Mercy Street

by Mariah Stewart

  “I thought Jilly liked it there.”

  “She did, but I don’t know if she remembers liking it. She might when she gets there.” He paused, and in the pause, she could feel the tension deepening. “Getting her there will be a battle. I hope this was the right thing to do.”

  “Are you having second thoughts?”

  He hesitated, and she sensed he was debating with himself. Finally, he said, “Not really. I know it’s the best thing for her. I think my mom feels she’s bailing on her daughter, but Jilly really needs to be in a residential setting. Regardless of how it affects us, this is what Jilly needs.”

  “Then I guess you need to remember that. You’re doing this for her.”

  “You’re right, and I know that. I should remind my mom of that when she starts feeling weepy.”

  “How is she doing?”

  “She’s hanging in there. We’ll see how things go on Saturday.”

  “What happens on Saturday?”

  “She goes into rehab.”

  “Good for her. I wish her all the best.”

  “Thanks, Mal.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, I guess I’ll catch up with you tomorrow. I’ll give you a call when I get back from Riverside.”

  “Hey, if you feel you need to talk…”

  “Yeah. Thanks. I appreciate that.”

  They ended the call, and she set the phone on the counter while she poured hot water over the tea bags she’d placed in a pitcher to make iced tea. She’d envisioned him dropping everything to come over on his way home to watch Ryan’s film—it was that important. But she totally understood that his obligations had to take precedence. It was apparent that he was conflicted about both his sister and his mother, and she respected that. Not ever having had either, however, she didn’t really understand the emotion. She knew it was the right way to feel; she just hadn’t ever experienced it herself. She couldn’t help but wonder what it was like, to have a mother who loved you. To have a sibling you cared for so much, you’d put everything on hold—your job, your life—for their sake.

  Then again, Mallory didn’t know for certain that she didn’t have a sister or a brother somewhere. Maybe someday she’d try to find out. Maybe.

  It was, she told herself, something she might want to think about some other day. Today she had a job to do, and it was easier to focus her thoughts on someone else than to turn them inward. She knew this was avoidance in its purest form—something she’d practiced most of her life—but so far it had worked for her. Focus on doing good—on saving a life, on solving a crime, on comforting a victim—and she wouldn’t have to focus on herself.

  She sliced a lemon and filled a tall, thick plastic glass with ice, then poured herself some tea. The ice crackled under the hot liquid, and a spire of steam rose. She locked the back door, took her tea into the living room, and prepared to watch Ryan’s film one more time.

  “Hey, Wanamaker, the chief’s looking for you.” Frank Toricelli appeared in Charlie’s office at almost the same time Charlie did.

  “Thanks.” Charlie was in no mood for conversation. He’d just dropped off his sobbing mother at home after taking a frightened Jilly back to Riverside, this time to stay. The last person he felt like dealing with was Toricelli. He had no patience left; his last nerve had been worn down to the quick.

  Toricelli opened his mouth and began to say something, but Charlie walked around him and into the hall. At the chief’s doorway, Charlie paused and looked in. Drabyak looked up and motioned for him to enter.

  “How’d it go this morning?” the chief asked.

  “It went, sir. Thank you.”

  The chief nodded as if he understood. Rather than belabor the issue, he said, “There’s a present waiting for you downstairs in one of the holding cells.”

  Charlie looked at him quizzically.

  Drabyak smiled. “Malcolm Wilson was brought in last night around eleven after blowing a red light and then deciding he’d rather outrun the patrol car that was following him than pull over. A number of stolen items were found in the car. Including a laptop with a smashed screen. Malcolm had an interesting story explaining where it came from and how it got smashed.” Drabyak smiled. “You might want to hear the story directly from him. It’s a doozy.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  “Malcolm Wilson still inside?” Charlie asked at the desk outside the holding cells.

  “He’s the only one we have right now.” The woman looked up to inspect Charlie’s badge, then buzzed him through.

