Line of Duty

by Terri Blackstock

  There was no answer. She knocked, then banged on the door.

  Finally, she heard Ashley’s aggravated voice on the other side. “Who is it?”

  “Jill,” she called. “Ashley, please open the door!”

  There was a long hesitation.

  “Ashley! Come on, let me in. Please!”

  Finally, she heard the bolt clicking, and the door came open. Ashley didn’t wait to greet her. As Jill stepped inside, she watched Ashley retreat from the room and head into one of the bedrooms.

  Jill followed her.

  “Ashley, I’ve looked all over for you. Where have you been?” She caught up to the girl and turned her around.

  Ashley had black makeup streaking her wet face, and as Jill reached for her, she crumpled into sobs.

  “Sweet Ashley,” Jill said, crushing her against her. “I’m so happy I found you. Honey, it’s going to be all right.”

  Ashley just wept her heart out as Jill held her.

  After a while, Ashley pulled back and wiped her face on her sleeve. She hadn’t expected Jill to hold her like that, as if she had some personal stake in her life.

  As if she actually loved her.

  That would be too good to be true. Ashley had barged in on her, after all, and practically forced herself on the woman. They were strangers, really. Why would Jill care so much?

  She thought of her mother’s prayer.

  . . . send her godly people who can love and guide her.

  What would her mother have said if she’d known about the pills she had almost taken? It would break her heart, she knew.

  It would break Jill’s, too.

  “I’m not leaving you here, Ashley. I want you to pack up whatever you need and come back to my house.”

  “That’s crazy,” Ashley said. “You hardly even know me. I’ve never even met Dan. And Clara—”

  “Don’t worry about Clara. She’s changing, Ashley. And she’s been worried about you. I think she regrets the fight you two had.” She took Ashley’s hand. “Come on, Ashley. Please. What do you need? I’ll help you pack.”

  She turned to the closet, and as she did, her gaze swept the bed. She saw the pills scattered across the dark green comforter.

  Ashamed, Ashley went to the bed and started picking them up.

  “Ashley, what are those?”

  “Aspirin,” she said. “I had a headache, and I spilled the bottle.”

  Jill took one of them, turned it over in her hand. “That’s not an aspirin, Ashley.”

  Ashley didn’t have the energy or will to convince her. “What do you care? It’s my life.”

  “Your life has impact on others, honey.”

  She wasn’t sure why that comment amused her, but she breathed a mirthless laugh. “Oh, yeah? Whose?”

  She could almost see the wheels turning in Jill’s mind, as if she racked her brain for an answer. “How about all those grieving loved ones of Icon victims?”

  Ashley hadn’t expected that one. “How does my life affect them?”

  Jill took the bag from her hands. “Ashley, the FBI interviewed me yesterday about the morning of the explosions. I told them you had seen the actual bomb. It turns out you’re the only one living who saw it. They want to interview you, honey. They think you might be able to tell them something that will help them catch the killer.”

  She was right. That would make a difference to those who grieved. “Really? You’re not just making that up?”

  “No. I’ll take you there right now. It could make a difference.”

  Ashley looked at the bag Jill clutched. She would flush them, she knew. But she supposed she could get more where she’d gotten those.

  But not now. There was time for suicide later—after she’d helped put the killer behind bars.

  Ashley glanced in the mirror. Black makeup still streaked her face. She really did look like a vampire. “Just let me take a quick shower and change,” she said. “I want them to take me seriously.”

  “Okay, honey,” Jill said. “I’ll wait right here.”

  Chapter Eighty-Three

  Stan heard the back door opening, and he backed into the bushes, drew his weapon, and waited.

  Merritt loped out, whistling. He wore sunglasses, a pair of sweatpants, and a baggy T-shirt.

  Stan watched as he headed for the pickup.

  He was going to have to act. No way could he let this man get away.

  He stepped out of the forest. “Freeze!”

