Reed’s face was sober. “So what you’re saying is … Jesus literally took your wheel.” He delivered the line so earnestly that Powell clearly couldn’t tell whether it was a put-on, a put-down, or the quiet awe of a fellow true believer.
The momentary confusion on Powell’s features dissipated as he surged ahead to safe, familiar territory. “That’s right, that’s right,” he said, smiling broadly as he spread his hands. “All praise be to Him and those He favors. God wanted Luis Carnevale captured that night, and I was merely the instrument He used to do it.”
Reed looked thoughtful. “It’s a convincing line of evidence that you’ve laid out here,” he said, “and I can see why the jury had no difficulty in convicting Luis Carnevale. But…”
Powell opened his mouth to protest, and Reed held out his hands to forestall him.
“Just for argument’s sake—just to play the devil, as it were—who would have been the number two suspect?”
“There wasn’t a number two,” Powell replied with a frown. “Carnevale did it.”
“But if there were. If you had to choose someone else to have set that fire, who would you pick? After all, no one knows the case quite like you do.”
Powell looked like he didn’t know whether to be suspicious or flattered. His mouth worked in and out as he considered what to say. “I guess maybe that Gallagher boy. Jacob. He had a history of fire starting, if I recall the facts correctly. But it wasn’t him because it was Luis Carnevale. Case closed.”
“Thanks for your time,” Reed said, standing, so Ellery took that as her cue to rise as well. “Do you mind sending us a copy of that presentation you gave? The illustrations of the geography of the fires are particularly well done. It’s something I could imagine we might use for teaching at the Bureau.”
Powell puffed up like a pigeon. “Sure, just leave your cards. I’d be happy to send it along.”
Ellery had no card so she jotted her personal email on a Post-it and left it with Powell. Seeing the little sticky note next to Reed’s polished FBI credentials made her face warm as she remembered anew what was really at stake here: her whole career.
They left together, and outside the snow had started to fall in earnest. Ellery hunched into her jacket as the snowflakes tickled in through the open spaces around her neck and melted across her skin. She retrieved a window scraper from her truck and started clearing the windshield. Reed, ever the gentleman, used the sleeve of his wool overcoat to brush the light snow from his side. They were both a bit breathless from the cold as they climbed inside. “He was lying,” Ellery announced immediately. “He wasn’t there because of a wrong turn.”
Snowflakes clung to Reed’s lashes as he blinked them away. “Yes, for a man who has a golden cross hanging on his office wall, Commissioner Powell seems to be rather sketchy on the details of the Commandments.”
“We could track down his buddies who were drinking with him that night,” Ellery said as she started up the truck and used the wipers to clear away the remaining snow. The defroster roared to life, sending a blast of chilly air at them.
“Yes, it would be interesting to hear their version of the story,” Reed concurred, but he seemed to be only half-listening to her. He had pulled out his phone and was poking around on it with one finger. “I’d be keen to talk to Jacob Gallagher at this stage.”
Ellery held her frozen hand over the air vents, which had warmed up to tepid. “You’re buying Powell’s idea that he’s the number-two suspect?”
“Not Powell, no. I read a half-dozen news articles this morning before phoning up McGreevy, just to make sure I had the facts straight. One of them included a picture of young Jacob Gallagher at his brother’s funeral.” He held out his phone so she could take a look. Indeed, there was Jacob standing next to his father outside the church. The boy looked awkward and shell-shocked inside a suit that was one size too small for him.
“So?” Ellery asked Reed. “It’s a picture of Jacob Gallagher.”
“So I’m reasonably sure I just saw another picture of him. In there, among Powell’s photos.” He nodded in the direction of the building. “That’s why I asked him to send the whole presentation.”
“Jacob was at the scene? Funny that no one ever mentioned it.”
“Mmm,” Reed said. “I thought maybe we might head over to the auto body shop where he’s working now and ask him about it. First though, we must get some coffee—it’s colder than a tin toilet in Tibet out here.”
