No Mercy--A Mystery

by Joanna Schaffhausen

  “That’s great, Alex, that you’re reaching out to Nate’s kids. I bet their mom is grateful, too.”

  Alex waved her off. “Elaine’s okay with it.”

  The group lapsed into silence again and Dr. Sunny nudged them. “Would anyone else like to share?”

  Tabitha scooted her chair forward, the metal feet dragging loudly across the floor. “I’ll go,” she said brusquely. “Here’s what I lost: three years of my life. My asshole of a husband threatens to kill me, I managed to hold him off with a knife, and yet I’m the one who got sent to jail.”

  “Well, he died,” Alex replied, not in a challenging way, but only stating the facts. “It’s not like the cops could question him.”

  Ellery looked at Tabitha, reassessing. Not just your average boring housewife after all, she thought.

  “Yeah, well, some people can just blow a guy away and call it self-defense and the governor acts like they’re a big hero for it,” Tabitha replied, her eyes on Ellery. “Not all of us are that lucky.”

  Ellery felt herself flush and she looked away. No part of her history could be called lucky.

  “What about something you learned or gained from the experience?” Dr. Sunny interjected, trying to keep the discussion on track.

  Tabitha studied her manicure for a long minute and did not answer. Then she huffed a short breath. “I said nothing,” she began again. “I said nothing when Ryan started telling me when I should be home at night, and which friends I could see. He was right—some of my friends didn’t like him. So why should we socialize with them? Why socialize at all? Isn’t that why we got married, to be together all the time? ‘I’ll be your best friend, babe,’ that’s what he said. ‘I’ll do everything for you.’ It sounded so sweet at first. So then…” She broke off, hesitating. “The first time he hit me, there wasn’t anyone left to tell. My friends were all gone. Ryan promised it wouldn’t happen again, and I made myself believe him. I didn’t believe him the second time, but I didn’t leave him, either. I just took it, for years. Well, I won’t take anything anymore. I’m not some little mouse who sits by and lets people take advantage of her. If I have a problem, I speak up. I’ll yell if I have to. But I’m through with making nice or putting up with other people’s bullshit. It’s my life now. No one else gets a say.”

  Ellery watched her, riveted. Tabitha’s long face was pink with emotion, her body posture daring anyone in the room to challenge her. She locked eyes with Ellery, and this time, Ellery did not look away. She barely heard Miles when he started talking.

  “… my wife. I will miss her every day until I die. I feel sad not just for me, but for the kids who didn’t get to have her as their teacher, and for the world that lost her beautiful music. I wish I’d thought to record more of it, you know, when she would mess around at our piano, playing those jazz tunes. I guess I always figured there’d be more time.” He took a deep breath and spread his hands. “I don’t think I gained much by losing her, truth be told. But I do have you all.” He flashed a self-conscious smile and looked around, lingering just a moment longer on Ellery. “And I’ve joined up with a group to fight for stricter sentencing on DUIs. Maybe … maybe we can stop the next drunk from getting behind the wheel.”

  “That sounds like a smart, healthy use of your time and experience,” Dr. Sunny replied. “Thank you for sharing it with us. Myra, did you want to say something next?”

  Ellery felt a stab of sympathy for the woman at being put on the spot like this. Who could find something positive in the death of your child? Myra twisted her hands in her lap, looking fretful. When she spoke, her voice was low and hoarse, almost inaudible. “I lost Bobby,” she whispered. “It’s been twenty-six years and I think about him every day. I think … if only I’d left him home that night. Patrick, sick as he was, still could have kept an eye on him. I think … why did the fire take him and not me? He was the innocent one in all of this.” Her eyes watered and she pulled out a crumpled tissue from her sweater pocket, which she used to blow her nose. “There is nothing I wouldn’t do to go back and fix it. Nothing. The family got money from the insurance, yes, but no amount was worth Bobby’s life.” Her voice wobbled again. “I guess, though, lately I’ve been thinking about Patrick. He could’ve left me half-burned in that hospital bed. Who wants an invalid for a wife? A cripple? He was still a young man. Now with money. He could’ve left me there and started over, but he didn’t. He’s taken care of me all these years. So maybe that’s what I get: forgiveness.”

