He nodded. “What’s going on?” Turning to Potter, who was still on the ground, “Why did you do that?”
Potter didn’t say anything.
“He hates homosexuals,” I said.
“Oh, you’re one of those kind? Just accept who you are and get on with your life.”
“Who the fuck do you think—” Potter began, rising to his feet.
Merrill stepped forward and backhanded him back down to the ground.
“I just want you to know, I didn’t hit you because you’re gay. Now, tell me the truth or I’ll turn your ass out and everybody at PCI will make you their little bitch.”
Potter looked down, but didn’t say anything.
“Got it?” Merrill asked.
Shoulders shaking, tremors running the length of his body, Potter began to cry.
“Ah, shit, man, don’t do that.”
I found myself studying Merrill again. I did it often. He was one the few people on the planet who consistently surprised me. He integrated so many personas, all of which he could slip into with the ease of a veteran actor doing a one-man show.
I started to say something, but froze as Potter reached behind his black zipper shirt and came out with a gun. Getting to his feet, he said, “Now tell me who’s the little bitch?”
“Still you,” Merrill said.
Stepping toward Merrill and pressing the gun into his forehead, he said, “Say goodnight, bitch.”
“Goodnight, bitch,” Merrill said, and bitch slapped Potter so hard his body whipped around with his head.
In the split second I was waiting to see if Potter was going to shoot, I realized he no longer had the gun.
“Gay or not, I just can’t let some chubby cheek redneck motherfucker point a gun at me and not bitch slap his fat ass.”
“And him wearing a zipper shirt,” I said.
“Now, bitch, tell me why you killed Menge. Was it because he wouldn’t go down on you or because he would or because they videoed you working out your sexual frustration on him?”
Potter didn’t say anything.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Merrill said. “We seen the movie you starred in.”
Potter’s eyes grew wide and he started to say something, but stopped himself.
“May I go now?” the little guy asked me.
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Why?”
“Because I’m tired of thinking of you as Little Guy, and I may need a statement from you.”
“For the police? No way. You don’t stay in the closet by being in the paper.”
I thought about it. There was no way we could make a case without him, but there was also no way I was going to be responsible for outing him.
“You can go. Just be more careful.”
“And,” Merrill added, “a little more selective about who you blow in an empty park at night.”
47
On Saturday, after cramming most of my stuff and a fraction of Susan’s into our new home, Merrill, Sharon Hawkins, Susan, and I went to the FSU-North Carolina State football game at Doak Campbell Stadium.
The stadium was packed, the crowd wild, a garnet and gold sea of pure adrenaline-powered energy. Several times throughout the game I got caught up in the moment, in the thrill of the drive, in the suspense of the outcome, and forgot about crime and criminals, murder and death, of blood flowing from mortal wounds.
Though it was an evening game, the sun was still up through the first quarter, and I could see the top of the capitol just above the stadium wall to my right. As the darkness grew and huge moths, like fireflies, began to dart around, the temperature dropped and all I could see of the capitol was the red flashing light on its roof.
At first Sharon didn’t seem to know how to act. She sat stiffly and flinched as the fans around her yelled at the players, the refs, the coaches, and each other, but by the middle of the second quarter she was one of the rowdy crowd.
“I’ve never been to a game before. This is wild. I love it. Thanks for bringing me.”
Though her mouth was right at my ear, she had to yell because of the roar of the crowd and the announcer’s booming voice, who, though he had the most powerful PA system in the South, still felt it necessary to shout.
“You’re welcome.”
“My life’s been way too sheltered,” she said.
“Think of all the possibilities.”
She smiled, but I could tell she wasn’t thinking about them. She was still convinced that all this was just a pleasant dream in the middle of a horrible life that resembled a nightmare.
It was an exciting game, though FSU lost by three points. Merrill and Susan didn’t talk much and she grew icy toward him when he talked about Anna, which was often. Just hearing her name made her absence from my life all the more obvious, emphasizing how much I missed her.
Near the end of the fourth quarter, Sharon saw one of the Pine County Commissioners. Her enjoyment of the game came to an abrupt end, and by the time we reached Wings and Rings she was shaking, her unfocused eyes gazing into the distance.
“They’ll come after me,” she said. Her words were quiet, but confident, spoken with the certainty of fate.
We were all silent a moment. Susan’s eyes were wide, full of fear and understanding.
“One can only hope,” Merrill said.
“You’re safe,” I said.
She gave me her laugh of futility, and I realized it was the first time I had heard it since we left Pine County.
“You are,” Merrill said. “This’ll be over soon.”
All around us, the beer flowed like water from a natural spring and I felt myself wanting to dive in, while Buffalo chicken wings and onion rings were downed by Seminole-clad college students who were as uproarious in defeat as in victory. We sat in a booth at the very back, but we still had to yell to hear each other over the music and the crowd.
