Mercy Street (21 page)

TWENTY-TWO

M
allory stopped at the drive-through ATM and frowned when she read the
OUT OF ORDER
sign. She parked in the first space she came to; taking her wallet and her keys, she locked the car and went to the walk-up inside the bank lobby. She took out the fifty dollars she felt she owed Sally and returned to her car. She tucked the bills into the top of her bag, which was sitting on the seat where she’d left it. As she drove away, she turned on the radio, smiling when she realized that the song playing was one of her all-time favorites, one that brought back one of her best childhood memories.

She’d danced to the song—Journey’s “Lights”—in her ballet recital when she was thirteen years old. She’d loved that dance, loved the costume—pink tulle with a fluffy skirt, the girliest thing she’d ever worn. To this day, she could remember every step. Every time she heard the words, she was thirteen again and feeling pretty for the first time in her life. Her dance instructor had wanted all the girls who had long hair to wear it in a French braid, but having had short hair all her life and having given birth to only boys, Mallory’s aunt hadn’t a clue how to construct such a thing.

Fortunately, Mallory’s friend Kelly’s mother was a hairdresser, and had offered to fix up both girls before the performance. Mrs. Allen had looped Mallory’s hair into a perfect braid and had touched her cheeks with pale pink blush. When she’d looked into the mirror, she’d barely recognized herself. That image—the reflection she’d seen that day—had never really left her. It had been one of the happiest days in an otherwise forgettable childhood.

Mallory turned onto Academy Street, wondering what had happened to her old friend, and thinking that if there was one person from her past she’d want to see again, it would be Kelly Allen.

She parked across the street from the house Sally shared with three other girls, the fourth one in from the corner in a straight line of identical row houses. She figured if she were to find Sally at home, it would be in early afternoon, before she set out for working the streets. Morning might have been too early; later in the day she’d have missed her. Mallory got out of her car and walked across the street. From a block away, she could hear children at recess playing in the East Conroy Elementary school yard. She rang the doorbell and waited. When no one answered, it occurred to her that she probably should have called first, so she took her phone from her bag. The screen alerted her to having missed two calls, and she’d just started to check those numbers when the door opened.

“Hey, it’s my pal Mal.” Sally smiled and stepped outside in bare feet and cutoff jeans. “What are you doing here?”

“I felt bad about costing you the other night,” Mallory said, thinking how young and pretty Sally looked, with her red hair toned down just a bit and pulled back in a ponytail, her face clean of makeup. She reached into her bag and took out the bills she’d gotten from the ATM. “I wanted to make it up to you.”

“You don’t have to do that. It was early, there wasn’t much going on anyway,” Sally told her. “Besides, I didn’t give you much.”

“You still lost some work time.” Mallory folded the bills into Sally’s hand.

“Really, Detective, I…” Sally looked past Mallory, a curious expression on her face.

Mallory turned toward the street just as a brown sedan with dark-tinted windows pulled up. Later, Mallory would recall that at that second, everything seemed to move in slow motion: the car window rolling down, the burst of fire, the explosion of red that rose into the air in liquid streams and solid splinters as Sally shattered into a million pieces before her eyes.

She’d recall reaching behind her into her waistband at the same time she’d heard the sound of return gunfire, and she’d remember being surprised, because she’d tried but hadn’t been able to draw her handgun, her fingers unexpectedly slippery with what she would later realize was Sally’s blood. She’d know that she’d slumped to the ground, cradling Sally, and that when the shooting stopped, she’d looked up to find Charlie leaning over her, his phone in one hand as he called for backup, his other hand wiping something wet and sticky from her face.

At some point, Joe had shown up, and she’d heard him tell Charlie to take her out of there, to get her home, and Charlie’s quiet words: “I’ll take care of her….”

TWENTY-THREE

C
harlie opened Mallory’s bag and sorted through its contents, searching for her keys. Pocketing them, he got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. He opened the door and reached over Mallory’s still form to unfasten her seat belt.

“Come on, Mal,” he said softly. “We need to get you inside, get you cleaned up.”

It didn’t take an EMT to tell she was in shock, and he wasn’t sure he shouldn’t take her directly to the nearest emergency room. He was debating that possibility when she moved toward the door. He helped her out and supported her as she walked with a staggered gait. Charlie fumbled momentarily with the key, then pushed the front door open and slammed it closed behind them with his foot. Once inside, he dropped her bag to the floor.

“We need to get you cleaned up,” he repeated, wondering just how they were going to do that. “Guess your shower’s upstairs, right?”

He took her hand and helped her up the steps. At the top of the stairs, he rightly guessed that the middle door of three on the left was the bathroom, and he steered her in. Mallory stood like a mannequin, her face pasty under the smears of blood where he’d tried to wipe away the worst of it. Her shirt was covered in bits and pieces of Sally’s bone and blood and tissue, and he realized there was no way she was capable of removing anything.

He turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature to moderately warm. Then, because she began to shake, he increased the hot water a little.