  Forgiveness. Ellery turned the word over in her mind, pondering the implications. Did Myra mean that Patrick forgave her for bringing Bobby with her to the store that night? She’d said Bobby “was the innocent one.” Who then, was the guilty? Ellery was so busy wondering about the meaning of Myra’s words that she failed to realize Dr. Sunny was talking to her. Only when she felt the eyes of the room on her face did she snap out of it. “Um, what?” she asked, embarrassed to have been caught not paying attention.

  “I wondered if you’d like to share your thoughts on gains and losses,” Dr. Sunny said.

  “Me?” It hadn’t occurred to her that she would be asked to contribute, too. In her head, she was still using the group as research, a way to learn more about Wendy’s and Myra’s cases. She was there as an observer, not a participant. Everyone was looking at her with an air of expectancy now, and she frantically searched herself for what to say. Something she lost. There was so much, it was hard to know where to even start the list. Her bike (it had never been recovered); her virginity; her smooth, unmarked body; her privacy. Her very name and place of birth. Maybe it was because her mother had asked her to come home for Christmas, but this was what she settled on. “I lost my home,” she said, her voice clipped, overloud in the room with its low ceilings. “It doesn’t matter that I had happy memories there because they all fall apart under the weight of that one night. I could see my bedroom window when he took me. I was that close. Almost home.” She reached out and grasped at the air. Her hand fell empty and heavy in her lap. “My mother still lives there in the same apartment, right where it happened, because to her, it’s the place where my brother was. To me, it’s the place where Francis Coben could have killed me. It can’t ever be home again.”

  She looked around and saw Miles was nodding at her with sympathy. Tabitha’s gaze was more probing. She wasn’t sorry for Ellery just yet. “And anything you’ve gained?” Dr. Sunny inquired.

  Ellery groped around mentally for an answer. “I, uh…”

  Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. Even though everyone was watching, she pulled the phone out for a quick look. Maybe it was Manganelli saying he’d caught the rapist. The text glowed on the home screen, and it was from Reed: All ok? Just checking in.

  Ellery smiled and sniffed and shoved the phone back in her pocket. “I think … I think maybe I got a friend.”

  Dr. Sunny smiled, too. “That’s a lovely gain, even if it comes at great cost. Thank you for sharing with us.” She turned to Wendy, who was now slouched low in her seat. “Wendy? Would you like a turn?”

  Slowly, Wendy righted herself, as if pulling against the tide. “I used to feel kinda stupid coming here with you all,” she said after a beat. “Most of you lost family or friends—people in the grave ’cause of what happened to you. Nobody died in my house that night.” She drew a long shaky breath, and when she spoke again, her voice was teary. “But when I look back at my pictures from before it happened, it’s like I don’t even recognize myself. Who’s that girl hanging with her girlfriends at the bar? Who’s that guy kissing her cheek and looking at her like he loves her? I don’t know her. I don’t have her life anymore. She’s gone, and he killed her. That’s who died—me.” She broke off to swipe angrily at the tears rolling down her cheeks. “So I’m gone but he’s still out there walking around free as a bird, ready to do it to someone else. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t see anything good about that.”

  When the meeting broke up a short wh
ile later, Ellery stopped Wendy before the other woman could pull her usual vanishing act. “You lived,” she said, planting herself between Wendy and the door. “He set out to destroy you, but it didn’t work. You’re still here, working to stop him, waiting to put him away. He underestimated you, Wendy. He might think you’re broken, that you’re powerless, but you aren’t. One day he’ll know it, I promise you that.”

  Wendy’s eyes became huge inside her gaunt face. “This don’t feel like victory,” she replied.

  “Not yet. But it isn’t over yet. Come on, let me buy you a sandwich. I need to eat something, and I could use the company.”

  “Mine?” Wendy asked wonderingly, but she didn’t try to flee.

  “Ms. Hathaway?”

