“So who shot him?” Reed asked, eyeing the door like Rhodes was out there with a stethoscope, listening.
“I have no idea. Truly.” She paused and looked at her lap. “But whoever it was, he or she may have saved my life.”
He reached for her hand and gave it a quick squeeze. “When the cops find whoever it is, we can be sure to thank them at the pretrial hearing. In the meantime, let’s get you home, hmm?”
That offer sounded so appealing that she didn’t even mind when he held her arm to help her out of the bed. She eased onto her feet and was pleased when they seemed to sustain her weight. She shuffled like an old woman to collect her discharge papers while Reed fetched them a taxi. He took pity on her because they rode back to her place in blessed silence. At her front door, she fumbled her keys twice before he took them from her hands and opened the lock himself. “I can do that,” she protested weakly.
“Yes, but you don’t have to. It’s already done.”
She removed her boots at the door, and then he steered her gently toward the couch, with the dog sniffing and wagging happily after them. She gave Bump’s head a clumsy pat as she put her legs up on the coffee table. “Sorry, buddy. I missed your walk.”
“I’ll take him out. You just sit.” Reed tucked a throw pillow behind her head and unfurled a nearby blanket over her lap.
“What are you doing?” she asked him as he fussed.
“I’m taking care of you,” he replied, all business.
“Oh.” Her heart faltered and she clutched the edges of the soft blanket. She couldn’t look at him all of a sudden. “I’m not sure how to do that,” she admitted at last.
He touched her knee gently and smiled. “It’s easy. You just have to sit there. Let me take Sir Sheds-a-Lot out to the curb and then I’ll be back in a jot, okay? Don’t you move.”
“I don’t think I could even if I tried,” she murmured, settling in. Morning sunlight streamed in through all her windows but she shut her eyes and found relief in the darkness. She heard Bump’s eager nails scratching on the wood floor and the jangle of his collar as he disappeared out the door with Reed. It seemed like they were gone only a few seconds before they reappeared again, jolting her from the netherworld. Reed was in the kitchen. She heard the sound of kibble hitting the dog bowl, and then Bump slurping down some water. A few moments later, when she felt the other end of the sofa sag, she forced open her eyes. “You didn’t have to come all this way,” she said. “I would have called you back eventually.”
He rubbed a hand over his stubble. “Right. From the morgue, maybe.”
“Did I say I was sorry?” she asked vaguely.
“I don’t want you to be sorry. I want you to stop taking chances with your life.”
She was sleepy again, her eyes drifting shut. “You forget. I’m living on borrowed time.” Her hand tremor returned suddenly, and she opened her eyes to look at it, like it was disconnected from the rest of her. “I’m shaking,” she observed with clinical detachment.
Reed looked concerned. “Are you cold?”
“No,” she said slowly, even as the shaking seemed to spread throughout her body. Soon she was in a full-body shudder and she couldn’t make it stop. “What—what’s happening to me?”
“I don’t know.” He shifted to sit closer to her, peering into her eyes, pressing a hand to her forehead. “You don’t feel hot. Your eyes aren’t crossed.” He dropped her hands abruptly and started pawing frantically at the papers the hospital had given them upon her release. “Maybe it’s shock. I’m calling the doctor.”
She wanted to protest but her teeth were chattering too hard for her to speak. Being out of control of her own body was the worst thing to happen to her today. Dimly, she heard Reed on the phone, his voice tight as he described her symptoms. “No,” he said. “No, none of that. Uh-huh. Are you quite sure?”
She was still trembling under the blanket when he returned to the couch. “Weh—well? What is it?”
“They say it’s probably the adrenaline wearing off,” he told her, smoothing a gentle hand down her arm. “We’re to call back if it doesn’t stop in a few minutes.”
She shivered, blinking back tears. “Minutes?” Her teeth clacked together and she clenched her jaw to try to make it stop. Nothing she did held back the tremors. “Reed?” She reached out her hand and clutched blindly for him, but instead of taking her hand, he folded himself carefully around her.
