No Mercy--A Mystery

by Joanna Schaffhausen

  “Ellery?”

  “Hmm?” She was looking at the split in his robe, which had fallen open to reveal an expanse of golden skin and a sprinkling of dark chest hair.

  “You’re sure you’re all right? You seem kind of … woozy.”

  “Your hair,” she said, apropos of nothing. She had raised her eyes to his head. “It’s flatter than usual.”

  “Yes, well. Pardon me if I didn’t take the time to gel it up properly before hopping a plane to make sure you were alive.”

  “I’m alive.” She gave a calm smile, and he returned it.

  “And I’m so glad,” he murmured. His hands, still on her shoulders, seemed to be urging her forward, and she decided to let it happen. He folded her in gently as though she might break, and she held her breath in this barest of hugs. Hesitantly, she let her fingers find the sides of him where he was lean and strong through the robe. Her nose poked into his collarbone and he smelled like warm, clean male. She couldn’t help herself: she opened her mouth and gave him a brief, experimental lick.

  “Jesus!” He jerked in her arms but he must have liked it because he didn’t let her go. No, he pulled her closer, his naked legs starting to mingle with hers, and one large hand came up to cup the back of her neck, his fingers twisting in her hair. Her tongue darted out again, addicted to the salt of him now, and he buried his face against the side of her throat. Yes, she could do this, she thought, arching her neck as his hands started to move on her body. She could give him something he wanted. Then his sacrifices wouldn’t have been all for nothing.

  Her heart hammered at the decision. This was usually the part where she went outside herself, where she pretended it wasn’t happening until it was over. If she could do it with other men, she could surely do it with Reed. She squeezed her eyes shut and tangled her fingers in the robe. It felt weird. Personal and intimate in a way that made her squirm. He was using his nose to nudge her shirt off her shoulder, exposing her skin to his mouth. She gasped at the scrape of his stubble contrasted with the softness of his lips, and was suddenly dizzy. That felt good. Too good. Strange sensations rushed at her and she couldn’t make them stop. She wrenched away from him, breathing hard, her mouth hanging open in shock. Losing control was not an option.

  Reed looked shellacked, his eyes dark, still aroused. “Ah, sorry,” he said, clutching his head. “I didn’t mean—that is, I shouldn’t have…”

  She had backed away from him into the hall. “Forget it.” She barely got the words out when the banging started at her front door.

  They froze again, a new kind of tension. It was after midnight now. There was a brief pause and then the pounding happened again. “I’ll get it,” Reed said, cinching up his robe.

  “No, I will.”

  They went together to the door, pushing past each other, but it was she who reached the locks first. She peered through the peephole and drew back in surprise. “I think it’s for you,” she murmured, deferring to him with a wave of her hands. He looked puzzled as he opened the door.

  Russell McGreevy stood in the dim hallway, shoes dripping, a streak of snow marring his otherwise perfect black coat. “Well,” he said with a scowl as he took in Reed’s bathrobe and bare feet. “Isn’t this cozy?”

  14

  McGreevy did not wait to be invited inside. He pushed past Reed and stalked into Ellery’s living room, his coat trailing like a cape. Ellery shot Reed a look that was half question, half accusation. What the hell is going on here? Reed gave a guilty shrug and cinched her bathrobe more tightly around his naked body, trying to look more self-assured than he felt as he marched in to face McGreevy. Regardless of the differences in their attire, it was his boss who was in the wrong here, and Reed had a feeling he knew it, too. Otherwise, why show up at Ellery’s place in the middle of the night?

  McGreevy had taken up sentry at the far end of the room, peering out at the city lights down below. He did not turn around when Reed and Ellery entered, as though they weren’t worthy of his attention. Reed halted near the sofa, and Ellery kept her distance from both men, hugging herself and looking warily from one to the other. Bump sat at her feet, whining softly at the tension in the room. For a long moment, the only sounds were the dog’s mild protests and the far-off tumbling clothes in the dryer.

  “Thought you were in Florida,” Reed said finally, and McGreevy whirled to frown at him.