  Ellery turned to find Myra Gallagher pushing herself around the row of chairs. “Just one sec,” she said to Wendy, and she hurried over to help Myra so the woman wouldn’t have to struggle any further. “Call me Ellery,” she said. “Please.”

  “This has to be quick,” Myra replied in a hoarse whisper. “Patrick will be along any second, and I don’t want him to see us talking. I wanted to ask you if you’d talked to Jacob. My son. Patrick said you’d been looking for him.”

  Ellery felt herself color under the sharpness of the woman’s gaze. “Yes, I stopped by his house a week or so ago, but he wasn’t there. I haven’t tried to talk to him since.”

  “No one has seen him. He isn’t at home and he didn’t show up for work this week. We’re worried sick that something’s happened to him.”

  “Has he ever done this before?” Ellery asked. “Gone off without telling anyone?”

  The truth was written on Myra’s face. “Not for a long time.” Her shoulders rose and fell with her sigh. “Jake’s had some troubles, yes, but that was in the past. It … it wrecked him, too, what happened to Bobby.”

  Ellery knew that Jake’s trouble with the law had preceded the Gallagher store fire, but she held her tongue. “I haven’t even met Jake,” she said. “But I can try to help you look for him if you like.”

  “Oh, no no,” Myra assured her in a rush. She looked around Ellery to see if Patrick was approaching. “Patrick would never hear of it. I’m sure Jake will turn up soon enough.”

  Ellery bit her lip. She had not planned to raise the topic with Myra, but since the woman had brought it up, she couldn’t resist asking. “Jake was there the night of the fire—did you know that?”

  Myra looked up in horror, her blue eyes bright with emotion. “No, he wasn’t.

  “He was. I’ve seen a photograph that shows his face among the crowd.”

  “No, you must be mistaken. He—he wasn’t there.”

  “Where was he?” Ellery knew from the reports that Jake’s whereabouts were unaccounted for the night the store burned up.

  Myra’s chin quivered. “Jake’s a good boy. Whatever struggles he had, they were my fault. Mine and his father’s. Jake’s paid enough for our mistakes.” Her face went pale as she caught sight of Patrick coming up the walkway toward the hospital. “Get away,” she said, waving Ellery aside. “He’ll see you.”

  Ellery did as she asked, watching from around the corner as Patrick greeted his wife with a kiss on her cheek and began wheeling her away. Forgiveness, she thought again, remembering Myra’s earlier words. Maybe Myra wasn’t talking about herself at all. Maybe she’d had to forgive one son for killing the other.

  * * *

  Ellery took Wendy out to one of the ubiquitous burger and shake shops that seemed to have sprung up all over Boston. At Ellery’s urging, Wendy ordered a cheeseburger, fries, and a chocolate shake, but Wendy just stirred a fry around in a pool of ketchup and didn’t eat much. “I used to love cooking,” Wendy said. “All kinds of it. Carnitas, frijoles, pasta primavera, butter chicken with all the fixings. I made a pineapple upside-down cake that was kind of famous in my family. My boyfriend Joe, he ate three slices at a time. Tastes like love, he used to tell me.” She gave a wistful smile.

  “Sounds delicious,” Ellery said. “I’d love to try it one day.”

  Wendy’s smile disappeared. “Yeah, well, I can barely heat a can of soup now. You know what happened when I got out of the hospital?” She looked up at Ellery as if measuring her. “I threw out all the food in my fridge. I looked at all of it and I thought, how can I eat this now? This is happy food. I was happy when I bought it. It felt like a million years ago, like it had been someone else who did the shopping. I pulled it all out and put it straight in the garbage.”

  Ellery remembered that feeling of having to relearn how to eat again. Three days in the closet with only occasional sips of water, only when Coben felt like giving them to her, it had left her feeling so powerless over her own body that she’d found it confusing to hold a fork those first few days. “It gets better,” she told Wendy gently. To prove it, she smiled and ate a fry.

  Wendy pushed aside her food and folded her arms across her chest. “That FBI man. Is he still working on my case? Running down those names?”

