Conlough: What’s your interest in Rebecca Clay?
Merrick: None, beyond who her daddy is.
C: What’s her father to you?
M: He treated my little girl. Now she’s gone. I want to find out where she is. C: You think you can do that by threatening a woman? Real big guy, huh, stalking a defenseless woman?
M: I didn’t threaten anyone. I didn’t stalk anyone. I just wanted to ask her some questions. C: So you do that by trying to bust into her house, breaking her window?
M: I didn’t try to bust into her house, and the window was an accident. I’ll pay for the damage C: Who put you up to this?
M: Nobody. I don’t need no one to tell me that what happened ain’t right. C: What’s not right?
M: That my daughter could disappear and nobody give a rat’s ass about finding her. Frederickson: Maybe your daughter ran away. From what we hear, she was having problems. M: I told her I’d look out for her. She had no cause to run away. C: You were in jail. How were you going to look out for her from a cell?
M: (silent)
F: Who gave you the car?
M: A lawyer.
F: Which lawyer?
M: The lawyer Eldritch, down in Massachusetts.
F: Why?
M: He’s a good man. He thinks I got the right to ask questions. He got me out of trouble in Virginia, then helped me when I came back up here.
C: So he gives you a car out of the goodness of his heart. What is he, St. Vincent de Paul’s lawyer?
M: Maybe you should ask him.
C: Don’t worry, we will.
“We’ll talk to the lawyer,” said O’Rourke.
“You won’t get much from him,” I said.
“You’ve met him?”
“Oh yeah. He’s old-school too.”
“How old?”
“So old they built the school out of wattle and daub.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Pretty much what Merrick just said.”
“You believe him?”
“That he’s a good guy who gives away cars to deserving causes? No. Still, he said that Merrick had been one of his clients, and there’s no law against loaning a car to your client.”
I didn’t tell O’Rourke that Eldritch had another client, one who seemed to be covering Merrick’s tab. I figured he could find that out for himself.
A call came through from the evidence technician. Merrick’s car was clean. There were no weapons, no incriminating papers, nothing. Frederickson emerged from the interview room to consult with O’Rourke and the FBI man, Pender. The man who had been talking with Pender listened in, but said nothing. His eyes flicked to me, regarded me for a moment, then returned to Frederickson. I didn’t like what passed between us with that look. O’Rourke asked me if there was anything that I thought we should put to Merrick. I suggested asking him if he was working alone, or if he had brought other men with him. O’Rourke seemed puzzled, but agreed to suggest the question to Frederickson.
F: Ms. Clay has taken out a court order against you. Do you understand what that means?
M: I understand. It means I can’t go near her no more, else you put my ass back in jail. F: That’s right. You going to abide by that order? You don’t plan to, and you can save us all some time right now M: I’ll abide by it.
C: Maybe you’ll think about leaving the state too. We’d like you to do that. M: I can’t promise nothing on that front. I’m a free man. I done my time. Got a right to go where I choose.
C: That include hanging around houses up in Falmouth?
M: I ain’t never been to Falmouth. Hear it’s real nice, though. I like being by the water. C: Car like yours was seen around there last night.
M: Lots of cars like mine. Red is a real popular color.
C: Nobody said it was a red car.
M: (silent)
C: You hear me? How come you knew it was a red car?
M: Car like mine, what else would it be? If ’n it was a blue car, or a green car, then it wouldn’t be like mine. Have to be a red car to be like mine, just the way you said it. F: You loan your car out to other people, Mr. Merrick?
M: No, I don’t.
F: So if we find out that it was your car—and we can do that, you know; we can take casts, canvass witnesses—then it would have to be you behind the wheel, right?
M: I guess so, but since I wasn’t there, it’s moot.
F: Moot?
M: Yeah, you know what “moot” means, Officer. Don’t need me to explain it to you. F: Who are the other men with you?
M: (confused) Other men? The hell you talking about?
F: We know you’re not here alone. Who did you bring with you? Who’s helping you? You’re not doing all this without others.
M: I always work alone.
C: And what kind of work would that be?
M: (smiling) Problem solving. I’m a lateral thinker.
C: You know, I don’t think you’re being as cooperative as you should be. M: I’m answering your questions, ain’t I?
F: Maybe you’ll answer them better after a couple of nights in jail. M: You can’t do that.
C: Are you telling us what we can and can’t do? Listen, you may have been a big shot once upon a time, but that doesn’t count for anything up here.
M: You got no more cause to hold me. I told you I’d abide by that order. F: We think you need some time to reflect on what you’ve been doing, to, uh, meditate on your sins.
M: I’m done talking to you. I want to call me a lawyer.
That was it. The interrogation was over. Merrick was given access to a phone. He called Eldritch who, it emerged, had taken the Maine bar exam, along with its equivalents in New Hampshire and Vermont. He told Merrick not to answer any more questions, and arrangements were made to transfer Merrick to the Cumberland County Jail, since Scarborough no longer had holding cells of its own.
“The lawyer won’t be able to get him out until Monday morning at the earliest,” said O’Rourke.
“The judges do like to keep their weekends clear.”
Even if Merrick was charged, it was likely that Eldritch would arrange bail for him if it was still in the interests of Eldritch’s other client that Merrick should be free, just as it seemed to be in O’Rourke’s interests. The only person whose interests might not be well served by Merrick’s freedom was Rebecca Clay.
“I have some people keeping watch over Ms. Clay,” I told O’Rourke. “She wants to cut them loose, but I think she may need to reconsider, just until we get a sense of how Merrick reacts to all this.”
“Who are you using?”
I shifted awkwardly in my seat.
“The Fulcis, and Jackie Garner.”
O’Rourke laughed, attracting surprised glances from the men around him.
“No way! That’s like using a pair of undercover elephants, and their ringmaster.”
“Well, I kind of wanted him to see them. The object of the exercise was to keep him away.”
“Hell, they’d keep me away. Probably kept the birds away too. You really do pick entertaining friends.”
Yeah, I thought, but he didn’t know the half of it. The really entertaining ones had just arrived. Chapter XIV
T he streets were thick with buses by the time I made it back from Scarborough to the Cumberland County Civic Center: yellow school buses, Peter Pan Trailways, in fact just about anything that had wheels and could accommodate more than six people. The Pirates were on a roll. Under coach Kevin Dineen they were at the top of the Atlantic Division of the AHL’s Eastern Conference. Earlier in the week they had beaten their nearest rivals, the Hartford Wolf Pack, 7-4. Now it was the turn of the Springfield Falcons and it looked like about five thousand fans had made their way to the Civic Center for the game.