Mercy Street

by Mariah Stewart

  He pulled in the driveway of a small ranch house and cut the engine. “I’ll just be a minute.”

  Mallory sat alone in the dark and watched him hustle up the front walk and unlock the front door. Inside, she could see lights go on. He was back out to the car within five minutes, notably relieved.

  “She’s okay?” Mallory asked.

  “Jilly doesn’t seem to be aware that Mom isn’t there, which is a good thing. If she knew, she’d be out looking for her. So yeah, she’s okay. She’s in her room, drawing pictures. I ran over to our next-door neighbor’s. She’s agreed to stay until I get back. Today Jilly’s drawing cats, so that will occupy her for a time. She really likes to draw cats.”

  He backed out of the drive and turned to the left. Without taking his eyes off the road, he said, “I feel a little responsible for this. Yesterday I called home and there was no answer. I jumped to the conclusion that my mother had gone out and left Jilly, but she was in the backyard, pulling weeds from her garden. I really pissed her off, and I don’t blame her.”

  “She was pissed off because you’d lost faith in her.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “It’s a tough situation to be in. You need to make sure that no harm comes to Jilly, but at the same time you need to support your mother. It can’t be easy.”

  “It isn’t. Thanks for understanding.”

  “Don’t mention it. That’s what friends do.”

  He didn’t comment, and a minute later he was parking in front of her town house. He put the car in park and, without warning, reached across the console to pull her close.

  “I don’t think I want to be just friends,” he said, right before he kissed her.

  Her first thought was that his lips were softer than she would have expected, had she been thinking about it, and she wasn’t sure she hadn’t been. Her second thought was that he was a really good kisser, and that she wanted him to kiss her again. She had pretty much decided he might have been the best kisser she’d ever met when he moved his mouth from hers to the side of her face and kissed her there as well.

  “I need to get back,” he said very softly.

  “You do.”

  “Come on.” Charlie leaned forward and kissed her lightly one more time on her mouth. “I’ll walk you up.”

  “You don’t need…”

  He was already out of the car, so she opened her door and met him on the sidewalk. He slipped an arm around her shoulder, and together they walked to her door.

  “What’s on your schedule for tomorrow?” he asked as if unaware that he’d just nearly turned her inside out.

  “I’m going to follow up with Father Kevin and see if anyone can think of a place that might have meaning to Ryan. Maybe not necessarily somewhere you might think of as a hiding place. Maybe one of his teachers or one of the other kids might have some thoughts on that.”

  She took out her key and fit it into the door. “What about you?”

  “I’m hoping to be able to talk to Regina’s buddy, Jay, see if we can learn anything from him.”

  “What if we’re wrong? What if it wasn’t her?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. But in the absence of any other viable suspects, we go with what we’ve got.”

  He opened the door for her, then bent down to kiss her again. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  “Good night. I hope things are okay at home.”

  “Me too.”

  He turned and walked back down the path to his car. She stood in the doorway and watched him pull away from the curb, one finger tracing her bottom lip where his lips had been. She closed the door slowly, and went inside. From somewhere near the back of the house, she heard Leroy squawking, “Hello, beautiful.”

  It was the last thing she remembered before her head exploded and the world went black.

  SEVENTEEN

  Mallory woke to find part of her face on the cool hardwood floor, and the rest of it on the edge of the area rug in the living room. Opening her eyes was an effort; lifting her head even more so. It felt as if a few hundred tiny little carpenters wielding heavy hammers had invaded her brain and were building themselves a residence.

  “Oh, Christ.”

  She raised a hand to the back of her head and winced when her fingers found the source of her pain. She struggled to pull herself up. She leaned back against the front door and tried to remember what had happened.

  She’d been with Charlie, she knew that, had spent the afternoon with him. They’d talked to someone…Bauer, that was who. She exhaled long and deep and fought the urge to touch the back of her head again.

  What else? She remembered that as Charlie had driven back to Conroy, he’d talked about his family. About how his sister was autistic and his father and brother had died, and about how his mother had dealt with all the disappointment and loss by crawling into a bottle and not coming out.

  Well, she’d known the part about his mother drinking, she just hadn’t known why.

  Oh, and he’d brought her home and kissed her in the car, and she’d kissed him back. How could she forget that part? Then he’d walked her to the door, he’d kissed her again, and she’d stood against the wood frame to watch him walk down the path to his car. She’d closed the door and started to lock it, and…

  And that was pretty much it. The lights went out. She raised her hand to her head and touched the place where the carpenters were doing their thing.

  She grimaced when her fingers found the lump that had already risen. She went still then, having pieced it all together. Someone had been in her house, had struck her from behind. That someone might still be there.

  No lights were on downstairs, which could mean that whoever had attacked her could be gone. Or they could be sitting in the dark, watching her.

