Blind Search

by Paula Munier

  Lillian shook her head.

  “His mother’s not around,” explained Mercy. “And his father is … unavailable.”

  She looked down at her phone where a new text had appeared. Speak of the devil. Mercy looked at Lillian and grinned. “Daniel Feinberg has persuaded Harrington to allow Ethan to come for Henry. Two police officers will accompany him.”

  “Police officers?”

  “Don’t worry. The fact that Caspar Farrow was murdered while Ethan was in custody should cast serious doubt on his guilt.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  Dr. Sharma smiled. “So all is well.” He gave a little bow. “I am going now. Coming back this evening for rounds. Meanwhile, please be cooperating with the tests.”

  Lillian muttered a gruff goodbye.

  Mercy accompanied Dr. Sharma to the door. “There should be a uniform sitting outside this room,” she told him. “I’ll find out where he is.”

  The doctor nodded and went on his way. Patience strode past him down the hall.

  “Thank goodness you’re here.” She kissed her grandmother on the cheek.

  Patience smiled. “I’ll stay with Lillian for the duration. Make sure she does as she’s told. She’s stubborn. Always has been. But I’ll keep her in line.”

  “Thank you.”

  “And you, please be careful.”

  “No worries. I’ll have Elvis with me.”

  Grandmother in tow, Mercy returned to Lillian’s hospital room.

  “You look much better than I thought you would, oxygen tank and all.” Patience smiled at Lillian. “Though certainly not good enough to leave.”

  “But Henry—”

  “Mercy’s got that covered.” Patience made herself comfortable in the orange plastic seat at her friend’s bedside. She fished a pair of playing cards out of her voluminous if battered wine-colored leather backpack. “Gin rummy. I’ll deal.”

  Lillian sighed. “Jokers wild.”

  “I prefer deuces wild,” said Patience.

  “I nearly died,” said Lillian.

  “Whatever.”

  * * *

  MERCY AND ELVIS snuck out while the two old friends were still bickering. She headed to the reception area, where Troy and Captain Thrasher waited with Susie Bear. An elderly couple was across the room, holding hands and watching an all-news channel on the television, but otherwise the waiting room was empty. The pair paid no attention to them or their dogs.

  “I talked to the fire investigator,” said Troy. “It was definitely arson. But your quick thinking with that fire extinguisher paid off. The Vermonter will still need significant repairs, but it’s not the total loss it could have been.”

  “Well done,” said Thrasher.

  High praise from the captain. Troy gave her a thumbs-up behind the captain’s back and she stifled a laugh.

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Thrasher cleared his throat. Uh-oh. Mercy knew him well enough by now to know that usually meant he was about to announce bad news.

  “Harrington has warned us off the investigation.”

  “What else is new,” said Mercy.

  “He also sent a team into the woods to bring in Yolanda Yellowbird,” said Thrasher. “There was nothing I could do to stop him. He’s convinced she’s up to more than mushroom hunting.”

  “She saved Henry,” she said. “Twice.”

  “All you can do is prove him wrong.” The captain grinned. “You’re good at that.”

  “I still think the night hunters are behind all this,” said Troy. “I’m going to check that camera and put another one at the bob-house. I have to go out on patrols anyway, and with the storm coming tomorrow, there’ll be plenty to do.”

  “The night hunters are up to something, but I’m not convinced that it’s murder.”

  “Why not?” asked Thrasher.

  “Follow the money,” she said. “And the money leads to Nemeton. I’ve got to get back there and do some more digging.”

  “I didn’t hear that,” said Thrasher.

  “You have no tires,” said Troy.

  “Daniel Feinberg had a rental delivered here for me to drive,” she said. “When will Ethan arrive?”

  “He’s on his way,” said the captain. “Becker and Goodlove are bringing him. They’ll stay with Ethan and the boy for the duration.”

  “Goodlove?” She knew Officer Becker, but not Goodlove.

  “A good officer, top of her class at the academy.”

  “A rookie?”

  “She’s new,” admitted Thrasher.

  She frowned. “Newer than Becker? Seriously?”