  “Hello, Malcolm.” Charlie stopped in front of the occupied cell.

  The man inside barely looked at him.

  “I’m Detective Wanamaker. I hear you had a bad night.”

  There was a folding chair next to the door, and Charlie brought it to the front of the cell and opened it.

  “I hear they found some interesting items in your car, Malcolm. I’m guessing you were on your way to unloading some of it when you ran that red light. Not a good idea to do that when a cop’s sitting right there at the intersection.”

  “I never saw that cop car,” Malcolm muttered, shaking his head. “Fucker came out of nowhere.”

  “Yeah, well, cops have a way of doing that sometimes.” Charlie nodded, turned the chair around, and straddled it. He rested both arms on the back. “There’s one thing I’m real curious about.”

  “What’s that?” Malcolm remained slumped on the mattress.

  “The laptop. How the hell were you going to fence a laptop with a broken screen?”

  “Wasn’t going to fence that. A friend asked me to get rid of it for her.”

  “Oh? I suppose it belonged to her and she dropped it accidentally.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I guess Gigi must have picked up some computer skills when she was away, huh?”

  Malcolm’s head shot up. “Don’t know no Gigi.”

  “Oh, give me a break.” Charlie laughed. “Three sets of prints were lifted from that laptop, Malcolm. Yours, Regina Girard’s, and the ex-cop’s who owned the laptop.” It wasn’t true, but Charlie bet it would turn out to be.

  “Ex-cop?”

  “Yep. I guess Gigi didn’t tell you that the house she had you break into belonged to an ex-cop?”

  “I didn’t break into the house, she just asked me to come with her to this house over on Essex in case…” He realized what he’d said and shut up fast.

  “The house over on Essex is owned by a former Conroy detective. Now, how do you think the police department feels about one of their former fellow cops being burglarized and brutally attacked?” Charlie left out the fact that there would probably be applause in the squad room once it got around.

  “There wasn’t no brutal attack, man. I just…” Malcolm got up and began to pace. “Shit. She didn’t say nothing about no ex-cop.”

  “This your first arrest for burglary, Malcolm?”

  The young man shook his head. “No.”

  “Guess it isn’t going to go so well for you, is it?”

  “I do not want to go back inside, man.” He spoke more to himself than Charlie.

  “Why don’t you tell me what your involvement was? We know you weren’t behind the break-in, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm continued to pace.

  “I’m guessing that Gigi asked you to come with her to serve as a lookout while she went through the house.” Charlie offered him an opening.

  “That was all it was supposed to be. Gigi said she needed something in this house, all I had to do was stand at the front door and keep an eye out in case someone came home while she searched the place. That’s all.”

  “She tell you what she was looking for?”

  “No. She looked around the first floor for a while, then she went upstairs. She was up there when the woman came home. I called up to her, told her someone was coming, she told me to take care of her. Gigi was going out the back door when the woman was unlocking the door.”

  “By ‘take care of her’
she meant…?”

  “I don’t know what she meant. This woman unlocked the door and came inside, she was closing the door and I clocked her from behind. She went down. Gigi hollered from the back of the house for me to do her, I didn’t see no need for that, she was already out cold, she hadn’t seen me, so I left her there.”

  “What did you take from the house?”

  “I didn’t take nothing, I swear. Gigi had the laptop and a bunch of papers in her hand, that’s all I seen her take.”

  “What happened next?”

  “We went back to this place Gigi’s staying over on Hawthorne. She turned on the computer, but she got real pissed when she couldn’t get any information out of it. She didn’t have the password and she couldn’t get into it no how. She smashed the screen with the heel of her shoe and told me to get rid of it.”

  “What about the papers she took. You see them? Any idea what was on them?”

  “Nah, didn’t see ’em. She sat at the table reading them for a while. Must have been something, though, ’cause she got real mad and started cursing. Then she asked me to drive her to Academy Street. Said she wanted to check out an address.”