“I’m here. You’re okay. Try to breathe.”
She screwed her eyes shut, the full horror of the day, of her whole life, rushing back at her. “Make it stop,” she whispered desperately. “When does it stop?”
He held her tight and kissed her head. “I don’t know, honey.” He sounded as helpless as she felt. “I don’t know.”
12
The buzzing of his cell phone penetrated his consciousness slowly, layer by layer, like a sander over a board, until at last Reed twitched himself fully awake and fumbled in the direction of the noise. His mouth felt filled with cotton and he struggled to get any words out. “Markham,” he said, half hanging over the side of Ellery’s couch.
“Where the hell are you?” McGreevy was on the other end, somewhere near traffic because Reed could hear the rush of cars going past.
“I’m up in—”
“Don’t say Boston.”
“—Boston.”
“Jesus Christ. This girl must really have your pecker in a pretzel if you’re playing kamikaze with your career for her. Did you forget that we’re supposed to be getting on a plane to Florida in half an hour?”
Reed lay back on the sofa cushions and closed his eyes. The correct move now would probably be to reply that he’d meet McGreevy in Florida, go hop on a plane, and forget everything he’d ever known about a drifter named The Blaze. He hadn’t told Ellery yet what he’d found; it wasn’t too late to play dumb. Unfortunately, Reed had an IQ of 154 and dumb just wasn’t in his repertoire. “Earl Stanfield didn’t just wander off in the middle of the Gallagher fire investigation,” he said. “He was placed in the MURS program—and I think you know that because you put him there.”
Wherever McGreevy was walking to, he stopped dead in his tracks. When he spoke again, his voice was low and dangerous. “You were barely out of short pants when that store went up in flames, Markham. So whatever it is you think you know now, more than a quarter of a century after the fact, you’re dead wrong.”
“I know the task force must have been deliriously happy to find Luis Carnevale gift-wrapped at the scene. I’ve read the files, Puss—this investigation reeked.”
“Reeked like the gasoline Carnevale had on his clothes. He didn’t just happen to be there that night. He was jerking off to his masterpiece while a little boy burned up inside that store. Think about that nugget whenever your heart starts bleeding too hard for the guy.”
Reed sat up and put his socked feet on the floor. He bent in half under the weight of what he had to do, his head in his hands. “Firebugs answer the alarm calls the same as the firemen. You know that as well as I do. Carnevale said he heard the sirens and followed them there.”
“And you believe him.” McGreevy’s voice was hard, threatening.
“I’ve been to the prison. I’ve talked to him.”
“Then you know what he is.”
Reed had no reply for this, so he said nothing.
“That man terrorized an entire city for more than two years,” McGreevy continued. “He set nearly a hundred fires and caused millions of dollars in property damage. Two men were badly injured putting out the fires he lit—and for what purpose? Just so he could get his rocks off, like he was doing the night Powell caught him.”
“What did Earl see?” Reed kept his question soft, as though his own life weren’t hanging on the answer.
“Nothing,” McGreevy bit out harshly. “Not one damn thing of probative value. He got a nice little apartment safe and sound—he may as well’ve won the lottery—and Carnevale got a ten
-foot cell, which is right where he belongs.”
“He wasn’t convicted of any of the other fires, only the Gallagher store.”
“We didn’t need any others. There was enough evidence from that one to put him away for a good long time.”
“I gather you all made sure of that.”
McGreevy snorted derisively. “Shit, Reed. You can’t frame a guilty man.” Then he paused as if considering his next move. “Listen here: I want you to tread very carefully because you’re walking down a lonely road—one you don’t get to come back from once you get too far gone. You want to go chasing some garbled story from a drunk back in 1988—whatever. If you want to make some big outcry of injustice for an arsonist who jacks off at a fire, well then I can’t stop you. But I was the junior man on that task force and anything I did, I did because someone else was telling me to—someone who knew better than I did what the stakes were. So I’m going to return that favor and offer you some advice: if you go turning over old rocks, then I guarantee something’ll slither right out and bite your ankles.”
