Mercy Street

by Mariah Stewart

  “Thanks. Maybe he knows what she’s been up to. I’d like an opportunity to question him. In the meantime, I’m trying to track down Courtney’s father. I’m guessing Mallory mentioned that possibility. I have a call into the state to see if he has a current driver’s license.”

  “I’m one step ahead of you. I just happened to be talking to a friend this morning, and while we were on the phone, I got him to run the name. Timothy Bauer is living about eighty miles from here.” Joe got up and walked to his desk. “He’s in Beaver Creek. Not far from Penn State, by the way.”

  “I have a feeling that’s supposed to be meaningful, but I’m afraid it’s lost on me,” Charlie admitted.

  “Penn State, where Courtney suddenly decided she wanted to go to school. Some coincidence, eh?”

  “So maybe Courtney got spooked and decided to run to Daddy?”

  “Possibly.” Joe sat in his desk chair and leaned back.

  “But Courtney sent in her application back in March, before Regina got out of prison.”

  “Maybe Regina found a way to get a message to her: I’ll be home soon and we have some unfinished business.”

  “I’ll take a drive out to speak with him. See if she’s been in touch, and if so, when.”

  “Here’s the address.” Joe handed him a piece of paper. “You might want to think about asking Mallory to go with you. She knows the area.”

  “Did she go to school there?” Charlie frowned. Odd; she hadn’t mentioned it when they were discussing Penn State last week.

  “She grew up not far from there.” Joe reached for his phone, which Charlie took to mean their talk was over. “Do her good to go back.”

  “Sure. If she wants to go.”

  “She’ll go. She’s hooked on this case.” He looked at Charlie from across the expanse of his desk. “Thanks for letting her work with you.”

  “Like you said, she’s good.” Charlie shrugged then, before he thought twice, heard himself asking, “Why’d you let her go?”

  “She handed in her resignation.”

  “Why’d you accept it?”

  Joe returned the phone to its cradle, his hand still on the receiver.

  “One of my detectives—off duty, that’s the key here—decided to involve himself in a high-speed chase into the next town.” He leaned back into his chair, his expression stony. “Unfortunately he had his six-month-old son in the backseat.”

  Charlie felt his jaw drop in spite of himself.

  “Yeah.” Joe nodded. “You get it. But my detective did not ‘get it.’ When he was reamed out for it, he tried to tell me that when the chase started, he was in the parking lot of a local convenience store talking to Mallory, who just happened to be there, and that he’d handed the baby off to her before he set off in pursuit.”

  “I take it it didn’t happen that way.”

  The chief’s expression made a reply unnecessary.

  “So how did Mallory end up being the bad guy?” Charlie asked.

  “She didn’t lie for him.” Drabyak cleared his throat. “There’d been some talk that…” He looked out the window as if searching for words. “Right from day one, anyone could tell that Mallory had the makings of a great cop. She made detective faster than anyone else in the department ever had. When our previous chief announced his retirement and I was moved up to fill the office, the lead detective’s job was coming up for grabs. There were a couple of men who had more seniority than she, but none of them was as good. And they all knew it.”

  “So when an opportunity arose to push her out…”

  “They jumped on it. Said the only reason her name was on the short list was because she and I had a thing going, if you follow.”

  “I follow.” Charlie hesitated before asking, “Did you?”

  “No. Not that it’s any of your business, but no. She was just an exceptional cop, and she deserved the promotion. And for the record, the former chief was the one who put her name on the list.” Drabyak looked up at Charlie. “Not that I wouldn’t have recommended her. He just did it first.”

  “So when Mallory didn’t step up as a team player to bail out this other guy’s ass…”

  “He’d been her partner.”

  Charlie nodded slowly. To a cop, not supporting your partner when he or she was in trouble was unforgivable. “With the lead detective spot about to open up, what better time to get rid of the opposition.”

  “That’s pretty much what it boiled down to.” Drabyak drummed his fingers on his desk and looked sad. “Anyway, suffice it to say that her coworkers were less than kind when the word was spread that she’d lied to get her partner out of the way so she’d have a better shot at the job.”

  “Wait a minute. Did he or didn’t he have the baby in the car?”

  “Oh, the kid was in the car, all right.” Drabyak nodded. “But by the time the story circulated throughout the ranks, the baby had mysteriously disappeared.”

  “So he denied it, said she made it up, and everyone believed him?”

  “Not everyone, but enough that it made her job hazardous. No one wanted to partner with her, when someone had to ride with her they ignored her…” The chief rolled his eyes. “It was all bullshit, but by that time the truth hardly mattered. The story was out there, and the detective was the one doing all the talking. He’d been busted back to patrol and he wasn’t liking it one bit. Took it out on Mallory.”

  “He’s still with the force? What’s his name?”

  “Cal Whitman. Two years away from retirement—from a nice fat pension and him with a new young wife who can’t wait to move someplace warm—and he blows it to play cowboy to go after a hijacked car, then lies about it.” Drabyak shook his head. “Things would have gone better for him if he hadn’t made up that stupid story and brought someone else into it. The chief wanted Whitman fired on the spot, but this was three weeks before he was set to leave, and the union was up in arms, so he let it go rather than get embroiled in something that would have kept him involved in the department long after he wanted to be sitting on his patio out in Arizona with a cold beer in hand.”

  Drabyak reached for the phone. “Anyway, that’s the story. Whitman in, Russo out.”

  “I still don’t understand why you let her go.”

  “There was no one to watch her back out there. Sooner or later, she was going to get hurt,” he said softly. “She wouldn’t have seen it coming, and I wouldn’t have been able to stop it. It was just better for her to go, with everyone lining up to pile on.”

  Charlie stared blankly at him. “With all due respect, sir, why couldn’t you just grab the guy at the bottom of the pile and bounce his ass out of here?”

  “Because it wasn’t just one guy.” Joe crossed his arms over his chest defensively. “It was a good portion of the force, all of the detectives lined up against her. And as for bouncing the guy responsible for creating the wall?” Joe laughed. “He’s a decorated detective with over twenty years on the force and his brother-in-law is the union rep.”

  Charlie nodded slowly. He’d seen the union in action firsthand.

  “Frankly, I was more concerned about Mallory’s safety than her job. But trust me on this, Wanamaker.” Joe lowered his voice. “The guy at the bottom of the pile will screw up big-time one of these days. And his brother-in-law isn’t going to be able to bail him out.”

  “With any luck.”

  “When the time comes, luck won’t have anything to do with it.”

  “Anything else you want to know?”

  “Who made lead detective?”

  “No one.” Drabyak smiled for the first time since Charlie came into the room. “The position is still open. They’re all bucking for it, but no decision’s been made. And frankly, I’m not in much of a hurry to make one.”

  They both fell silent for a moment, then Charlie said, “Thanks for filling me in.” He got up to leave. “I appreciate the history lesson.”

  “Everything under control at home?” Joe asked as
Charlie reached the door.

  “Yes. Thank you.” Charlie turned around, his hand still on the doorknob. “My sister’s going to go back to Riverside on Thursday. She’ll be staying there. Thanks for arranging the interview for her, for getting her bumped up on the waiting list. I think being there is going to be the best thing for her. So thanks. I—we—my mother and I—appreciate your help.”

  “Glad there was a string I could pull. I hope everything goes well for her.”

  “I feel certain it will. Thanks again.”

  “You’re welcome.” Joe looked back at the phone and began to dial.

  Charlie left quietly and returned to his office.

  He walked through the door and found Frank Toricelli leaning over his desk.

  “Something I can help you with?” Charlie stood in the doorway, blocking it.

  Toricelli jumped at the sound of his voice, but when he turned, there was no trace of embarrassment or apology in his demeanor.

  “Just stopped by to see how your first day on the job was going. You weren’t here, so I thought I’d leave you a note. Just looking for something to write on. No need for that now, though,” Frank said. “So how’s it going? I see the chief has put you to work.” He snapped his fingers. “That’s right. He had you working before you officially started.” He shook his head and chuckled drily. “Way to make points with the boss, Wanamaker. Take home work before you ever get on the clock. I see he even gave you his old office. Is this arrangement only temporary, or should we be reading something into that?”

  “Was there anything in particular you wanted?”

  “Nope. Just trying to be friendly.” He pointed to the stack of paper on Charlie’s desk. “But I see the old Hazel’s Market file here. That was my case, you know? Just curious, what you’d want with that?”

  “The missing girl in the playground case—Courtney Bauer—was working at Hazel’s the night the kid on the cash register was killed. Some coincidence, huh?”

  “How’d you know about that? About her being at Hazel’s?”

  “The chief mentioned it. Said he’d thought the girl’s name sounded familiar, then remembered where he’d heard it before. I thought I’d take a look at the file, read over her statement.” Charlie stepped behind Frank and pulled a sheet single of paper from the file. “Doesn’t look as if she had much to say, does it?”

  “The statement is short because the girl wasn’t in the store at the time of the shooting, so she wasn’t really a witness. Didn’t really know anything about what went down that night.” Toricelli’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Couldn’t add a thing.”

  “You think she could have been lying about that?”

  “What, that she wasn’t there when the kid was shot?” Toricelli laughed out loud. “Nah. Why would she lie?”

  Charlie wondered if the thought had ever crossed Toricelli’s mind that the kid could have been scared shitless of the shooter.

  “What about this suspect you had…” Charlie pretended to look through the file as if searching for the name.

  “Gigi. Regina—Gina—Girard.” Toricelli shook his head in disgust. “What a piece of shit that one is. She should have gone down for that.”

  “What happened? How’d she slip by?” Charlie folded his arms over his chest and leaned against his desk. “There was one witness, right? The customer who’d ducked down behind a display when he heard the shots? He said he saw her, right? Gave you a description of her and the two guys who were with her?”

  “Yeah, he described her. White, tall, thin, black hair…like no one else in that neighborhood looks like that. And those two shit-heads who were with her?” He snorted. “The wit said he only saw them from the back; he never did see their faces. But he picked out Gigi from a lineup of other tall, thin, dark-haired white women in their early twenties. He was adamant it was her in the beginning, but once trial day came around, he was nowhere to be found. Gone, no forwarding. Just vanished.”

  “Wasn’t that convenient?” Charlie said drily.

  “Yeah, no shit. We knew she had a hand in that somehow, maybe had one of her boyfriends on the outside take the guy for a ride, if you know what I mean. But we could never find a thing. The guy just disappeared one day and hasn’t been heard of since. So there was no witness to testify at trial. We tried to make her think there was someone else who saw her who was willing to testify—trying to smoke her out, you know. Even put her in a second lineup, a fake one this time—you know, made her think someone was behind the glass and all—but she just shrugged and said she wasn’t there so our so-called witness must be lying.”

  “Who did she think the witness was? Didn’t she wonder why this witness didn’t testify at trial?”

  “We told her that the wit was a minor and her mother wouldn’t agree to have her testify.”

  “So, in other words, you let Regina believe that a sixteen-year-old girl witnessed her killing Christopher Jackson that night in Hazel’s, and that the girl was willing to testify.” It was all Charlie could do to not put his fist through Frank’s face.

  “We didn’t tell her that, exactly.”

  “You think she didn’t read the papers, Frank? The reports all said that no one else was in the store that night except for a sixteen-year-old high school student named Courtney Bauer who said she was in the back of the store at the time of the shooting.”

  “Yeah, well, Regina didn’t fall for it. Besides, I never said who the witness was.”

  “But if Regina had seen Courtney there that night, she’d have known who it was, wouldn’t she?”

  “How could she have seen the girl?” Frank frowned. “The kid was in the back of the store. She never came out front. She didn’t see the shooting.”

  “Like I said before, maybe she lied.”

  “Well, it don’t make much difference now, because no one testified against her and she got off.”

  “She walked on that murder, but now she’s out.”

  “Yeah, she walked to the back of the courtroom and we slapped cuffs on her, took her back into custody on another case. And yeah, she’s out. Been out about a month. Haven’t heard much about her, so I guess she’s been keeping her nose clean.” He laughed again. “Which would be a first.”

  “How about the guys who were with her at Hazel’s that night? I read in the file that there were two young guys there, one on the door inside, one outside.”

  “Couple of yahoos from the neighborhood. Both kept their mouths shut. You know the drill, right? They weren’t there. They don’t know who was there. They had alibis. They didn’t know a thing. So when she walked, they walked.”

  “They were tried together?”

  “Yeah. Some genius in the DA’s office thought that was a good idea.” Toricelli looked disgusted. “So when he couldn’t get a conviction on her, he lost all three of them.”

  He was leaning against the side file cabinet. “Tell me again why you’re interested?”

  “Just curious about the other case Courtney Bauer was involved in.”

  “Oh. Right.” Toricelli yawned. “Well, gotta go get me some sleep. This sniper’s been running me ragged, you know what I mean? Toughest case I ever handled.” He stepped around Charlie on his way to the door. “You take care out there. Conroy’s a dangerous place these days. You never know where that sniper will turn up next.”

  Charlie stood over his desk until he heard the department door close, then began to check through the papers he’d left sitting out. It was apparent that things had been moved around, though why the other detective would be interested in what was on Charlie’s desk was a mystery. Charlie checked through the file, through the pages of notes he’d made during his review, and through the notes he’d made later during his conversation with Mallory. There was no indication that he’d been speaking with her, as far as he could see, though that in itself may have been of interest to Toricelli.

  “Just because he’s an asshole, he’d want to know about that,” Charlie muttered under
his breath. Talk about a dog with a bone. That was pretty much the way Toricelli seemed to be fixated on Mallory. For whatever reason, he just wasn’t going to let go.

  Charlie tucked the papers back into the file and closed the folder, then slipped in the pad containing his notes for safekeeping. He was annoyed as hell that Toricelli would come into his office, and annoyed with himself that he hadn’t made that more clear. His first inclination had been to bodily toss the shorter man out of his office, but he’d wanted an opportunity to question him about the Hazel’s Market case.

  Everything’s a trade-off, he reminded himself.

  All in all, he’d gotten the best of the bargain anyway. There’d been nothing on his desk that Toricelli could have been interested in, but Charlie now knew that not only was Frank an asshole, he was a lazy asshole. He hadn’t bothered to pin down the testimony of their key witness, and he’d taken Courtney’s word that she hadn’t been in the store when the shooting occurred.

  And he’d probably given Regina Girard cause to paint a target on Courtney Bauer’s back.

  He’d just have to make it a point to remember to keep his desk clear when he was out of his office, he told himself, and to keep his files locked up.

  He glanced at the clock. It was almost five in the afternoon. For some reason, if his mother was going to have a meltdown, it usually occurred around this time. He called home to see how things were going, but there was no answer. She might have turned the ringer off, he rationalized, knowing how the sound hurt Jilly’s ears so. Or she could be passed out on the living room sofa.

  His good mood having vanished, Charlie walked down the hall to the department kitchen where the vending machines were located. He’d sworn off soda after having read an article spelling out the dangers of all that unnecessary sugar and had kept to his resolve to drink springwater, but between having found Toricelli hanging over his desk and not knowing what his mother was up to, Charlie was feeling peevish. He pulled an assortment of change from his pocket and plunked four quarters into the Pepsi machine. The can clattered out from its slot, and he retrieved it. He popped it open and took a long swig.