  Merritt swung around and saw Stan coming toward him, his gun trained on him. Panic flashed across his face, and for a moment he did freeze.

  Then he decided to run for it. He leaped into the truck, turned the key, and began to back out.

  “No, you don’t!” Stan fired at two of his tires, crippling the truck.

  Merritt leaped out and took off on foot.

  Stan fired over his head, but the man kept running.

  He wasn’t going to get away. Stan knew he could hit him with one shot, kill him instantly. But he wanted the man alive.

  If he’d planted those bombs, he wanted to see him suffer like Dan had suffered, like George and Jacob and the others had suffered. He wanted him to know the kind of anguish that the grieving families felt. He wanted Merritt to face his own family with his deadly deception.

  He launched after Merritt. When he caught up, he threw himself on the man’s back, knocking him to the ground.

  “You haven’t got anything on me!” Merritt shouted against the dirt. “I haven’t broken any laws!”

  Stan cuffed his wrists roughly and searched him for a weapon. Quickly, he radioed for backup, then called Mills Bryan to tell him what had happened. With the element of surprise no longer necessary, he heard sirens not far away.

  “You, my friend, are under arrest. . . .”

  “For what?” Merritt cried.

  “For one hundred and fifty-three counts of first-degree murder, and still counting, pal. That’s just for starters.” He pressed the barrel of his firearm to Merritt’s skull. “You have the right to remain silent . . .”

  Two police cars and a SWAT team van screeched to a halt nearby, and several armed men jumped out and surrounded them.

  Stan got up and left him lying there on the dirt as Mills Bryan took over.

  His hands were shaking as he returned his weapon to its holster.

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Jill called the number Mills Bryan had given her, and he asked if she could bring Ashley to the Newpointe Police Department, since that was where he and his agents were currently occupied.

  When she tried to turn onto Purchase Street, Jill caught her breath.

  Press vans glutted the road.

  “What’s going on?” Ashley asked.

  “I don’t know,” Jill said, “but I’m going to park somewhere else.” She pulled her car into Allie’s flower shop parking lot. Ashley got out and ran her fingers through her hair. She had combed it down and left her face free of makeup, and had removed the black polish from her fingers and toes. She wore a pair of faded jeans and an LSU T-shirt. Even though she still wore her nose ring, she looked as close to normal as Jill had ever seen her. Ashley followed her across the street, up the block, and through the press members lining the sidewalk as if they were waiting for a statement from someone.

  They stopped as they came to one of the New Orleans correspondents making a live remote broadcast. “We don’t yet know where they found Donald Merritt, but we’re told he is inside at the Newpointe Police Department, being interviewed by the FBI at this very moment.”

  Jill looked at Ashley. “Donald Merritt.”

  Ashley’s face changed, and Jill saw her pale face go red. The girl pushed past the reporters and started up the steps of the police department.

  Sid Ford let them in. “Jill, I didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “I brought Ashley Morris,” she said. “Agent Bryan wanted to interview her.”

  “Yeah, go on in. Tell Stan. He�
�s at his desk. I’m trying to keep the press out.”

  “Where is he?” Ashley demanded. “Where’s Donald Merritt?”

  “Being interrogated,” he said. He pointed to the closed door at the back of the room. “Feds got him in there.”

  Ashley cursed and shot for the door. Jill followed her. “Ashley, you can’t go in there!”

  Stan looked up from his desk and got to his feet.

  The girl reached the Interview Room door and bolted through it. Stan caught up to her before Jill did and grabbed her to pull her back.

  Some of the agents reached for their guns, and Donald Merritt shrank back.

  “It’s okay,” Stan told them. “I’ve got her!”

  “You killed my mother!” Her scream shrieked out over the building, silencing everyone who heard it. She cursed again. “You murdered her!”

  Stan tried to move her out of the doorway, but she fought to break free. “If I had a gun, I’d kill you myself!” she screamed. “I’d blow you into a million pieces! I’d bury you alive!”