Ellery smiled as she put the truck in gear. “Your thin southern blood is showing, Agent Markham.”
Reed scoffed, his breath fogging the window. “Can’t be,” he drawled. “It’s plumb done froze.”
* * *
They picked up coffee and then made their way back into East Boston, where Jacob Gallagher was supposedly employed at T&E Auto Body. Progress through the city was slow. Lumbering plows scraped along the streets even as the snow poured down from the sky. A few scattered pedestrians remained in sight, bundled up and bracing themselves against the swirling storm, while the tops of the taller buildings had vanished into the clouds. The world was erasing itself, inch by inch. Ellery drove with both hands clenched on the wheel, cautiously easing the truck around each corner as her wipers slapped against the mounting snow. She had to circle back to get to the repair shop because she missed the sign the first time due to poor visibility.
An old-fashioned bell jingled as they tramped inside the shop, snow melting at their feet, but no one immediately appeared. “Hello?” Reed called out. There was a lone desk that was covered in white and yellow papers, but no attendant. “Is anyone here?”
Eventually, a broad-faced man with swarthy skin emerged from the garage, wiping his hands on a cloth. “Can I help you?”
“We’re looking for Jacob Gallagher,” Ellery told him. “We were told he works here.”
The man seemed unimpressed. “And you are?” he asked in slightly accented English.
Reed, as the only one of them with a badge, took the opportunity to flash it. “Agent Reed Markham,” he said. “This is Ellery Hathaway. Are you the owner here?”
“Ernesto Aducci. I own this place with my brother, Tony,” he said, only it came out more like, wid my brudder, Tony.
“Ah, that would make you Mr. E,” Reed said, smiling, but Ernesto Aducci did not smile back.
“What do you want with Jake?”
“We just want to ask him a few questions,” Ellery said. “He’s not in any trouble.”
At the word “trouble,” Aducci’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Oh, yah? He’s in trouble with me. He’s not shown up to work here for two days. I don’t know where he is. If you see him, tell him he’s here at eight on Monday, or he don’t come back at all.”
“You have an address for him?” Reed wanted to know. “We’ll be happy to deliver your message.”
Aducci seemed to be weighing the benefits and risks of cooperation. Eventually, he sighed deeply and went over to the desk. He leaned down and rustled around in a filing cabinet, after which he stood up holding an employment form. “Sixteen Shelby Street, number two,” he said, waving the paper. “You tell him. Come back Monday, or don’t bother.”
The trip to Shelby Street didn’t take very long, even with the deepening snow. Ellery glided the truck to a stop not far from the address Jacob Gallagher’s boss had given them. The street was straight, laid out in classic Boston style: uniform row houses lined up on either side of the road, with barely three feet between them. They were boxy and plain, like shipping containers, differentiated only by the slightly varying colors of their cheap plastic siding. Each row house contained three separate apartments, and Ellery and Reed quickly found the one marked sixteen, number two. There was no name near the bell. Ellery used one gloved finger to press it and then blew on her hands to warm them through the material as they waited. The sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs coming down made her heart rate pick up. He was home. She braced herself for what she might find on
the other side of the door.
It swung open quickly, and she found herself looking into the face of Patrick Gallagher. He appeared as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “Mr. Gallagher,” she said. “Hello.”
His shock faded into a scowl. “What are you doing here?” He glanced at Reed. “And who’re you?”
Reed glanced at Ellery, as if unsure how to play it. She cleared her throat. “This is Reed Markham. He’s a friend of mine. Reed, this is Patrick Gallagher.”
“Pleased to make your acquaintance,” Reed said, extending his hand, but Patrick Gallagher merely frowned at it.
“You didn’t say what you’re doing here.”
“We were hoping to speak to Jacob,” Ellery said. “Is he here?”
“He’s not here, so you’re out of luck. What do you want with him?”
