Dying for Mercy with Bonus Material (5 page)

W
hy was Innis creeping about late at night, on his own property, while a party was going on inside?

The man knew everything. He knew much too much, and if he was true to his word, he was going to make sure that the whole world knew, too.

Innis said he wanted justice.

That would ruin everything. All the meticulous planning, all the preparation, all the carefully crafted lies would be for naught. If everything was made public, the dream would be crushed.

What was he up to now? Why had he stolen away, and where was he going?

The sound of the greenhouse door closing indicated where Innis was, but what on earth was he doing in there?

I
have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.”

Innis heard the saint’s words over and over in his head.

“I have been all things unholy.”

He picked up the knife and gripped the handle. He held it for a moment and closed his eyes, trying to summon the courage.

“I have been all things unholy.”

He had to do this. He couldn’t think of another way to repent, to make things right. Innis was sorry about the things that were going to come out, sorry to reveal such grave sins—and who had committed them. And he didn’t feel right about what Valentina was going to have to face.

It couldn’t be helped.

He could have left a written account of everything that had happened, laying the whole sordid story out at once. Instead, Innis had chosen a puzzle as his method. As each part of the puzzle was revealed, a little at a time, each guilty party would have a chance to come forward, confess, and repent.

“If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.”

He wouldn’t exit this world without leaving a record of all that had happened. What transpired after his death was in God’s hands and he hoped Eliza Blake would be the instrument used to make things right.

As the blood oozed bright red against his pale flesh, Innis knew he wasn’t part of the select group of holy men and women who had been chosen by God, the ones who had experienced the mystical appearance of the wounds. There had been over sixty of them, St. Francis being the first, with no logical explanation for the angry tears in their skin at the carefully chosen spots on their bodies.

Innis wasn’t like them. There was nothing mystical about what was happening to him. He was doing it to himself.

He had read that the fluid that flowed from their cuts and punctures might not have been blood, but Innis was certain that it was blood leaking first from one foot, then from the other as he plunged the hunting knife into his extremities. He cried out with pain that shot through his mutilated body. Perspiration dripped from his brow and tears seeped down his cheeks.

Innis heard himself groaning loudly again as the knife he held pierced his left palm. He forced himself to repeat the process on his right hand.

“Dear God, dear God, help me,” he prayed. “Help me get through this. I need your help, Lord, to make things right.”

Switching grips again, and breathing heavily, Innis took the knife and leaned over awkwardly. He had practiced getting into position before, but it was a much different situation when both hands were bleeding and throbbing. Innis reached around and found a spot between his ribs on the left side of his body and pushed the knife through.

As he lay on the ground in the greenhouse, life draining from him, Innis wondered if St. Francis had felt this way when he had experienced the stigmata. Did the unexplained marks corresponding to the wounds of Christ that had appeared on the saint’s body six years before he actually died hurt as much as the ones Innis had inflicted on himself in the very same places?

E
liza was standing by the fireplace admiring the beautiful carvings that decorated it when she heard the clock on the mantel begin to chime. She glanced at the Roman numerals edging the face. Ten o’clock.

She was ready to go home.

As she tried to find her hosts to thank them for a lovely evening, Eliza was stopped several times by people who complimented her on her work on
KEY to America.

“If the percentage of people at this party who say they watch our broadcast was representative of viewers nationwide, we’d have nothing to worry about with the ratings,” she told them, laughing.

“But I really
do
watch your program,” insisted a diminutive woman with steel gray hair arranged in a classic chignon style. She wore a simple navy dress with a vintage Hermès scarf tied loosely at the neck and sensible black leather pumps on her feet. “Fitzroy and I watch KEY News every morning.”

“And I thank you for that,” said Eliza. “Now, if we could just get the ones younger than us to watch, we’d be in great shape. As it is, network news viewership is declining, even in the morning. Cable news is part of the problem, but more and more people are also getting their information via the Internet.”

“Well, we don’t get cable and we don’t know how to use a computer,” said the woman. “Fitzroy and I are satisfied with things just the way they are. Where is he, anyway?” She craned her neck to search the room. “Oh, there he is.”

The man who approached them had thinning white hair and a lined and thin yet still handsome face, and he walked with a slight limp. Standing erect, he firmly shook Eliza’s hand.

“I’m Fitzroy Heavener, and it’s such a pleasure to meet you,” he said in an even, well-modulated voice. “We are great fans.”

“I’ve been telling Miss Blake that, dear,” said his wife. “I told her we watch her every day.” The woman’s facial expression clouded, and she lowered her voice. “Of course we were glued to our chairs in July. I prayed for you every night.”

