."
"About what?"
He said nothing.
"About what?"
He sighed. "We had an argument. That's all that matters. But I didn't kill him."
I turned back to Belinda. I wondered if she'd told Merle about Clay Traynor yet and decided she probably hadn't.
And it wasn't my place to inform him that his mistress had a lover.
"Would you mind leaving us alone?" I asked her. "Yes, I would. I don't want you to hurt him."
"I'm not going to hurt him." She looked at Merle then at me. "You promise?" I promise.
"Is it all right if I leave?" she asked Merle.
He didn't seem to hear her. He was somewhere else.
She stared at him several long moments then left, looking hurt and confused. I wondered what the letter she was writing Merle said. If it admitted to the affair she had had, or was still having, with Clay Traynor, or if it shed any light on the murders. For some reason, I had the feeling that is was a very important letter, and one I needed to lay my hands on.
Merle went back behind his desk and put his hands over his face. Then he took them away. His face looked awful, as if he'd just awakened from the worst hangover of his life.
"There's no way out now," he said.
"From what?" I said, trying to keep my voice friendly.
"You know what I'd really like to do?"
"What?"
"Go back to my wife. Patch things up." He made me think of Sarah Anders-maybe we could have a big group therapy session up here.
"You've got a nice wife."
"Damned nice." He sounded as if he were going to start crying. Then he nodded to the outer office where the sound of a typewriter could be heard. "Clay Traynor strikes again. He and Belinda were seeing each other for a while. Belinda said she just got tired of sitting home alone nights when I had to be with my wife. I guess I can't blame her." But obviously he did.
So he did know. I felt sorry for the poor bastard. Sitting there, his shoulders slumped, he looked much older than his forty years. In high school, I felt sure, he had been head of the camera club or the science club-the classic nerd as seen by his classmates-and now here he was trying to compensate for all that pain and dislocation by having a hairstyle that looked silly and a mistress who was unfaithful. It wasn't funny. Some of the pity I felt for him crept into my voice. "Why was Denny murdered, Merle?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, Michael, I really don't."
"You didn't do it, then?"
The laugh again. "You really think I could commit murder, Michael?" He was copping to his nerd image- using it to his advantage-but it didn't work. Nerds commit their share of murders, too.
"So why the gun?" I said.
"Because it's all such a goddamn mess, why else?"
"There's something you're not telling me."
He shrugged, sighed again, looked miserable.
I took the newspaper clipping out of my pocket and put it on his desk. Right next to the gun.
He didn't notice it for a while. Then his eyes narrowed and he reached out a delicate finger and picked it up.
The way the blood started filling his cheeky cheeks, it was obvious Merle knew the significance of the clipping.
He surprised me. He decided to lie. He threw it back at me. "Hell, I don't know what this means."
I leaned forward. "Merle, I'm going to hurt you. I really am. Unless you tell me what the hell's going on. What's this clipping got to do with the murders?"
I watched him eye the gun on his desk. Was he thinking of using it on me or himself?
From behind me, a voice said, "You'd better leave now." Belinda Matson.
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Yes, you are," she said, coming into the office. "Because Merle's going to pick up the gun and make you leave." She looked at Merle. "Aren't you, honey?"
Merle flushed again. He didn't want me to see how dependent he was on others for his strength. But that didn't stop him from picking the gun up and pointing it at me. There was oil on the gun and part of the handle was chipped. The flaws made it all the more real.
"You're a stupid bastard, Merle," I said. "There's a good chance you're involved in something that's already taken two lives. But you're not handling it right, believe me. You're going to die, too."
I watched Belinda this time instead of Merle. I could see her pretty, tiny face stretch with anguish as I spoke. Obviously she was worried about the same thing. All these crazy people I was surrounded with-and the secret that tied them all together, the secret I didn't know.
"Merle-" I started to say, feeling sorry for him again.
"All you need to know," Merle said, sounding much more self-confident with the gun in his hand, "is that I didn't kill either Denny or Gettig. Either one of them. Your man Stokes is working a con game-he's got pictures of all of us who were there that night. He was hiding in the house. He decided to fleece me because he wrongly thinks I have access to certain moneys-" He glanced up to little Belinda. She shot him a glance that said he was talking too much. This is how it had been for all of Merle's life. Never quite knowing how to handle a situation, screwing it up more likely than not.
"He'll be clearing out his desk," Belinda said. "He won't be working here anymore. Neither will I."
"That's going to look great to the cops," I said.
She shrugged. Her sense of desperation matched Merle's earlier mood. "They can't prove anything."
I stood up. "I wish you two would let me help you."
"You just worry about yourself," Belinda said, now the official spokesperson for both of them. "Whoever's doing this may have you included in the plans, too."
I knew there was no point in asking for that obscure sentence to be cleared up for me.
Merle waved the gun at me again, looking sad and silly.
"I hope you know what you're doing," I said.
"I do," he said. But didn't believe it, either.
SIXTEEN
It took me many long minutes to realize that the hands shaking me were not part of a nightmare but were in fact real.