Ed Grayson shoots Arthur LeMaine in the knees

Ed Grayson shoots Arthur Lemaine in the knees in an act of private punishment that the novel reconstructs through investigation and later conversation rather than presenting as a fully witnessed scene. The shooting is tied to a family secret: Lemaine had taken the images that made Grayson’s son, E. J., a victim of child sexual exploitation. Grayson’s decision to maim him instead of killing him again exposes the collision between vengeance, guilt, and the family’s effort to keep the abuse from becoming a public trial.

The Shooting Reconstructed

The account of the attack emerges after Dan Mercer’s release and presumed killing, when Wendy Tynes and Mickey Walker consider who shot Lemaine. Wendy notes that the person who shot him did so from a distance. Walker interprets that as the work of a skilled marksman, and Wendy connects the possibility to the Gun-O-Rama owner’s earlier description of Grayson as an expert marksman. The exchange does not provide a direct eyewitness account; instead, it turns the shooting into a question of inference, linking a technical detail about the attack to evidence associated with Grayson.

Wendy then lays out a broader reconstruction. In her account, Grayson kills Mercer after Mercer is freed and disposes of the evidence. On returning home, Grayson is confronted by his wife, Maggie, who knows what he has done. At this stage Wendy openly marks parts of the sequence as uncertain: she does not know exactly what Maggie said or when Grayson learned that Lemaine was responsible for the images involving E. J. She considers more than one possibility, including that E. J. told his father the truth. Her uncertainty matters: the conversation offers a working explanation, not a scene-by-scene record of the shooting’s immediate origins.

The Family Secret

The later conversation with Grayson supplies the key fact behind that reconstruction. He says that Maggie saw him covered in blood, told him to stop, and explained that it was her brother who had taken the pictures. She also told him that E. J. was moving past what had happened and that her brother was getting help. Lemaine was therefore not a distant suspect but Maggie’s brother and E. J.’s uncle, a person embedded in the family whose actions had harmed Grayson’s son.

The relationship was not merely a matter of family association. Lemaine had coached E. J.’s hockey team, a detail Wendy raises while discussing the shooting. The contrast between a trusted family-and-sports role and the revelation about the images sharpens the conflict: Lemaine’s position brought him close to the child he victimized, while his connection to Maggie made any public prosecution consequential for the whole family. The novel presents that closeness as part of the stakes, not as an excuse for what he did.

Grayson’s Choice

Grayson says he was not prepared to let Lemaine’s conduct go unpunished, but he also did not want E. J. to testify against his own uncle. Wendy concludes that Grayson shot Lemaine in the kneecaps. Grayson refuses to confirm the act directly, saying only that he is not foolish enough to answer the question. His evasive response, set beside Wendy’s specific accusation and the earlier discussion of the distant shot, strongly supports her conclusion without turning the exchange into an explicit confession.

Wendy’s interpretation also distinguishes this attack from Grayson’s killing of Mercer. She believes Grayson was not strong enough to kill again after what he had done to Mercer. The shooting is thus described as violence deliberately limited in outcome, not as a lawful route to accountability: Lemaine is left alive but maimed, while E. J. is spared the prospect of testifying against him. The choice protects the family from one kind of exposure, but it also keeps the matter outside the ordinary process by which Lemaine might have been brought to justice.

Guilt, Vengeance, and Consequence

The shooting is bound to Grayson’s guilt over Mercer. Wendy reasons that Grayson had spent months publicly demanding punishment for Mercer, only to discover that he had killed the wrong man. She imagines that recognition—and the knowledge that Lemaine might never be brought to justice—left Grayson facing a new, intolerable conflict. Mickey adds the cost of a trial to the family: Lemaine’s prosecution could force the family through another public scandal and require Grayson to admit that his campaign against Mercer had been wrong. These are presented as Wendy and Mickey’s interpretation of the pressures surrounding Grayson, rather than as a complete account of his private thoughts.

In that interpretation, shooting Lemaine becomes a compromised answer to two wrongs. It cannot undo Mercer’s death, and it does not provide public accountability for Lemaine. It does, however, fit Grayson’s determination not to let his brother-in-law’s actions pass without consequence, while avoiding a proceeding in which E. J. might have to testify. The episode therefore repeats the novel’s central conflict between private punishment and justice under law: Grayson acts on the truth within his family, but his response leaves the larger questions of responsibility and accountability unresolved.