“Unity, I’m sure Ms. Blake doesn’t want to be reminded of all that,” Fitzroy chided.

“Please, call me Eliza,” she said, not commenting on the kidnapping. “And I wish I could stay and talk some more, but I have a driver waiting outside and a little girl at home who might not fall asleep until I get there. I just want to find Valentina and Innis and thank them.”

Just then a shout came from across the room.

“In the greenhouse! Innis is lying in a pool of blood in the greenhouse!”

A stream of guests ran out the French doors and across the property.

E
xcuse me. Pardon me.”

Eliza made her way through the crowd that had gathered at the door. When she managed to get inside, she walked past the pots of plants and bags of soil and fertilizer. As she drew closer to the cluster of people gathered at the rear of the greenhouse, she noticed a single black shoe on the floor in front of one of the antique worktables.

She could hear Valentina murmuring, “Oh, Innis, Innis. What have you done? What have you done to yourself?”

Valentina was sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth gently and cradling her husband’s head in her lap. Her legs and hands were smeared with blood. All color had drained from her face.

Innis, too, was very pale, his mouth open, his head drooping to one side. His limbs were splayed. His hands and bare feet bled from the deep incisions that pierced them. The left side of his crisp white shirt was drenched in blood.

It took a while for Eliza to grasp what she was seeing. Altogether there were five places where the skin had been sliced open. Innis bore the five wounds that Jesus had suffered at Calvary the day he was crucified. Eliza knew there were stories about holy men and women who had mysteriously suffered the same wounds—wounds appearing seemingly without cause but known by them to have come from God as a bizarre sort of blessing.

But seeing the hunting knife with its long, sharp blade lying beside his still body, Eliza immediately sensed that Innis had administered the wounds himself.

Poor, sad, troubled man.

Is that what Innis had meant when he said that he wanted to unite himself with St. Francis in the most vivid way possible?

She cringed at the thought. Had Innis gotten so carried away with his religious fervor that this is what he’d done to himself?

Eliza thought about their walk around the turtle fountain together earlier in the evening. Innis had been distressed, saying he was ashamed of himself. It had never even crossed her mind that he was desperate enough to kill himself. What had happened that was horrible enough to make suicide the only answer?

Watching the emergency medical technicians arrive and begin working on Innis, Eliza realized that she could have been the last person that he’d spoken to in more than amiable cocktail-party conversation. If she had understood the depth of his anxiety, she would have done something to help. Instead, thinking Innis just needed an opportunity to vent, she’d only listened.

“It could have nicked the heart.”

Eliza heard the medical technician’s words and felt anguish along with guilt and responsibility. If she had reacted differently, this horror might have been averted. She tried to remember every bit of their conversation. What had Innis been talking about when he insisted that she cared about right and wrong and said he knew that Eliza would do what needed to be done? What was it that he wanted her to do?

Instinctively, Eliza felt that someone should be making a record of what was happening. She took out her cell phone and began snapping pictures. Trying to be unobtrusive, she managed to take a few shots before a uniformed Tuxedo Park police officer intervened.

“No pictures, ma’am,” he said, in a tone that left no doubt he was deadly serious.

Glancing over at the covered figure that was now lying on the stretcher, seeing the tears streaming down Valentina’s face and her son awkwardly trying to comfort his mother, Eliza didn’t fight. She slid her cell phone back into her purse.

She wasn’t even going to tell Linus about the pictures, because if the
KTA
executive producer knew about them, he would insist on using them.

But for some reason she was glad to have them.

I
n their final conversation in his study, Innis had said he was going to make everyone sit up and take notice. He’d certainly done that.

It wasn’t easy watching the stretcher carrying his body being rolled out of the greenhouse. There was too much history between them not to feel regret and some sorrow. But there was also relief.

There would be no need now to eliminate Innis before he revealed everything. He had done that to himself.

Innis wasn’t going to be around to be the righter of wrongs. Life could go on as it had, with nobody the wiser.

But what if this act of suicide, so grotesquely executed, was just the prelude to something more? What if he’d planned to grab everyone’s attention before disclosing the devastating thing he’d threatened to tell? What else had Innis planned?

In addition, there was Eunice to worry about. The maid had overheard all the sordid details and could wreck everything if she came forward with what she knew.

And something else was troubling. Eliza Blake had never seemed to be one of those media hounds who would take pictures of someone, especially a friend, bloodied and dead on the ground. And yet that’s exactly what she’d just done.

B
.J. D’Elia groaned. “These hours kill me.”

“Think what misery it would be to be stuck on this shift,” said Annabelle Murphy as she and the producer-cameraman sat in a KEY News Broadcast Center editing room. “Thank God we’re on dayside. It’s bad enough we have to fill in once in a while.”