“Under other circumstances, I’d be enjoying this,” he told her as he began to strip off her clothing. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about doing exactly this, these past few days.”

He dropped the bloodied clothing on the floor and turned her body in the direction of the shower. “But right now…not so much…”

He redirected the showerhead so that the water would rain down on her head. He unbuttoned his own shirt and took it off, then pulled his T-shirt over his head.

“Nope, not the way I planned it, Mal.” He helped her into the shower and stood just beyond the plastic curtain. “I know this isn’t the time, but I gotta tell you, you’re one beautiful woman.”

He wet a washcloth and wiped the blood from her face and neck, moved on to her chest.

“I promise I’ll tell you again, when the time’s better.” He rinsed the cloth and muttered to himself between clenched teeth, “Take one for the team, Wanamaker. Sometimes you have to take one for the team….”

When she’d been washed clean, he turned off the water and wrapped her in a towel, then sat her on the toilet seat and dried her hair as best he could. There was a white terry-cloth robe on the back of the bathroom door, and he wrapped her in it and tied it at the waist, then led her down the hall to her bedroom. He pulled back the light blue coverlet and helped her to lie down.

“I’m going to make you some…I don’t know, tea or something.” He debated. Did she drink hot tea? He tried to recall if he’d seen her drink hot anything. He had heard a kettle whistling in the background last night on the phone. “So, tea, yeah. We’ll go with tea. You stay right here, Mal. I’ll be right back.”

He was back in five minutes, steaming-hot tea in a white mug. Placing it atop a magazine on the bedside table, he sat down on the bed next to her still body and took her hands.

“Mallory.” He waited, hoping her eyes would follow the sound of his voice. He’d been just about ready to give up, just about to decide that both he and the chief had been wrong, that she should have gone to the ER, just about to call 911 for an ambulance, when she turned her head.

“I did this to her,” she whispered, her eyes brimming.

“No, Mallory. Regina Girard did this to Sally. Not you.”

“Somehow she knew. That Sally talked to me. Told me where she was. Or else she was following me.” She covered her face with her hands. “She was afraid that Regina would find out she talked to me, and I promised her she’d never know. I promised her I’d never put her in danger, and she believed me. She trusted me and now she’s dead.”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“Yes, it is. I should have…” She started to sit upright.

“Listen to me.” Charlie placed his hands on her shoulders and gently pushed her back down. “Regina Girard is a psychopath. Sally didn’t give you any information about Regina that we wouldn’t have gotten sooner or later anyway.”

“Then why did she kill her?”

“Because she wanted to. Because she felt like it. Because she could.”

Her hands still covering her face, Mallory began to weep, long racking sobs that seemed to come from someplace deep within her. Charlie rested her against his chest and let her ride out the storm. When it finally subsided, she said, “I never really knew her. I don’t know where she came from or how she came to do what she did. I used her to get information when I needed it, and every once in a while I’d toss her a few bucks for her time. But I never bothered to get to know her. All I knew about her could fit on one side of an index card.”

“Could be she wanted it that way,” he told her. “Some people are like that, you know? They don’t want anyone getting too close.”

Take you, for instance,
he could have said, but didn’t. It wasn’t the time. They would have a conversation about her, one of these days, but it wasn’t going to be today.

“Did you get her?” she asked.

“No,” he told her. “Whoever was driving for her moved too damned fast for me to get a good shot. Which is probably why she missed hitting you. The car took off while she was still shooting.”

“So how do we get her?” She was resting against him, her breath warm on his bare chest.

“I don’t know.” His hand moved the length of her back from her neck to her waist and back again, hoping to soothe. “We will get her, I promise you.”

“I want to be there,” she told him. “I want to be the one to pull the trigger.”

“No, you don’t. You’re a civilian. You’ll be charged with murder.”

“I don’t care.”

He understood her frustration and her anger, her need to retaliate, to seek revenge. He’d felt it a hundred times, when he’d brought in someone who’d left a sad trail of victims behind, someone he knew could get around the system and be back on the streets in too short a time.

“You worry about finding Ryan and Courtney, okay? Let me take care of Regina Girard.”

“How did she know?”

He hesitated, then told her, “She and some street punk were the ones who broke into your house the other night. She grabbed a handful of your notes. I’m guessing you’d jotted down something after you spoke with Sally last Saturday night, and she found it.”

“Sally didn’t really tell me anything except where Regina was staying sometimes, you know that.”

“Yes, but Regina didn’t.”

“Why would she have broken into my house? How would she have even known that Sally and I spoke the other night?”

“Someone obviously saw you with Sally, maybe someone who might have known you’ve been asking questions about the playground shooting.”

“There has to be a connection I’m not seeing.”

Mallory sat quietly for a while, then pushed against him.

“Misty Bauer,” she said. “When I spoke with her the first time, she kept watching the street—remember I told you how nervous she seemed? She even ripped up the card I’d given her and made a thing about dropping the pieces in the street.”

“Ah,” Charlie replied. “Yes, if Regina was convinced that Courtney had contacted her sister—or that she would contact her—she would have kept an eye on her. Watched where she went, who she spoke with.”