  Merritt looked shaken. “I didn’t plant the bomb!” he yelled back. “I didn’t kill anybody!”

  Stan wrestled Ashley from the room, and one of the agents came out to help calm her. Jill tried to help.

  “Why are you talking to him?” Ashley sobbed. “He’s not a person! He’s a monster! Why can’t you just kill him and get it over with?”

  “Honey, calm down,” Jill cried. “Please, calm down.”

  Stan pulled her into another interview room. He led her to a chair and bent over her. “Look at me, sweetheart,” he said. “I want you to try to calm down and look at me.”

  Ashley’s face twisted as she looked up at him.

  “We’re going to prosecute him to the full extent of the law,” he said. “I promise you, if he’s guilty, he’s not going to get away with it.”

  “If?” Ashley cried. “Of course he’s guilty, or he wouldn’t have faked his death! He killed a hundred and fifty-three people! He killed my mother!”

  Someone handed Stan a glass of water, and he gave it to her. Then he pulled up a chair and sat knee to knee with her. “If we prove he did it, you can bet he’ll get the death penalty, Ashley. And you can help us prove it. You can tell us what you saw that day.”

  “I just saw the bomb!” she said. “I didn’t see him with it. It’s not like he’d written his name on it. If he walks free—”

  “He won’t,” Stan said. “But the things you tell us can help us trace the things he made the bomb with. We can find out where he bought them, search his property for them. Everything you can give us can help us connect him to the crime.”

  Ashley drank some of the water. Hiccuping her sobs, she locked into Stan’s gaze.

  “Can you calm down and help us, Ashley?”

  She looked up at Jill, and Jill nodded, reassuring her.

  “You’re one of the only witnesses so far,” Stan said. “We need you, Ashley, if justice is going to be done.”

  Finally, Ashley drew in a long, deep breath. “I’ll tell you whatever I can.”

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  When Ashley had finished telling her story, Jill took her out of the station. Stan went with Mills to finish his interrogation of Merritt.

  “Funny thing happened after that girl came in,” one of the agents with Merritt told them. “He started wanting to talk.”

  Merritt was trembling. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I really didn’t do it. I know this looks bad. But I didn’t plant those bombs. You’ve got to believe me. All I did was take advantage of the opportunity.”

  “What do you mean, you took advantage?” Mills asked.

  “I didn’t even think of it when the explosion happened. I was just like everybody else, running down the stairs, trying to get everybody out when the first bomb went off. I was one of the last ones out of the building, and then it collapsed, and I was in shock like everybody else, just standing in the dust and trying to figure out what in the world had happened.” His voice broke off.

  “I realized my whole world had come crashing down. There was nothing left. And finally the thought occurred to me that I could just start walking and never come back. They would think I had died in the collapse. All my problems with the law, all my financial worries, my family problems, everything. I could leave them all behind and just start over.”

  “But then you took money out of your bank account.”

  “I thought no one would know. I didn’t even know my family knew about that account.” He looked into the agent’s face. “I know I’ve done some horrible things that have caused problems for a lot of people. But I’ve never killed anybody. And I sure wouldn’t have killed that many innocent people.”

  As the interrogation went on, Stan began growing angrier. The man was a liar, as well as a bloody killer.

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  I told you he wasn’t dead.”

  Gordon’s reaction to the news of Merritt’s arrest didn’t surprise Jill. She and Ashley had decided to go by his house before going back to the hospital, just to make sure he knew. He had already been watching the news updates when they came in.

  “Well, you hit it right on the money,” Jill said.

  She looked at Ashley, who had been quiet since they’d left the police station. Seeing Merritt had almost pushed her over the edge. Jill thought of those pills she had flushed down the toilet. How hard would it be for Ashley to get more?

  “Of all the people to have survived that blast.” Gordon rubbed his red face and looked at Ashley. “You okay, honey?”

  Ashley didn’t answer. “They said I might be called as a witness in his trial. I’ll do anything to make sure he pays.”