“Is that a threat?”
“Words of wisdom from someone who’s been there.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Reed replied tightly.
“Take it to the airport. I want you back on the job in Florida by the six P.M. news conference tonight. If you don’t show up there, then don’t bother showing up at all.” He paused meaningfully. “And that is a threat, so I suggest you treat it as such.”
Reed hung up with McGreevy and tossed his phone aside onto the coffee table. He had a crick in his neck from sleeping on the sofa and was dressed in yesterday’s clothes. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten anything. Maybe it wasn’t wise to throw one’s career away on an empty stomach. He foraged in Ellery’s pantry for something edible and finally found one granola bar, expiration date unknown. He took his chances and wolfed it down with a tall glass of tap water.
His watch said it was just past ten in the morning. Ellery had stopped shaking sometime after seven and disappeared into her bedroom, practically fleeing his presence. He’d heard the lock click shut and there had been no sound from her since. Normally, he’d be happy to let her sleep, but with her head injury, the doctor had given orders to check on her every so often to make sure she wasn’t exhibiting any serious signs of brain damage. Reed went down the shadowed hall to stand in front of her white door. He listened but heard only silence on the other side. Gingerly, he stretched out a hand to stroke the smooth, cool wood. This was how they’d met, the two of them, with him on one side of the door and her on the other. Sometimes he felt like it would always be between them.
He rapped gently and heard a boisterous woof in response, followed by the jingle of Bump’s collar and the sound of him snuffling the crack by Reed’s feet. There was a long stretch with no other action, and Reed was just wondering if he should find a way to jimmy the lock when he heard it slide open. Ellery drew back the door and stood there squinting at him as though the light hurt her eyes.
“You’re alive,” he said with some relief—another déjà vu moment in their nontraditional relationship. Bump stopped just long enough to give Reed’s feet a cursory sniff before bounding off in the direction of the kitchen.
Ellery hummed a nonreply and rubbed the side of her head with one hand. Her hair was tangled and the scrape on her chin had turned a dull brick red. She seemed hazy and unsteady on her feet and he wasn’t sure if he ought to be hauling her back to the hospital, lickety-split.
“How do you feel?” he asked cautiously.
“Like I’ve been hit with a lead pipe.”
She ghosted past him, careful not to touch, and with that he had his answer: she was fine. He trailed after her to the kitchen, where he found her sitting on a high stool, slumped over the granite-covered island. Now that he knew she would be okay, he felt a grim sort of comfort at her distress: maybe she would learn her lesson this time. “That was an incredibly dangerous stunt you pulled in the alley last night,” he said as he poured her a glass of water. “What was your plan if you had caught Murphy climbing up the fire escape?”
“To stop him.” She accepted the glass and drank it halfway down.
“Ellery.” He took the seat next to her, but she did not look at him. He sighed. “I know you want to get this guy, but you can’t be following around violent sexual predators on your own. There’s a reason cops bring backup.”
“No one is looking for him. No one. Manganelli’s busy with some jewelry store heist, and meanwhile this guy is out there somewhere, planning which window he’s going to crawl through next.”
“It’s frustrating. I get that.” He hesitated. “There’s always some guy, though. Someone out there doing harm or planning to—you can’t be responsible for all of them.”
She rubbed the spot between her eyes. “Wendy asked me for help. I promised her.”
“You don’t owe her anything.”
Ellery looked him in the eyes for the first time. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’re standing here in my kitchen because I didn’t answer my phone for a few hours. So yeah—go ahead and lecture me about my overreaching sense of personal responsibility.” She took up the glass of water and drained the rest of it while he fought off the heat he felt coloring his face.
He opted for a change of subject. “I’m going to go find some food, since it’s been ages since I’ve eaten a proper meal and I figure I can take the animal with me to get some exercise. Would you like anything?”
