It was late afternoon before a guard finally came for Merrick. He felt half inclined to complain. Should it really take this long to let a free man go free? A ludicrously inefficient system, but he bit his tongue and followed the guard. It would all be behind him shortly. At a steel-caged door, he signed for his belongings. He changed into his suit and returned his prison blues. As he suspected, the suit needed to be tailored—loose at the waist, tight in the chest and shoulders. It offended his sartorial sensibilities, but at the same time it pleased him. As if it might come apart at the seams if he flexed. He looped his tie in the supercilious full Windsor that he favored and plucked a piece of lint from his lapel. He was already feeling more himself. Perhaps the clothes did make the man.
The custodian returned his wallet, a fountain pen, and the cheap Rolex knockoff that he’d been forced to wear in court—his Vacheron Constantin Tour de I’lle having long since been confiscated. God, how he missed that watch, but the knockoff would suffice until he got where he was going and could find a suitable replacement. He asked the time, then wound and reset it. It was almost five p.m.—how is that possible? He flipped through his leather billfold, empty apart from an expired driver’s license. He slipped it into the breast pocket of his suit nonetheless. Squared away, he moved to a final station, where he attempted to sign his release papers with his fountain pen, but its ink had long since desiccated. They handed him a bus ticket for New York City, twenty dollars in cash, and a check for fifty-seven dollars and twenty-three cents—the remaining balance on his commissary account. He endorsed the check and slid it back.
“Keep it,” Merrick said. “You need it more than I do.”
It felt right to tip them, and he wished he had more to give. The average man tipped to show his appreciation; the exceptional man overtipped to remind the world of its insignificance. After eight years, if Merrick had learned anything, it was that insignificance was the defining characteristic of everyone associated with this place. Imparting that lesson to them felt, in a small way, like repayment for all their many kindnesses. The guards looked dumbfounded, so he thrust his hand out and shook each one’s hand, clapping them on the shoulder as he did—a formality perhaps, but that was what one did at the conclusion of a business transaction.
“Farewell, gentlemen,” he said with a wave.
And with that, ten-plus hours after his exodus had begun, Charles Merrick finally stepped through the doors of Niobe Federal Prison and walked to the front gate, a free man.
For the last hour, each new road had been categorically the absolute last Gibson would drive. This was it, he’d tell himself, and then turn the corner and start down another. He was talking to himself at this point, an incoherent monologue about futility and stubbornness. Merrick was probably already out by now. But he didn’t stop. He drove leaning forward now, to rest his chin on the steering wheel. He would finish this one road, pull into a parking lot somewhere, and sleep in the back. After this one last road.
In a moment of perfect metaphor, the Stingray alarm sounded as he pulled up to the crossroads of a small town with a McDonald’s and a service station at its center. Gibson craned back in his seat to stare at it with the look of a man who flies halfway around the world only to bump into the guy who terrorized him in elementary school.
“No . . . ,” Gibson said. “Way.”
Then he did a happy dance in his seat that resembled an upright seizure more than anything and punched the steering wheel in celebration. The car behind him interrupted, honking for him to get a move on. Gibson made a right, pulled into the service station, and heard the signal diminish in intensity. Good—the four antennae spread across the roof of the van were already doing their jobs, triangulating the signal and pinpointing its direction. The alarm was telling him this wasn’t it, which left two possibilities. He scrambled back to the laptop in its dock, his exhaustion forgotten in an adrenaline surge, and scrolled through the data.
There was the phone number, pinging away.
The Stingray led him out of town, such as it was, down a long featureless road. He followed it for a mile until the signal began to weaken, then doubled back and crawled along the side of the road with his hazards on, listening to the tone of the alarm and looking for a turnoff that he might have missed. There wasn’t one; he saw only solid woodland in both directions. But the signal was definitely coming from the east. He consulted his map and found a road that ran perpendicular to the one he was on. He went to the crossroad and took a right.
The signal was stronger now, and the Stingray chirped away happily. The homes here all had a healthy footprint, with driveways spaced out every hundred yards or so. He pulled up at a plain white ranch-style home. A unmowed lawn, but otherwise it looked unremarkable. He checked the laptop. No mistake. The cell phone was inside.
Gibson stared at the house, trying to decide what to do now. He’d been so focused on finding the house that he hadn’t considered what to do if he actually did. Nothing wrong with the direct approach, he reckoned, so he went to the door and knocked. He waited and then knocked harder. He rang the bell. Finally, he went back down the walk and made his way around the side of the house, checking the windows, which all had the shades drawn. Around back, he came upon an elevated deck. At the foot of the stairs, a dead bird lay peacefully in the tall grass. He stepped over it and went up slowly, pausing by a rusted grill to look for movement through the sliding glass door. Nothing. The only other furniture on the deck was an old aluminum chaise longue with green-and-white webbing. A metal bucket that might once have held a citronella candle was now an overflow of crushed-out cigarettes. Mixed with rainwater, over time the butts had stained the deck a soggy yellow. Empty beer and liquor bottles lay nearby where they’d been discarded.
Cupping his hands to the glass, Gibson peered into the dark house. The room was a combination kitchen and living area, divided by a kitchen island. In one corner sat a desk and an office chair with a computer and precarious stacks of papers. In the center of the room stood a wide leather armchair, and in the chair, a pasty white man in boxer shorts stared blankly at an enormous flat-screen television. The television was off. The man was emaciated, bones propping up his skin like an abandoned circus tent. Gibson rapped on the glass to get the man’s attention but saw no movement apart from a slow, steady blinking.
Gibson tested the door, found it unlocked, and slid it open. A rancid, flatulent smell stung his eyes. He asked if he could come in but got no answer. He weighed his options. Everything about the man unnerved him, far more than if it had been some burly thug with gun. He felt a superstitious tickle at the back of his neck, as if he were trespassing in a graveyard. But he’d come a long way for this, and he commanded himself to get it together.
“I’m going to come in,” he announced and stepped across the threshold. Still no response. If the man in the chair had a gun, Gibson would be a dead burglar. It wouldn’t take a jury an hour to exonerate his killer. He left the door open for ventilation and as a potential escape route.