AS SOON AS SHE GOT HOME, Mercy slipped her Beretta into her belt, grabbed a light pack, and went out to track the intruder. She followed his boot prints easily across the lawn to the tree line. She looked for shell casings but didn’t find anything, and didn’t really expect to. This guy knew what he was doing. And he knew better than to leave shell casings behind.
She continued through the bramble into the forest. The damp leaves and mud and debris readily revealed the man’s trail. Too easily.
She realized that he hadn’t cared if she could track him or not. He must have known he could get away. She pushed on through a long thicket and around a small patch of bog, coming to a thick line of spruce. Swatting pine needles away from her face, she shouldered through the close crowd of trees. On the other side of the copse was an ATV trail. The prowler’s prints ended there, on the flank of the trail, where disturbed ground indicated that a large weighted object had recently occupied the spot. He must have come by ATV, parked it here while he tossed her house, then raced back to his machine and disappeared down the trail. Leaving behind nothing but tread marks in a tangle of tread marks left by the heavy traffic of the holiday.
She could hear the roar of several all-terrain vehicles speeding along; their numbers would grow as the day went on. ATVers were nothing if not notorious for riding on private property without permission, driving while under the influence, riding unlicensed vehicles, and more.
Most of the land out here was owned by a flatlander from Boston, an investment banker named Daniel Feinberg who’d bought a big estate named Nemeton that included a large tract of timberland. They say he’d bought the land to preserve it from logging, and had mostly done just that, apart from weekend parties in the summer and skiing parties in the winter. Guilt money, many Vermonters called it, but Mercy didn’t mind as long as the forest benefited. She was sure Feinberg would not welcome trespassing ATVers any more than he welcomed poachers on his land. Still. Absentee owners often led to trouble, sooner or later.
Nothing more she could do here, for Feinberg or for herself. At least not today. It was late afternoon now and she was tired. Long day. Long two days.
She trudged back through the woods, missing Elvis. She’d grown more attached to him that she’d thought possible. Truth was, she used to envy him. Just a little, anyway. Her fiancé had loved that dog, and in some ways was closer to him than he was to her. She’d been a bit jealous. Ridiculous. She’d share Martinez with a kennel full of dogs if only she could have him back just for one walk in these woods.
Back at the cabin she began the thankless and time-consuming job of cleanup. She reshelved books, replaced pillows, restocked her desk, repacked clothes in drawers and closets. She swept up the debris of her emptied pantry and kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanity.
A mess, to be sure, but nothing seemed to be missing. What she most valued—her books and her pictures—were mostly no worse for the violation. But the bastard—for that was how she thought of the intruder now—had broken the frame of the photograph of her and Martinez. The one Amy said she looked so happy in. She did look happy, her face alive with a luminosity that occurred only when her freckles and her pale skin aligned in rare moments of true contentment. She wondered if she’d ever be that happy again. She wondered if that happy woman was lost to her forever. Trapped in the past with all her memories.
The glass had shattered and the silver frame was bent beyond repair. Carrying the mess to the kitchen, she dumped the glass and the frame into the trash. Carefully she brushed the picture free of shards with a paper towel. She’d need a new frame, but for now she simply hung the photo on her fridge with a magnet. She stared at the man she loved, eye to eye now, squarely facing him. He looked happy, too, but as always his handsome features were animated with a life force that went beyond happiness. He was a man who believed in passion—in body, mind, and spirit. Time to get with the program, he seemed to be saying, get moving, get on with your life. She loved to look at the photograph, even when it hurt. But at this eye-to-eye level, it suddenly seemed like a rebuke. She turned the picture over and placed it back on the fridge. Nothing but an empty white space now, dated with a time stamp long expired.
It was nearly suppertime and she was hungry and thirsty. What she needed was dinner and a glass of wine. Not necessarily in that order. Mercy poured herself some Big Barn Red and pulled a frozen lamb shepherd’s pie from the Northshire Union Store out of the freezer. She popped it in the oven. The new owners of the two-hundred-year-old store had added frozen gourmet to-go dinners to their menu that Mercy—and Elvis—loved. When she didn’t feel like cooking, which was admittedly most of the time, she simply opened her freezer, stocked with homemade lumberjack vegetable soup, chicken pot pies, mac and cheese, and her hands-down favorite, lamb shepherd’s pie. Whenever Patience complained that she wasn’t eating enough, she just invoked the sacred name of the Northshire Union Store.
While the frozen dinner heated up in the oven, Mercy curled up on the couch and sipped her wine and thought about Elvis’s close call. She closed her eyes, and tried to breathe through the fear that she’d failed him and Martinez. Just as she’d been breathing through her grief for the past year. Never mind step by step—breath by breath was how she’d made it this far.
She kept on breathing, and eventually her inhalations and exhalations allowed her to surrender to her exhaustion. Mercy dozed off, finally, dreaming of masked men and crying babies and lost lovers.
* * *
THE OVEN TIMER was chiming and the doorbell was ringing and her wine was perched precariously at the edge of the coffee table when she awoke with a start, the name of her lost soldier on her lips.
“Coming!” She stumbled as she scrambled off the sofa, and caught the nearly empty glass just before it stained her lap with the last of the Big Barn Red. Jogging for the front door, she checked the peephole. There on her front porch stood her grandmother and Elvis, on his feet if a little groggy. And more than a little perturbed at the unwieldy protective cone around his handsome neck.
“Elvis!” Careful to avoid the cone and the bandage on his butt, she body-hugged the dog, burying her head in his soft, shiny coat. Whether he was more embarrassed by the cone or the hug, she wasn’t sure.
“He’s fine.” Patience pushed her way into the cabin.
