Mercy Street

by Mariah Stewart

  “How long will this take?”

  “I’m not sure. I’ll let you know when I know.”

  “Then you’ll save your hours and bill them when the time comes.”

  “We’ll see. A lot can happen between then and now.” Mallory walked to the door. “You should know one thing about me. I’m a good investigator. I can’t find evidence where there isn’t any, but I will find whatever is there. And if there comes a point when I feel I can’t do any more on this case, you will be the first to know. So you won’t have to worry about firing me for dragging out an investigation that’s going nowhere. I’ll have quit long before that.”

  Mallory left the office and walked down the silent hall toward the door, her footfalls little more than whispers on the thick carpets. She passed no one on her way out, and wondered if Robert and Susanna were the only souls in the house. Someone must clean this place, she was thinking as she let herself out. Someone must cook and take care of all the details of everyday life. She was pretty certain that someone wasn’t Susanna Jones.

  She got into her car and left the way she came, following the lane to the gate, which opened on its own at her approach. Off to her right, a landscaping crew worked on extensive flower beds that lined the drive on either side. She drove slowly, noting the lush swaths of peonies and roses that appeared to be newly planted, some flowering shrubs she didn’t recognize, and dozens and dozens of perennials already in bloom.

  Whose idea was that? she wondered.

  Not Robert Magellan’s, certainly. The man didn’t appear to have much of an interest in anything. And probably not Susanna’s, either. She didn’t strike Mallory as the type to concern herself with such tasks, though Mal could be wrong about that.

  What Susanna did strike Mallory as was distrustful. Cool. Detached. Except, she suspected, when it came to Robert.

  The gates closed behind her, and Mallory headed back toward Conroy. At first, she hadn’t been sure she liked the idea of having to sign what amounted to a confidentiality agreement, but she saw no harm in it. After all Robert Magellan had been through, it was probably a good idea, though she was pretty certain the idea had been Susanna’s rather than Robert’s. Mallory smiled and turned on the radio. It had been a very revealing morning. Trained observation and well-honed instincts had led her to three compelling realizations in a very short amount of time.

  One was that she’d probably never get close enough to Robert Magellan to write the authorized book on the disappearance of his wife and child. She doubted he’d ever entrust that part of himself to anyone. That was okay, though; she didn’t blame the man. She could live with that.

  Two, it was clear to Mallory that Susanna was in love with Robert—probably had been for years.

  And three—and possibly even more intriguing—was that Robert appeared to be absolutely oblivious to Susanna’s feelings.

  If nothing else, Mallory mused as she slid back her sunroof, this had all the makings of a really interesting ride.

  SIX

  At promptly eight on the following morning, Mallory walked up the steps of the Conroy Diner and smiled at the elderly man who held open the door for her.

  “Thank you,” she said, looking past him into the diner.

  “My privilege, beautiful.” He half bowed, and she laughed, shaking her head.

  Only a man of a certain age could get away with something like that these days, she was thinking as she entered the diner and looked for a familiar face.

  She was still smiling when she slid into the booth next to Father Burch.

  “Good morning, Father,” she said, adding to the woman seated opposite her, “You must be Mary Corcoran. I’m pleased to meet you.”

  “God bless you, Miss Russo, for doing this.” Mary Corcoran’s eyes filled. “Father told me you’re going to help us find Ryan.”

  Mallory held up a hand.

  “One thing at a time. First of all, I agreed to look into the case, but you have to understand that there are no guarantees here. Ryan and Courtney have been missing for more than two weeks. That’s a long time, Mary. If they’re hiding someplace, they’ve done a damned good job of it. It’s going to be very hard for anyone to find them if they don’t want to be found.”

  “I understand, I do.” Mary nodded a little too quickly. “But knowing that someone other than the police is looking for them makes me think they’re more likely to be found.”

  “I was a member of that police force for a long time. I’m sure they’re doing their best.”