  “She say whose?”

  “Some hooker, she said.”

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out who the hooker was and what had set Gigi off.

  “Did she find the house?”

  “Yeah, but no one was home, so we left. I took Gigi back to Hawthorne and dropped her off. I haven’t seen her since.”

  “Thanks, Malcolm.” Charlie folded the chair and leaned it against the wall where he’d found it. “I’ll tell the chief you were very cooperative. Maybe we can do something about reducing the charges, maybe get you out a little early.”

  “You goin’ after Gigi?”

  “Yeah. We’re going after Gigi.”

  “You going to let her know I talked about her?” Malcolm sat back on the mattress. “Because if you do, I may be better off right here, where I am. At least, until you bring her in. She’s one crazy bitch, man.”

  “So I’ve heard.” Charlie buzzed to get out.

  On his way back upstairs, Charlie called Mallory and left a message.

  “It’s important that you call me as soon as you get this message, Mal.” He briefly related what he’d learned from Malcolm Wilson. “Depending on which notes Regina Girard lifted from your house and how much you’d written down, she may know everything that you know right now. And if that’s true, she knows you’ve connected the dots between the shooting at Hazel’s and the shooting in the playground. And to my mind, that makes you a real big target. This is one irrational woman, Mal. If you’re on her list, we’ve got a big problem.” He’d taken the steps two at a time, and he stopped at the top of the stairs to catch his breath. “And that’s not the only problem we have. Malcolm mentioned that after Gigi read your notes, she got really pissed off—something about a hooker, he said—and she had him drive her to a house on Academy Street. I’m hoping that your CI doesn’t live on Academy, because if she does, Gigi’s going after her. I’m on my way in to talk to the chief right now, see if we can get a car over there. In the meantime, if you can get in touch with her, you need to warn her that she could be in danger. Please call me so that I know you got the message. I have a really bad feeling that this is about to blow up, and you and your friend Sally are going to be right in the middle of it when it does.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  Mallory stopped at the drive-through ATM and frowned when she read the OUT OF ORDER sign. She parked in the first space she came to; taking her wallet and her keys, she locked the car and went to the walk-up inside the bank lobby. She took out the fifty dollars she felt she owed Sally and returned to her car. She tucked the bills into the top of her bag, which was sitting on the seat where she’d left it. As she drove away, she turned on the radio, smiling when she realized that the song playing was one of her all-time favorites, one that brought back one of her best childhood memories.

  She’d danced to the song—Journey’s “Lights”—in her ballet recital when she was thirteen years old. She’d loved that dance, loved the costume—pink tulle with a fluffy skirt, the girliest thing she’d ever worn. To this day, she could remember every step. Every time she heard the words, she was thirteen again and feeling pretty for the first time in her life. Her dance instructor had wanted all the girls who had long hair to wear it in a French braid, but having had short hair all her life and having given birth to only boys, Mallory’s aunt hadn’t a clue how to construct such a thing.

  Fortunately, Mallory’s friend Kelly’s mother was a hairdresser, and had offered to fix up both girls before the performance. Mrs. Allen had looped Mallory’s hair into a perfect braid and had touched her cheeks with pale pink blush. When she’d looked into the mirror, she’d barely recognized herself. That image—the reflection she’d seen that day—had never really left her. It had been one of the happiest days in an otherwise forgettable childhood.

  Mallory turned onto Academy Street, wondering what had happened to her old friend, and thinking that if there was one person from her past she’d want to see again, it would be Kelly Allen.

  She parked across the street from the house Sally shared with three other girls, the fourth one in from the corner in a straight line of identical row houses. She figured if she were to find Sally at home, it would be in early afternoon, before she set out for working the streets. Morning might have been too early; later in the day she’d have missed her. Mallory got out of her car and walked across the street. From a block away, she could hear children at recess playing in the East Conroy Elementary school yard. She rang the doorbell and waited. When no one answered, it occurred to her that she probably should have called first, so she took her phone from her bag. The screen alerted her to having missed two calls, and she’d just started to check those numbers when the door opened.