Elvis shook Mercy off. She stepped aside and watched as they passed by, wondering if the shepherd held her responsible for his injury. He trotted breezily behind her grandmother, as if he were returning from a holiday picnic rather than the animal hospital. Despite the cone, which he obviously considered an affront to his dignity. He turned to look back at her with those dark eyes, as if to say, Come on, Carr. Move it! Just like his sergeant would have done.
She traipsed after them into the kitchen. Her grandmother snapped off the timer and peeked into the oven. She retrieved the shepherd’s pie, which bubbled around the edges but was still frozen in the middle.
“You’re supposed to defrost it first.”
She shrugged. “I just secure the perimeter and eat around it.”
Patience laughed. “At least it’s Northshire Union. You could do worse.”
“Elvis likes it.”
“I bet he does.”
Mercy got down on her hands and knees so she could get a good look at him. She whistled and he trotted over to her, dropping into his favorite Sphinx position. She leaned forward, headfirst, into the cone. Now they were nose to nose. His was cold and wet, and now hers was, too. She laughed.
“Good boy,” she said, her voice high with praise.
He licked her face, a soppy sign of affection he’d always reserved for Martinez alone. She let him lick her cheeks again and again before finally pushing him away, still laughing. “Okay. Enough.”
Patience grinned as she sorted through her bag for a tissue and handed it to her. “Wipe away that slobber.”
Anything anyone ever needed was in her grandmother’s battered wine-colored leather backpack, a worn and weathered antique she’d had as long as Mercy could remember. She was, in some ways, the Mary Poppins of Vermont. And like a rabbit from a hat, she always pulled from it whatever the moment required: Band-Aids, ointment, coins, keys, paper money, pen and paper, apples, chocolate Kisses, pet treats, and more.
Patience pulled a doggie biscuit from the pack and slipped it to Elvis. “Go to your bed now and rest.”
He chomped the bacon chew happily and retreated to his side of the sofa.
“Eat,” her grandmother ordered, handing Mercy an empty dish. She poured herself a glass of wine and refilled Mercy’s as well. “His anxiety seems to have abated. Of course the meds help.”
“That’s good news.” Mercy spooned some of the shepherd’s pie onto the blue plate. She wondered how he’d be when they wore off. He’d had a very stressful day. “How long does he have to wear the cone?”
“Until he’s completely healed or until he destroys it. Whichever comes first.” Patience sighed. “I know he hates it. They all do. But a dog like this one … if there’s a way to get it off, he’ll find it. And he’ll probably drive you crazy until he does. Just try to keep him away from that wound.”
“Will do.” Mercy sipped more wine. “How’s the kitty?”
“She’s fine. Still no name?”
“Not yet.”
“Maybe tomorrow’s cat rescue will inspire you. The crime scene has been processed, so the Cat Ladies have gotten the clear to go over to the Walker place in the morning.” Her grandmother gave her an expectant look.
“I don’t know. Elvis needs to rest.” The Cat Ladies was a rescue group funded by the estate of a local heiress who’d left her big farmhouse as part of the bequest. The eighteenth-century Northshire saltbox served as home base for the foundation—and home to more than a hundred felines at any given time, waiting for forever friends to adopt them. Mercy liked the Cat Ladies, and she knew she should help, but she wanted to look for Amy and the baby.
“He’ll be fine.” Patience raised her eyebrows. “Let me remind you that like it or not you are now a civilian. You need to stay out of this investigation.”
“I know.” Mercy looked down at her food, away from her grandmother’s scrutiny.
Patience sighed. “But if you need a legitimate reason to revisit the crime scene, this would be it.”
“Well, when you put it that way … count me in.” Mercy raised her head and grinned at her grandmother. “Always glad to help.”
“I thought so. I’ll be keeping an eye on you both.”
“No doubt.”
Patience paused, and Mercy knew she was watching to make sure she was actually eating.
“I’m eating, I’m eating.”
Her grandmother nodded, and speared a bite of her own from the edge of the pie and popped it into her mouth. “This is good.” She leaned toward her. “Now tell me the rest of it. What happened to your masked man?”
Mercy recounted her unsuccessful trek through the Feinberg property to the ATV trail and the cleanup effort after her return to her trashed cabin.
“I don’t get it,” Patience said. “Why do you think he tossed the place? What was he looking for?”
“Nothing that I can tell. At least so far.”
“Weird.”
“I have the feeling that I’m missing something.”
“It’s really not your problem.”
“It’s my house. My dog. My life.”
“I know.” Patience sighed and served herself some pie. “Want to talk it through? I used to do that with your grandfather. He always said it helped.”
“Okay.” Mercy washed down the last of her pie with a gulp of wine and retrieved her cell phone, flipping through the photos of the murder crime scene for her grandmother. Including the close-ups of the victim, Donald Jonas Walker.
“Lovely guy. No wonder the poor child ran away.”
“Yeah.” Once again Mercy examined the middle-aged man with the seedy, spotty beard and the pale bloodshot eyes—open even in death, as if he’d been surprised by his violent passing, as he’d undoubtedly been—and the bloodstained, dingy white wifebeater shirt that bore the rust-red marks of the knife wound that killed him.
There were several pictures of the victim, from different angles. In one of the photos, the tattoo that inked his upper left arm was more visible than in the others. Something familiar about it drew her attention.
The art was crudely drawn, but the faded black-and-white images clearly revealed a pine tree against the mountains, bundles of grain, and a stick-figure cow.
“What is it?”
“This tattoo.” Mercy enlarged the image on her phone and handed it to her grandmother. “What does it remind you of?”
“It looks like the Vermont coat of arms.”
