Traces of Mercy (29 page)

“And did she confide in you?”

Deirdre looked pained. “I used to think so,” she said. “But it seems to me that things had changed between us when she came back to the convent after leaving Rand.”

“How do you mean?”

Deirdre looked toward Mercy. “It felt like she had just … shut me out of her life. She didn’t speak of her breakup with Rand. Didn’t say what had happened.”

“And how was her demeanor?” Shepherd asked.

“Sir?”

“How did she act? Was she sad? Happy? Angry?”

“She seemed sad when she first arrived, but after Rand paid a visit, I noticed that the sadness wasn’t—genuine. I caught her humming, smiling—there was a hopeful gleam in her eyes.” Deirdre stopped. “That might sound odd …”

“Not at all,” Shepherd quickly assured her. “And her actions made you suspicious?”

Deirdre looked down. “A little—yes.”

“Of what, exactly?”

“I got the idea Rand was still in her life. That maybe the two of them were going to run off together.”

“But why? Why do that when she could have had the wedding of her dreams?” Shepherd asked.

Deirdre shook her head. “I didn’t know. But I stumbled across the answer by accident one morning when I was cleaning our room. I was flipping the mattress on her cot when it just fell out onto the floor.”

“It?”

Deirdre licked her lips nervously. “Her journal. I’ve seen her write in it dozens of times, and I never would have thought to read someone else’s most private thoughts, but …”

“But … you felt as if something wasn’t right with her? Is that it?” Shepherd asked.

Deirdre nodded. “Yes. At first I was just going to put it back under the mattress, but it had fallen open to a page that had some inflammatory information that I just couldn’t ignore.”

“So you read it.”

“Yes, though I wish I hadn’t. As soon as I read a few recent passages, I knew I needed to show Rand.”

“You didn’t confront Mercy?”

“No,” Deirdre admitted. “I didn’t want her to know what I’d found out. I didn’t tell anyone but Rand.”

“You didn’t even tell Mother Helena, the woman in charge of your order?”

Deirdre looked down at her hands folded in her lap. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I was worried she’d tell me that I was meddling in something that didn’t concern me.”

“But you felt it did concern you.”

Deirdre nodded. “Indirectly, but yes. Rand and his family have been great friends and supporters of the Little Sisters of Hope. I just hated that he was being duped.”

“Why didn’t you go to the authorities with the journal?” Shepherd asked.

“I knew Rand to be a good and honorable man,” Deirdre said. “I was sure once he knew the truth, he would do the right thing.” She lifted her chin. “And he did.”

As Deirdre left the witness stand, Don Shepherd looked at Mercy. “The state calls the defendant to the stand.”

Shepherd asked Mercy to identify each piece of evidence he had introduced. She agreed that the clothes with the bloodstains were hers.

“And these are the same clothes that you buried behind the Prescott cottage the day you left?”

“Yes.”

“Along with the bedsheets that were stained with your own blood?”

Mercy barely nodded. “That’s right.”

Shepherd walked to a table on the side of the courtroom and picked up a rifle. He carried it back to Mercy.

“Do you recognize this rifle?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever fired this rifle?”

Mercy looked at Rand, then back at Shepherd. “Yes.”

“Yes. In fact, isn’t it true that you fired this rifle on the morning that Congressman John Henderson’s house caught fire?”

Reluctantly, Mercy dipped her chin to nod.

“Answer with a yes or no, please,” Shepherd said.

“Yes, but I didn’t mean to fire the gun. It went off accidentally.”

Quiet, uneasy laughter rippled through the courtroom. Judge Young pounded the gavel on the bench. “Proper decorum from the spectators, please.”

“You are telling me that you never intended to actually fire the rifle you carried from the Prescott cottage to the Henderson estate that morning?” Shepherd asked. “Remember you are under oath.”

“I’m saying I didn’t intend to shoot Mr. Henderson,” Mercy said.

Shepherd turned to the men in the jury box and offered a small, disbelieving smile. “And I suppose you would have us believe that the fire you set was an accident also?”

Mercy cleared her throat. “No. Though I’m sorry about it now—it was deliberate.”

“You mean sorry because you were caught?”

Mercy looked at him. “Well, sir, I’d be lying if I said no to that. Of course I’m sorry I was caught.”

“Rand Prescott maintains that you fostered a false relationship with him in order to become acquainted with John Henderson,” Shepherd said. “Is that true?”

Mercy saw John and Mary Henderson sitting beside Charles and Ilene on the prosecutor’s side of the courtroom. She let her glance go from the Hendersons to Rand, who sat in front of his parents.

“No, that isn’t true,” she said. “My feelings for Rand were real.”

“Yet you continually lied to the man you claimed to love,” Shepherd said.

Again, Mercy looked down at her hands. “Yes.”

“One last question,” he said.

Mercy pressed her lips together and nodded.

“Were you a Confederate soldier during the war between the states?”

Mercy looked at the jury, then out at the faces of the people who seemed to lean forward in their seats to hear her answer. She knew with her next statement her life would probably be over, but she said it anyway.

“I’m so very sorry to say that yes—I believe I was.”

If ever there was a time in her life she wished her memory would disappear, it was that time in that place, seeing Rand’s contemptuous face as he watched her leave the stand and go back to sit beside Frank.

