“In what ways?”
“Shall we go into my office and discuss his case?” Dr. Beckwith asked, leading John into a large suite facing west over the brick-and-granite city—surprisingly not the better, million-dollar view of the bay. A young woman with short brown hair and grad-student-style clothes sat at an outer desk, typing on a computer.
Closing the door behind him, Beckwith gestured for John to take a seat across the wide desk. He pushed some consent forms across, and John read them, noting that Greg Merrill had granted permission for Dr. Beckwith to discuss his case.
“We both know that Merrill is where he belongs,” Dr. Beckwith said. “Behind bars, locked up, for the rest of his life.”
“However long that might be.”
“Exactly. He fits the formulaic criteria of state law; he’s a violent predator who has offended repeatedly. The question is: Does he have a mental disorder that makes him commit his terrible crimes? Again, I think we both know that he does.”
“The State doesn’t, though. When the prosecutor delivered his argument at the sentencing hearing, he said, ‘You’ve heard a lot about extreme emotional disturbance, but that’s just an excuse for a man who likes to kill teenaged girls.’”
“I know, I’ve read the transcripts.”
“I have to tell you,” John said. “I have a daughter. When I think of Merrill from the perspective of a father, I want him to stay right where he is, on death row. But as his counsel…”
“You’ve done the right thing, coming to me,” Beckwith said, leaning forward, hands folded on his desk. He was an elegant man, with neat white hair and patrician features.
John was silent, waiting for him to go on.
“Greg Merrill is, in many ways, a typical serial killer. Extremely bright, quite personable, an innocent demeanor—permitting him to attract his victims.”
John was silent, listening, thinking of Willa Harris.
“But inside, something quite different. Your client is off the charts on a scale of psychological disorders. He can’t subdue his fantasies. They haunt him constantly, even today, through the medication. He fits all the DSM-IV criteria for paraphilia, with more added. He not only wants to rape, and eventually kill his victims…”
John looked away.
“He wants to possess their souls. His fantasy includes keeping them alive in the breakwaters for one hour after he’s stabbed them. He sits with them as the tide rises, until the last possible minute for him to walk away and not get wet. Always just out of sight of the beach, of boats passing by.”
“Why?” John asked, focusing on the doctor’s eyes.
“So the women can feel how close they are to death—and, at the same time, to help and rescue.”
John waited while the doctor continued.
“He feels the primal pull of the tides…the sea, to Merrill, is female. An all-giving, all-taking-away mother. She nurtures, then she consumes. His particular pathology includes hatred for his own mother. She was very controlling and possessive, but she worked long hours at her job to take care of her boy. Merrill thinks if he can keep his victim alive for that time, as the water rises around them both and they share that primal experience, then she will belong to him forever.”
“He
really
believes that?” John asked. “It’s not just a metaphor…he’s not just gaslighting us?”
“No patient,” Dr. Beckwith said with an amused smile, “gaslights me.”
“Sorry,” John said. “I should have just spoken for myself. I’ve been manipulated by the best in the business. Believed a client’s story totally, then found out he’d been lying the whole time.”
Beckwith shook his head. “Merrill can’t lie about this. It’s too important. His need for control over the girls is paramount, and I see it in the way he abducts them, holds them prisoner in his van, tapes their mouths, hurts them repeatedly, kills them slowly.”
“Keeps them alive for that last hour, letting the tide rise…” John said, aching with the thought of Willa gasping for air, waiting…God, the image was horrendous, and he dreaded to think of Kate hearing this.
“Yes. In a way, he considers the sea—his mother—his accomplice. Although he denies this vehemently, he needs ‘her’ permission. He allows her to complete the act.”
“He’s very intuitive,” John said, shaking himself out of thinking about Kate’s pain. “He already knows that you want to create a new category for him. He says you think of him as a ‘zombie-maker.’”
The doctor smiled sadly at the black humor. “Sorry to disappoint our mutual client; he wouldn’t be the first. Dahmer had a fantasy of creating a zombie of one of his victims. No, what makes Gregory Merrill distinctive is his need to dominate women while, in fact, being submissive to one.”
“The sea,” John said, wondering whether Willa Harris’s body was hidden in a breakwater somewhere. “The rising tide.”
“Precisely.”
John checked his watch. He had a busy afternoon, and then he planned to unground Maggie and take a bike ride with her. “So, we have a sexual disorder-mental illness defense to take to his next hearing.”
“Most certainly.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” John said. Shaking his hand, he walked out of the inner office. Standing in the vestibule, he waited while Beckwith’s assistant made copies of the consent forms.
He thanked her and the doctor, and then he took the elevator down. Returning to his car, parked on Thayer Street, he bought a coffee for the drive home to Connecticut and thought about what he and Beckwith did. The doctor wanted to help people, to understand them better.
John wanted to do that for Kate.
Since hearing her grief, locked in her car in that Fairhaven parking lot, he had felt something unlock and release in his own body. He was a defense lawyer in an untenable position.
Hearing Beckwith talk about his clients, John had felt even greater disgust and hatred building inside. Since taking on Merrill’s case, he had spent time getting to know the victims, understanding them—to the best of his ability—as young women with hopes, dreams, families who had loved them.