  “They’re only trying to find them to arrest them. They’re not doing anything to find the real killers.” Mary lowered her voice and leaned across the table. “Detective…”

  “Not anymore,” Mallory corrected her. “Or maybe I should say not yet. I have applied for a license, but right now, I can’t legally refer to myself as an investigator. So just call me Mallory.”

  “I don’t know what that means.” Mary frowned and looked at Father Burch. “I thought you said…”

  “Don’t worry, Mary, she’s come highly recommended by none other than the chief of police. What she means by not legally being a detective is that she can’t charge for services as a private investigator until she has a license, isn’t that how you phrased it, Mallory?”

  “Basically, yes. So until I have my license in my hand, I’d like to keep this all pretty much low-key. It’s going to take me a while to talk to everyone Father Burch thinks I should, and hopefully by the time I’ve finished, the paperwork will have gone through.”

  “And in the meantime, I’m just telling people that Mallory is a friend of mine who’s agreed to help us out. Which is the truth.” The priest smiled. “A new friend, but a friend all the same.”

  “I don’t care about any of that official stuff.” Mary waved a dismissive hand. “I’m only interested in the fact that you’re going to try to find Ryan.”

  The waitress stopped by the table to take their orders, and Mallory took the opportunity to study the woman who sat across from her. There was no question that the uncertainty and fear following her grandson’s disappearance had taken a heavy toll on Mary. Her pale blue eyes were rimmed in red, and the dark circles beneath them were a likely testament to the many sleepless nights she’d spent since Ryan went missing.

  After they ordered, Mary tapped on the table with an index finger to get Mallory’s attention.

  “My grandson is innocent, Mallory. He could not have done this thing.” Mary removed a stack of photographs from her purse and started to place them on the table. “Does this look like a murderer? Look, here he is at his prom…”

  Mallory didn’t have the heart to tell the worried grandmother that murderers don’t have any particular look.

  “He’s very handsome, Mary.” Mallory took the photo of tall, good-looking Ryan in a tuxedo next to a pretty blond girl in a pale pink gown on the front steps of what appeared to be a red-brick twin home. “And Courtney is a very pretty girl.”

  “Oh, that’s not Courtney,” Mary told her. “That’s Ryan’s girlfriend.”

  “Courtney isn’t his girlfriend?”

  “No, no. See, that’s another thing the police got wrong and even though I told them—and Courtney’s mother told them, too—they’re making this big thing, like these two kids are Bonnie and Clyde.” She shook her head. “Ryan’s been going out with Shelby for almost two years now.”

  “Shelby Keeler,” Father Burch supplied the last name. “She’s a junior at Our Lady of Angels.”

  “The newspeople make it sound like Ryan and Courtney have some big romance going on, but they’re just good friends. Have been since kindergarten.” Mary passed several other pictures to Mallory. “Same with these boys, Adam and Jamey. The four were pretty much inseparable most of their lives. There is no way either Ryan or Courtney could have hurt Adam or Jamey.

  “Don’t think I don’t know what you’re thinking,” she went on, searching her purse for a tissue. “You’re thinking, Of course she has
to say that, this is her flesh and blood.” She blew her nose softly. “I want you to understand that this isn’t Ryan’s grandmother blindly defending her grandson. This is God’s truth. Ryan could never have pulled a gun, pulled the trigger, on either of his friends. Or on anyone else, for that matter. It isn’t in him.”

  “Mary, do you know why the kids went to the park that night?”

  “Courtney was bothered about something or other, something she wanted to talk to the boys about.”

  “Did Ryan tell you what it was?”

  “No.” Mary shook her head. “He just said she needed to talk about something important and they were going to get together at the park. It was something they’d done a lot over the years, just got together to talk from time to time. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “Did they always meet in that park?”

  “Pretty much, yes. It was where they used to play when they were little, you know? It used to be so much nicer than it is now, but they never got out of the habit of meeting there. I used to ask Ryan, ‘Can’t you find another place to hang out?’ It’s maybe not so nice there after dark anymore, but he always just said it was their place.”

