No Mercy--A Mystery

by Joanna Schaffhausen

  “Ha-ha, yeah, man. That’s the guy they arrested—Cardinale or something.” He grinned and bobbed his head, pleased with himself like a game-show contestant who’d won a prize. “Yeah, he was there. Definitely.”

  “What about him?” Reed showed an older picture of Patrick Gallagher culled from news footage at the time of the fire.

  Stanfield chewed his thumbnail as he looked thoughtfully at the picture. “I know him, sure. He was the owner, right? Saw him lots of times.”

  “What about the night of the fire?”

  Stanfield paused to think about it a moment and then shook his head. “Don’t think so. I saw his wife and kid. Not him.”

  Reed had saved the best for last. He called up a picture of David Gallagher, his current favorite suspect. He used the clearest one: an older driver’s license picture that revealed David’s close-cropped reddish hair, his green eyes, one set slightly lower than the other, and his dimpled chin. There was an arrogance in the set of his mouth, almost a smirk, that made Reed want to smack him. He handed the laptop over to Stanfield for a good look. “Take your time,” he said as the other man hunched over the screen.

  “This is the brother,” Stanfield said after a moment. “The other guy from the store. I seen him sometimes, but not as much as the first guy and the wife. When this dude showed up, it was often after closing time and he wasn’t alone—you know what I’m saying?”

  Reed played dumb. “No, what are you saying?”

  “He used it like party-town, man. Girls and booze and stuff. Sometimes, he’d leave half an empty in the garbage out back. Maybe half of a pizza. Yeah, I was always happy when he showed up.”

  “The night of the fire,” Reed prompted.

  Stanfield shook his head and handed the laptop back to Reed. “Naw, he weren’t there. I told you. The place was dark. No party. It was dark right up until the boom. Then you could’ve lit the whole sky. Sounded like the end of the world.”

  Reed looked down at his screen, where he clicked over to the smiling image of little Bobby Gallagher, the picture used at his funeral. “For some people,” he said, “I guess it was.”

  Across the room, Ellery scuffed her boot on the floor. He could feel her frustration, and Stanfield apparently sensed it, too. “Is this what you wanted?” he asked, anxious to please. “Did I help?”

  McGreevy’s smile was genuine for the first time as he stood up to shake Stanfield’s hand. “You helped a lot. Our apologies again for the interruption. I assure you we won’t be bothering you anymore.”

  Back in the town car, they drove in silence for several miles before Ellery leaned forward from the rear. “I don’t understand,” she said to McGreevy. “That man witnessed nothing of consequence.”

  “Precisely what I have been trying to tell you.”

  “So then why hustle him out of town?”

  McGreevy seemed to choose his words carefully. “Stanfield was a rambling drunk at the time, a hustler, eager for any kind of handout he could get. His timelines might easily get confused, or be purposely confused by someone with an agenda.”

  “Someone like the defense lawyer, you mean,” Ellery said.

  “We made sure he got a hand up, not a handout,” McGreevy replied. “The case went forward without incident. It was win-win for everyone involved.”

  Ellery disappeared into the backseat again, seemingly deflated, and Reed turned his face toward the window. He saw only a hint of his reflection in the blue light from the dash. McGreevy was so satisfied, so sure they had grabbed the right man in Luis Carnevale all those years ago, and nothing Reed or Ellery had turned up called that conclusion into certain doubt. Stanfield was living proof of the uselessness of eyewitness testimony. He’d been staring right at the store and seen nothing that clarified the case. Or maybe there was nothing to clarify, and McGreevy and the task force had been right all along: Luis Carnevale set the fire.

  Reed still felt unsettled when he recalled the picture of Bobby Gallagher, as though there was something left to learn from the picture of a grinning two-year-old little boy, with his miniature denim suspenders and ruddy-cheeked face. Perhaps it was just the sense of a life cut way too short, a purpose unfulfilled, and the understanding that no matter whom they arrested for his murder, it could never bring relief. A child’s death would always feel unsolved.

