Mercy (Beartooth, Montana)

by B. J Daniels

  * * *

  NETTIE WAS SURPRISED to see her husband come into the café. She saw him glance around and wondered whom he was looking for. Kate came out, and he asked if Callie was working.

  “She’s taking the day off,” Kate said. “She should be upstairs.”

  “Yes, she should be,” Frank agreed before turning to walk toward Nettie’s booth. When he reached her, he pulled off his Stetson and gave her a quick kiss before sliding into the seat across from her.

  She saw the lines around his eyes. They seemed deeper. He looked as if he had the weight of the world on his shoulders. Nettie desperately wanted to take some of it off. “What’s wrong?”

  “The whole community is up in arms over Carson Grant’s murder—that’s what’s wrong,” Frank said. “Not that I blame them. People are scared.”

  The murder had shaken the community to its core. The fact that it was Carson Grant, and a gruesome murder at that, made it much worse. It wasn’t that long ago that the town had turned against Carson, most people believing he had killed his high school girlfriend.

  But since he’d been cleared and had come back and gone to work for his sister, Destry, whom he’d reconciled with, folks had started to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “People have started locking their doors,” Frank said. “There’s talk of devil worshippers and alien beings. It’s turned crazier than it already was. Everyone is outraged and demanding the killer be caught.”

  “I’m sure the talk is worse than the actual crime,” Nettie said.

  His look confirmed what she’d heard through the grapevine—that this time, the crime was horrendous beyond even the local gossips’ imaginations.

  “You’ll catch him,” she assured her husband. She had faith in Frank Curry. He was her hero.

  He met her gaze and smiled. “The worst part is,” he said, lowering his voice even though the café was nearly empty, “two of my key suspects seemed to have skipped town. One of them left me a message to say he’d be checking back in within twenty-four hours.” Frank raked a hand through his hair. “I wish I’d thrown him in jail when I’d had the chance.”

  “Well, I have some news,” Nettie said. “I found the Beartooth Benefactor. It was just as you said. Someone with a lot of money. Someone with a tie to the community. Someone who had to be crazy. Mrs. Archibald Abrahams.”

  “Who?”

  “Charlotte, formerly Charlotte Westfall.”

  Frank laughed. “That’s what you’ve been up to?”

  “I went to visit her and she admitted it, and guess what. She doesn’t have dementia at all. She was just proving that she was a better actress than people thought, especially her brother, Bull, rest his soul.”

  “Nice work, Lynette.” Frank reached over and took her hands in his. “I should hire you for this case.” As he saw her sudden excitement at the idea, he quickly added, “I was just kidding. I’m glad you got to the bottom of it. That must give you peace of mind to know who’s behind rebuilding the store.”

  “There is one other thing. Charlotte wants me to help make the store even better than it was. She’s also offered me a job a few days a week. Would you mind if I worked at least until you retired?”

  “I just want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. So, of course I don’t mind.”

  She smiled and squeezed his hands.

  “Just as long as Charlotte will let you off so we can have a proper honeymoon. I haven’t given up on Hawaii.”

  “Neither have I. Once you solve this murder...”

  He let go of her hands, looking worried again. “I just hope we can catch the killer before there’s another murder.”

  * * *

  THE NIGHTMARE WAS always the same. The blood. The smell, the silky feel of it, the stain spreading across the bedsheets.

  She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. The heavy, hot, sweating man holding her down. The agonizing pain, her screams muffled by the pillow he pressed to her face. The agonizing pain of her blood spilling out of her as her body tore.

  “This is all your fault.”

  “No,” she screamed as she stood, staring at the blood her mother tried frantically to wash out of the bedding. “It wasn’t my fault. It was my sister. She—”

  The slap was such a surprise, she didn’t even cry out.

  “Because of you, that busybody deputy will be coming by.”

  Not her fault. Her sister’s. The man’s. He was the one who had hurt her. One of the girls had found her barefoot, half-naked, bleeding and wandering the halls, crying.

  “You want me to call the deputy?” the girl said when she took her to her mother.

  “No,” her mother snapped. “We’ll handle this ourselves.” And pushed the other girl out, warning her what would happen if she talked.

  Her mother told her to clean herself up, told her she was now a woman and that this was her future. She stopped crying and didn’t cry again until her mother told her she had a baby inside her and that it had to come out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  ROURKE DROVE THE TWO-LANE north through miles of snowy rolling foothills. The Crazy Mountains stayed with them for so long that Callie thought the mountain range was never ending.

  She’d been watching the side mirror, half expecting the law to come after them. Rourke had left a message with the sheriff that they would be back in twenty-four hours. Still, she felt as if they were being followed.

  This is going to come to a bad end.

  “So, you’re sure about going back there?” Rourke asked, breaking the long silence.

  Callie looked over at him. She still couldn’t read him, but she could tell he was as anxious as she was. He was counting on her remembering the killer. He was convinced it would be the same killer she’d witnessed that night at Westfield.