He knew their names and recited the list. But regardless of his desire to humanize them, he had never met any of them before. He had never held one of their sisters, kissed her in the cold, November wind.
John’s work was no longer just theory: not just a psychiatric defense. Not just family members sitting across the courtroom, hating him for defending their loved one’s murderer. This family member had a name, a face, eyes that looked right into his soul: Kate.
Regardless of whether her sister had met up with Greg Merrill, John knew that he was defending the sort of evil that had destroyed her family’s life. Teddy always badgered him about it: “Merrill did what they say he did—murdered girls, ruined families. He deserves what’s coming to him. Everyone says he does, Dad.”
He reached into his pocket to pull out Kate’s card. He would call her, ask if she’d gotten the kids’ letter. He’d ask how she was doing, whether she had gained any relief since returning home, tell her he hoped she was okay.
But just as he flipped open his cell phone to dial her number, it rang in his hand.
“Hello?” he asked. His heart was pounding, as if it might be Kate Harris, as if their Fairhaven magic was working again, and they’d found themselves in the same place at the same time.
“Johnny? It’s Billy.” Billy Manning, his voice deep and filled with excitement. “Just breaking every rule in the book to give you a heads-up. You’d better get down to Point Heron right away—the breakwater.”
“What are you talking about?”
“We have a copycat working—”
“A body?” John asked, blood rushing into his head.
“Yeah. Jammed into the breakwater.”
“Recently?” John asked, his voice a croak, thinking that if it was Willa, if Greg had killed her, she would have to be all bones by now, praying that Billy hadn’t found bones…
“Very recently” Billy said. “She was under for no longer than one tide cycle. He left her there before dawn, for the incoming tide. Just like Merrill, John. And the new guy knows the signature.”
“Good,” John said quietly.
“Good?” Billy asked. “Are you crazy? Get down here, why don’t you, before you miss the chance to see what we have. And don’t tell anyone who called you.”
“On my way,” John said, starting to drive. Point Heron was about forty-five minutes from Providence, just east of Silver Bay.
Good
. His comment had had nothing to do with the copycat knowing Greg’s signature.
Good
, because no bones meant that it wasn’t a body six months dead, that it wasn’t Willa Harris;
good
that Kate wouldn’t have to face that horror. Nothing else: there was nothing else
good
about what Billy had called to tell him.
Nothing at all.
A crowd had gathered to watch the police activity.
Vans from the State Police’s Major Crime Squad blocked the sandy parking lot. Yellow crime scene tape had already been stretched out across the rocky promontory. Low black clouds scudded across the sky, making the afternoon seem like night. Camera flashes illuminated the scene; approaching white headlights and departing red taillights were reflected in the flat silver wash of each retreating wave.
John parked his car, walked over to the yellow tape, and looked for Billy Manning.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” one of the other cops asked. “You ambulance-chasin’ another one?”
“Drop it,” John said wearily, watching his friend walk in from the breakwater, his leather shoes slipping on the wet rocks.
“You lawyers got an uncanny sense for where your next meal’s coming from,” the cop said. “There’s got to be a better way than getting rich on death.”
John ignored him, but the words made his chest hurt. He could see the crowd gathered out at the end of the breakwater. Detectives, the medical examiner, a cop videotaping. It was getting darker; the tide was coming in. A young officer, dispatched for the black body bag, grabbed it from the back of the coroner’s van.
Peering out the breakwater, when the crowd broke up for a moment, John saw in a flash the woman’s arm—crooked, raking the sky, fingers splayed. The arm looked thin and hard, like a stick of driftwood bleached by the elements. The water rose higher, and the team set about removing her before she was covered by waves.
Staring, John didn’t even hear the person come to stand beside him.
“Dad?”
It was Teddy, dressed in jeans and a jacket, wearing sandy sneakers, holding a soccer ball. He stared up at his father, eyes shadowed with worry and pain.
“What are you doing here, Ted?” John asked.
“I saw her, Dad,” Teddy said. “Bert, Gris, and I were playing soccer on the beach. Some lady was walking her dog, and the dog went scrambling over the rocks. Next thing, we heard the lady screaming…”
“Did you go out there?”
Teddy shook his head, his face pale. “No. We wanted to help, but the lady said the girl was dead—for sure. The cops came, and then you came…”
“I’m glad you didn’t, Teddy,” John said, giving his son a hug. It was sheer impulse, and he almost immediately pulled back, realizing how embarrassed Teddy must feel. But Teddy actually hugged his father harder, not letting go right away. The feeling choked John up. He closed his eyes, wondering how far he would have to go to take his family away from all the horrors of the world.
“What’re you playing here for,” he asked, “instead of at the field?”
“We were supposed to practice at Riverdale today, for the indoor soccer league. But Mr. Jenkins said Mr. Phelan—the Riverdale coach—couldn’t get the gym for some reason. Basketball practice, I guess. We’re going to do it tomorrow, but Bert and I wanted to get started. So we came to the beach.”
“Why Point Heron instead of Silver Bay?”
“’Cause Bert’s mom drove us here. She has a new boyfriend…he lives in that glass house,” Teddy said, gesturing at the new, modern house perched above the beach. An old 1930s cottage had been bulldozed to make room for the starter castle; turning to look, John saw Sally Carroll and a man standing on the deck. Sally was watching him with binoculars.