  “Did you see Courtney that night, Mary?”

  Mary nodded. “She came to the house and went upstairs to get Ryan. They were up there for a while, then they left to meet up with Adam and Jamey.” Mary looked down at the napkin she’d been shredding. “Maybe I should have talked to her. Asked her what was bothering her. Maybe I could have helped. Then maybe they wouldn’t have gone to the park at all that night.”

  Mary began to weep.

  “Mary, is there a gun in your house?”

  “No.”

  “Was there? Ever?”

  “No, I just told you…” Mary dropped her hands to the table and stared at Mallory.

  “Ever? At any time, did you have…”

  “No. No. No. You’re not listening to me.” Mary’s voice rose slightly in obvious frustration, and she slapped a palm on the table, surprising even herself. Mallory guessed that Mary Corcoran was not a woman who generally made a scene or raised her voice, but she did so now. “We had no guns in the house. Ryan had no gun. Courtney had no gun. No. Gun.”

  Father Burch reached across the table to pat her hands. “Shhhh, Mary. We’re not back at the parish hall in your office.”

  “I have to ask,” Mallory said softly, hoping to calm Mary down a bit. “You have to understand, if I’m going to work with you, there are certain questions I have to ask.”

  Mary nodded, her head down. She was about to speak when the waitress arrived with their order, sandwiches for Mary and Father Burch, coffee for Mallory. After they’d been served, Mallory looked up at Mary.

  “Tell me about Shelby, Ryan’s girlfriend.”

  “She’s lovely. Wants to be a nurse. She’s upset about Ryan graduating and going off to college. She’s afraid he’ll forget about her.” Mary shrugged. “It happens. Maybe he will, I tell her, maybe not. They’re both too young to worry about such things.”

  “Do you know her family?”

  “Joe and Shirl, sure. I’ve known them forever. Even before Shelby was born, before Ryan came to live with me. They’re great people. They’re trying to stand behind Ryan now, and I know it’s hard for them, with all the publicity and everything.”

  “And Courtney, she has a boyfriend?”

  “She had been going out with someone, but I think that was sort of casual. I only met him a few times.”

  “Do you know his name?” Mallory sipped her coffee, but found it too hot to drink. She added some ice from her water glass and tried again.

  “Joe something. He didn’t go to school here. But Linda would know. Courtney’s mother. Or Misty, her sister.”

  “How about Jamey and Adam? Did they have steady girlfriends?”

  Mary shook her head. “Not that I know of.”

  “If I wanted to talk to someone at their school, who would I want to see?” Mallory asked.

  “Stop in the principal’s office tomorrow after school—around four or so—and I’ll have everyone available to you that I think you’ll need to talk to. To start, anyway,” Father Burch told her.

  “Thanks,” Mallory said. “How about extracurricular activities?”

  “Ryan played football, you probably saw that in the papers. That terrible headline.” Mary shivered, and Mallory recalled the article referred to. The one that started out, FOOTBALL STAR SUSPECT IN DOUBLE SHOOTING. “That and film club were the only things he really was involved in. He had a lot of AP classes. He worked really hard, got straight A’s…”

  Mary held half her sandwich in her right hand, but hadn’t taken a bite.

  “And Courtney…” Mary’s eyes filled with tears again. “She didn’t have time for a lot of extracurriculars. She’s worked part-time at Hazel’s for the past couple of years.”

  “Hazel’s Market, the mom-and-pop over on Appleton?” Mallory asked.

  “Right. She’s been saving for college. She’ll be the first in her family to go.”

  She placed her sandwich back on her plate. “You know this city, Mallory, you’ve worked here for how many years?”

  “Nine.”

  “You know about the mills closing, about how everything in town sort of went downhill. Things have gotten a little better with that new mall between here and Toby Falls. That town has money, always has. A lot of people from Conroy have found work in those stores. They sure can’t afford to shop there. Conroy’s strictly blue collar these days.” She smiled ruefully. “Some might say we’re lucky to have any collar at all. But I guess you know that.”