  “Don’t play cute with me.”

  “Who’s playing cute? I’d say this is more cloak-and-dagger, what with the surprise visit at this late hour.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not too late,” McGreevy replied testily. He raked Reed up and down with his eyes. “I trust you have actual clothes lying around here someplace.” His gaze slid toward the hall, toward Ellery’s bedroom, but Reed refused to take the bait. He folded his arms.

  “Why does it matter how I am dressed?” If McGreevy thought he could order Reed onto a plane to Florida, he was sadly mistaken about where his line of influence ended.

  “Just get dressed, will you?” McGreevy gestured at him impatiently. “I don’t have much time.”

  Reed didn’t budge. “Where are we going?”

  McGreevy regarded him with pale eyes. “I’ve found Earl Stanfield. The Blaze, whatever. Before you blow up my career—and your own—I thought you should hear the whole story, right from the horse’s mouth. Then you can decide whether your crusade is really worth it.”

  “Found him,” Reed repeated ironically. “Right about where you left him twenty-five years ago, is that it?”

  McGreevy put a hand to his hip, causing his coat to gape open and reveal his gun. A power gesture to remind them: McGreevy was still head of the pack. Adrenaline started pulsing through Reed’s body, making it harder to breathe. McGreevy took several deliberate steps closer, his head tilted, his eyes squinting at Reed. “You make it sound like I trussed him up and left him for dead in the countryside. You act like it was my idea. I took orders from about six different men on that task force—I didn’t make a single move without their say-so.”

  “So you were just following orders to disappear a witness,” Reed said. “Got it.”

  McGreevy closed the distance completely, to the point where Reed could smell him now—the wet wool and dried sweat, coffee breath and barely controlled fury. He resisted the urge to look away. “Must be nice,” McGreevy said, “that view from your high horse. Impressing your girlfriend with the firm moral stance, are you?” He pounded a fist into his palm for emphasis. “Maybe she doesn’t remember the last time the three of us were together, you’d let a murderer walk around right in front of you and never seen him coming. Maybe you were busy watching her ass instead. Is that it?”

  “We were the only ones even looking for a killer,” Reed reminded him.

  “She could’ve died, Markham,” McGreevy continued as though Reed hadn’t spoken. His face loomed so close now that Reed couldn’t even bring him into focus. “Your Ellery could’ve died just like little Adam Kennedy died. Right on your watch. Hell, you could’ve gone down with her, and then we wouldn’t even be standing here, having this conversation. You’d be dead. Instead, fate went a different way, and you were the hero. Funny how thin that line can be sometimes, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, funny.” Reed’s voice was hard.

  After another beat of silence, McGreevy backed away with a slight shake of his head. “And let’s not forget how that whole mess ended. How I signed off on your official bullshit story without so much as blinking, even though your girlfriend was left standing over a dead body with a gun in her hand.”

  He twisted around to look at Ellery, who seemed to quiver in his sights. Heat flared through Reed, quick and hot. “As you so dutifully pointed out, she could have easily been killed herself. As could I.”

  McGreevy kept his gaze trained on Ellery as he answered. “That’s what I’m trying to remind you, Markham. Sometimes the right outcome is all that matters.” He waited a beat longer and then drew himself up abrupt
ly. “Get your clothes. Let’s go.”

  “Now? It’s the middle of the night.”

  “And come the morning, if we’re lucky, it’ll be like this whole thing never happened. You have five minutes. I’ll be downstairs in the car waiting.”

  * * *

  It took Reed only three minutes to shed Ellery’s robe in place of his freshly laundered jeans and shirt. Ellery herself had disappeared into her bedroom to change as well, so at least they didn’t have to make eye contact or discuss what McGreevy had nearly walked in on with his ill-timed visit. She emerged dressed in black from head to toe, looking like a night prowler, and Reed had a flash of how that had gone two nights before. “Maybe you should stay here,” he said. She was still battling a head injury and serious bruises. No wonder he’d been allowed to feel her up in the laundry room. He winced a bit at the memory, and how he’d pressed an unfair advantage.

