Mercy Read online

  "No," Cam said shortly. He turned Jamie away from the flowers abruptly, so that the lily fell to the floor and was crushed beneath the heel of his own boot. "Let's go."

  It started almost two years ago, when we were ice-skating. Maggie was good at it; she'd do little axels and toe loops and impress the hell out of the kids who came to play pickup hockey on the pond. I was goalie, and feeling every bit of my thirty-four years as I blocked the shots of these high school guys. When the action was down at the opposite goal, I'd turn to my right to catch what Maggie was doing.

  It was only chance that I happened to see her fall down. Something stupid, she said when I raced across the ice to her side. A twig sticking out of the surface that caught on the pick of her skate. But she couldn't stand up; thought maybe she'd heard something pop when she fell. I pulled her up the hill on a Flexible Flyer we borrowed from a little girl, and even though she was crying with the pain, she managed to make a joke about us trying out for the Iditarod next year.

  They showed me her X rays, not just the clean break of her ankle, but the little holes in the white spaces, like bone that had been eaten out. Lesions, they said. Bone cancer was a secondary site.

  When they found the original tumor, they removed her breast and the lymph nodes. They did CT scans, bone scans, sent for estrogen receptors.

  It stayed dormant for a while, and then it came back in her brain. She would hold my hand and try to describe the flashing red lights, the soft edges of her fading vision as this tumor ate away at her optic nerve.

  The doctor said that it was a guessing game. It was only a matter of time but there was no way to determine where the cancer would show up next. Another lobe of the brain, possibly, which would mean seizures. Maybe it would depress respirations. Maybe she would go to sleep one night and never wake up.

  A few months before our eleventh wedding anniversary, we went to Canada. The Winter Carnival, in Quebec. We danced and sang in the streets and in the thinnest hours before morning we sat on benches in front of the ice sculptures with only each other to keep ourselves warm. Maggie unzipped my coat and unbuttoned my shirt and placed her cold hands on the flat of my chest. "Jamie," she said, "this thing is taking me from the inside out. My bones, my breast, my brain. I think I'm going to look down one day and realize that nothing is left."

  I hadn't wanted to talk about it; I tried to look away. But directly in front of us was the ice sculpture of a woman, all curves and lines and grace, her arms stretching over her head toward the limbs of a tree she would never be able to reach. I stared at the sculpture's dead eyes, at the lifelike form that "was a lie--it was only a shell; you could see right through to the other side.

  Maggie tightened her fingers, pulling at the hair on my chest until I stared at her, called back by the pain. "Jamie," she said, "I know you love me. The question is, how much?"

  By the time Jamie MacDonald finished telling Cameron how he had killed Maggie, he was kneeling on the floor, his hands clasped together, tears running down his face.

  "Hey," Cam said, his own voice thick and unfamiliar. "Hey, Jamie, it's all right." He reached down awkwardly to touch Jamie's shoulder, and instead Jamie reached up and grasped his hand. Instinctively, Cam put his other hand down, too, cupping Jamie's clasped hands in a silent show of support.

  It was also a gesture of obeisance, Cam realized with a start, the one a Scots clansman had used two hundred years back to accept the protection of his chief.

  According to the sworn voluntary statement of James MacDonald, his wife had been suffering from the advanced stages of cancer, and had asked him to kill her. Which did not account for the raw scratches on his face, or the fact that he'd traveled to a town he'd never set foot in to commit the murder. Maggie had not videotaped her wishes, or even written them down and had them notarized to prove she was of sound mind--Jamie said she hadn't wanted it to be a production, but a simple gift.

  What it boiled down to, really, was Jamie's word. Cam's only witness was dead. He was supposed to believe the confession of James MacDonald solely because he was a MacDonald, a member of his clan.

  Except for the time he had come back to Wheelock against his own wishes to succeed his father as police chief, Cam hadn't given much thought to being chief of the Clan MacDonald of Carrymuir. It was an honor, a mark of respect. It meant that when he married Allie, he did so in full Highland dress regalia, kilt instead of tuxedo, snowy lace jabot instead of bow tie. It was an anachronism, a cute link to history, and it might have made him a little more protective of his town's inhabitants than other police chiefs, but it did not override his other responsibilities.