The summation in her defense was brief. Frank asked the jury to remember that Mercy had never verbally confessed to planning an assassination of Congressman John Henderson. Therefore, the charge of treason could not be constitutionally upheld. But Mercy knew, as did the rest of the spectators in the court, that Frank Collins was standing on the bow of a sinking ship.

It took the jury less than three hours to find her guilty of treason and attempted murder. Moments later the judge delivered the news of her fate: death by hanging.

Mercy heard the words and waited for the tidal wave of emotions she should be feeling—but instead, she felt herself die with the pronouncement. She was vaguely aware of Frank’s words of apology, his sympathy, the ripple of vindication from the gallery of spectators. As the guard led her away, she looked at Rand and saw a flicker of regret on his face before his mouth settled into a smirk of vindication.

Rand went to join his parents and the Hendersons as they stepped outside the courtroom.

“I’m sorry I brought that woman into your life, John,” Rand said.

“Sounds like she would have found me with or without you, Rand,” John said. “No hard feelings here.”

“Still, I feel like a fool,” Rand said.

“Nonsense,” John said. “She is a beautiful, charming young woman. We were all taken in by her.”

“I wasn’t,” Ilene said bitterly.

Charles sighed. “This isn’t the time, Ilene.”

“I’m just glad it is all over,” Mary Henderson said. “I won’t miss all the security men that have been camped on our doorstep these past weeks.”

She looked at her husband. “You should let Elijah know. He was so worried when he left.”

“I’ll send a messenger to Fort Wallace right away,” John agreed.

Under a hot sun the next afternoon, a lone rider galloped along a grassy river that led him into a valley dotted with canvas-walled tents, a long building made from pine lumber, and two storehouses. The rider dismounted in front of a large, singular tent twice the size of the others and spoke to the man in uniform who stood guard.

“This Fort Wallace?”

The soldier nodded. “Yup.”

“Got a message here for one of your officers,” the rider said. “Captain Elijah Hale.”

The soldier held out his hand. “I’ll see he gets it.”

“I’m supposed to hand it to him myself,” the rider said.

“Captain Hale is in the field.”

The rider sighed. “Point me in the right direction.”

The soldier offered a wry smile. “Okay, pal. Just know that between here and Captain Hale, there are countless Indians who ain’t happy about the railroads chopping up their land.”

The rider considered it, then handed him the message. “I’ll consider it delivered.”

The soldier folded the paper in half and stuffed it into his pocket. “It will be as soon as I see him.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-
T
HREE

It was late afternoon when Elijah rode back into camp at Fort Wallace. He had been gone for two weeks, traveling over the Smoky Hill Trail in western Kansas to protect the railroad surveyors from the increasing hostilities of the Plains Indians. The work was long, hard, and often dangerous on the trail, but Elijah found he preferred it to spending all his time at the fort. But now that he had a few days to relax, he was anxious to be out of the saddle. For the past few hours, it was the thought of a warm meal and sleeping on a cot that had kept him going. He brought his horse to the stables and then went to the mess tent for a coveted cup of coffee and some hot food.

He greeted a few familiar faces as he carried a tin plate to a table in the back of the tent. A young man looked up as Elijah sat down across from him. Sergeant Howard Peterson had a splash of freckles across the bridge of his nose and a bristly cap of hair that actually looked needle sharp.

“Hey, Captain, good to see you back in one piece,” he said.

“Thanks, Pete,” Elijah said. “Good to be back for a few days.”

“Did Brownie find you?” he asked.

Elijah tucked into his food and shook his head. “Nope. Just got back about a half a second ago.”

“He started lookin’ for you a’ couple a days ago,” Peterson told him. “He figured it’d be sometime seen that we’d see ya.”

“What does he want?”

“He had a message for you,” Peterson said.

Elijah looked up from his food, alarm on his face. “From who?”

Peterson shrugged. “Don’t know. When he couldn’t find you, he said he was gonna take it to Captain Gordon.”

Elijah hurried from the mess tent and made his way to the man in charge, Captain James Gordon. He executed a quick knock on the door that hung from the frame of the tent.

“What is it?” Captain Gordon called out.

Elijah went inside and found Gordon poring over drawings spread across a desk in the center of the tent. Gordon looked up.

“Elijah. Back to regroup?”

Elijah nodded. “For a few days.”

“See any action?”

“A few skirmishes, threats—nothing that we couldn’t handle.”

“Good. Good. I’ve got to put in an acquisition request for more lumber and supplies. The rate we’re going, it’ll be winter and we’re still going to be in these blasted tents.”

“Do you have a message for me, James?” Elijah asked.

Gordon nodded and then started to lift up piles of papers on his desk. “Brownie brought it to me yesterday,” he said. “It’s here somewhere.”

All kinds of desperate thoughts ran through Elijah’s head—most of them having to do with his mother. What if something had happened and he never got a chance to tell her good-bye?

“Ah! Here it is,” Gordon said, pulling the telegram out from under some drawings. He handed it to Elijah.

Elijah opened the telegram and read the words on the page twice:
Assassin caught. Rand’s fiancée turned out to be a reb. Guilty of treason. Set to hang at dawn at Gratiot. May 3.

“Hope it’s not bad news,” Gordon said.

Elijah couldn’t believe it. If Mercy had been the one to set the fire, then he knew without a doubt that it wasn’t John she had been after—it had been him.

“Elijah?”

He looked up from the telegram. “What’s today’s date?” Elijah asked.

“It’s the first of May,” Gordon said.

“I have to get to St. Louis,” Elijah said.