Ellery hesitated, knowing how Patrick didn’t want her digging around in his family’s past. In a way, she couldn’t blame him. “They’re worried about him down at the auto body place where he works,” she fibbed. “He hasn’t been to work in two days. I imagine you must be worried, too, if you’re here.”
“Jake’s a good boy. Works hard, pays his bills. Helps me with Myra on the weekends. I don’t want you coming around here, bothering him.”
“Do you know where your son is, Mr. Gallagher?” Reed asked gently.
“That’s not your business.”
Reed pulled out his FBI shield. “Maybe it is,” he said, and Patrick stiffened. He turned his head slowly and looked down at Ellery with some horror.
“What have you done?” he whispered to her.
“Nothing, I—”
“You get out of here!” His arthritic, liver-spotted hands started pushing the door closed on them. “You leave my family the hell alone.”
They had no choice but to back up and let him slam the door. There was the sound of his uneven footsteps trudging back up the stairs, and then only the silence of the snow. Ellery and Reed stood on the narrow stoop and looked at each other. “He’s scared,” she said.
“This must be hard, bringing back all the memories for them,” Reed murmured.
Ellery recalled what Patrick had said about Jake being a good boy, and how he hadn’t always been that way. “The fires Jake set when he was a teenager,” she said. “What happened with that?”
“Don’t know,” Reed said as he peered at the sky. “But let’s find somewhere warmer to talk about it, shall we?”
They hurried through the snow and back to the truck, where Ellery started the engine and steered toward home. “Don’t think you’re flying out of here tonight,” she said.
“No, it would appear not. It’s fine. I’ve got time.”
Ellery said nothing to this, although she could practically hear the clock ticking. He had a day or two at most. “You’re welcome to my couch again, if you can stand the dog hair.”
Reed sighed and glanced down at his trousers. “I practically blend in as it is,” he said morosely as he picked off a bit of fur and then another. “It’s like he keeps a spare coat in here just for emergencies.”
Ellery smiled. “Think of it as extra warmth.”
As they drove, Reed played around with his phone. After a bit, he announced: “It doesn’t appear that Jacob Gallagher was ever convicted of arson. Rather, he participated in the juvenile diversion process.”
“That’s where kids get counseling and community service and stuff instead of jail time, right?”
“Yes, if you keep a clean record, you aren’t ever charged with your original crime. If you violate the terms, then the state can charge you as originally planned. Jacob Gallagher must have completed his probation without incident.”
“Huh.”
Reed turned to look at her. “That’s a particularly thoughtful ‘huh.’ What are you thinking?”
“Jake would have needed a lawyer. His family would’ve had to pay a fine also, and possibly restitution from the damage caused by the school fire.”
“Yes, and?”
Ellery shook her head, a tad impatient. If Reed Markham had a blind spot, it was money. He’d never in his life had to think about it, and so he pretty much didn’t. “The furniture store was going under,” she explained. “The Gallaghers were flat broke back then—so where did they get the funds to bail out their son?”
Reed blew out a long breath. “That’s a good question.” He paused. “I guess two million dollars might have helped in that regard.”
“You think?” She remembered what it was like to be poor, when Daniel’s medical bills had taken every last bit of her mother’s money and then some. Ellery had walked the streets and searched the garbage cans for aluminum cans that other people had tossed away because they didn’t need that five-cent refund from returning them. She’d used the spare change money to buy food or clothes from Goodwill—one less thing for her mother to worry about. One time she’d been so hungry she’d eaten two Big Macs and a large fries all at once, practically gulping the food right there near the counter. An old man, someone worse off than her—she could tell from his tattered clothes and by the way he carried all his possessions on his back—had laughed and laughed. “Damn, girl,” he’d said as he’d handed her a five from inside his army jacket. “You look like you could use this.”
She recalled how she’d taken it and run out like a squirrel with a nut, how elated and ashamed she had felt, all at the same time. Back then, five dollars had felt like a million. A real million would’ve been simply beyond belief.