  “If he lives that long.” He shivered.

  Jill realized it was cold in the house, so she got an afghan off of the couch and laid it over his legs. “What do you mean, if he lives that long?”

  Gordon pulled the blanket up to warm himself. “There are some angry people out there who lost loved ones, like Ashley here. Or your husband, whose life may be changed forever. Some angry soul is going to take that man down. I wouldn’t give a plug nickel for his life right now.”

  Jill knew he was right.

  The doorbell rang, and Jill sprang up to get it. Stan Shepherd stood there, looking grim and thoughtful.

  “Hey, Jill,” he said. “I saw your car.”

  “Were you looking for me?”

  “No, I just came by to talk to Gordon.”

  She let him in, and Stan smiled at Ashley, then shook Gordon’s hand and told him not to get up. “Gordon, I met you at church the other night. Detective Stan Shepherd of the Newpointe Police Department.”

  “Yes, I remember you,” he said. “Have a seat.”

  Stan sat down next to Jill. “The reason I’m here is I’d like to take a statement from you, since you were near the top floors of the building when the bomb went off.”

  Gordon shrugged. “I don’t know what I could add to what they’ve already told you. I practically can’t remember anything. I hurt my leg after the first bomb went off. If it weren’t for these two young ladies, I’d probably be dead right now.”

  “Well, I’d just like to ask you a few questions, if you don’t mind.”

  Jill got up and nodded to Ashley. “We’ll leave you two alone. I really need to get back to the hospital.”

  “No, don’t go,” Gordon said. “You might be able to fill in some of the blanks for me. I’m not sure I remember everything.”

  Stan nodded that they could stay, so they both sat back down.

  “Gordon, if you don’t mind, tell me what took you to the Icon International Building that day.”

  Gordon swallowed and looked down at his hands. He began to rub them on his trousers. Jill could see that the memories made him just as tense as they made her.

  “I went up to clean out my desk. You see, my wife had died two weeks earlier. While I was out for her funeral, they laid me off. Pretty crum
my thing to do, if you ask me. They’re selfish and hateful, the whole lot of them. The ones who were left were the ones padding their pockets. They’re all in cahoots.”

  “What floor did you work on?”

  “The twentieth,” Gordon said. “I had boxed up the stuff from my desk, and then I ran upstairs to human services for my exit interview. Before I got there, the evacuation started, and I turned to go back down.”

  “Before the evacuation, did you make it up to the twenty-ninth floor, by any chance?”

  “No, not quite. I think I was about to twenty-five or twenty-six when the alarm went off.”

  “Could you tell me if you saw Donald Merritt on those stairs?”

  “No,” he said. “I don’t remember seeing him.”

  “Even on the stairs on the way down, do you remember seeing him run past you?”

  “I was pretty tied up,” Gordon said. “I don’t remember noticing anybody’s faces except for Jill’s and Ashley’s.”

  “We’re just trying to establish when and how he got out of the building, whether he seemed to have foreknowledge of the bombs on the lower floors . . .”

  “He had foreknowledge, all right,” Gordon bit out. “Planted all three of those bombs and left those people to die.”

  “Do you have any information to prove that?”

  “The fact that he’s alive with two suitcases full of cash is all the evidence you need,” Gordon spouted out.

  Stan frowned. “How did you know we found suitcases?”

  “Heard it on the news. They said it was a confirmed report from the FBI.”

  Jill noticed that as the wind blew harder, the living room grew colder. She shivered. “Stan, I hate to interrupt, but Gordon, I’d like to turn the heat up. Can you tell me where the thermostat is?”

  Gordon shook his head. “Don’t bother. The furnace is broken.”

  “Broken?” she said. “But it’s going to get below freezing later this week. You’ll need heat.”

  “Can’t help it,” Gordon said. “I haven’t been able to afford to get it fixed. But it won’t be cold for more than a couple of days, then it’ll warm up again.”