  “Reed had to go back to Virginia,” Ellery said with regret. “Detective Manganelli is working on the list of names.” She hoped she’d sold this white lie, which wouldn’t be untrue for much longer. The rapist had nearly killed Wendy, and Manganelli had to know the next woman might not be as lucky.

  “Reed,” Wendy mused as she picked up another fry. This one actually made it to her mouth. “He’s the one you were talking about today, isn’t he? The friend you got.”

  “Yes.”

  Wendy nodded to herself. “And he knows everything that happened to you, right? What Francis Coben did with the farm tools?”

  Ellery willed herself not to flush. “Yes, he knows.”

  “Must be nice. My friends, they sent flowers after it happened. They came to visit me once or twice. But most of them couldn’t stand to look me in the eyes. Like they were imagining it, what he did to me. Eventually, they stopped coming at all. Now my sister’s kicking me out, too.” Her eyes welled up. “There’s no one left.”

  Impulsively, Ellery reached across the table and grabbed Wendy’s hand, hard. “Yes, there is.”

  * * *

  That night, Ellery texted Reed back: All’s quiet here. Got your promotion yet? She waited, watching her phone as she fed the dog his dinner, but Reed did not reply. Probably he was with his daughter. Or maybe on a real date, one that didn’t end with fire. She checked her email and voice mail messages again for any sign of Manganelli, despite the fact that she knew very well he hadn’t called or written. The jewelry store robberies were still unsolved, and the owner had died the day before. It might be a week yet, maybe longer, before he would even think to get back to Wendy Mendoza’s case.

  Ellery pulled up the list of names that Reed had given her and scrolled through them for the hundredth time. She had each one memorized by now. Victor Cruz, 114 Elm Street. Max Johnstone, 440 Central Street, Apartment 2. Dwayne Redford, 21 Park Avenue. It would be far too risky to take Wendy around to each one, but there was no reason Ellery herself couldn’t go to check them out. “I won’t talk to them,” she assured Bump, who was sitting in the kitchen with her, looking hopeful next to his freshly empty dish. “I just want to see them, watch where they go. Maybe I can give Manganelli something more to go on.”

  She knew even as she said the words that he wouldn’t welcome her involvement in his case, but since he couldn’t be bothered to work it, she would fill in for him in the meantime. Wendy deserved as much. She grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, holstered up her weapon, and snatched her phone from the counter. It buzzed in her hands, a response from Reed. No promotion yet. Just cleaning my bathroom like a regular schmoe. What are you up to?

  She hesitated with the phone in her palm. He’d be furious with her. Walking the dog, she texted back quickly. He says hi.

  Then she was gone.

  10

  Back in his nondescript town house, Reed felt no sense of homecoming. The place always looked exactly the same,
as though preserved with a hermetic seal. Before, when he’d had to leave Sarit and Tula to travel for work, they’d lived entire lifetimes in his absence, and he would come home to a new, unexplained crack in the stairs, a refrigerator decorated with fresh, brightly colored scribblings, and a novel set of in-jokes that he couldn’t follow. Fill me in, he’d say. What did I miss? And Sarit would oblige with a chatty, wide-ranging narrative that included piles of laundry and playdates and a new story she was researching on the most valuable home improvements people were making in D.C. and didn’t he think they might consider adding solar panels? Wait, slow down, he’d say, but they never listened. They kept growing and changing until suddenly his family lived somewhere entirely different, a place he could no longer reach.

  The noise and chaos was coming for a visit, though, as Sarit was to drop off Tula shortly for an overnight stay. Reed had prepared one of her favorite dishes—pan-fried chicken with biscuits and gravy, salad on the side—fully aware he was sucking up but not caring in the least. All’s fair in love and divorce. He’d put on a Bach concerto to fill the void in the meantime—Bach, with his jaunty pointillist melodies, was perfect for chopping—and leaned over the counter as he scrolled through his phone, looking for any connection there. Ellery still hadn’t answered his last message from hours ago, when he was hungry at work and he’d tried to be funny: