A Borrowing of Bones

by Paula Munier

  “Yes. She’s a good mother. The question is, are the two of them safe from the boyfriend? Or the stepfather?”

  “We can’t help her unless she files a complaint.” Troy texted the captain back, and told him they were on their way.

  “But if she comes in, what will Child Protective Services do? Amy’s only eighteen. A kid with a baby.”

  “She’s an adult in the eyes of the law. And we don’t know for sure who the custodial parent is.” Troy knew that CPS was overworked and understaffed and that if Amy Walker was indeed the custodial parent, odds were that she would not be charged with kidnapping. She could possibly be charged with child endangerment. But even if he reported it now, CPS wouldn’t get to her case for weeks. Certainly it wouldn’t happen over the long holiday weekend.

  “Yes, but she’s got nowhere to go. She doesn’t want to go home. And she doesn’t want to go back to the baby’s father, either.” Mercy gave him a pleading look that only the strongest man would be able to resist. “Don’t call CPS. I can find her.”

  Troy hesitated. By law he had twenty-four hours to report suspicion of child endangerment to the proper authorities. So technically he would not be breaking the law if he waited a few hours.

  “Please.”

  “I’ll think about it.” He whistled for Susie Bear and she leaped to his side. He hurried out of the cabin with the dog and went straight to his truck. He could hear Mercy and Elvis on their heels.

  “Goodbye,” she yelled after him.

  Troy waved his hand without looking back. He hustled Susie Bear into the Ford F-150, slamming the door in his haste. They had a missing boater to find and a murder to solve.

  And the day had barely begun.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “THAT WENT WELL,” MERCY SAID TO ELVIS as they stood together on the porch and watched them drive away.

  She could see that the encounter with Amy and little Helena had affected her. She felt energized; the same buzz that coursed through her when she was on duty reverberated through her now. Today the mountains and the woods and the sky spoke to her, not calling her to escape but calling her to act.

  Elvis felt this sense of mission, too; she could see that in the way he nudged her with his cold nose, bullying her to get moving. She felt useful for the first time since Martinez died.

  This is what it felt like to engage with the world, to care what happened next, and to whom. This was dangerous. But this was living.

  The Malinois cocked his dark triangular ears.

  “I know, you’re right. We’d better go find them before they get into any more trouble.”

  Within five minutes Mercy had restocked her pack and they were on the move. The rainfall had stopped as quickly as it had begun, making tracking Amy and the baby pretty easy. She found broken twigs, disturbed debris, and footprints in the mud leading into the forest. The light morning shower made the work easier for Elvis, too, because cool, moist air kept the scent closer to the ground.

  They traced the young mother and child northwest through the woods to the county road. There the trail ended abruptly.

  “Probably hitched another ride,” she told the dog. She wondered if the game warden had called off the AMBER Alert yet. If not, another witness might come forward, as Mabel Hennessy had done.

  Meanwhile, there was another place to look.

  “Home.” She trudged back through the wet forest, Elvis bounding ahead. When they arrived at the cabin, she settled on her end of the couch and booted up her laptop. The shepherd curled up on his side and dozed off while she Googled “Amy Walker.” What came up confirmed much of what the teenager had told her. She’d been a student at Northshire Regional High School and a member of the drama club, and stills of her in costume as Helena in a production of A Midsummer’s Night Dream appeared on the school’s website. A short video clip of the scene in which Helena delivers her famous monologue revealed Amy as a surprisingly good actress. The baby’s birth announcement was reported in the Northshire Review-Journal, but there was no mention of the father. And Karen Walker, Amy’s mother, had posted several photographs of both her daughter and her granddaughter on her Facebook page.

  “Bingo.” She researched the mother online and found that she lived with her husband, Donald Jonas Walker, in the middle of nowhere northwest of Sunderland. She knew that her mother’s house wouldn’t be Amy’s first choice, but if she felt that she had nowhere else to go … it was worth a shot.

  Mercy snapped her computer shut. “Wake up, soldier.”

  At the sound of her voice, the dog awoke.

  “Time for a ride.”

  Elvis jumped from the sofa and trotted over to her pack. He carried it back to her, dropped it in her lap, and waited patiently while she pulled on her boots.

  She smiled. He was happy to be back at work. And she was, too.

  * * *

  THE WALKERS’ RESIDENCE was even more dilapidated and depressing than Mercy had expected. There was an old rusted green Dodge truck on blocks and nothing but weeds and dead leaves and dirt where the front yard should be. The old tin-roofed farmhouse had seen better days; its gray paint was peeling and its windows were boarded up as often as not. The front porch sagged under the weight of years of wear and tear, neglect, and three abandoned sofas.

  But what struck her the most were the cats. She sat in the Jeep, momentarily stunned by the spectacle of dozens of tabbies, torties, and calicos peeking out from under the house, cuddling on the couches, lounging on the steps and the railings, and crowding every inch of the planked floor. Elvis danced on the passenger seat beside her, desperate to leap into the fray of felines.

  She peered through the gloom, looking for more of them. There had to be more of them.

  But other than the cats on the porch, the place seemed deserted.

  “Stay,” she told the shepherd, who pushed at her hand on the steering wheel with a cold nose as if to say, Come on. Let me go.

  “Stay,” she repeated firmly, but she left the hatchback open so she could call for him if she needed him. And to see if he could really resist the siren call of all those cats.

  Mercy stepped carefully around the kitties, few of whom bothered to move. Many seemed lethargic; she hoped that the listlessness was not due to hunger or disease but that was probably a faint hope at best. She would call the animal rescue folks when she got home. But first she needed to talk to Karen and Donald Walker.

  At the front door, she paused, then rapped sharply on the faded blue painted wood. The door creaked open.

  “Hello,” she called. “Mrs. Walker? Mr. Walker?” She listened for any sound of human activity inside. At first she thought they might be sleeping in, but she could hear the muted broadcast of a soccer game on television. Martinez had loved soccer like she loved baseball—and they’d spent many a long night in the desert debating the relative merits of each sport.

  A black cat slipped through her legs. Her nose was smudged with red. A sudden roar from the TV signaled a goal, and the little pussy sprang off the porch and across the yard and disappeared around the Dodge. Still no sign of the Walkers or anyone else.

  Mercy whistled for Elvis and heard the phlegmatic creatures screech as they scuttled away from the Malinois as he tore up to the house. To his credit, he ignored them all and halted at her hip. At her nod, they entered the house together.

  The small front room was cluttered with empty Bud Light cans and old newspapers, scattered potato chips, and what was left of a half-eaten bologna and cheese sandwich. A flat-screen TV played the game she’d heard, a repeat of Arsenal playing Manchester City, in Manchester, home team leading 2 to 1, much to the screaming crowd’s delight. Martinez loved Manchester City, almost as much as he loved Club America and the Houston Dynamo.

  Under the dingy window that looked out on the yard sat a ragtag version of the velveteen love seat that graced the parlor in her parents’ stately brownstone in Boston.

  The love seat appeared to be the only tidy spot in the ro
om. Even the cats weren’t sitting on it.

  In the middle of the room about three feet away from the television loomed a torn black faux-leather recliner, its back tilted toward Mercy. She could see a pale hairy hand spilling off to one side of the chair’s right arm.

  “Mr. Walker?” she asked as she circled the recliner to get a better look.

  Splayed in the seat was a thick-bellied middle-aged man with white spindly legs sticking out of knee-length Hawaiian-print shorts and a white wifebeater shirt that partially revealed a colorful tattoo wrapping around his left bicep and disappearing over his shoulder. He had a broad, jowly face and dyed jet-black hair that came to a widow’s peak high on his forehead.

  But the most striking thing about him was the Buck hunting knife that stuck out of his chest, right under his left nipple, the fatal bulls-eye of a dark red blood blotch that stained his T-shirt with death.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE MAN WAS DEAD. Mercy knew that just by looking; she’d had enough experience to know death when she saw it. She didn’t have to feel for a pulse, but she did anyway. She assumed that he was Donald Jonas Walker, Amy’s stepfather. There was nothing she could do for him now.

  She didn’t think he’d been dead very long, so she and Elvis were careful as they checked the remaining rooms of the house—a small cramped combination kitchen/dining area, a master bedroom, a smaller bedroom, and one large if outdated bathroom with a claw-foot bathtub—but there was no one around. They checked the back of the house, too, but there was nothing out there but a weed-choked strip of concrete barely keeping the woods at bay.

  Nothing to do but contact the authorities. She texted Troy about the murder, and he texted her back right away to say that he was out in the field and that she should call the police and let them handle it. Understandable, since he was a game warden, after all, not a homicide detective. And that’s what this situation called for. He may have already overstepped his boundaries, and if he had that was probably her fault. But she could only feel so bad about that, because she had done what she thought she needed to do, for the baby’s sake.

  She called 911, and while she waited for the authorities, she snapped photographs of the scene with her cell phone while Elvis amused himself in the yard raising dirt and chasing cats. He was going to need a bath when they got home.

  When she heard the sirens, she whistled for the shepherd, and he trotted up to her, nose in the air. His way of bragging. That’s when she realized that he had something in his mouth. “Drop it,” she said. But he didn’t drop it; instead he waited and when she finally held out her open palm in frustration, he opened his mug and let a purple pacifier fall into it.

  She stared at the baby binky. A car door slammed outside. Mercy slipped the pacifier into one of her cargo pockets and by the time footfalls sounded on the porch, she and Elvis were standing quietly in the front room.

  The young deputy who walked in the front door had rookie written all over him. His name was Josh Becker and this was obviously his first violent death. He shook her hand, petted Elvis, and secured the crime scene—all by the book with a careful, if nervous, thoroughness.

  Then he excused himself politely to throw up behind the house. She could hear the sounds of his retching outside. She knew how the first time felt—an assault on all your senses, most notably your sense of smell and your sense of humanity.

  She waited patiently for him to pull himself together and get on with it. After a couple of minutes, she could hear him call in the Major Crime Unit before rejoining her inside.

  “Detective Kai Harrington, the Crime Scene Search Team, and Dr. Darling will be here shortly,” he told her. “I’ll take your statement, but he’ll want to talk to you, too.”

  “Fine.” She smiled at him, hoping to put him at ease.

  Becker still looked green, whether from the aftereffects of murder or the thought of Harrington, she wasn’t sure. He took her name and address and phone number, and asked her what happened. She told him, and she answered all his questions truthfully. Which was easy, because he was not a skilled investigator. At least not yet. She didn’t say anything about the pacifier.

  Before he could drill down more deeply, she was saved by the arrival of the medical examiner. The ever-cheerful Dr. Darling gave her a big smile. “I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.”

  Mercy smiled back. “An unexpected pleasure.”

  “Indeed.” The doctor leaned in conspiratorially. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this. Harrington won’t like it.”

  “Detective Harrington didn’t come to the other crime scene.”

  “He likes them fresh.” Dr. Darling laughed as she began her examination of the dead man.

  “What?”

  “No glory in a cold case.” The medical examiner winked.

  “I see.”

  “Kai will be here for this one.” Dr. Darling stared past Mercy at something behind her. “Speak of the devil.”

  “Doc.” Detective Harrington nodded at the medical examiner. He was tall and dark and slickly handsome and he carried himself like he knew it in his way-beyond-his-pay-grade custom-tailored gray suit.

  He introduced himself to her with a quick firm handshake and a frank once-over that infuriated her.

  “I understand you discovered the body.”

  “Yes. I dropped by to see Mrs. Walker.”

  “And you just let yourself in?”

  “The door was open. Nobody answered me when I called out. I knew something wasn’t right.”

