Acts of Mercy (18 page)

Next to the front door stood pots of pink petunias that cascaded over the rim in bright ribbons. Irene, who had been retired for ten years and widowed for six, planted and tended the flowers. In the winter, she hung a wreath on Fiona’s front door, and in the fall, she’d planted spring bulbs. “Otherwise,” she’d told Fiona, “folks will think the house is vacant. Then, next thing you know, we’ll have break-ins in the neighborhood because word will get out that there’s an abandoned house over on Forest Drive.”

Fiona had laughed and cheerfully reimbursed Irene for whatever seasonal display was chosen to adorn the porch or the front door.

The house welcomed Fiona home with hushed silence,
as always. The light on her answering machine was blinking, but she ignored it. She went straight to the kitchen and turned on the overhead light, then dumped the mail on the counter. Later, she’d pick out the bills and toss the rest into the trash. She had no time for junk mail, and rarely got a personal letter. There were few bridges to her past that she hadn’t burned.

She grabbed a fork from a drawer and a bottle of water, and went out onto the back porch with the carton of chicken lo mein. She sat on the back step and ate while she watched the light fade from the sky as the sun set behind the trees. She saw the first stars of the evening begin to twinkle overhead and closed her eyes and wished that either she hadn’t asked Annie about Carly DelVecchio, or that the answer had been very different.

Sam pulled up in front of the one-and-a-half-story cedar-shake bungalow and checked the address Fiona had given him. Nineteen Forest Drive. This was it. Somehow the house looked cozier than he’d expected, with the pots of flowers on the front porch and the wreath of something colorful on the front door. Fiona hadn’t impressed him as being the cozy type. Which wasn’t a bad thing, he reminded himself as he walked to the front door. Not everyone did cozy. He sure didn’t.

He rang the bell but hadn’t needed to. Through the glass pane of the oak door he could see her walking toward him. She was leggy and graceful and he wished the hall had been longer. He liked watching her walk.

“Hey, you’re right on time.” Fiona opened the door with a smile. “Come on in and I’ll get my things.”

Sam stepped inside and tried not to look around with as much curiosity as he felt, but he couldn’t help himself.

“This is a great house,” he told her.

“Oh, thanks,” she called from the kitchen, where he could see her closing a window.

“How’d you find something like this?”

“I just told the realtor what I wanted, and waited until they found it.”

“Did you have to wait long?”

“No. I got lucky. I just need to run upstairs to close a few windows. We’re supposed to get some rain this afternoon.”

Sam waved her off. “Take your time.”

He wandered into the living room, which was comfortably furnished with a deeply cushioned sofa and two overstuffed chairs that flanked a stone fireplace. An oriental rug that looked like a real antique covered the hardwood floor and a simple oak table held a leather-bound book and a stained glass lamp which looked like a Tiffany to Sam but must have been a knockoff. He’d lived on a special agent’s salary, and he’d never been able to afford a real Tiffany lamp. Or, he thought, a real Turkish carpet.

A group of photos lined the mantel, and Sam stepped closer to look. Family photos, he guessed. A picture of a younger Fiona with a little girl and a younger boy—probably her siblings—and another of a very good-looking man and woman. Her parents?
One of Fiona by herself, sitting on rocks overlooking the ocean, her hair swirling around her head in the breeze, and another that appeared to be a studio shot, the latter of a very different Fiona, this one with blond hair and makeup.

“Ready?” she said from behind him.

“Sure.” He turned but didn’t take a step. “Is this your family?”

“Yes.”

When she didn’t elaborate, he asked, pointing to the appropriate frames, “Your siblings? Parents?”

“Yes. Are you ready?” she repeated.

Feeling somewhat rebuffed but not understanding why, Sam walked to the front door and out onto the porch to wait while she locked the house.

“Do you want me to drive?” he asked.

“I’ll drive. You’ve already driven several hours today.”

“Do you know how to get to the prison?”

“Route 9 to Turner Highway.”

“It’s faster to go through Sanderson than around it,” he told her as they got into her car.

“I don’t know that way.”

“You can stay on this road right into Sanderson,” he said.

“All right.”

“On my way down here this morning, I spoke with the assistant Warden. He said he’d meet with us out at the prison. I think he didn’t understand why we wanted to drive out there.”

“And you told him …?”

“Like the boss always says, you have to be at the
scene yourself. Breathe the same air the killer breathed. See what he saw.” He smiled. “Any boob …”

Fiona laughed. “… can look at photographs, I know. I’ve heard it too.”

“That’s John. Get out and get into it.”

“Do you miss it?” She didn’t have to explain what
it
was.

“I did at first. For a while, anyway. But I was traveling around so much that after a few weeks, that was my focus. The countries I traveled to. The people I met. The things that I saw.”

“What countries did you visit?”

“Ireland. Spain. Portugal. France. Poland. Greece. Turkey. Kazakhstan. And on the way back, I stopped to see my parents in Italy.”

“Your parents live in Italy?”

“They own a B and B there. It’s one of those places where you can go and take cooking lessons for a week, drink the local wine, that sort of thing.”

“Your parents are chefs?”

“Nah. They just own the place. They have a local guy do the actual teaching.”

“Sounds very cool.”

“It is very cool.” He looked out the window. “I’m really happy for them both. They’re having the time of their lives.”

Fiona turned onto Sanderson’s main road and Sam felt a tightening in his chest. He’d avoided this ride for a long time, but he knew that sooner or later he’d have to do this. It might be better, he’d reasoned, if someone else was driving, someone who wouldn’t be tempted to pull over to the side of the
road. This time, the first time, just a pass-by would be enough.

“Take a right at the light,” he told her.

“The prison is that way.” She pointed straight ahead. “Just about six miles down the road.”

“I know,” he replied.

She made the turn at the light.

“Now another right,” he said after they’d gone several blocks.

Fiona stopped at the stop sign, then made the requested turn.

The street was narrow and there were cars parked here and there on either side, requiring her to slow down. The houses were small and cottagelike, with bay windows and leaded glass and flower boxes.

“Cute street,” she said.

“Yes.”

Finally, they were almost there. Sam leaned forward and craned his neck to look out the driver’s side window.

There. There it was, the white house with the black shutters and the red door, the color having faded a bit since the last time he’d been here. The grass was patchy and unkempt, and weeds grew up through the cracks in the walk that led from the street to the front door. The Realtor’s sign was still out front, but Sam suspected there’d been precious little interest in the house.

Fiona slowed.

“Sam, did you want to stop …”

“No. That’s okay. Thanks.”

Fiona accelerated and drove on.

“Thanks,” he said again, and he knew from the
look on her face that
she
knew without asking that the house they’d just passed had been the house he’d shared with Carly, the house in which she’d been tortured and killed.

They rode the remaining six miles to the prison in silence.

T
here’s the crime scene.” Fiona slowed down and pointed to the bright yellow tape that marked off a long rectangle from the side of the road to well past the middle of the field.

“I guess you can park anywhere along here. We’ll walk out,” Sam said.

“Walk all the way out there?” She frowned.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“No reason,” she mumbled.

She pulled to the side of the road and parked, then got out and looked across the field. The grass and weeds were almost knee-high. Sam was already in the field. He turned and looked back at her and stopped. “Are you coming?” he called.

“Sure.” She stepped into the grass and felt it tickle the bare skin under her pants legs. She shuddered and tried to decide which was worse. Not looking, and therefore not knowing what manner of creature lurked in the tall grass, or watching every step and therefore possibly avoiding anything that might be there. And anything could be under the grass and weeds. Snakes. Mice. Ticks. Spiders. Rats.

She reminded herself that she’d read somewhere that field rats were nothing like city rats, that they were smaller and much less aggressive. She decided to follow in Sam’s footsteps—literally. She walked the path he’d made into the field and prayed that he’d scared off anything that might be living there.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she told him, feeling more than a little foolish. She’d faced serial killers and child murderers and kidnappers, but the thought of some unseen furry or crawly thing making its way up her leg made her blood run cold. “We all have our little quirks,” she muttered.

“What?” Sam turned to her as he stepped over the yellow tape.

“I said, I guess it’s impossible to tell exactly where Wilke was killed. Since he was strangled here, there’s probably no physical evidence. All the blood would be over near the fence, where he was stabbed.” With one arm she brushed away the low-flying squadron of insects that had been flushed out of the grass.

She caught up with Sam in the middle of the section that was cordoned off. “Well, I suppose even as late as last week it would have been easier to see where the killer parked the car. This much later, there’s nothing.”

“I’m surprised the tape is still in place,” he remarked. “I’d have thought between the press and the curiosity seekers, it would have been down by now.”

“Maybe people are just being respectful. I suppose it does happen now and then.”

“Or maybe they’re concerned about him.” Sam turned toward the prison.

“Who?” She followed his gaze to the watchtower that overlooked the field. “Oh. Him.”

“I wonder why the killer wasn’t too worried about being seen the night of the murder,” he said. “We’re standing, what, fifty feet from the outer fence, and the tower is another fifty feet from the inner fence. That’s roughly one hundred feet away.”

“And the guard would have been elevated, so it would have been easy for him to see a car from that distance.”

“The killer would have had his headlights off, and probably would have turned off the interior lights as well. Still …”

Fiona nodded. “The guard should have seen something.”

“Do you have a copy of his statement?”

“No, but we can get one.”

“Maybe we should get our own statement.”

“An even better idea. I’m sure we can get his information easily enough.”

“Let’s take a walk over to the fence.” Sam motioned to her to follow him. “Let’s see how long it takes the guard up there to come to the window to see what we’re doing.”

“He already knows. John called the prison and told them we’d be out here.”

“All the same, you’d think he’d be curious.” Sam forged ahead and sure enough, before they reached the fence, they could see the guard standing and looking down at them.

“There you go, see?” He pointed upward. “He’s expecting us but he still wants to see what we’re up to. So the question is—”

“How come the guard who was on duty the night of August fifteenth didn’t bother to check out the movement he must have seen in the field?”

“Well, he could have been asleep, or drunk, or reading a really good book.”

“Any of the above would work. The problem is getting him to admit to it.”

“Sometimes you don’t need an admission to know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” Sam stopped and nodded toward the ground, where a small, white makeshift cross was planted in the dirt. He knelt and inspected the heavy wire fence immediately behind it. “This is where the killer left Kenneth Wilke’s body. There are still traces of blood on the wire here.”

Fiona looked back over her shoulder at the distance they’d walked from the field to the fence.

“So we’re to believe that the killer carried a body from fifty feet in that field, propped it up here, then stabbed it forty or so times, and no one saw or heard anything?” She shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”

“Well, then, let’s scout up the guard who was on duty that night and see if he can explain how all this could have gone on under his nose without him knowing.”

“I’ll put in a call”—Fiona took her phone from her pocket—“and see if we can meet with him this afternoon.”

“Have you eaten here before?” Fiona asked when they’d been seated at the first restaurant they came to on their way back from the prison. Sam nodded. “A few years back, but I think it’s
under new management now. Let’s hope so. It wasn’t very good.”

“So why didn’t we look for another place to eat?”

“One, because I’m starving, and two, because, like I said, new management.” Sam smiled at the waitress who brought them their menus, and the waitress smiled back as she listed the lunch specials.

“I’ll give you a minute,” she said, her eyes still on Sam.

Fiona studied the menu and pretended she hadn’t noticed. Sam did the same. Within minutes, the waitress was back.

“Have you decided?” she asked.

“I’ll have the turkey club, whole wheat toast. Iced tea. Unsweetened.” Fiona closed the menu and handed it over. “Are your tomatoes local?”

“Sure.” The waitress turned to Sam. “And for you?”

“Hamburger. Medium rare. Fried onions, Order of fries.” He slid his menu toward her. “Water’s fine.”

Fiona’s phone rang and she answered it.