  If only this trip would end the headaches and the killings. Her fear was how it would end, though. There had to be a reason she never saw the killer’s face. She prayed it wasn’t because the face was her own.

  “I’m not sure if I remember the place or if I just heard other girls from the home talking about it,” she said, turning away from his handsome face to watch the white landscape blur past.

  “Do you remember Gladys McCormick?” he asked, sounding anxious.

  “My memories are...fuzzy. They are more like feelings. My mother at the center of them.”

  “So you don’t remember the murder?”

  “I only know what I’ve been told.”

  “Edwin said that you didn’t talk for a long time after. You’d gone...mute.”

  She nodded and nervously smoothed her palms down the leg of her jeans. “But we don’t know why. Was I too traumatized to speak because of the murder or knowing my mother was dying or realizing I could hear other people’s thoughts?”

  “I’m sorry,” he said and reached over and took her hand, squeezing it gently. “Why did you choose Westfield as your last name?” he asked, as it had been something that had been bothering him.

  “One of my foster parents called me that. I just assumed it was my last name.”

  * * *

  ROURKE STARED AT the open highway ahead, worried that this was a mistake. He couldn’t predict what Callie’s reaction was going to be once they reached Westfield. He kept thinking about what Laura had said.

  But he didn’t turn the SUV around. Instead, like Callie, he kept watching the traffic behind them. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being followed, that he’d been followed since he’d arrived here.

  Edwin was dead. So was Carson Grant. Callie had seen the killer last night. He could feel everything coming to a head. What scared him most was the worry that he wouldn’t be able to protect Callie. The killer had called her to all the murders. What if she called her to he
r death?

  He glanced over to find Callie with her eyes closed. He didn’t think she was sleeping, though. Ahead, he saw the turnoff to Flat Rock and slowed.

  “How much farther?” Callie asked, without opening her eyes.

  Rourke could see a grain tower in the distance. As he came around a curve, he saw a large three-story building sitting off by itself to the west of town.

  “We’re here.”

  * * *

  CALLIE OPENED HER eyes and sat up. As what she knew must be Westfield Manor came into view, she felt dread move like sludge through her veins. She swallowed and tried to still her pounding heart as Rourke turned down a weed-choked dirt road that ended in front of the hulking structure.

  “This is it?” she asked, her voice breaking.

  “Does it look familiar?”

  She shook her head. On the drive, she’d tried to remember her first five years of life. All she’d managed were a few fleeting memories, mostly of her mother. They were worn from years of pulling them out and looking at them. She couldn’t even be sure any of them were real anymore or just fantasies that she’d made up of her mother.

  Rourke killed the engine and the two of them merely sat for a few moments without speaking. Wind buffeted the SUV. In the distance a tumbleweed bounced along over the tops of the weeds to disappear behind the building.

  “I need some time alone inside the building,” Callie said.

  “I don’t think that’s—”

  “Please. If you want me to remember, then you need to let me do it my way.” She could tell it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “An old building like that could be dangerous—”

  She laughed. “That building is the least of our worries. I’ll be fine. I’ll call if I need you.” She met his gaze. “Give me this, Rourke.”

  “I never knew you were so stubborn.”

  Callie smiled. “Wait until you actually get to know me. Stubbornness is my best quality.” She opened her door and got out. The wind lashed her hair about her face as she walked toward the open front door. She half expected to hear Rourke open his car door and come after her. Or at least argue that he couldn’t let her go in there alone.

  To his credit, he did neither.

  Callie took a deep breath, let it out and stepped inside.

  * * *

  ROURKE WATCHED CALLIE disappear into the blackness of the building. He started to reach for his door handle. No way could he let her face that alone. He jumped at the sound of his cell phone and then swore as he looked toward Westfield again and couldn’t see Callie.

  Torn between ignoring Callie’s request and following her and answering Laura’s call, he punched the button and said, “Laura.”

  “Where are you?” she said, sounding upset.

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Rourke, I just heard about Edwin Sharp. I can’t believe it. Tell me you didn’t go to Westfield. The more I’ve thought about it...”

  “We’re here now. Callie has gone into the building. I can’t talk. I have to go.”

  Laura said something he didn’t catch, something that sounded like “my sister.” Her sister must have been in Seattle visiting. He frowned as he disconnected. No, she’d said “warn you about my sister.”

  He shook his head. Whatever it had been, it didn’t matter right now. He let that moment of concern blow away like a cobweb in a wind as he got out of the SUV and ran toward the darkness of Westfield’s gaping doorway.

  No matter what Callie wanted, he couldn’t let her do it alone.

  * * *

  THE INTERIOR OF WESTFIELD looked like any other abandoned old building. It disappointed Callie that she felt nothing as she stepped inside the lower floor.

  The place was a mess, charred in one corner, with the remains of parties in another. She’d thought it would be scary, but as she moved more deeply into the building, it only made her feel sad.