“Yeah. McDonald’s. I’d like an egg McMuffin with two hash browns and an extra-large Coke with lots of ice.”
Reed made a face. “My arteries hardened just from that description.”
“The ice is medicinal.” She shifted slowly off her seat, her back to him again. “I’m going to go shower for about three days.”
Reed took Bump out into the frosty, sunshine-filled day. He had left Virginia with just the clothes on his back, so he had to step carefully around the larger slush piles or risk ruining his work shoes forever. Not that I’ll need them if I don’t get down to Florida by nightfall, he thought to himself as he tied Bump’s leash to a pole outside of the nearest McDonald’s. He ordered Ellery the food she’d requested and then stopped at a sandwich shop a few doors down to get tuna and sprouts on whole wheat for himself. When he returned to her apartment, he found Ellery showered and redressed in jeans and a green sweatshirt, with bare feet and wet hair that curled at the ends. He felt a little guilty about admiring the firm shape of her rear end as she stood on tiptoe to reach the plates in her kitchen cabinets. Everyone seemed to think he wanted only to get into Ellery’s pants, and he wondered if perhaps he was protesting the truth of that too much.
Ellery didn’t notice his lingering gaze. She appeared more alert and definitely voracious as she devoured the McMuffin in a series of quick bites. “Not to seem ungrateful,” she said around a mouthful of food, “but aren’t you supposed to be at the FBI right about now?”
“Something like that. According to McGreevy, I’m to be in Florida by dark or I’m fired,” he replied, matter-of-factly.
“What?” She blanched as she set down her enormous paper cup of soda. “You should go, then. Right now.”
She pushed off the stool and tried urging him away from his sandwich and toward the door. “Wait, it’s okay.” He gentled her with a hand on her arm. “Maybe he actually means to go through with the threat—but I have my doubts.”
Her gray eyes searched his. “Why?”
He guided her back to her stool. Once he told her, there was no going back. He might be able to keep mum about what he’d found, but Ellery never would. “It seems that Luis Carnevale and his lawyer were right all those years ago. That would-be witness, Earl Stanfield, may have had a hand getting out of town. I think the task force hooked him up with the Massachusetts branch of the Urgent Relocation Service, which is meant to be tempor
ary. But in this case, Earl stayed gone.” He told her about his suspicions and his conversation with McGreevy.
“Wow,” she murmured when he’d finished. “Earl must’ve had quite a story if they were willing to take a risk like that.”
“McGreevy claims not. He says the guy didn’t actually witness anything. I think he believes he was just smoothing out a weird wrinkle in the prosecution’s case.”
“He used one hell of an iron to do it. If they took a homeless guy and made him not-homeless—enough to buy his silence for good—that can’t have been cheap.”
Reed said nothing. He’d seen government budgets up close and personal, and they weren’t inclined to be handing out money where it wasn’t strictly necessary. He also knew how much power lay in the words “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” He flashed his ID and people did what he told them to more often than not. Maybe The Blaze had been happy to relocate. Maybe he’d had no other choice.
“Where is he now?” Ellery asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone does.” Once Carnevale had been convicted, no one would have cared much about the whereabouts of Earl Stanfield.
“We have to tell Bertie Jenkins.” Ellery was already reaching for her phone.
“No, wait.”
She halted and looked at him, surprised. “What do you mean, wait? The guy’s been in prison for twenty-five years. Don’t you think that’s long enough?”
“Yes, but…” Reed spread his hands. “We don’t have proof of anything at all. MURS wouldn’t admit to relocating Earl Stanfield, and McGreevy would surely deny everything if asked in an official capacity. Furthermore, McGreevy is right about one thing: we don’t know that Earl actually saw anything that would help prove Carnevale’s innocence. He could very well be just a drunk with a mixed-up story. Worse, we don’t know where he is or if he’s even living. Without anything to substantiate our story, all we would be doing is giving a loud-mouthed lawyer the chance to drag the FBI’s name through the mud.”
No Mercy--A Mystery Page 21