“Are you in danger?” Susan asked me.
Merrill smiled. “His parish full of thugs, rapists, murderers. He in danger every time he pass through the front gate.”
There had always been tension between Susan and Merrill, but lately it had intensified—probably because they were seeing so much more of each other.
Ignoring Merrill, Susan kept her eyes on me, her face taking on the pallor of morning sickness. She started to say something but stopped.
“And I’m only making it worse,” Sharon said. “Y’all shouldn’t’ve taken me into your lives. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. Maybe killed.”
“No maybe about it,” Merrill said.
I didn’t say anything. I knew that the kind of man Merrill was wouldn’t let him not respond to what Hawkins had done to him. I also knew he knew how I felt about vengeance and the need for true justice and compassion, and I respected him too much to tell him again.
“You’re right. They won’t stop until they kill us.”
“I kill them first,” Merrill said, “they got no choice but to stop.” He looked over at me. “When they come after us—which make it self-defense.”
“You can’t be serious,” Susan said to Merrill, then turned to me. “He’s not serious, is he? I mean, you’re in the business of punishing murderers. You can’t just kill someone.”
“I’m in the business of keeping inmates captive against their will,” he said. “But that’s got nothing to do with this.”
She looked at me. “You can’t just let him kill someone.”
“I look like I could stop him?”
“You could try. You could talk to him.”
“Merrill knows how I feel, and I understand how he does.”
“What about right and wrong? What about the law?”
“Two different things,” Merrill said.
Susan studied Merrill for a long moment, then looked back over at me as if I were a stranger.
In the midst of everything, I made a mental note to call my sponsor.
“What would you do if it were you?” she
asked me.
“Protect myself and my loved ones as best I could, but it’s not me, and it’s too easy for people to say what they’d do when they’ve never been put in a remotely similar situation. I don’t think you understand the kind of people we’re dealing with—that we deal with every day.”
“But you don’t have to be like them to deal with them, do you?”
Sharon looked at Susan with surprise. “These guys are nothing like Howard and Mike.”
She thought about it. “Look at what Dad’s doing. He’s working hard to keep Martinez in prison, and he’s not breaking the law or worse—take it into his own hands—to do it.”
A couple of tables away, a heated argument over a decision Bobby Bowden had made in the fourth quarter turned into a shouting match, and a pitcher of beer was turned over, splattering the jeans of those who sat nearby as it hit the floor.
“And what Dad or he would do,” Susan said, not even using Merrill’s name, “is not what I’d expect from you. I thought you were different.”
“He is,” Merrill said.
She didn’t say anything.
“You know he is. He the reason I’m not over in Pine County right now with a big stick. One thing you can count on, he in something, he’s gonna figure out the right way to be in it.”
“Like helping his friend,” Sharon said. “Protecting me—and you.”
“I don’t need you two to explain my husband to me.”
Sharon said, “If I just take off, who knows, maybe they’ll never find me.”
“You can go wherever you want to,” Merrill said, “soon as they not a threat to you.”
“Well, I’ve got to go,” Susan said. “Right now.”
She made a move to slide out of the booth. I got up and let her out.
“Later,” Merrill said.
“Stay with Merrill,” I said to Sharon. “Don’t run off. This won’t take much longer.”
Susan didn’t wait on me and when I reached the car, she was already inside.
“Why’d you get so upset?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“Please tell me.”
“I don’t know . . . I just got so scared. And then I got so angry that he thinks he knows you better than I do.”
“I was just trying to be honest with you,” I said. “I do believe in compassion, but . . .”
“Are you becoming like the criminals you work with?”
“I’m trying not to, but . . . I don’t know. All I can do is try to figure it out as I go along. I don’t have a manual. I know there’s a time for mercy, there is, but there’s also a time for justice.”
“In this life?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Why else would your dad and I do what we do? I still believe one day God will somehow make every crooked place straight, but for now, she’s left it up to us. I’ve always equated justice with fighting for the powerless, the disenfranchised, and though Merrill is anything but weak, there’s something about what the Hawkins did to him that reminds me of the white supremacy of the Old South, of lynchings, and the corruptness of absolute power.”
She nodded. “I can see why you would see it that way, but you have some blinders on when it comes to Merrill.”
I thought about it for a moment. “I’m sure I do.”
“Just tell me you’re not like him. Tell me you couldn’t murder someone. Tell me prison hasn’t changed you that much.”
“You know what I’m like.”
“I thought I did.”
“You’ve known me a long time, you think I could commit premeditated murder?”
She shook her head.
Susan’s car was cold, the breath coming from her rigid body forming small clouds as she talked.
“But you’re just going to let him kill those people—or get killed trying to?”
“I don’t let Merrill do anything.”
“I don’t hear you trying to talk him out of it.”
She was right. I hadn’t been.