  * * *

  Back in front of Ellery’s building, McGreevy didn’t even bother to get out of the car. “I’m going to catch the next available plane to Tampa,” he said, with a meaningful look at Reed. “If you’re smart, you’ll go with me.”

  Ellery got out of the car without a word. Reed watched her go, feeling pained. He couldn’t just leave without talking to her. “You go,” he said to McGreevy. “I’ll catch up.”

  McGreevy put the car back into gear, his mouth curved in a wry smile. “Maybe. Right now, all you’re doing is falling farther behind. There’s no future to be had here, Markham. The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get on with the rest of your life.”

  Reed got out, and McGreevy sped away from the curb, sending up an arc of salt and slush that caught Reed across the knees. He looked down at the mess with a shiver. There was no way he could ask to borrow Ellery’s washing machine again. He went to the front door of her building, where he found her waiting to let him inside. She did so in silence and they rode up in the elevator the same way, with no hint of conversation. Once inside the apartment, she hung up her jacket gingerly, as though raising her arms gave her pain, and he remembered anew that she was injured.

  “Look,” he said, and she stiffened, her back to him, as though she’d been dreading this very moment. “About what happened earlier…”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said swiftly, moving away from him without even turning around.

  He followed after her, gaining ground so that she couldn’t put a door between them before he’d had his say. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. That is, I didn’t think you wanted…”

  “I don’t.” She turned around in the hallway but didn’t meet his eyes. “I mean, forget it. It doesn’t matter what I want.”

  He searched her. “It does to me.”

  He waited but she did not say anything further, just hunched in on herself and looked at the floor. He wanted to gather her into his arms and hold her until she relaxed, but he knew such action would probably have the opposite effect.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, “for taking advantage.”

  Her head snapped up. “Don’t apologize. That’s worse. You’re … you have nothing to worry about, okay? You don’t have to be sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t?” He reached a hand toward her but then drew it back.

  Pain swam in her eyes but she held his gaze steady. “No,” she said hoarsely. “It won’t.” Then she turned on her heel and disappeared into the bedroom, closing the door with a firm click.

  Reed stood there rooted to the floor for a long time, until Bump ambled over and sat down next to him. He leaned on Reed’s leg as if to commiserate how hard it was to be on the wrong side of the door. Reed leaned down and patted him with a sigh. “She has to come back out eventually,” he told the hound, who followed him back out to the living room.

  Reed stretched out on the sofa, which was becoming like a second home to him. He had already memorized the shape of the serpentine crack on her ceiling. He should try to get some sleep but the events of the day buzzed like fireflies in his head, lighting up and disappearing again before he could get a close look. He did what he usually did when he needed to feel better, to feel calm: he took out his phone and called up pictures of Tula. Her smiling face always made him smile in return. There she was last Halloween, dressed as a butterfly princess, complete with antennae and a crown. Here she was wearing one of his aprons as they made pecan pie together, flour on her nose. Her nose was his nose, and he touched it now, feeling its familiar shape in the dark. He remembered the day she’d been born and how primal it had felt to
hold her, his own flesh and blood. His own mother had been murdered but his father had apparently walked away before that. Reed couldn’t fathom it then, holding tiny Tula, watching her delicate fingers curve around his thumb. How could anyone leave behind their own child?

  He swiped through a few more pictures. Tula really was a delightful mix of both her parents. She had Sarit’s long lashes. His almond eyes. Reed’s reverie over his darling daughter popped like a soap bubble. In its place, he saw Bobby Gallagher’s picture again.

  A hot prickle broke out over Reed’s skin, and he sat up on the sofa. As if propelled from the great beyond, he pulled out his laptop and powered it up so he could see Bobby’s photo again. It looked just as he’d remembered. Young Bobby, with his mother’s heart-shaped face and the fresh good looks of a wee Irish lad. Reed frowned and leaned forward to see the screen up close. He called up pictures of Myra and Patrick, and compared them to Bobby. Then he called up one of David Gallagher. Yes, there it was: green eyes, dimpled chin. Patrick had neither of these.