  He certainly wasn't about to let a murderer off the hook because the man was his cousin. And bending the laws would be unethical. If there was any principle Cameron MacDonald lived by, it was doing things the way they were supposed to be done. After all, as both police chief and clan chief, it had been the pattern of his entire life.

  But Jamie MacDonald had specifically come to Wheelock, Massachusetts, to kill his wife because he wanted to commit a murder in a place that was under the jurisdiction of the chief of Clan MacDonald. He was not expecting special treatment, but he knew he could count on being listened to, understood, judged fairly.

  Cameron suddenly remembered a story about Old MacDonald of Keppoch, who centuries ago had punished a woman for stealing gold from his castle. He'd chained her to the rocks on the islands, so that when the tide came in she drowned. None of the clan had helped her; none had protested their chiefs judgment. After all, the woman who had stolen from the chief had indirectly stolen from them as well.

  It was premeditated murder; Murder One.

  It was done out of mercy and love.

  He knew the town would take sides on a case like this. He also knew that, like three hundred years ago, whether he chose to let Jamie MacDonald go free or whether he recommended life in prison, no one in Wheelock would contradict his decision.

  But that didn't make it any easier.

  It was after four-thirty when Allie returned to the flower shop. She pushed past Mia, slipping on cuttings that were strewn across the floor, and locked herself in the bathroom in the back. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom, Mia was standing nearby with a bowl of water and a Handi-Wipe. "You should sit down," she said. "The smell of all those roses is going to make it worse."

  "It's a little overwhelming," Allie agreed. She sank into her desk chair and leaned her head back, letting Mia's cool hands position the towelette across her brow. "Oh, God," she sighed.

  When Allie closed her eyes, Mia started for the door. She paused with her hand on the frame. "Is it true? Did he kill her because she was dying?"

  Allies head snapped up. "Where did you hear that?" "A woman named Hannah called. I told her you weren't here." Mia paused. "I made the cemetery baskets and the wreaths," she said. "You can take a look."

  With her head throbbing, Allie pulled herself to her feet. She'd glance over Mia's work, although she was sure they were fine, put them into the cooler, and close up a half hour early.

  Mia's arrangements were lined up at the bottom of the cooler, three simple conical shapes that did not look much like cemetery baskets at all. They were very traditional arrangements of carnations, fennel, barberry, larkspur, yellow roses, and Michaelmas daisies, colorful but standard. Allies eyes swept their lines, a little disappointed. After what she had seen of Mia's green, grassy setting this morning, she had hoped for something original.

  "Oh," Mia said, wiping her hands on an apron Allie had forgotten she owned. "Those aren't for the funeral. I saw the purchase order for that MacBean woman, and I didn't know whether you'd be back in time to fill it for tomorrow's luncheon." She lifted a thin shoulder. "I figured a library wouldn't want something that goes against the grain, so I tried to remember what the centerpieces looked like at my cousin Louise's wedding." Allie lifted her eyebrows, and Mia blushed, filling in her nervou
sness by tumbling her words one after another. "You know, the kind that's done at a VFW hall, with some tacky band in blue tuxedos that sings 'Daddy's Little Girl.' "

  Allie laughed. "Let me guess. The flower girl carried a little ball made of miniature pink carnations."

  Mia smirked. "You were invited?" She helped Allie lift the centerpieces into the cooler, and then gestured to the far corner of the store where a string of cemetery baskets and wreaths were taking shape beneath the dried flower rings Allie hung on the walls for browsing customers.

  Allie sucked in her breath. Mia had found the rue, all right, but had steered clear of the bluebells and the other suggestions Allie had offered. And she had been absolutely correct to do so. Instead of the traditionally shaped baskets, she had placed side by side six trailing bouquets more fashioned to a wedding than a funeral. Snowy lilies of the valley, orchids, and stephanotis nestled between heather sprigs, rue, rosemary, ivy, and ferns. And at the heart of each pale, creamy arrangement was one spiraled rose as red as blood.

