“Tell her my other mommy can’t be my mommy anymore, so I need her to be my mommy all the time instead of just once in a while.”
I nodded. “I’ll tell her that,” I said. I reached my hand tentatively toward her, not sure whether she’d pull away. She did not, and I pulled her head toward me and kissed her forehead. “For sure, I’ll tell her. I’m sure she’ll be very worried about you and will do everything she can.”
“Also,” Katie said, “I need a daddy. I didn’t have an extra one of those.”
Was she simply in shock? Was she traumatized? Or was she the bravest little five-year-old I’d ever encountered? Or was it a bit of both?
“I’ll tell her,” I said.
“Let’s hit the road,” Merker said behind me. I touched Katie softly on the head, looked one last time into her sad eyes, and turned to face him. He had a real gun in his hand this time, not the one he’d used to stun me. Fifty thousand volts were bad, but they were preferable to one real bullet.
He led me out to his blue pickup, a rust-eaten twenty-year-old Ford that sat up high on oversized tires. Four-wheel drive, by the look of it. I hauled myself up into the passenger side as Merker settled in behind the wheel. He slid the keys into the ignition, turned it, and I wondered if I’d misread the nameplate on the side, and that we’d actually climbed aboard a John Deere. He tapped the accelerator a couple of times and the engine roared like an oversized tractor. He put the column shift into reverse, but held his foot on the brake and gave me a look.
“Let’s just be clear,” he said. “You try anything stupid, you try to run, you try to get the cops, I call Leo, and that kid dies. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” I said.
“We’re going to do this thing, we’re going to find out where my money is, and when I get it, stop by a playground, let the girl go.”
“But not me. You hand me over to Mrs. Gorkin and the Westinghouse twins.”
Merker shrugged. “I made a deal with her. What can I say?”
“You’re going to give her twenty-five thousand? Like you said?”
Merker’s cheek poked out as he moved his tongue around, maybe trying to keep himself from grinning. “Sure.” He wiggled his nose some more. “That one, Luddite or whatever her name was, seemed to take a fancy to Leo. He’s never been that great in the ladies department. This’ll be a nice treat for him.”
He let his foot off the brake, backed the truck onto the street, leaving Trixie’s car in the driveway. “So where are we going?”
I gave him directions to the highway that would take us west out of the city. Once we took the Oakwood exit, I’d be able to get us to the Clayton Correctional Facility. I’d never been in it, but had driven by it enough times when we lived out that way to know where it was.
Once we were on the highway, and I didn’t have to navigate for Merker, I was quiet. I glanced over occasionally, but Merker was usually preoccupied with wiggling his nose or conducting digital explorations of it. He almost never had both hands on the wheel. I could see, sticking out of his front jeans pocket, what looked like the handle of a knife. A switchblade, most likely.
I was surprised when, after ten minutes or so, he actually spoke. “You ain’t got much to say,” he said.
“Just thinking,” I said.
“Oh. About what?”
“I guess I’m wondering what kind of person would kill a little girl’s parents.”
“They weren’t her parents,” Merker corrected me. “That was her aunt and her aunt’s husband.” So there.
“But they were raising Katie like she was their own child.”
“Yeah, well, that wasn’t my decision, now was it,” Merker said. “That was your friend Trixie’s decision.” He shook his head derisively. “She has an awful lot to answer for, you know.”
He looked up the highway. “Fuck.” Traffic was bunching up. Brake lights were flashing on ahead of us. “What time is it?”
I glanced at my watch. “It’s only ten thirty-five. We have lots of time.”
But Merker wasn’t a patient man. He made a fist out of his nose-picking hand and bounced it angrily off the steering wheel. “Do you see an accident? I don’t even see an accident. Everyone’s just fucking slowing down.”
“The Oakwood exit is just up ahead,” I said. “Take it easy.”
“Take it easy? Does somebody owe you half a mill? Maybe if they did you’d be a bit tense too.”
“Half a mill?” I said, innocently. “You just told Mrs. Gorkin it was a hundred thousand.”
Merker blinked. “Yeah, well, I forgot a bit of it,” he said. He steered the truck over to the right lane without signaling, cut some motorists off. Someone laid on the horn and Merker held up a finger to the window, then reached into his jacket, where I knew he was touching the grip of his handgun, wondering whether to pull it out and use it as a traffic calmer.
Never again would I honk at anyone.