  “So you went in to check it out. Alone.”

  “I had Elvis with me.”

  “Elvis?”

  “My dog.” She felt Elvis stiffen at her side as he stared down the detective.

  “Right.” Harrington stepped back under the shepherd’s glare. “I understand that this is your second crime scene in as many days.”

  “Just lucky, I guess.” Mercy smiled back at him, her equilibrium restored, thanks to Elvis. She wasn’t going to let this guy get away with anything.

  Dr. Darling laughed.

  Harrington shot her a dirty look, but the perky medical examiner remained as imperturbable as ever. Mercy decided that she really liked this woman, who could obviously hold her own in the testosterone-driven world of law enforcement. She knew firsthand how hard that could be.

  “What can you tell us about the deceased?”

  “Nothing, really. I assume it’s Donald Walker. But I never met the man, so I can’t make a positive ID for you.”

  “You say you were here to see Mrs. Walker.” The detective checked his notes. “That would be Karen Walker?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’re trying to locate her. Do you have any idea where she might be?”

  “No.” She stopped at the sound of a ruckus on the porch. A distraught woman burst into the room, poor Becker hot on her heels.

  “I’m sorry, sir, she just barged right by me,” said Becker.

  “Don? What’s happened?” The plump blonde rushed into the room, right smack into Detective Harrington, who held her away from him with long strong arms. Her resemblance to Amy Walker was striking: the daughter’s same heart-shaped face and narrow build burdened and bloated with age in the mother.

  “Where’s my husband?” Her voice was shrill now.

  “Karen Walker?” asked the detective in a growly voice that managed to be intimidating and ingratiating at the same time. He turned a practiced look of compassion on the hysterical woman, and all the energy fueling her distress emptied out of her.

  Mercy marveled at the man, whom she knew would have the poor widow weeping on his shoulder and spilling all her secrets in short order.

  “Let’s talk on the porch,” he said quietly to Mrs. Walker, and ushered her out of the house, looking back over his shoulder to tell Becker to take Mercy’s statement.

  “I already did,” said Becker.

  “Then do it again.”

  Becker stared at the detective’s back as he
disappeared outside with Mrs. Walker, murmuring his condolences. Then he remembered her. “I’m sorry, but…”

  “It’s fine,” she said, and walked him patiently through her discovery of the body one more time. When she’d finished and it was obvious the rookie had no clue what to do next, she took him aside. “Look, you have all my information. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

  “You can’t leave yet.”

  “I’m just in the way here.” Mercy waved a hand at the team working the scene behind them. “And my dog is tired.” Elvis had dozed off, not so much because he was tired but because there was little else to do now that all of the cats had abandoned the porch and the crime scene techs had arrived. She suspected that the kitties were all hiding under the house, away from the commotion.

  Through the front room window she could see Detective Harrington leaning against the porch railing, talking to Mrs. Walker, who sat on one of the sagging sofas, her back to the house. If he had known how many mangy cats had slept on that railing, she thought, he’d never do that. She wished she could hear what they were saying.

  “Let her go.” Dr. Darling was standing now, backing up from the victim. “Not much more to do here.”

  Becker relented, and Mercy mouthed a thank-you to the medical examiner. She whistled for Elvis, who took his sweet time getting to his feet. “Come on,” she said, and took the long way around the house to the Jeep, hoping to eavesdrop on the detective. But all she heard was an angry Karen Walker.

  “Amy hated him,” she was telling Harrington. “If anyone killed my Donald, she did.”

  Mercy stopped to listen, hoping to hear more. Elvis heeled. She patted her pocket to reassure herself that the binky was still there.

  “Ms. Carr,” yelled the detective, calling her out. “Don’t leave town.”

  Not trusting herself to turn and face them, she held up a hand and wiggled her fingers in reply. Without a backward glance, she strode toward the Jeep.

  Elvis beat her there. He stretched himself out along the passenger door, his long nose pointed at the front tire.