  Her eyes moved around the room, studying the shadows, her ears straining for the sound of breathing coming from someone other than herself. Seeing nothing, hearing no sound, she slipped off her shoes, holding one in her right hand, heel-first. Her bag was right where it had fallen, and she looped it over one arm and rose clumsily. She made her way through the living room, pausing at the entry to the dining room, which was smaller and offered few hiding places. But why hide when whoever had struck her was armed with something—whatever had hit her—and she was armed with…one black leather flat with floral cutouts and a madras Dooney & Bourke shoulder bag.

  She made a cursory check under the dining room table, but there was no one there, so she ventured into the kitchen. Someone could still be upstairs.

  Here there was light creeping in through the open door from Jacky’s second-floor deck. She slipped outside and pulled her phone from her bag.

  Her first impulse was to call Charlie, but she hesitated. If she called him, she suspected he’d turn the car around and come back. He’d be caught between helping her and taking care of Jilly. She thought maybe Jilly needed him more.

  Mallory called 911 first, then put a call in to Joe. She knew there was a damned good chance that the patrol officers who showed up would be some of those who had a beef with her, and she wasn’t in the mood to be messed with. They could talk all they wanted, but her house had been broken into, damnit, and she was going to have someone there who cared enough to make sure that her attacker was gone and that any prints that might have been left behind were properly lifted. She wrapped a towel around a handful of ice, held it to the back of her head, and sat on one of the patio chairs until she heard commotion at the front of the house. She went back in through the kitchen, careful not to touch anything, and opened the front door, steeling herself from whoever might be on the other side.

  “Miss Russo.” A deliberately indifferent Officer Michelle Crandall addressed her formally. “We had a report of a break-in at this address.”

  “Please come in.” Mallory stepped aside to let in Crandall and her partner—a male officer Mallory did not recognize. She could tell by his demeanor that he’d been apprised of all
her past sins.

  Mallory turned on the overhead light in the living room.

  “I’d been out since about four this afternoon,” she told the officers, “and arrived home about…”

  She looked at her watch and tried to calculate.

  “About thirty minutes ago. I unlocked the front door and came inside, and when I turned to close the door, I was struck from behind.”

  “Are you injured?”

  Crandall asked without any real interest. Mallory met her cold stare with one of her own.

  “I was hit with sufficient force to knock me out cold, so I’d say yes. Yes, I was injured.”

  “Where were you injured?”

  “The back of my head where I was struck.”

  “Would you like us to call an ambulance?”

  “No, I would like you to check upstairs to make sure that the person who broke into my home has left. And then I’d like you to see if you can lift prints from the back door where my assailant apparently gained entry to my house.” Mallory stood with her hands on her hips, trying to ignore the pounding in the back of her head. She fought back the sarcasm that was welling inside her. Perhaps I could assist you in dusting for prints, Officer Crandall? May I borrow your gun and your flashlight so that I might check upstairs myself?

  “We’ll take a look upstairs.” Michelle Crandall motioned for her young partner to accompany her.

  Mallory turned on the light switch to illuminate the stairwell, then listened to their footsteps on the floor overhead before they stopped in her office.

  A moment later the young officer called down to her, “Miss, have you been up here since you arrived home?”

  “No. As soon as I came to, I called 911,” she replied. “Why?”

  She started up the steps, but her head began to throb, and she had to force herself to slow down. She reached the office door and gasped. The room was a mess, with papers strewn all over the floor and her files emptied on the desk where her laptop had stood.

  “Can you tell if anything’s missing?” Crandall asked.

  “Yes, my laptop is gone.” Mallory walked to the desk and started to go through her papers.

  “Anything else?”

  “I don’t know.” Mallory shook her head.

  “Word is you’re writing a book,” Crandall noted sarcastically. “Maybe someone wants to beat you to the punch, steal your notes.”

  “Maybe.” Mallory refused to bite.

  “Mallory?” Joe called from the first floor.

  “Up here,” she called back.

  He came up the steps and appeared in the doorway. Crandall’s attitude vanished the second the chief of police walked into the room.

  “Officer Crandall. Officer Stuart.” He nodded as he entered. “You all right, Mallory?”

  “Except for this lump on the back of my head, I’m fine.” She held up the towel that held the dripping remains of the ice. “This has helped a little.”

  He looked around the room. “Would it be too much to hope that this was a routine burglary?”

  “My laptop’s gone, maybe some of my notes. I haven’t looked in my bedroom yet. I don’t have any jewelry of any value, though, so I can’t imagine what might have been taken from there.”

  Without being asked, Crandall walked into the other second-floor room and turned on the lights. “Miss Russo, would you come in here and take a look around?”

  Mallory nodded and followed her. Before she left the room, she turned back and said, “Thanks, Chief. I appreciate you coming over. I’m sorry, I just wasn’t sure…”

  “Don’t apologize.” He shook his head.

  She went into the bedroom and looked around, but it didn’t appear that anything there had been touched, and she so advised the police officer.

  “Looks like the only thing that was taken was the laptop,” Mallory told the chief when she came back into her office. “And maybe some of my notes.”