  He heard Jake Gallagher’s words echo back to him: My dad accused my mom of running around on him … So I followed her … Who the hell has an affair in the middle of a furniture store?

  Reed sat back, gobsmacked at the revelation. After blinking in the semi-darkness for a moment, he took the laptop and went to Ellery’s bedroom door. He knocked twice before she deigned to answer. “I don’t want to talk about it,” she said shortly, parting the door just a crack.

  He shoved the laptop screen up to the narrow space so she could see the terrible truth that he had just discerned. “Bobby Gallagher wasn’t Patrick’s son. He was David’s. Myra had been having an affair.”

  15

  Maybe it was her lingering head injury or the lack of sleep, but Ellery felt fuzzy on the logic of why they were parked in front of Dave’s Pizza just ahead of the oncoming lunch rush. “You’re absolutely sure that Bobby Gallagher was David’s son?” she asked Reed again.

  Reed sat behind the wheel of her rented SUV because she was still in no shape for navigating, and truthfully, he was now the one driving this latest twist in their sub rosa investigation. His hands skimmed the wheel in a nervous fashion that did not reassure her. “Well, nothing would be certain without a DNA test, but the odds are strong given the pattern of inheritance for a cleft chin. Add in that they have the same green eyes…”

  “Wonder if the family noticed.”

  Reed squinted at the pizza parlor in thoughtful fashion. “People see what they want to see. I can’t tell you how many times I used to look at my parents and try to see a biological connection. I once convinced myself that Suzanne and I had the exact same shaped hands.” He held them out for his own inspection. “In my case, though, I knew the truth.”

  “Maybe David knew the truth, too—is that what you’re thinking? That he set the fire to get rid of Myra and his son?”

  “I don’t know what to think at this stage. But so far, we’ve found only one member of the family who routinely hung about the furniture store after hours, and that’s David. I’m curious as to what he has to say.”

  Ellery took a deep breath to prepare herself for the exit, urging her sore body into motion. “Let’s do it.”

  Inside, they got hit with a rush of warm, fragrant air infused with the scent of rising dough, oregano, and spicy tomato sauce. The restaurant had a single line of red plastic booths along the wall and about a dozen small tables and chairs to fill out the rest of the space. Behind the counter, an industrial oven roared out heat like a dragon, and white-aproned employees moved in concert, dodging one another as they hurried to get the food ready for arriving customers. The queue was already halfway out the door, as a group of nearby construction workers arrived en masse, hungry for pizza. “What’ll you have?” a harried woman in a red bandana yelled at them across the counter.

  “We’d like to speak to David Gallagher,” Reed replied, his voice also raised above the din of surrounding conversation.

  It took the woman a second to parse that his words were not a food order. “Dave’s busy making pies,” she said.

  Reed held up his FBI identification. “Tell him we’ll take two slices of cheese. To go.”

  The woman’s eyes went round like pizza pies, and she clearly wanted to hand them off as soon as possible because her voice became authoritative and urgent. “Dave! You’ve got customers come to see you!”

  A voice from beyond hollered back. “Can it wait?”

  The woman looked Reed up and down. “Don’t think it can!”

  A moment later, David Gallagher appeared behind the counter, dusting flour off his hands, his cheeks pink from the heat. He had shaved his thick auburn curls close to the scalp, but the green eyes and dimpled chin said they had found the right man. “Can I help you?” he asked, his gaze fixed not on Reed or Ellery but on the restless line of customers behind them.

  Reed once again held up his ID. “We’d like a couple slices and a bit of your time,” he said, and David’s frustration hardened into glum resignation.

  “Sure,” he said. “On the house. Nina, can you bring over a couple of cheese slices and a pair of Cokes for our guests? Thanks.” He took off the apron and came around the counter, indicating the nearest empty booth with a sweep of his hand. “Please, sit.”