  “Becker’s a good officer,” said the captain. “He and Goodlove make a good team.”

  “You can’t do everything yourself,” said Troy gently.

  “Not to mention that you are a civilian,” said Thrasher dryly.

  Troy jumped in, probably to make sure that she ignored that remark. “Ethan will take Henry home to Lillian’s house. And stay there with Becker and Goodlove until we figure out who is behind this.”

  “What about Lillian?”

  “There’s a uniform on the way,” said Thrasher. “Even Kai Harrington knows that letting anything happen to the grand dame of Northshire would be a bad idea.”

  “Did they chase down the SUV that tried to run us off the road yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Thrasher. “It seems to have disappeared into thin air.”

  “Whoever they were,” said Troy, “they knew what they were doing.”

  “They could be on their way to Maine by now. But we’ll keep looking.”

  Dr. Sharma joined them. “Henry is okay to be going home.”

  “Elvis and I will stay here with him until his father shows up.”

  The doctor nodded and excused himself.

  “Then I’m going to back to Nemeton,” she told Thrasher and Troy.

  “I suppose there’s no stopping you,” said the captain. “But stay out of trouble. That blizzard is on the move. Just the mention of snow and the peepers all panic. We’re going to be very, very busy.”

  By which he meant Troy and Susie Bear would be very, very busy, and possibly unavailable, should she need help.

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Thrasher left as soon as Lillian’s uniformed guard arrived. Troy and Susie Bear stayed behind in the reception area with her and Elvis just long enough for him to tell her that Alice de Clare had been pregnant.

  “Dr. Darling can test for Ethan and Farrow,” said Troy.

  “But what about the rest of them? The sooner I get back to Nemeton, the better.”

  “Anyone could be the father. It doesn’t have to be someone in this hunting party.”

  “You mean it could be a coincidence.” She raised her eyebrows and waggled them at him.

  Troy laughed. “Yes, Groucho, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  “Private joke?” Thrasher rematerialized as if from nowhere.

  She bit back a yes, sir! and said simply, “Sort of.” She felt her face flush.

  “Mercy doesn’t believe in coincidences,” Troy said. “At least not when it comes to murder.”

  “Neither do I.” The captain looked from Mercy to Troy. “Not when it comes to anything. Time for patrols, Troy.” He nodded at her, then exited, clearly expecting Troy to follow.

  Which he did, after grinning a goodbye at her and calling for Susie Bear.

  The shaggy dog lumbered after him, and Mercy sat in one of the thinly stuffed blue armchairs designed to make patients and family feel comfortable while they waited for good and bad news. Elvis settled at her feet.

  She watched Troy and Susie Bear disappear through the wide hospital doors into the dark night. The elderly couple still sat in front of the television, still taking no notice of them, still holding hands.

  Elvis lifted his head, resting it on the seat of the chair, nose nuzzling her thigh. Even so, Mercy felt alone. Whether this feeling was down to another sudden wave of grief
over her fiancé’s death catching her unawares again or the insistent tug of attraction to a certain game warden, she wasn’t sure. Elvis licked her hand and she smiled. As long as she had Elvis, she was never really alone.

  She slapped her thigh to rouse the shepherd to her side, and together they went to find Henry. Fifteen minutes later, she was back in the reception area with Henry and Elvis, waiting for his father.

  Henry sprawled on the orange couch across from her; the shepherd sat to his left. Elvis leaned into the boy, his head on Henry’s knobby knees, alert and attentive as ever.

  The snow flurries had begun, and even though the driving conditions weren’t near as bad as they would be once the storm arrived in full, she knew that accidents would be piling up as tourists spun off roads, slipped into ditches, and plowed into their fellow drivers. Law enforcement would be short-staffed and overworked, especially with three of them guarding the Jenkins family.

  “What should we do to pass the time?” she asked Henry.

  The toys in the corner of the reception area were for toddlers. There was a stack of coloring books and a box of crayons.

  “We could color.”