  “Notes from…”

  “My current project,” she said meaningfully.

  “I see.” He stood with his hands on his hips. From his expression, Mallory took it that he was struggling not to ask questions specific enough that Crandall might realize Mallory was working hand in hand—albeit unofficially—with the department on an open case.

  “I see,” he repeated. “Any idea who…?”

  “None.” She shook her head.

  She could have said, Maybe one of my former colleagues, but she didn’t. Would any of them have actually broken into her home? And if they had would they have actually struck her with enough force to have knocked her out?

  Duh.

  By the time prints were lifted and the house was hers again, it was three in the morning and Mallory was sitting at her desk, sipping a soothing cup of tea. She’d knocked back more than the recommended dosage of Advil, then picked up the papers that had littered the floor and reorganized them. Next she went through them to see what, if anything, was missing, but she couldn’t really tell. Most of what had been tossed on the floor pertained to the book she was working on. Almost all of her notes regarding her efforts to find the missing kids were on her computer. The thought of someone hacking into the machine and accessing the pages of information made her nervous. What would someone—anyone—else want with those notes?

  Maybe it was just the computer, she rationalized. There was always the chance that it had been a random burglary. The fact that neither the downstairs nor the bedroom had been ransacked didn’t mean a whole lot. She didn’t really have anything worth stealing.

  Besides, access to her computer was protected. To get into her files, a series of passwords was needed. So unless the thief was a really good hacker, he’d be unable to read her files, wouldn’t he?

  Wouldn’t he?

  The pain reliever began to kick in, and while it really hadn’t reduced the pain, it had slowed down the pounding. She’d declined a trip to the hospital, but since she did suspect she might have a concussion, she promised Joe she’d stay awake for the rest of the night—not that she’d be able to sleep anyway. The thought that someone, somewhere, right at that moment, might be booting up her computer and reading her files made her crazy.

  But what would be the point, she wondered. Who would be so curious about what she was doing that they’d break into her home to find out?

  Toricelli, maybe? Or maybe one of the other officers who’d lined the drive the other day? Maybe someone started asking questions around the building and found out where she’d been and why she was there. She’d been tempted to voice her suspicion to Joe, but she had nothing to back them up. Besides, any accusations she might make would only serve to add fuel to the fire. And if she was wrong, she’d be even more reviled than she already was.

  If one of her former fellow officers was behind the break-in, she’d need proof if she intended on taking it to the chief of police. How she’d get such proof, she had no idea.

  Then there was this case of hers. She pondered that possibility for a while.

  And cop or not, the questions still remained: who and why.

  EIGHTEEN

  The phone rang in her ear with all the clarity of a church bell.

  “Oh, dear God.” She fumbled under her pillow for the cell phone she’d tucked under there before she finally went to bed around seven AM.

  “Mallory, it’s Charlie,” the voice on the other end said. “What the hell is going on?”

  “What?” She frowned and struggled to sit up, then groaned. Those hateful little carpenters were at it again.

  “I just heard there was a break-in at your house last night.” He sounded angry, and she wasn’t sure why.

  “Yeah. Yeah, there was.” She leaned back against the pillow and turned the clock around so she could see the time. Nine thirty. Good. She woke up. She would probably live.

  “Are you all right? I heard you were attacked.”

  “I was smacked on the back of the head with something hard, not sure what,” she told him. “I guess
I walked in on someone after you dropped me off and—”

  “Wait a minute, you mean this happened while I was still outside?”

  “No, you’d driven away by then. I closed the door after you left, and that’s all I remember.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “My first thought when I came to was to call 911. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you need the police ASAP.”

  “I am the police,” he reminded her. “You found time to call the chief.”

  “I called Joe because…well, because he’s Joe, and I didn’t want someone showing up here and giving me a hard time because I’m Mallory Russo, former cop.” She sighed. “And I didn’t call you because you needed to be home. You had your own thing to take care of. If I’d called you, you would have been torn between turning around and coming back or going home to take care of your sister. I didn’t want to put you in that position, Charlie. It wouldn’t have been fair.”

  When he didn’t respond, she said, “How is everything? How was your sister when you got home?”

  “She was okay.” He paused. “I just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “I have one bitch of an egg on the back of my head, and one nasty headache, but other than that I’m okay. Thanks for asking.”

  “Chief says your laptop was stolen.”

  “Yeah. That’s the bad news. All of my notes on this investigation are on there. The computer has several layers of security, but still, someone with more knowledge of computers than I have could probably get into the files if they really wanted to. I just don’t know why anyone would want to. Which makes me wonder if it wasn’t a random burglary.”

  “That seem probable to you?”

  “I guess anything is possible, but probable? Not so much.”

  “Any thoughts on who might be behind it?”

  She hesitated just a little too long.

  “You don’t really think that someone here…” He lowered his voice.

  “I honestly don’t know what to think, Charlie. But I imagine if one of Conroy’s finest had a hand in it, sooner or later you’ll hear about it.”