“You sure you live here alone?” he asked.
I nodded.
“It don’t feel like you’re alone,” he said. There was no hint of a threat, no sense that he felt I had lied to him, only a deeper unease at something he did not understand. He closed the closet door softly and walked back to the bed.
“I got nothing against you personally,” he said. “We’re even now. I believe you do what you think is right, but you got in my way, and I couldn’t have that. Worse, I think you’re a man who lets his conscience bother him, and conscience is just a fly buzzing in your head. It’s a nuisance, a distraction. I got no time for it. Never did.”
He slowly raised the gun. The muzzle regarded me blackly, like an empty, unblinking eye.
“I could kill you now. You know that. Wouldn’t cost me much more than a drop of sorrow. But I’m going to let you live.”
I breathed out hard, unable to suppress a feeling that bordered on gratitude. I was not going to die, not at this man’s hands, not today. Merrick knew the sound for what it was.
“That’s right, you’ll live, but you remember this, and don’t you forget it, now. I had you in a mortal grip, and I set you free. I know the kind of man you are, conscience or no conscience. You’ll be all fired up about how I came into your house, how I hurt you, humiliated you in your own bed. You’ll want to strike back, but I’m warning you that the next time I have you under the gun, I won’t waste a breath before I pull the trigger. All of this will be over soon enough, and then I’ll be gone. I’ve left you with enough to be thinking about. You save your anger. You’ll have cause enough to use it again.”
He put away the gun and reached, once more, for his little satchel. He removed a small glass bottle and a yellow rag, then unscrewed the cap from the bottle and doused the rag with its contents. I knew the smell. It wasn’t bad, and I could almost taste the sweetness of the liquid. I shook my head, my eyes growing wider as Merrick leaned over me, the rag in his right hand, the stink of the chloroform already making my head swim. I tried to buck my body, to lash out at him with my legs, but it was no use. He gripped my hair, holding my head still, and pressed the rag against my nose.
And the last words I heard were:
“It’s a mercy, Mr. Parker.”
I opened my eyes. Light streamed through the drapes. There were needles piercing my skull. I attempted to sit up, but my head felt too heavy. My hands were free, and the tape was gone from my mouth. I could taste blood upon my lips where its removal had torn the skin. I leaned over and reached for the water glass on the night table. My vision was blurred, and I almost knocked it to the floor. I waited for the room to stop spinning, and for the twin images before me to come together before I tried again. My hand closed on it and I raised it to my lips. It was full. Merrick must have refilled it, then left it within easy reach. I drank deeply, spilling water on the pillow, then lay there for a time. I closed my eyes and tried to quell the sickness that was rising. Eventually, I felt strong enough to roll across the bed until I fell on the floor. The boards were cool against my face. I crawled to the bathroom and rested my head on the toilet bowl. After a minute or two I vomited, then fell once more into a poisoned sleep on the tiles.
The sound of the doorbell woke me. The texture of the light had changed. It must have been past noon. I stood, supporting myself against the bathroom wall until I was sure that my legs would not buckle beneath me, then staggered to the chair where I had left my clothes the night before. I pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, threw a hooded top on to ward off the cold, then tentatively walked barefoot down the stairs to the door. Through the glass, I could see three figures standing outside, and there were two unfamiliar cars in my drive. One was a Scarborough P.D. cruiser. I could tell by the colors.
I opened the door. Conlough and Frederickson, the two detectives from Scarborough who had interviewed Merrick, were on my doorstep, along with a third man whose name I did not know, but whose face I remembered from Merrick’s interrogation. It was the man who had been talking to the FBI man, Pender. Behind them, Ben Ronson, one of the Scarborough cops, leaned against his cruiser. Usually, Ben and I would exchange a few words if we passed each other on the road, but now his face was still and without expression.
“Mr. Parker,” said Conlough. “Mind if we come in? You remember Detective Frederickson? We have a few questions we’d like to ask you.” He indicated the third man. “This here is Detective Hansen from the state police over in Gray. I guess you could say he’s in charge.”
Hansen was a fit-looking man with very black hair and a dark shadow across his cheeks and chin that spoke of too many years of using an electric razor. His eyes were more green than blue, and his posture, relaxed yet poised, suggested a wildcat about to spring on easy prey. He was wearing a nicely cut dark blue jacket. His shirt was very white, and his dark blue tie was striped with gold.
I stepped back and allowed them to enter. I noticed that none of them turned their backs on me. Outside, Ronson’s hand had drifted casually toward his gun.
“Kitchen okay?” I said.
“Sure,” said Conlough. “After you.”
They followed me to the kitchen. I sat down at the breakfast table. Ordinarily, I would have remained standing so as not to give them any advantage, but I still felt weak and uncertain on my legs.
“You don’t look so good,” said Frederickson.
“I had a bad night.”
“Want to tell us about it?”
“You want to tell me why you’re here first?”
But I knew. Merrick.
Conlough took a seat across from me while the others stayed standing. “Look,” he said, “we can clear all of this up here and now if you’ll just be straight with us. Otherwise”-he glanced meaningfully in Hansen’s direction-“it could get awkward.”
I should have asked for a lawyer, but a lawyer would have meant a trip there and then to the Scarborough P.D., or maybe to Gray, or even Augusta. A lawyer would have meant hours in a cell or an interrogation room, and I wasn’t sure that I was well enough to face that yet. I was going to need a lawyer eventually, but for now I was in my own home, at my own kitchen table, and I wasn’t about to leave unless I absolutely had to.
“Frank Merrick broke into my home last night,” I said. “He cuffed me to my bed”-I showed them the marks on my wrists-“then he gagged me, blindfolded me, and took my gun. I don’t know how long he left me like that. When he came back, he told me that he’d done something that he shouldn’t have, then chloroformed me. When I came to, the cuffs and tape were gone. So was Merrick. I think he still has my gun.”
Hansen leaned back against the kitchen counter. His arms were folded across his body.
“That’s quite a story,” he said.
“What gun did he take?” asked Conlough.
“Smith amp;Wesson, ten millimeter.”
“What load?”
“Cor-Bon. One-eighty grams.”
“Kinda tame for a ten,” said Hansen. “You worried about the frame cracking?”
I shook my head in disbelief.
“You’re kidding, right? The hell does that matter now?”
Hansen shrugged.
“Just asking.”
“It’s a myth. You happy?”
He didn’t reply.
“You got the ammo box for the Cor-Bons?” asked Conlough.
I knew where this was headed. I suppose I knew from the moment I saw the three detectives on my doorstep and, had I not felt so sick, I might almost have admired the circularity of what I suspected Merrick had done. He had used the gun on someone, but he had kept the weapon. If the bullet could be retrieved, then it could be compared with the box of rounds in my possession. It mirrored exactly the manner in which he had been linked to the killing of Barton Riddick in Virginia. Bullet matching might have been discredited but, as he had promised, he had still managed to do enough to land me in a lot of trouble. It was Merrick ’s little joke at my expense. I did not know how they had traced it back to me so quickly, but I suspected that had been Merrick ’s doing as well.