“What was his name?”
“He never told me his name, and I didn’t ask. I just paid him. It was good stuff.”
More half-truths, more lies, but Ricky was confident in his abilities. He was far from stupid, and he knew it.
“You weren’t afraid that he was a cop?”
“He wasn’t no cop. You only had to take one look at him to know that.”
Snot dribbled from his nose, mingling with his tears.
“Where did he come from?”
“I don’t know. Up north, somewhere.”
The man was watching Ricky carefully and caught the way his eyes shifted again as he lied. Dave “The Guesser” Glovsky might almost have been proud of him at that moment.
“You ever hear tell of a place called Gilead?”
There was the “tell” again, the body betraying the difficulty the brain felt in disguising the lie.
“No, I never did, unless it was at Sunday school when I was a kid.”
The man was silent for a time. Ricky wondered if that had been a lie too far.
“You got a list of people who pay for all this?”
Ricky shook his head.
“It’s done through credit cards. The men in Boston take care of it. All I have is email addresses.”
“And who are these men in Boston?”
“They’re Eastern Europeans, Russians. I only know first names. I have some numbers to call if there’s trouble.”
Ricky swore. He thought he had made a mistake by telling his assailant once again that there would be repercussions for hurting him, that of course he would have someone to call if the operation was threatened. Ricky didn’t want the man to be reminded that it might be better not to leave him alive. The man seemed to understand Ricky’s concerns.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you’ll be expected to call them about this. I figured they’d hear about it one way or the other, uh-huh. It don’t bother me none. Let ’ em come. You can get rid of that stuff on your screen now.” As he spoke, he picked up a cushion.
Ricky swallowed. He closed his eyes briefly in gratitude. He turned back to his computer and began clearing it of the images. His lips parted.
“Thank-”
The bullet blew a big hole in the back of Ricky’s head, and tore a bigger one in his face as it exited. It shattered the screen, and something in the monitor exploded with a dull pop and began to burn acridly. Blood hissed and bubbled in the exposed workings. The ejected shell casing had bounced off a filing cabinet and lay close to Ricky’s chair. Its position was almost too good, so the visitor tapped it with the side of his foot, sending it sliding over toward the trash basket. There were prints on the linoleum from his boots, so he found a rag in a closet, placed it on the floor, and used his right foot to erase the marks. When he was satisfied that all was clean, he opened the door slightly and listened. The sound of the gunshot had been loud, despite the cushion, but the trailers on either side of Ricky Demarcian’s were both still dark, and elsewhere he could see the glow of TVs, could even hear what they were showing. He left the trailer, closing the door behind him, then disappeared into the night, pausing only at a gas station along the way to report a shot fired at Tranquility Pines, and a glimpse of what looked like an old Mustang speeding away from the scene.
Frank Merrick didn’t like people getting in his way, but he had a certain amount of respect for the private detective. In addition, killing him would create more problems than it would solve, but killing someone else with the detective’s gun would create just enough problems to keep him occupied, and only a few for Merrick.
Because Merrick knew that he was now entirely alone. He didn’t care. He had tired of the old lawyer and his careful questions sometime before, and Eldritch had made it clear when he came up to Portland after Merrick’s arrest that their professional relationship was now at an end. The private detective’s comments about Eldritch’s motives and, more to the point, about whoever had instructed the lawyer to aid Merrick, had only exacerbated his own doubts. It was time to finish this thing. There was still some business to be concluded down here, but then he would go northwest. He should have gone there long before now, but he had felt certain that some of the answers that he sought were in this small, coastal city. But he was no longer so sure, and Gilead beckoned.
Merrick took the duct tape and stuck the detective’s gun to the underside of the driver’s seat. He had liked the feel of it in his hands. It had been a long time since he had fired a gun, longer still since he had done so in anger. Now he had the taste for it again. He had been careful not to carry a weapon, just in case the cops came for him. He did not want to be incarcerated again. But the time had come to act, and the detective’s gun would be more than suitable for the work he had to do.
“It’s all right, honey,” Merrick whispered, as he left the light of the gas station and headed east once more. “Won’t be long now. Daddy’s coming.”
Chapter XXIV
I lost track of time. Hours became minutes, and minutes became hours. My skin itched constantly from the touch of the sacking, and the sense of impending suffocation was never far away. Occasional whispers emerged from the shadows, sometimes close by, and sometimes farther away. Once or twice I began to doze, but the tape across my mouth hindered my breathing and almost as soon as I fell asleep I would wake again, breathing heavily through my nose like a thoroughbred after a long race, my heart rate increasing, my head straining away from the pillow as I struggled to draw in more oxygen. Twice, I thought that something touched my neck before I awoke, and the contact was so cold that my skin burned. When that happened, I tried to work the burlap off, but Merrick had secured it well. By the time I heard the front door open and close, followed by the heavy, deliberate tread of footsteps upon the stairs, I was completely disoriented, but even with my senses confused I was aware of presences receding, moving away from me as the stranger approached.
Someone entered the bedroom. I felt body heat close to me and smelled Merrick. His fingers worked at the tape around my neck, and then the sack was removed and at last I was able to see again. Small white suns exploded in my field of vision, so that for a moment Merrick ’s features were indistinguishable to me. His face was a blank visage upon which I could paste whatever demon I chose, constructing an image of all that I feared. Then the spots before my eyes began to fade, and he was once again clear to see. He looked troubled and uncomfortable, no longer as assured as he had appeared when I had first awoken to find him by my bed, and his gaze drifted to the darker corners of the room. I noticed that he no longer stood with his back to the door. Instead, he seemed to be trying to keep it in sight, as though he were afraid to leave himself vulnerable to an approach from behind.
Merrick stared down at me, but he did not speak. He tugged at his lower lip with his left hand while he thought. There was no sign of my gun. Finally, he said: “I done something tonight that maybe I ought not to have done. It’s what it is, though, for good or ill. I got tired of waiting. Time has come to draw them out. It’s going to cause you some trouble, mark me, but you’ll get out of it. You’ll tell them what happened here, and they’ll believe you, in the end. In the meantime, word will spread, and they’ll come.”
Then Merrick did something strange. He walked slowly to one of the bedroom closets, my gun now visible where it was tucked into his belt, and rested his left hand against its slatted door, his right drawing the Smith 10. He seemed almost to be peering through the slats, as though convinced that someone was hidden inside. When at last he opened it, he did so warily, slowly easing it open with his left hand and using the barrel of the gun to explore the spaces between the jackets, shirts, and coats hanging within.