  Reed slid in first, and Ellery joined him. David Gallagher took the opposite side, his head bowed. He seemed to be gathering his inner resources, as if reaching down inside for a different version of himself to present to the law. When he looked up, he gave them a determined smile. “It’s not every day I have the pleasure of serving the FBI,” he said. “What brings you to my humble establishment?”

  Ellery saw it then, the way he could turn on the twinkle in his eye, how he deliberately shifted his body posture to be open and welcoming. Women could end up in bed with such a guy and not know his true self until it was over. She thought of his ex-wife and the dropped assault charges and wondered how long it had taken the woman to see the light.

  “We’re interested in the fire that occurred at your furniture store,” Reed said, and Ellery watched closely for David’s reaction. Surprise was really their only weapon here.

  David seemed less shocked than she’d anticipated, given the fact that the crime was more than two decades old. He leaned back casually in the booth, his expression inscrutable. “Oh, yeah? Is that because the guy’s getting out … Carnevale? You think he might pull something else?”

  It was Ellery’s turn to be surprised. “Carnevale’s getting out?”

  David’s brow wrinkled, as though he was starting to doubt their authenticity. “Yeah, he made parole. It was on the news this morning. That’s not why you’re here?”

  “I don’t watch the news,” Ellery replied. A woman appeared at their table to drop off the pizza slices and the cans of Coke. Ellery’s stomach gave an eager rumble at the enticing scent of melted cheese, but she forced herself to push it aside for now. “Carnevale’s lawyer believed he didn’t set the fire,” she said to David.

  He snorted with amusement. “Lawyers will say anything you want if you pay them enough.”

  “Are you speaking from experience there?” Reed wanted to know.

  David said nothing for a moment, looking from one to the other, assessing them. “If you’re feds, then you know my record: it’s clean.”

  “Your ex-wife, Heather, might disagree,” Reed said.

  David waved them off, his hand still coated with flour. “Water under the bridge. She got remarried. We’re good now.”

  “The night of the fire, you said you were home in bed with Heather,” Ellery said.

  “I said it because that’s where I was.”

  “I looked up your divorce records,” Reed told him. “They suggest that you weren’t always in your bed when you were supposed to be. Heather filed on the grounds of marital infidelity.”

  Anger flashed across David’s face, but he reined it in quick. “Like I said: it’s old news. Was I
the greatest husband in the world? No. Did she walk away with close to a hundred grand of my money after just three years of marriage? Yeah, she did. So let’s say I paid for my sins, okay?” He frowned at them. “I don’t see how this is any business to the FBI in any case.”

  “At the FBI, we have the luxury of deciding for ourselves what is and isn’t our business,” Reed told him.

  “Suit yourself. I just thought you’d have more important things to do than sit around here asking me whether I screwed around on my wife twenty years ago.”

  “We’re more interested in whether you screwed around on her twenty-nine years ago,” Reed replied.

  “Twenty-nine years ago we weren’t even married.”

  “Yes, but Myra was,” Reed said. “To your brother, Patrick.”

  At this, David froze, just for a fraction of a second. He didn’t have a canned, ready response, and the shock of these names, after all these years, showed on his face. “Patrick and me, we don’t talk anymore. After the fire, he went his way and I went mine.”

  “You fought over the store,” Ellery said. “You wanted out, even before the fire.”

  “We inherited the place from our father. It was always his dream, not mine. Patrick loved working in the shop, carving out some new fancy table leg or whatever the hell inspired him on that particular day. To me, a chair’s something you sit on, not a piece of art. He wanted me to work the business end so he could be hammering and sawing all day. No, thanks. That wasn’t how I wanted to spend my days.”

  “The store was in financial trouble before the fire,” Reed said. “You both could have lost everything.”

  David’s gaze turned fierce again. “Patrick did lose everything. He lost his son! Don’t think for a second we looked on that fire as any kind of blessing.”

  Ellery wanted to look at Reed, to check his reaction to David calling Bobby Patrick’s son, but she dared not give away their suspicions just yet. “It wasn’t a blessing for him,” she allowed, “but you got what you wanted.”