“We didn’t-” began Caswell, then caught himself.
“Didn’t what, Otis? Didn’t do anything to Daniel Clay? Didn’t kill him? Why don’t you tell me about it.”
“Fuck you,” said Caswell. “Fuck you to hell and back.”
He hung up. When I called a third time nobody picked up. The phone just rang and rang at the other end, and I pictured Otis Caswell in his white-trash house, his hands over his ears to block out the sound, until at last the ringing changed to a busy signal as he removed the connection from the wall.
Night descended. Our encounter with Caswell marked the beginning of the end. Men were heading northwest, Merrick among them, but the sands of his life were slowly trickling away, not through the neck of some old hourglass but from the palm of his own hand, his fingers clasped tightly against his skin as the dry grains slipped through the gap below his little finger. By asking questions about Daniel Clay, he had shortened the span of his existence. He had held open his hands and accepted the sands, knowing that he would be unable to hold them for long, that now they would peter away twice as fast. He had merely hoped that he could stay alive long enough to discover his daughter’s final resting place.
And so, as darkness fell, Merrick found himself in the Old Moose Lodge. Its name sounded quaint, evoking images of wooden floors, comfortable chairs, friendly Maine hosts to greet the guests, a roaring log fire in the lobby, rooms that managed to be clean and modern while never losing touch with their rustic roots, and breakfasts of maple syrup, bacon, and pancakes, served by smiling young women at tables overlooking placid lakes and mile upon mile of evergreen forest.
In fact, nobody had ever stayed in the Old Moose Lodge, at least not in a bed. In the past, men might have slept off their drunks in a back room, but they had done so on the floor, so stupefied by alcohol that comfort mattered less than a place in which to lie flat and allow the blankness they had been seeking to overwhelm them. Now even that small concession had been taken away for fear that the lodge’s liquor license, annual speculation about the renewal of which provided regular fodder for the local newspaper, and most of the populace, might finally be removed if it was found to be operating as a crash pad for drunks. Still, the impression created by its name was not entirely inapt.
It did have wooden floors.
Merrick sat at a deuce near the back of the bar, facing away from the door but with a mirror on the wall in front of him that allowed him to see all those who entered without anyone immediately being able to spot him. Although the bar was warm, causing him to sweat profusely, he did not take off his heavy tan suede coat. In part, it enabled him to keep the gun in its pocket within easy reach. It also meant that the wound in his side, which had begun to bleed again, would not be visible if it soaked through the bandages and into his shirt.
He had killed the Russians just beyond Bingham, where Stream Road branched off the 201 and followed the path of the Austin Stream toward Mayfield Township. He had known that they would come. The killing of Demarcian alone might have been enough to draw them to him, but there were also grudges outstanding against him relating to a pair of jobs at the beginning of the nineties, one in Little Odessa, the other in Boston. He was surprised that they had not made a move on him in prison, but the Supermax had protected him by isolating him, and his reputation had done the rest. After the killing of Demarcian, word would have spread. Calls would have been made, favors requested, debts wiped out. Perhaps he should not have killed Demarcian, but the little man with the withered arm had repelled him, and he was a link in the chain of events that had taken Merrick ’s daughter from him. If nothing else, the lawyer Eldritch had been right about that much. If the price to be paid for Demarcian’s death was more killing, then Merrick was willing to oblige. They would not stop him from reaching Gilead. There, he felt certain, he would find the answers that he sought.
He wondered how the Russians had found him so quickly. After all, he had changed his car, yet here they were, those two men in their black 4x4. Merrick reflected that perhaps he should not have left Rebecca Clay’s ex-husband alive, but Merrick was not a man who killed without some cause and, as far he could tell, Legere knew nothing. Even his ex-wife had not trusted him enough to share anything about her father with him.
But Merrick was also certain that, almost since his quest had begun, his progress was being shadowed and his every move watched. He thought of the old lawyer in his paper-filled office, and his unseen benefactor, the mysterious other who had instructed Eldritch to help him, who had provided funds, a place to hide, and information. The lawyer had never provided a satisfactory explanation for his willingness to aid Merrick, and Merrick’s distrust of him had quickly grown, leading him to distance himself from the old man as soon as was feasible, the period of his recent brief incarceration apart. Yet even after that, when he was taking care to cover his tracks, there were times when he had felt himself being watched, sometimes when he was in a crowd, trying to lose himself in a mall or a bar, and other times when he was alone. He thought that he had caught a glimpse of a man once, a ragged figure in an old black coat, who was examining Merrick thoughtfully through a cloud of cigarette smoke but, when he tried to follow him, the man had vanished, and Merrick had not seen him again.
Then there were the nightmares. They had begun in the safe house, shortly after Merrick had been given the car and the money by Eldritch: visions of pale, wasted creatures, their eye sockets black, their mouths lipless and wrinkled, all dressed in soiled tan coats, old mackintoshes with buttons missing and reddish brown stains on the collars and the sleeves. Merrick would awaken in the darkness, and in that moment between sleeping and consciousness he thought that he could almost see them receding from him, as though they had been leaning over him while he slept, no breath emerging from their mouths, only a stale smell of something old and noxious lodged deep within themselves. Since he had abandoned the safe house, the dreams had come less often, but there were still nights when he ascended from the depths of sleep to a crawling sensation on his skin and a faint stench that had not been there when he closed his eyes.
Had Eldritch, reckoning Merrick to be a liability, told the Russians where he was, facilitated by the other, or by the man in the ragged black coat? Were this man and Eldritch’s client one and the same? Merrick did not know, and it no longer mattered. It was all nearing an end, and soon there would be peace.
The Russians had been careless. He had seen them coming, watching in the rearview as they hung three or four cars back, occasionally overtaking when it was necessary to keep him in sight. He had pulled over at one point to see if they would pass him, and they had, keeping their eyes fixed straight ahead, scrupulously ignoring him as he spread a map upon the steering wheel and pretended to trace his route with a finger, too many trucks passing for them to be able to take him while he was stopped. He had let them go, then pulled out after a few minutes had gone by. He saw them ahead, hanging back in the slow lane, hoping that he would pass them again, and he obliged. After a couple of miles, he turned onto Stream Road, and from there found a dirt track that would suit his purpose. He followed it for over a mile, past abandoned shacks set back from the road, past a double-wide trailer and cars slouched on tireless rims, until even those humble tokens of human habitation disappeared, and the road became rougher yet, bouncing him in his seat and causing his spine to ache. When there was only forest before and behind, to north and south, east and west, he cut the engine. He could hear them approaching. He got out of the car, leaving the driver’s door open, and moved into the trees, heading back in the direction in which he had come until the Russians appeared. They stopped when they came to his abandoned car. He could almost guess the conversation that was taking place within. They would have known that they had followed him into a trap. The only question for them was how to free themselves from it while ensuring Merrick ’s death and their own survival. Crouched in the undergrowth, Merrick saw the one in the passenger seat, the man with red hair, look over his shoulder. Their options were limited. They could reverse and leave, hoping to catch him again on the road, whether he tried to escape on foot or by car; or they could get out, one from each side, and try to hunt him on foot. They would be at their most vulnerable when they opened the doors, but their reasoning would be that if he opened fire on them, he might hit one of them at most, if he was lucky, and in doing so he would expose his position.