  Henry just looked at her, big brown eyes aghast. He scrambled to his feet and went to the tall window on the left, one of the soaring glass panels flanking the hospital’s entrance.

  Coloring was not challenging enough for this little genius.

  “Okay, no coloring.” She joined him at the window. Elvis wriggled between them, and the three of them stood there, watching the snow fall, white sparkles in the dark night.

  “They say every snowflake is different.”

  Henry shook his head no. “Crystals.”

  “Crystals,” she repeated, trying to think like he would. “Oh, I get it. You’re saying that snowflakes aren’t really flakes at all. They’re crystals.”

  Henry nodded. He got up and retrieved the box of crayons and one of the coloring books from the corner. Cinderella.

  He took out a black crayon and opened the coloring book. In the blank corner of one of its pages, a page featuring the pumpkin carriage, the boy drew an arrangement of six-figured water molecules in the ice-crystal lattice. Hexagons.

  “I’m guessing that’s the molecular structure of a snowflake. Er, crystal.”

  Henry nodded, and continued to draw, detailing the molecular structure of different kinds snowflakes and labeling them as appropriate: stellar dendrites, bullet rosettes, sectored plates, twelve-branched stars, radiating dendrites. Quite a vocabulary, even for the Wikipedia kid.

  “Impressive,” she said. “You should be a meteorologist when you grow up. I could watch you on the news every night. You could wear a bow tie.”

  Henry smiled at that.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME Ethan Jenkins showed up with Officer Becker and Officer Goodlove, Mercy knew more about the complex structure of snowflakes than she ever thought she would.

  “Henry!” Ethan gathered his son into his arms and Henry hung there, arms limp at his sides, letting his father embrace him.

  Becker was a good cop for a rookie. Although she supposed that when he was paired with Officer Goodlove, she was the rookie, and he the seasoned veteran.

  Goodlove was a pretty woman with a moon-shaped face framed by dark curly hair and blue eyes that gazed upon her new partner with admiration.

  “Heartbreaker,” Mercy said to Becker under her breath. He blushed.

  She turned her attention to Henry.

  “I know you’ll miss Elvis, but two police officers are better than one police dog.” She smiled at Becker and Goodlove. “At least that’s what they say.”

  Henry lowered his head, staring down at the highly polished floor. Refusing even to acknowledge her presence. She squeezed his shoulder and left quickly. Elvis barked a goodbye, following on her heels.

  The snow was falling more steadily now, and she had to spend a couple minutes clearing off the Land Rover Daniel Feinberg had rented for her. Fluffy snow, wet and heavy. She knew from her conversation with Henry and her own winter wisdom that as the temperature fell—and it was falling fast—the snow would grow lighter and drier, more powdery. No matter what its molecular composition, the white stuff was piling up.

  She’d have to hurry to get to Nemeton before the roads needed plowing.

  Elvis bellowed in the back seat. Cocked his triangular ears as if to say, Where’s Henry?

  “Henry couldn’t come,” she told the anxious shepherd. “Becker and Goodlove are with him. Don’t worry about it.”

  But Elvis was going to worry about it. Just as she was.

  * * *

  BEFORE GOING OUT on patrol, Troy and Susie Bear dropped by the office to handle paperwork that couldn’t wait. Then at the captain’s request—read order—they joined him for dinner at Pizza Bob’s Wood Fired Pie Company.

  It was a command pizza. Which made him nervous, since he did not know what burr was under the captain’s saddle this time. The man was nothing if not enigmatic.

  Susie Bear was excited, not nervous, as pizza was one of her special people foods, right up there with steak and sandwich and Patience O’Sullivan’s pot roast. All the way from the truck to the restaurant, she pranced in front of him. Despite her size, she was light on her feet. She stopped several times to enjoy the attentions of children and grown-ups alike. The dog’s happy-go-lucky personality was a beacon, allowing Troy to shine in her light. He wasn’t that good with people, but thanks to Susie Bear, most people never noticed.