“Do you not care if he kills them?”
I thought about it. I wasn’t sure I did—at least not in self-defense, but was that really what it was? Was it really all that different? What had happened to me? At one time I had been convinced that I was supposed to extend compassion to everyone regardless of their response. I believed it my duty to minister mercy—whether or not it was received. Now I seemed to be picking and choosing who was worthy. Were power-hungry sociopaths like Hawkins exempt?
“Think about what you preach,” she continued. “What you stand for. Your message is one of compassion.”
“And justice.”
“You can’t think if he kills them justice is served. “You can’t be this big a hypocrite.”
I let out a harsh, involuntary laugh. “Don’t be so sure.”
48
I met my sponsor at a coffee shop in Panama City the next morning.
His name was Dennis, but everybody called him Den. He was a retired cop from New York with a lot of time in the program and a decade completely clean. He was tough, direct, and always available—though I seldom called him.
“Been so long I heard from you, I figured you for dead.”
I loved the way he talked, not only his accent and the speed his words shot out, but his speech patterns. Just hearing his voice made me feel better.
I told him some of what was going on, but more of how I was handling it, the thoughts and feelings I was having, and some of the things I had done.
“You drinking?” he asked.
I shook my head.
He studied me for a long moment.
“Going to meetings?”
“Not regularly.”
“You’ve never gone regularly. You goin’ at all?”
“Not lately, no.”
He nodded to himself as if I had confirmed his suspicions.
Meetings had never been a big part of my recovery process. I went sporadically at best, but it had never been a big issue between us. As long as I wasn’t drinking he was okay with it.
“Self-reliant bastard, aren’t you? Works for you, though.”
“Some of the time.”
“Most of the time. How close you to drinking?”
I shook my head. “Nowhere close.”
“Why I don’t press the meetings. Still, be better you go.”
I nodded.
Our coffee came, and we went through the ritual of preparing and drinking it. As a general rule no one drank more coffee or smoked more cigarettes than recovering alcoholics—yet another way in which I was a misfit.
“So you’re not drinking?”
“Acting out in other ways.”
“Rage and what not?”
I nodded.
Den was a large man with big fleshy paws and an enormous balding head. As if to make up for the hair missing on the top of his head, he wore the sides and back too long, and I loved that about him.
As usual, he had on a short-sleeved Hawaiian-style shirt unbuttoned and open, a wife beater visible beneath, gray chest hair bursting out of the top of it.
“This is not so much about sobriety as serenity,” I said. “I feel so hollow. My thinking’s all messed up.”
“And your spiritual life’s for shit.”
“Exactly,” I said, and I realized that just talking to him was helping.
“This case won’t go on forever.”
“There’ll always be another, and I wasn’t doing so good before it started.”
“It possible you expectin’ too much from yourself?”
I gave him a wry smile. “That’s usually not a problem.”
“I know better. You got a lot of shit on you right now and you’re still not drinking. Start there. That’s no small thing. Second, so what you smack around a rapist? So the fuck what?”
“It’s not just that. I’m slipping. I can feel myself sliding back into somewhere I don’t want to be.”
He nodded. “I understand that, and I realize you got to ge
t your head right. I’m just sayin’ lighten up on yourself a little. So you ain’t a fuckin’ saint, so the fuck what? Who the fuck is? You’re a cop.”
“I’m a chaplain.”
“You’re both. So you’re actin’ more like a cop at the moment. You’ll be doin’ that other shit again soon enough. I’m not sayin’ you aren’t fuckin’ up. I’m sure you got shit you got to get straight—especially in your head. I’m just tryin’ to put all this shit in perspective for you.”
I nodded. “You have. Thank you.”
“How long it been you taken some time off?” he asked.
“I went to the FSU game this weekend.”
“I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout a Saturday. You’re supposed to take those off. When’s the last vacation you had?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe rage’s not the only thing you subbing for booze.”
I nodded. He was right. My approach to my work had become compulsive.
“I want you to go on retreat.”
“Okay.”
“Don’t sit there tell me okay, you don’t mean it,” he said.
I smiled again.
“I set it up, you’re goin’.”
“As soon as the case is over.”
“Don’t fuck with me.”
“I’m serious.”
“I’ll set it up. Go ahead and pack a bag now. Soon as you clear the case you’re on your way.”
49
DeLisa Lopez was scared.
Her face was pale, her eyes bloodshot, and it was obvious she had not been sleeping or eating. She had not missed work the last few days because she was sick. She wore loose clothes that hung off her and a big, open coat, in which she tried to hide.
When I had stopped by her apartment after work earlier in the afternoon, she cracked the door just as far as the chain would allow and peered out at me warily. After convincing her to let me in and seeing her condition, I talked her into letting me take her to Rudy’s for something to eat.
On the drive over, I had confronted her, and she had confessed.
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