  “Screw that,” she told him as she grabbed her jacket. “You wouldn’t even know about this case if it weren’t for me.”

  Reed had to admit she was right about this point so he made no further argument. Downstairs, they found McGreevy idling in a dark town car, its humming engine the only noise on the otherwise silent street. Ellery climbed into the backseat and Reed hesitated a fraction of a second about where to sit before taking shotgun. He sided with Ellery, always, but he wasn’t going to have McGreevy chauffeuring them around like they were a pair of recalcitrant children.

  McGreevy didn’t make any chitchat, his mouth set in a grim line as he drove them out of the city. Reed couldn’t see Ellery from his vantage point so he had no idea what she might be thinking or if she had taken McGreevy’s veiled threat to heart. Reed and Ellery had lied on their reports last summer about the shooting, and McGreevy knew it. There was a sizable gap between what he knew and what he could prove, though, and Reed was counting on that crevasse to keep them safe. In the end, the right person had wound up dead, and maybe that was McGreevy’s whole point. Reed glanced sideways at his boss, who felt the shift and returned his stare briefly. He had to refocus on the road as he left the highway for a curvy, dark exit—a turn so tight it belonged at a carnival. Reed gripped the side of his door and held on.

  With low cloud cover and the lights of the city far gone by now, there was almost no illumination to guide their path. Yet McGreevy drove with confidence, as though on native soil. He took them farther from the main roads, the scenery growing sparser with tall bare trees that flashed like white sticks in front of the car’s headlights. The black night hid a deepening forest, someplace you could hide a body where it might never be found. The leather creaked beneath Reed as he twisted in his seat, trying to get his bearings. “Just how far off did you put this man?”

  “We’re almost there,” McGreevy replied neutrally.

  Sure enough, the trees parted and it was like coming out of a tunnel. Houses sat in the shadows, far off from the road, with lots of space between. They passed a café and a gas station, both shuttered for the night. McGreevy took another abrupt turn that led them back closer to civilization. Brick buildings. A small grocery and a bank. Finally, he found the side street he was seeking and stopped the car in front of a nondescript two-story house that had been divided into two apartments. “I’ll do the talking,” McGreevy said as they got out of the car.

  The house showed no signs of life. Wind whipped down the street, waving the branches like scarecrows in a meadow. “What did you tell Earl Stanfield about this?” Ellery asked as they mounted the rickety wooden steps.

  “I didn’t tell him anything.” He pushed the doorbell hard, twice in a row.

  Ellery looked at McGreevy with some horror. “So we’re just showing up here in the middle of the night to rattle him?”

  “You’re the one who started this,” he replied without looking at her. He pushed the bell and held it.

  After a few more seconds, the porch light came on and then Reed heard uneven footsteps coming down the stairs. When the door opened, it revealed a tall, heavyset man with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair and skin the color and texture of a worn-out baseball mitt. His right cheek bore the telltale white birthmark in the shape of a flame. They had found The Blaze.

  “Mr. Stanfield?” McGreevy held up his ID, and the man leaned forward, cross-eyed, to stare at it.

  “Do you people know what time it is?” he asked as he straightened up.

  “Mr. Stanfield, I’m Russell McGreevy. We met about twenty-five years ago, after the fire at the Gallagher Furniture store.”

  Stanfield blinked slowly with no hint of recognition. “You’re sayin’ I know you?”

  McGreevy barely repressed a sigh. “Yes. I helped set you up here. May we come in?”

  “You want to come in?” The man was looking around like he half-expected to find some hidden cameras playing a trick on him. “What for? I’m not in trouble, am I?”

  “No, no trouble. We’d just like to talk to you.”

  “I got a phone for that,” he said as he pulled back the door to admit them. “You can even call it during the daytime hours.”

  “I’m sorry about the hour,” McGreevy replied. “This just couldn’t wait.”