  He smiled at her many admirers as they made their way into the restaurant. With all the peepers in town, the place was more crowded than ever. Pizza Bob—a big man with a big smile who always smelled of garlic and pepperoni—greeted him with a bear hug and Susie Bear with a breadstick from his back pocket. She loved Pizza Bob’s breadsticks.

  Pizza Bob’s was not a fancy place, which was one of the reasons Troy and Susie Bear liked it so much. The other reason was the pizza. The best in town, thanks to a massive one-of-a-kind stone oven Pizza Bob and his brothers had built with their own hands back in the Sixties and embellished with colorful graffiti true to that time: peace signs and flowers and rainbows and Give Pizza a Chance.

  In good weather, they could sit outside with the other human and canine customers. The rest of the year, they counted on Captain Thrasher to commandeer a quiet booth in the back with room for a hundred-pound dog to stretch out nearby. Even at peak peeper season, Thrasher did not disappoint. Pizza Bob led them through the throngs to him.

  “I’ve already ordered,” Thrasher said. “The usual.”

  That meant an extra-large Howl—a hand-tossed pie with pepperoni, sausage, bacon, meatballs, and ham—and fresh root beer on tap for them and a large bowl of water for the dog.

  “Thanks.” Troy slipped into the bench across from his boss and waited.

  “An interesting day.”

  “Yes, sir.” Although their relationship was friendly and their usual interactions fairly casual, he knew at times the captain needed to lay on the formality. This was one of those times.

  “I read your report. Two murders. A child witness. A hat with peregrine feathers. Quite a story.”

  “Sir.”

  “What do our night hunters have to do with this?”

  “Maybe everything, maybe nothing.”

  “We know that there’s more illegal activity happening in the woods now than ever,” said Thrasher. “In addition to the usual drug dealers and poachers, we’ve got those gunrunners to worry about.”

  The recent flood of illegal handguns on the streets of Toronto pointed to smugglers buying up handguns at gun shows down south, sneaking them over the border, and selling them on the black market. The Canadian authorities had been pushing Vermont law enforcement for results.

  “No sign of them yet.”

  “With all these criminals operating in our woods, sooner or later we’re going to catch them. And sooner or later, they’re going to run into civilians. And w
e know what happens when civilians find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “Murder happens.”

  “Maybe. We don’t know enough to make even an educated guess at this point.”

  “And much of what we do know doesn’t make much sense.”

  “So we keep working until it does make sense.” Thrasher steepled his fingers and raised them to his chin. “The name Mercy Carr appears several times in your report.”

  “She discovered the first victim. She tracked down the boy. She found the second victim. She got run off the road. She pulled Lillian Jenkins from a burning building. She—” He stopped when he saw the smirk behind his boss’s fingers.

  Thrasher laughed, a deep baritone that rolled through the restaurant like a tidal wave, sweeping away everyone in the place. It was an infectious laugh, one that made every man want to be his friend and every woman want to be his, well, woman.

  Troy knew without looking that all of Pizza Bob’s patrons were staring at them. Dying for an invitation to join the party.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Something’s changed,” said the captain. “You and Mercy Carr. Tell me about it.”

  To Troy’s relief, Pizza Bob appeared with a steaming meat-laden pie and a pitcher of root beer. “I’ll be back with the big girl’s water.”

  Thrasher helped himself, and Troy put a plate piled with three thick slices under the table for Susie Bear, and one with another three slices on the table for him.

  Pizza Bob set the Newfie’s water down on the floor. “Enjoy, all of you.”

  For the next several minutes, neither of them said a word. The captain was completely focused on his food—he took eating very seriously—but Troy was distracted.

  It was unlike Thrasher to pry into his private life. God knows the captain guarded his own privacy with a ferocity few dared to breach. His wife, Carol, had died of cancer two years ago, and he never spoke about it. Troy’s wife, Madeline, had left him not too long after that, and they’d grieved their losses together over many pizzas and pitchers of root beer without mentioning their wives at all.

  “None of my business, I know that.” The captain wiped his mouth and hands carefully with a thick stack of napkins Pizza Bob always knew to supply, removing every trace of grease and sauce from his person. “But I have my reasons for asking.”