  “Hey, it’s my pal Mal.” Sally smiled and stepped outside in bare feet and cutoff jeans. “What are you doing here?”

  “I felt bad about costing you the other night,” Mallory said, thinking how young and pretty Sally looked, with her red hair toned down just a bit and pulled back in a ponytail, her face clean of makeup. She reached into her bag and took out the bills she’d gotten from the ATM. “I wanted to make it up to you.”

  “You don’t have to do that. It was early, there wasn’t much going on anyway,” Sally told her. “Besides, I didn’t give you much.”

  “You still lost some work time.” Mallory folded the bills into Sally’s hand.

  “Really, Detective, I…” Sally looked past Mallory, a curious expression on her face.

  Mallory turned toward the street just as a brown sedan with dark-tinted windows pulled up. Later, Mallory would recall that at that second, everything seemed to move in slow motion: the car window rolling down, the burst of fire, the explosion of red that rose into the air in liquid streams and solid splinters as Sally shattered into a million pieces before her eyes.

  She’d recall reaching behind her into her waistband at the same time she’d heard the sound of return gunfire, and she’d remember being surprised, because she’d tried but hadn’t been able to draw her handgun, her fingers unexpectedly slippery with what she would later realize was Sally’s blood. She’d know that she’d slumped to the ground, cradling Sally, and that when the shooting stopped, she’d looked up to find Charlie leaning over her, his phone in one hand as he called for backup, his other hand wiping something wet and sticky from her face.

  At some point, Joe had shown up, and she’d heard him tell Charlie to take her out of there, to get her home, and Charlie’s quiet words: “I’ll take care of her….”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Charlie opened Mallory’s bag and sorted through its contents, searching for her keys. Pocketing them, he got out of the car and walked around to the passenger side. He opened the door and reached over Mallory’s still form to unfasten her seat belt.

  “Come on, Mal,” he said so
ftly. “We need to get you inside, get you cleaned up.”

  It didn’t take an EMT to tell she was in shock, and he wasn’t sure he shouldn’t take her directly to the nearest emergency room. He was debating that possibility when she moved toward the door. He helped her out and supported her as she walked with a staggered gait. Charlie fumbled momentarily with the key, then pushed the front door open and slammed it closed behind them with his foot. Once inside, he dropped her bag to the floor.

  “We need to get you cleaned up,” he repeated, wondering just how they were going to do that. “Guess your shower’s upstairs, right?”

  He took her hand and helped her up the steps. At the top of the stairs, he rightly guessed that the middle door of three on the left was the bathroom, and he steered her in. Mallory stood like a mannequin, her face pasty under the smears of blood where he’d tried to wipe away the worst of it. Her shirt was covered in bits and pieces of Sally’s bone and blood and tissue, and he realized there was no way she was capable of removing anything.

  He turned on the shower and adjusted the temperature to moderately warm. Then, because she began to shake, he increased the hot water a little.

  “Under other circumstances, I’d be enjoying this,” he told her as he began to strip off her clothing. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking a lot about doing exactly this, these past few days.”

  He dropped the bloodied clothing on the floor and turned her body in the direction of the shower. “But right now…not so much…”

  He redirected the showerhead so that the water would rain down on her head. He unbuttoned his own shirt and took it off, then pulled his T-shirt over his head.

  “Nope, not the way I planned it, Mal.” He helped her into the shower and stood just beyond the plastic curtain. “I know this isn’t the time, but I gotta tell you, you’re one beautiful woman.”

  He wet a washcloth and wiped the blood from her face and neck, moved on to her chest.

  “I promise I’ll tell you again, when the time’s better.” He rinsed the cloth and muttered to himself between clenched teeth, “Take one for the team, Wanamaker. Sometimes you have to take one for the team….”