  Had she and her mother really lived here for almost six years? It seemed inconceivable. From what she’d been told, she’d been five when her mother had died and she’d been taken away.

  She tried to draw up even one of the so-called memories she had. None of them seemed to fit now. Tears welled in her eyes, filling her with an even deeper sadness. The memories were all she had of her mother, and if they weren’t true...

  Callie stopped at the bottom of the stairs and looked up. Her heart leaped. She almost laughed. She remembered the stairway.

  As she started to climb, she began to feel the building. More memories, tiny flashes of her and her mother here. She climbed faster, anxious now, even though she wasn’t completely sure where she was headed.

  Another set of stairs. She practically ran them, climbing higher and higher. She could feel the wind whistling through the broken glass. A song came to mind, something from her childhood. It hung just out of reach, teasing her with the faint memory as she reached the third floor.

  She felt as if her feet knew the way. She didn’t question it as she walked down the hallway past empty rooms strewn with old bed frames and mattress stuffing. At the end of the hall, she turned and stopped in the doorway of the last room at the front of the building.

  The glass in the window was gone. A cold breeze blew in to stir some trash into one corner. Callie looked past it to the open window and the town beyond.

  This is where it will end, she thought as she stepped toward the yawning opening three stories above the ground.

  * * *

  ROURKE FINALLY FOUND her standing at the third-floor window. “Callie?” he inquired tentatively from the doorway.

  She turned to look at him. To his surprise she was smiling through her tears. He’d thought bringing her here would be painful. Worse, traumatic.

  “You have good memories here,” he said in surprise.

  Still smiling, she wiped at the tears. “My mother is here. I remember her. She loved me so much. She used to tell me stories. She loved to talk about my father, what a sweet, loving man he was and how someday the two of them would be together. He died in a car wreck before they could get married.”

  “Even with what happened here...” That was when he knew, without a doubt, that she wasn’t the killer. She’d had a loving mother, a father who had wanted them both.

  It was the killer who couldn’t let go of this place—and what had happened here. Not Callie.

  He stepped to her and took her in his arms. Holding her, he saw that something here had freed Callie. At least from part of the past.

  But she was still bound to this place by the killer and the night of violence she’d witnessed. If he could find some way for her to either break that bond or go back to that night...

  “I didn’t find the answers you’d hoped I would,” she said. “I’m sorry. If there was any way I could...”

  “You found something more valuable in this horrible old place,” he said, glancing around in disbelief. “You remembered that you were loved here.”

  “I did.” She stepped from his arms to move to the window. “Look.”

  He stepped closer to see the carved name in the wood that Edwin had emailed him a photo of. Caligrace.

  “She left our mark here. She wasn’t ashamed of being pregnant with me. She loved me and my father.”

  He put his arm around her and looked out toward what consisted of the town of Flat Rock. “It’s late. I should find us a place to stay. I thought I saw a motel just before we turned. I’ll get adjoining rooms in case...” He hated to take it for granted that she would want to sleep with him again.

  Callie didn’t seem to be listening. “You said there is a stone on my mother’s grave?” He’d told her about it when he’d explained everything the private investigator had found on her and her mother.

  He nodded, think
ing how brave she was to come here. He was sure that she hadn’t known what her reaction was going to be any more than he had. Her strength awed him.

  “I’d like to see it.”

  They walked out to the cemetery together along a grown-over path through tall dead weeds. This part of the country got chinooks that blew in and melted the snow, leaving the countryside bare. Everything was a dull dirty brown. He couldn’t wait to get out of here.

  Rourke turned his attention from the landscape. The late-afternoon sun shone on Callie’s face as she looked down at the crude writing on the concrete headstone. She appeared so calm, so at peace. He was sure she saw the good and the bad of people because of her psychic ability. She’d accepted all of it, apparently, at a young age, including the lesson that people died, sometimes brutally.

  “Someone else loved my mother,” Callie said as she bent down and traced the letters. “That person must have made her this.”

  “I think it was the man who was the deputy at the time,” Rourke said. “From what Edwin told me, the man had cared very much for your mother. But he had his own family, so he wasn’t able to help the two of you as much as he would have liked.”

  “I’d like to meet him sometime,” she said, rising to her feet. “Would you mind if I stayed here for a while?”

  He looked around, seeing nothing but open country and a dying small town. There was no one on the streets. Only an occasional semi roared past on the highway in the distance.

  Still, he didn’t like leaving her alone. “You have the gun in your purse? It’s loaded, right?”

  Callie smiled. “I’ll be fine. I can see the motel from here. I’ll meet you there. It’s a nice day for a walk.” She touched his arm. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember.”

  This place made him uneasy, as if the ghosts of the girls still inhabited it. But Callie didn’t seem to feel them. Or if she did, they didn’t bother her.

  He stood for a moment, understanding that she needed to be alone, but also not sure he could leave her. This place scared him because he feared this was where it had begun, where a serial killer was made and still lurked in the shadows.