  Threadbare carpet covered the stairs, and the narrow passageway was lit by a pair of naked bulbs yoked to the ceiling. At the landing, Stanfield pushed open a creaky wooden door and they all followed him inside. He turned on a floor lamp and flopped into a nearby recliner. A giant television set, one generation before flat-screen, took up about a third of the room. For seating, the others had to choose between a lumpy faux leather sofa and a rocking chair that was missing one spindle from its back. Reed and McGreevy took the sofa while Ellery opted to stand, leaning one shoulder against the doorjamb.

  Stanfield rubbed his face with two large hands. “State your business,” he said. “I got to be to work at seven.”

  “My associates here would like to know about the night of the fire,” McGreevy said. “They want to know what you saw.”

  Again, Stanfield looked at them as if they were playing some trick, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowed. “The fire? That was a long time ago. What’re you rousting me out of my bed about it now for?”

  “There have been some questions about the fire’s origins,” McGreevy said.

  “That lady lawyer.” Stanfield pointed at McGreevy, smiling a little now that he’d caught on. “Yeah, I seen her on the TV, going on about her uncle. She’s a cute young thing. Fiery. I like that.”

  “You talk to her?” McGreevy asked sharply, as though this possibility had just occurred to him.

  “Naw. I remember the deal. Don’t talk to no one.” He shrugged. “What’s it matter now, anyway? That guy, her uncle, he’s up for parole.”

  “It matters if he didn’t do it,” Reed cut in, and McGreevy turned to glare at him. Reed ignored the censure. “If you have knowledge that could exculpate him, then you need to say so, even now—no matter what kind of deal you made back then.”

  “I don’t know anything about no exculpatin’. I told what I seen and I told the truth. Whatever you people did with it, it’s no mind to me.”

  “What did you see?” Ellery asked, pushing away from the wall.

  Stanfield glanced at McGreevy as if asking for permission. McGreevy nodded. “Go ahead. Tell them.”

  Stanfield took a deep breath and looked at the ceiling. “Been a long time. Real long. I don’t like to think too much about that time in my life—not much worth dwellin’ on. But yeah. I remember that night. It was April but you know how that goes in Boston—it was still colder than a witch’s titties after it got dark, so I liked to stay in this little space across the street from the furniture store. One of the walls was part of a pet shop, see, and so they had to keep the heat on all night for the animals. The vent put out warm air that kept me from freezing my ass off. So that’s where I was when the fire started.”

  “Back up a second,” Ellery said. “You were sitting there, across from the furniture store
… just watching?”

  “He was drinking,” McGreevy supplied. “A fifth of vodka, I believe it was.”

  “I just got done telling you how cold it was,” Stanfield retorted. “I had to get warm any way I could.”

  “So you had a view of the front door—not the back.” Reed was trying to visualize the moment.

  “Yes, sir. Front door. I seen that poor woman and her boy go inside. Seemed like no time at all before the fire started—almost like it was waiting for them.” He shook his head in dismay. “I went across the street to see if I could help but the flames were coming out the door. There wasn’t nothing I could do.”

  “Did you see who set the fire?” Reed asked.

  “You mean did I see someone with a gas can or flamethrower or what have you? No. I did see that guy, though—that dude who got arrested. He was there.”

  “Before the fire?”

  Stanfield looked confused. “Before? I don’t know. There was a lot of people who came around that night once the place started to burn. He was there after, I know that much for sure. Before the fire … I don’t remember. It was a cold night. Not too many people on the streets, ’cept the ones who had no choice.”

  Reed glanced at Ellery. She widened her eyes in question because this certainly wasn’t the smoking gun story they had expected to hear. Reed had come prepared, however. “I want to show you some pictures,” he said. “Tell me if you recognize anyone from that night.”

  “Sure, okay.”

  Reed took out his laptop and powered it up to reveal a school photo of Jake Gallagher, taken around the time of the fire. “What about this person? Did you see him?”

  Stanfield frowned as he studied the image. “Don’t think so. Can’t say for sure.”

  “What about this man?” Reed switched the image to reveal a shot of Luis Carnevale.