“Ever notice that ‘once in a while’ seems to be turning into ‘all the time’ lately?” asked B.J. “Somebody’s always on vacation or on assignment, and we’re stuck plugging up the holes.”

Annabelle took a sip of the thick, bitter brew that came from the aluminum coffeemaker sitting on a cart in the hallway. “Ugh,” she said after she swallowed. “Remember the good old days when the cafeteria was open twenty-four hours, when you could get a decent cup of coffee whenever you needed it, and there were actually more than enough people to get the jobs done around here?” Annabelle didn’t wait for B.J. to respond. “That’s why we get saddled with this overnight stuff, Beej. The budget cuts. Cutbacks in personnel. Cutbacks in overtime hours. The same amount of work to be done—even more—but fewer people to do it.”

“Bitch and moan, bitch and moan.” B.J. smiled as he leaned forward and played with the knobs on the monitor.

“I’m serious, Beej.”

“I know you are, Annabelle. But what’s the alternative? You think it’s any better at ABC, CBS, or NBC? Every network has tightened things up. All we can do right now is smile, do our jobs, and pray we get to keep them.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Annabelle begrudgingly, “but if I can’t complain to you, who can I complain to?”

“You can complain to me all you want, but just don’t let Linus hear you.”

“What do you think I am, an idiot?”

“Who’s an idiot?” Annabelle and B.J. jumped as they heard another voice. Eliza was standing in the doorway.

Annabelle relaxed when she saw who it was. “What are you doing here so early?” she asked. “Did you even have any sleep?”

“Not really,” said Eliza, closing the door of the editing room. “But I wanted to get in before Linus does and show you guys something.” She handed her cell phone to B.J. “Download the last pictures, will you, Beej?”

Standing with Annabelle and B.J., Eliza felt a reassuring camaraderie. The three of them, along with Margo Gonzalez, had gone through so much together over the last months. Each of them had contributed to solving the murder of Eliza’s predecessor at
KTA,
Constance Young. And they had bonded around Eliza, supporting her personally and using their considerable professional skills to help when Janie and Mrs. Garcia were kidnapped. They had jokingly dubbed themselves the Sunrise Suspense Society because of the ridiculous hours they kept and the anxiety-filled and sometimes dangerous situations they’d found themselves in.

While they waited for B.J. to do what needed to be done, Eliza told them what had happened.

“I heard on the radio in the cab coming in that Innis Wheelock had offed himself, but I didn’t know you were at the party when he did it,” said Annabelle. “Linus must be beside himself at the prospect of your giving our audience an eyewitness account.”

“He was thrilled when I called him at home and told him,” she said. “But I didn’t tell him I took these.”

Eliza nodded toward the monitor where the first of the cell-phone pictures appeared. The grainy image showed the body of Innis Wheelock, covered in blood, stretched out on the floor next to a large terra-cotta pot.

“Nasty,” said B.J., grimacing as he studied the picture. “This one scores high on the gore meter. But I guess we can crop the picture and fool around with it so it doesn’t show all that blood.”

“Don’t go to the trouble,” said Eliza. “We’re not going to air these.”

Annabelle and B.J. both turned to look at Eliza. “I’m assuming that nobody else was taking pictures,” said Annabelle.

“The cops took some, but I think I was the only guest who got any,” said Eliza.

“So we’re exclusive with these, right?” asked Annabelle.

“Right,” Eliza answered.

“Are you kidding? We
have
to air these,” Annabelle insisted.

“Innis Wheelock was a friend of mine, Annabelle,” Eliza said quietly. “It was the journalist in me that made me pull out my phone, but now I almost regret it.”

Annabelle looked back at the violent image on the monitor and tried to imagine how she would feel if a friend of hers had committed suicide. She wouldn’t want the disturbing and profoundly private pictures broadcast and published around the world. She said nothing as B.J. displayed the next image.

The second shot zeroed in on one of Wheelock’s pierced hands.

“What’s that he’s holding in his hand?” asked B.J.

“I don’t know,” said Eliza. “I didn’t even notice that last night.”

“Why would you?” asked B.J. “There was too much else to capture your attention.”

“It looks like he’s clutching a handful of dirt,” said Annabelle.

The next image appeared on the screen. “What a mess,” said B.J., grimacing. Innis Wheelock’s white shirt was drenched in blood.

“The blood is coming from the left side,” said Annabelle. “He stabbed himself in the hands and the left side?”

“And feet,” said Eliza.

All three were quiet for a moment as they thought about it.

Annabelle broke the silence. “The radio didn’t say anything about stigmata.”