  "Oh, Mia," Allie said. "These are perfect."

  "You really like them?" She twisted her hands in Che hem of her shirr. "It isn't what you asked for."

  "It's more than I asked for." She looked up at Mia, taking in the florist's moss trapped beneath her nails, the leaves clinging to the soles of her shoes. "Mr. MacDonald will love them."

  "If Mr. MacDonald ever sees them," Mia said, and then abruptly looked away. "I would assume he'd be in jail when they have the funeral."

  "Oh, Cam wouldn't do that," Allie said easily. "Cam?"

  "The chief of police. He's my husband."

  Mia thought back to the early afternoon, to the tall red-haired man who had burst into the flower shop with such a presence that the air around her had started to hum. Of course he was the police chief; he'd been in charge at the scene with Mr. MacDonald. Mia had seen him put his arm around Allie when she volunteered to sit with the body. He had bent low to talk to her, but to Mia it seemed he was curling over Allie, a method of protection.

  "Mia," Allie said, "where in town are you staying?"

  Mia had thought about it during the day; in fact had even called the Wheelock Inn to see how many nights she could afford to stay in a room before her dwindling stock of money was replenished with a paycheck from Allie. But the Inn had suddenly found itself blockaded by the police, the site of a murder investigation.

  "To tell you the truth," Mia said, "I'm not entirely sure."

  Allie glanced at the row of funeral baskets. It was very likely her own fault that Mia hadn't had any time to find accommodations. She thought of Maggie MacDonald and knew that the last thing she wanted was even a moment alone by herself. "Why don't you stay with me, for the night? Cam isn't going to be home until late, and it'll be nice to have some company."

  Mia smiled. "I'd like that." Then she bit her lip. "I have a cat out in my car."

  Allie waved her hand. "It can't possibly do anything to the house that Cam hasn't already done." She picked up a broom and began to sweep the cuttings into a pile, concentrating, with a stroke that bordered on violence so that her mind would not wander. She raked the heavy bristles across the wooden floor, over and over and over, until the scrape of the raffia against the polyurethane rang like a scream in her ears.

  She stopped sweeping, balancing her forearm on the knob of the broom, taking deep breaths so that she would not break down in front of this woman she hardly knew.

  "Do you want to talk about it?" Mia's voice came softly from behind.

  Allie shook her head, letting her throat close with tears. "I don't know what's the matter," she said, trying to smile. "I guess I just keep thinking how much you'd have to love a person, to be able to do something like that for her." She wiped her eyes on the shoulder of her shirr. "It's a horrible thing to imagine."

  "Maybe," Mia said quietly. "Maybe not."

  Mia Townsend believed in love, she really, truly did. She knew it could strike certain people like a stray line of lightning, leaving them prostrate and burning and gasping for breath. After all, this had been the case with her parents. She had grown up surrounded by their consuming love, constantly in its presence, but always on the outskirts. In fact when she thought of her childhood, she imagined herself standing in the snow, her nose pressed to a small, cleared ring of glass on an icy windowpane, watching her parents waltz in circles. She pictured the circles getting tighter and smaller and warmer, until her mother and father converged into one.

  So when asked if she believed in love, Mia said yes--without hesitation--but she did not count herself as a participant. She thought of it as the chemical reaction it was, and saw herself not as part of the equation but as the by-product you sometimes find after the combustion.

  Allie MacDonald had driven her to the small Colonial she'd lived in for five years with Cam. She'd made tea and soup and told Mia the stories behind certain objects in the house: the old oak trunk with the bullet stuck in the center, the basket-hilted sword hung over the fireplace, Che red tartan blanket that Mia was beginning to recognize as the Carrymuir MacDonald plaid. Then she'd tucked embroidered sheets around Che cushions of the living room couch and had given Mia two pillows and one of the blankets and told her to sleep well.

  Mia fell asleep with Kafka, the cat, tucked under her arm, and almost immediately started dreaming of her strongest childhood memory: the time her parents had left her behind.