Back at her apartment, Ellery took Bump out for a short walk in the snow while Reed booted up his laptop. The dog never seemed to mind the cold, trotting amiably from one snow pile to another, his long ears making snakelike tracks in the snow. He stuffed his delighted snout deep inside a snowdrift and then withdrew with a sneeze. “Pee already,” Ellery told him darkly as she hugged herself. “Or we’ll both catch our death out here.”
The snow had tapered off into flurries for the moment, a bit of a lull, but the street was as deserted as though it were a full-on blizzard. Ellery looked around at the warm yellow light spilling from the apartment buildings, hers and the others around her. For some reason, Joe Manganelli’s irritation about Reed’s profiling efforts on the rapists came back to her: He’s a guy who likes to break into second-story buildings or higher? What am I supposed to do—put out a BOLO for a guy carrying around Architectural Digest?
Maybe there was a way to profile a building, but not in the way Joe had intimated. Ellery hustled Bump back inside and jabbed the elevator button repeatedly. When she reached her apartment, Reed looked up in surprise as she burst through the door with an air of excitement. “That geographical profiling—could it work on Wendy Mendoza’s rapist?”
“Uh, what?” He had his glasses on, his brows knit in confusion.
“The geographical profiling technique that Powell showed us today. I was thinking maybe it could be used with the cases that are linked to Wendy Mendoza’s. That way we might narrow down the area her attacker lives in.”
Reed’s expression turned thoughtful for a moment and then he took up his laptop again. “That’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Five probable cases isn’t a lot to work with, but I was learning last year about a new software program that can sometimes make estimates with lower levels of geographic data. I can look into it.”
Ellery joined him on the couch, bouncing a little with the rush of possibility. “If we could narrow the zone, it would at least point Manganelli in the right direction,” she said. Plus, it would allow her to face Wendy Mendoza again. She didn’t know how to look the poor woman in the eyes and tell her they’d come up with exactly nothing on her case. She sank deeper into the sofa, relaxing for the first time that day. Beside her, Reed got up and stretched.
“If I’m impinging on your hospitality, the least I can do is cook.”
“Hmm. Well, good luck with that.”
He gave her a curious look and went to the kitchen. He opened a few
cupboards and closed them again. Then he spent a good long minute staring into her refrigerator, really much longer than she felt was necessary, given the meager contents inside. “What the heck do you eat?” he called back to her, sounding vaguely alarmed.
“There’s a Burger King up the street,” she said as she pushed herself off the couch. “I can run out.” No need to test the mettle of his sensitive southern skin.
“Burger King?” Reed was aghast. “I’m sorry, but no. I’ll find us someplace for dinner. Someplace with actual food.”
“Yeah? Good luck with that, too.” She walked to the window and looked out at the storm. “The T is probably barely functioning right now. You’d freeze your tuchus off waiting for a train, and I’m sure not driving around in that.” As if to prove her point, the wind slapped at her windows, spewing an icy blast of snow across the panes.
“So we call a cab.” Reed was back at his laptop, this time consulting restaurant options.
“You think you’re getting a cab to come out in this weather?”
“You pay them double, they’ll come whenever you want,” he replied, absorbed in his search. “Do you like Cantonese?”
“I was kind of hoping for that burger,” she replied with a sigh.
“If it’s red meat you want, red meat you shall have. You just go get ready.”
Ellery looked down at her jeans and long-sleeved black T-shirt. “I thought I was ready.”
“We’re aiming for a slightly higher class of restaurant than Burger King, remember?”
“Fine,” Ellery grumbled. “I’ll go put on my dressy jeans.”
She got to her bedroom door when a sudden, terrible thought occurred to her. She walked slowly back to the living room and stood there with her hands on her hips. Reed did not look up. Finally, she spoke up. “This isn’t a date, is it?”
He still didn’t look at her. “Can’t be. You don’t date.”
No Mercy--A Mystery Page 11