  Mallory nodded. She’d seen with her own eyes how, block by block, downtown Conroy’s shops had been boarded up as one small family-owned business after another found itself unable to compete with the big chain stores and closed its doors. Nights found more and more kids gathering on the dark corners. When she’d worked patrol, she’d hauled in her share of underage drinkers, many of whom later were picked up on drug charges, sales as well as possession. The flip side of poverty was crime, and over the past few years Conroy had had more than its fair share of both.

  “If you know the town, you know how important it is for some of these families to send a child to college. Ryan would have been our first too. Temple University. Big-time for us, you know? They wanted him to come out for football. One of the assistant coaches came here to watch him play last fall, called the house a couple of times, too.” Her eyes flashed angrily, and she clenched her fists. “This is Ryan’s golden opportunity to go places no one in his family has gone, understand? Smart, handsome, athletic, talented—the sky’s the limit for a kid like him.” Mary shook her head adamantly. “No way would he have thrown away his future for a thousand dollars. No way…”

  “I’ve thought the same thing, Mary,” Mallory said thoughtfully. “There just doesn’t seem to be a motive for either Courtney or Ryan to have been the shooter.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you. Just like I told that detective they sent over to talk to me, but all he was interested in was where did I think Ryan would go if he was running for his life.”

  “Is there a place he’d go? To hide? A relative? A friend or a friend of the family?” Mallory asked.

  “No one that I can think of, and I have tried. I haven’t much family. My only sister died five years ago. My husband died in 1987. My daughter…” Mary’s eyes clouded with pain. “I lost my only child shortly after that.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m confused,” Mallory said. “I thought your daughter was Ryan’s mother.”

  “She was. When I say ‘lost,’ I mean lost to me. Before her father died, Kathleen was hard to handle. After his death, she became impossible to control.”

  “How did he die?”

  “Car accident. He was working the night shift at the paper mill and was driving home in a storm. A tree uprooted and fell just as he was passing under it. He died a few days later.”

&n
bsp; “I’m so sorry,” Mallory said.

  Mary shrugged. “It had to have been God’s will. Otherwise, the tree would have fallen on someone else, you know?”

  “A lot of kids have problems after losing a parent,” Mallory told her. “Kathleen had problems since the day she was born. She wasn’t an easy baby, never liked to be held much. The terrible twos? Doesn’t even begin to tell the story. Fussed all the time, cried, threw tantrums to get what she wanted. As soon as she learned to talk, she was talking back. She was always very strong-willed and contrary.” Mary blew out a long breath, her eyes sad. “The truth is, she wasn’t a particularly likable child. Some kids just aren’t.”

  “That’s true, Mary,” Father Burch agreed. “Some children are more of a challenge than others.”

  “Well, I’m afraid I wasn’t always up to that challenge, that’s the God’s truth. I never knew how to handle her on the best of days, but after John died, things more or less fell apart. I fell apart,” she told them, “and Kathleen, well, she just fell. Unfortunately, with her father gone, there was no one there to catch her. She caught up with a bad crowd, moved out of the house on her sixteenth birthday, and I didn’t see her again for almost two years.”

  “That must have been very hard on you,” Mallory said.

  “It was harder after she came back.” Mary smiled ruefully. “She had Ryan when she was seventeen. Stopped at the house with him when he was just a couple of months old. She never even told me who his father was. Well, of course, I wanted her to stay, told her I’d send her back to school to finish up, I’d take care of the baby. For a while, she might have even thought about it. But one morning I woke up and they were both gone. Last I heard of her until the detectives from Philadelphia rang my doorbell one day to tell me they’d found her dead of an overdose and not to worry about my grandson because he was in foster care but the baby’s father said they should look for me, maybe I’d want him. Foster care! As if I’d let my flesh and blood grow up in foster care! Father Whalen—God rest his soul—got on the phone and talked to some people in the city, and the next day I had Ryan in my arms.”