  Mia had been four years old when they went for that walk in the woods. She had trailed behind them, passing in front when her parents stopped for several minutes to kiss in a copse of bushes. Knowing it would be a while, Mia had wandered off to listen to the trees. She was sensitive to sounds--she could hear blood running through veins or buds opening on flowers. So while her parents moaned in each other's arms, she flopped down on her belly in the moss and waited for the telltale hum and stretch of bark as the branches sought out the afternoon sun. When she remembered to look up, her parents were gone.

  She had tried to listen very carefully for the traces of their laughter on the breeze, or of her father's fingers brushing her mother's neck, but the only sound she could distinguish was her own unsteady breathing.

  Mia had sat down and hugged her knees to her chest. It wasn't on purpose, she told herself. It wasn't their fault. It wasn't that they didn't love her either; it was simply that they loved each other more.

  After about three hours, she had wandered to a road, and a driver she did not know took her to the closest police station. Mia could remember, even now, certain things about the officer: how nice he was when he helped her climb into the chair behind his desk; how his hair smelled of peppermint and did not wave in the wind. He had driven her home in a police cruiser and they walked in through the unlocked door. She poured him a glass of milk while they waited in the kitchen for her parents to appear. Mia had sat very quietly at the table, wondering if it was only she who could hear through the ceiling the rush of her mother's breath, the square pressure of the big four-poster on the bedroom floor, the pound and ache of her parents' love. . . .

  Mia woke up when she heard the first tumblers in the lock giving way. Quiet footsteps traced their way into the living room. Blinking, she let her eyes adjust to the darkness. She sat up to see Cameron MacDonald raise his arms over his head, stretch with an animal grace, and turn in her direction.

  His first thought was that Allie had been waiting up for him, and had fallen asleep on the couch. But he had talked to her at dinnertime; told her she'd best go to sleep. Years of instinct had him reaching for a gun belt he'd removed in the kitchen, so his hand was riding on his hip when he realized he knew the woman on the couch.

  She was wearing one of Allies nightgowns and her hair was in even greater disarray than it had been when he'd first seen her in the flower shop. Her hands clutched at a MacDonald plaid and her eyes were wide and bright.

  He tried to move, and couldn't.

  Then she smiled at him, and with an instinct he could only conside
r self-protection, Cam whirled and ran up the stairs.

  Allie was asleep on her back, wearing a fine lawn nightgown blued by the light that was ribboning through the bedroom window. She was snoring. Cam held his breath and eased down beside her on the bed. He untied the laces at the throat of the nightgown and gently peeled the fabric away, so chat Allies breasts lay exposed like an offering.

  He bent his head to her nipple, running his tongue along the edge until her hand came up to his hair. She made a small sound in the back of her throat and tried to sit up. "No," Cam whispered. "Just stay there."

  He pulled off his shoes and socks and uniform, tossing them across the room. His badge hit the corner of the dresser with a metallic ping. He stood naked in front of her, watching her eyes darken and her nipples peak harder, knowing that he did not even have to touch her to get her started.

  When he brushed his lips down Allies ribs, she tried to sit up again. Cam shook his head. "But I want to," Allie whispered. "I want to touch you."

  "Not now," Cam said. "Not tonight." He turned toward her again, making love with a methodical rhythm, as if he was cataloging each inch of her somewhere in his mind. By the time he moved up to look in her eyes, he was heavy. He tried to push away the churning thoughts of Jamie MacDonald in the holding cell, of Maggie's body lying in the yellow light of the embalming room, but he found himself thinking instead of the woman downstairs on the couch.

  With his head pounding, Cam buried himself in Allie, moving more roughly than he'd ever intended to. When it was over, he rolled her onto her side, noting the red abrasions of his beard stub-ble on her neck and her breasts; the bite he'd left on her shoulder.

  Jamie MacDonald had murdered his wife more gently than Cam had made love to his own.

  THREE

  He didn't so much mind the dying.

  That surprised him a little; at twenty-five, he still pictured his life like the long ribbon of a river, spread out farther than the eye could see in twists and gullies that caught one unaware. He'd been fighting to protect what was his for nine years now, and he'd certainly accepted the fact that one careless moment, one running sword, could kill him. But the odds had never seemed quite so bad.