“So Frank saw these pictures?”
“Uh-huh.”
“And you could remember nothing of the men who took you there?”
“Not their faces. I told you: they wore masks.”
“What about other marks? Tattoos maybe, or scars?”
“No.” He frowned. “Wait. One of them had a bird, here.” He pointed to his left forearm. “It was a white eagle’s head, with a yellow beak. I think that was why he wore the eagle mask. He was the one who told the others what to do.”
“Did you tell the police this?”
“Yeah. I never heard nothing more, though. I guess it didn’t help.”
“And Frank? Did you tell him about the tattoo?”
He screwed up his face. “I think so. I don’t remember.” His face relaxed. “Can I ask a question?” he said.
Aimee looked surprised. “Sure you can, Andy.”
He turned to me. “You going to try to find these men, sir?” he asked. There was something in his voice that I didn’t like. The boy was gone now, and what had taken its place was neither child nor adult but some perverse imp straddling both. His tone was almost mocking.
“Yes,” I said.
“You’d best hurry then,” he said.
“Why is that?”
Now the smile was back, but so was that hostile light.
“Because Frank promised to kill them. He promised to kill every one of them once he got out.”
And then Andy Kellog stood and threw himself face-first at the Pleixglas barrier. His nose broke immediately, leaving a smear of blood on the surface. He rammed it again, opening a wound on his forehead just below his scalp. And then he was shouting and screaming as the guards descended on him, and Aimee Price was calling his name and begging them not to hurt him as an alarm sounded and more men appeared and Andy was submerged beneath a mass of bodies, still kicking and shouting, inviting new pain to drown the memory of the old.
Chapter XVIII
The colonel of the guards was fuming quietly as we walked back to the reception lobby. There he left us for a time. Aimee took a seat, and we waited in silence for Long to come back to us with news of Andy Kellog’s condition. There were too many people around to enable us to talk about what had occurred. I looked at them, all caught up in their own pain and the misery of those whom they were visiting. Few spoke. There were older men who might have been fathers, brothers, friends. Some women had brought children along for the visit, but even the kids were quiet and subdued. They knew what this place was, and it frightened them. If they ran around, even if they spoke too loudly, they might end up in here like their daddies. They wouldn’t be allowed to go home, and a man would take them and lock them up in the dark, because that was what happened to bad children. They got locked up, and their teeth rotted, and they beat their faces against Plexiglas screens to numb themselves into unconsciousness.
Long appeared at the lobby desk and gestured for us to join him. He told us that Andy’s nose was badly broken, he had lost another tooth, and he had sustained some bruising during the attempt to subdue him, but otherwise he was as well as could be expected. The injury to his forehead had required five stitches, and he was now in the infirmary. They hadn’t even Maced him, perhaps because his lawyer was present on the other side of the glass. There were no signs of concussion, but he would be kept under observation overnight, just in case. He had been restrained, though, to ensure that he didn’t injure himself again, or try to hurt anyone else. Aimee retreated to use her cell phone in private, leaving me alone with Long, who was still angry at himself and the men under his command for what had happened to Andy Kellog.
“He’s done that kind of thing before,” he said. “I told them to keep a close eye on him.” He risked a glance at Aimee, an indication that he blamed her in part for making his men keep their distance.
“He doesn’t belong in here,” I replied.
“Judge made that decision, not me.”
“Well, it was the wrong one. I know you heard what was said in there. I don’t think he had much hope from the start, but what those men did to him took away what little there was. The Max is just making him crazier and crazier, and the judge didn’t sentence him to gradual insanity. You can’t keep a man locked up in a place like that with no possibility of release and expect him to stay balanced, and Andy Kellog was barely holding on to start with.”
Long had the decency to look embarrassed. “We do what we can for him.”
“It’s not enough.” I was railing at him, but I knew that it wasn’t his fault. Kellog had been sentenced and imprisoned, and it wasn’t Long’s duty to question that decision.
“Maybe you think he was better off with his pal Merrick close by,” said Long.
“At least he kept the wolves at bay.”
“He wasn’t much better than an animal himself.”
“You don’t really believe that.”
He raised an eyebrow at me.
“You developing a soft spot for Frank Merrick? You better be careful, or you’re likely to find a knife in it.”
Long was both right and wrong about Merrick. I didn’t doubt that he would hurt or kill without compunction, but there was an intelligence at work there. The problem was that Merrick was also a weapon to be wielded, and someone had found a way of using him to that end. But Long’s words had struck home, just as Rachel’s had. I did feel some sympathy for Merrick. How could I not? I was a father too. I had lost a child, and I had stopped at nothing to hunt down the man responsible for her death. I knew too that I would do anything to protect Sam and her mother. How then could I judge Merrick for wanting to find out the truth behind his daughter’s disappearance?
Still, such doubts aside, I now knew more than I had an hour before. Unfortunately, Merrick shared some of the same knowledge. I wondered if he had already begun scouting around Jackman and the ruins of Gilead for traces of the men who he believed were responsible for his daughter’s disappearance, or if he had a lead on the man with the eagle tattoo. I would have to go to Gilead eventually. Each step that I took seemed to take me closer to it.
Aimee returned.
“I’ve made some calls,” she said. “I think we can find a sympathetic judge who’ll order a transfer to Riverview.” She turned her attention to Long. “I’ll be getting an independent psychiatric evaluation done on Andy Kellog over the next few days. I’d appreciate it if you could make the whole business as easy as possible.”
“It’s got to go through the usual channels, but once I get the okay from the governor, I’ll hold the shrink’s coat for him if it helps.”
Aimee seemed reasonably satisfied and indicated that we should leave. As I moved to follow her, Long gently took my arm.
“Two things,” he said. “First of all, I meant what I said about Frank Merrick. I saw what he was capable of doing. He near killed a guy who tried to take Andy Kellog’s dessert once, left him in a coma over a plastic bowl of cheap ice cream. You’re right: I heard what Andy Kellog had to say in there. Hell, I’ve heard it before. It’s not news to me. You want to know what I think? I think Frank Merrick used Kellog. He stayed close to him so he could find out what he knew. He was always pumping him for information, trying to get him to remember all that he could about what those men did to him. In a way, he was responsible for winding Kellog up. He got him all upset, all riled up, and we had to deal with the consequences.”
That wasn’t what I had been told at the hockey game, but I knew there was a tendency among ex-cons to sentimentalize some of those they had met. Also, in a place where kindnesses were at a premium, even small acts of human decency assumed monumental proportions. The truth, as in all things, probably lay in the gray area between what Bill and Long had said. I had seen how Andy Kellog had reacted to questioning about his abuse. Perhaps Merrick had managed to talk him down sometimes, but I didn’t doubt that there were other occasions on which he had failed to do so, and Andy had suffered as a result.