“And if she knew I’d spoken with Misty, she might have thought I’d be worth watching, too…” Mallory frowned. “Maybe word was out that I was looking for Courtney.”

“She’d have known who you were, all those years she was on the street, while you were on the force. No big secret there,” he pointed out. “Conroy isn’t that big, and there aren’t that many women detectives.”

“We need to talk to Linda Bauer,” Mallory said. “She needs to keep a real close eye on Misty until this thing is over.”

She started to get up.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“To get my phone.”

“Use mine. And stay put for a minute, will you? Shit, Mal, you were so white there for a while…” He stopped and shook his head. It didn’t matter now. She was okay, seemed like herself again. The anger and frustration had brought her back. He knew what that was like, too.

He took his phone from his pocket and handed it to her.

“I don’t know the number. It’s in my phone.”

“In the bag you had this morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get it. Just sit here and wait a minute.” He ran downstairs and found the bag on the floor where he’d dropped it. He opened it up and shifted things around, searching for the phone, wondering why women felt it necessary to carry around so much stuff: a brush, several tubes of lip balm, a small notebook, a couple of pens, a tiny tin of mints.

He found the phone in a side compartment, went back upstairs, and handed it to her.

“Call Linda Bauer, check up on Misty, then drink your tea.”

“What tea?” She began to look up the number.

“The tea I made you.” He pointed to the bedside table.

“You made me tea?” Her smile started slowly. She looked up. “What else did you do for me?”

“Cleaned you up.” He shifted on the edge of the bed at the reminder.

“I guess I was a mess, wasn’t I?”

“I’ve seen worse.” Actually, he hadn’t, but he didn’t think that would be the best thing to say, under the circumstances.

“Where are my clothes?” she asked. “The ones I was wearing when—”

“In the bathroom,” he cut in. “I can put them in the washer for you, if you tell me where it is.”

“No,” she told him. “I want to do that. I need to see it.”

Her jaw set firmly, and she began to dial.

“Crap,” she said and made a face. “Voice mail. I guess Linda’s not home from work yet….”

She waited a second, then said, “Linda, hello, it’s Mallory Russo. If you could give me a call when you get in…or Misty, if you hear this message before your mom gets home, please give me a call. It’s very important. Here’s my number again….”

She repeated the number, then ended the call.

“I wonder if I should have been more explicit.” She frowned.

“What could you have said on a message that wouldn’t have sent that woman into a panic?”

“Good point.” She nodded. “Then again, a little panic might be a good thing.”

She lay back against the pillows and seemed to be studying his face. When she reached for him and pulled him to her, he offered no resistance.

“Where’s your shirt, Detective Wanamaker?” she asked.

“With yours, on the bathroom floor.”

“Did you get into the shower with me?”

“Don’t you remember?”

“No.”

“Then if I said yes, we showered together, would you think we’d already passed that hurdle?”

“Which hurdle is that?”

“Seeing each other naked.”

“Ha. Nice try.” She tried unsuccessfully to smile. “I think I’d remember that.”

“I’m crushed that you don’t remember.” He tucked the quilt up around her. Despite the warmth of the late-afternoon sun coming in through the window, her skin was still cool to the touch.

“You want a window open?” he asked.

“Just the back one, maybe.” Her eyes were at half-mast, but they followed him across the room.

He pulled up the shade and opened the window. A refreshing breeze blew in.

“You’ve had a really bad couple of days here.” He returned to her bedside, leaned over her, and kissed the side of her mouth. “Try to get a little sleep, and…”

“We need to look at the film that Ryan made,” she protested and started to sit up.

“Uh-uh. I can look at them while you rest.”

“I feel fine, honest.” She pushed his arms away. “We need to go out and look…”

“It’s too late in the day, it’ll be dark soon. I’ll watch Ryan’s films and later we’ll compare notes, okay? And first thing in the morning, we’ll see if we can locate any of the places that look promising.”

“Don’t you need to get home with your mom?”

He glanced at the clock on her bedside table. “She won’t be home for a while yet.”

“Is she…out?” Mallory hesitated to say it.

“She’s at AA.” He nodded when he saw Mallory’s eyes widen slightly. “Yeah. She figured she needed to go a few times before she leaves for rehab this weekend.”

“At least she’s trying.”

“I think that her knowing that Jilly is being taken care of has removed a huge weight from her shoulders. I think she was really overwhelmed. Maybe now she feels more free to take care of her own issues.”

“Good for her,” she said, her voice starting to drop, her eyelids fluttering.

“I’ll be downstairs,” he told her.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“How long are you going to stay?”

“As long as you want,” he told her. “As long as you need me…”

It was just after six the next morning when Mallory’s phone began to ring. She struggled to sit up, then fumbled with first her quilt, then her bag, as she searched in the semi-darkness for her phone. By the time she found it, the ringing had stopped. She stretched and yawned, then sat back down on the side of the bed, engulfed by a great sadness as she recalled the events of the previous afternoon.