John Burley - The Absence of Mercy

Sam nodded. “Hello, Mike.” He regarded the yellow DO NOT CROSS police tape stretched along the edge of the woods for about a hundred yards. At the far ends, it turned a right angle perpendicular to the roadway and headed straight back into the forest. “Where’s Detective Schroeder?” he asked.

“Right here, Chief,” Carl announced from thirty yards away, walking toward them. He’d been canvassing the road slightly to the north, covering the area from where the police tape ended to a small cluster of houses just over the rise of the next hill. As he approached, he held up a Ziploc bag containing the tattered remains of a few small white cylinders. “Cigarettes,” he said. “Four of them, lying in the grass just on the other side of the hill. Pretty soggy and mashed to hell from the rain last night, but definitely worth a look.”

“Good,” Sam commented. He nodded at one of the officers. “I want that area cordoned off as well—and have the forensic guys examine the ground for shoe prints and anything else they can come up with.”

“Sure thing,” the deputy said, grabbing the police tape and a few stakes from the back of his car and heading off in that direction.

Sam turned to Carl. “What’ve you got so far?”

Carl pointed to a spot where the road’s asphalt met the shoulder. “She was discovered here.”

The grass in this area was matted down, and in a few places tufts had been pulled from the wet earth. The rain was doing its best to wash the area clean, but Sam could see what he presumed to be bloodstains in several areas. It didn’t take much of an imagination for him to picture the girl lying there weak and exhausted, having pulled herself hand over hand from the dark recesses of the woods. “Where was she attacked?” he asked.

“It looks like most of the struggle occurred at a spot about two hundred and fifty yards in,” Carl said. “Lots of broken branches and a fair amount of blood.”

“We need to get a canopy up in that area,” Sam said. “And one here, too. Get these areas protected from the rain as much as possible while there’s still any evidence left worth collecting.”

Carl motioned to one of the deputies standing behind them, who nodded and went to his vehicle.

“Who found her?” Sam asked, studying the woods.

“A motorist on her way to work came across the victim at 6:45 A.M. We got the 911 call at 6:48.”

“You’ve interviewed her?”

“Yeah. The lady’s a nurse at Trinity Medical Center, and was heading in for a 7 A.M. shift. She says she assessed the victim’s injuries and rendered what aid she could before placing the call to 911. Said the girl was unconscious, and that her breathing was so slow and shallow that at first the nurse thought she was dead. Fortunately, she checked for a pulse.”

Sam nodded. “Where’s the victim now?”

“They took her to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.”

“Why not take her to Trinity? It can’t be more than a ten-minute drive from here.”

Carl shook his head. “Trinity’s not a trauma center. The girl’s injuries were… severe.”

Sam’s eyes met the detective’s. “How severe?”

At first, Carl didn’t answer. The precipitation falling from the sky was really beginning to pick up now, and large drops of water congregated on the edge of his hood before cascading the remaining several feet toward the pavement. He looked down at the grass in front them, imagining what it must’ve been like for the girl as she crawled all that distance through these woods after the attack, as she lay here in the darkness staring up at the rain. “I don’t know,” he said finally. “She might not survive.”

The chief considered this for a moment. Behind him, the forensics van arrived and pulled to a stop on the opposite side of the street. Sam glanced over his shoulder as the two technicians emerged from the vehicle, then he turned back to Detective Schroeder. “Let them know what we’ve found so far,” he ordered. “Then come with me.”

“Where are we going?” the detective asked.

“Pittsburgh,” Sam called back, making his way toward the car. “I want to go see her.”

Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood lies along the southeast bank of the Allegheny River. When approached from the Fortieth Street Bridge in the late afternoon, the sun, low in the west, deepens the redbrick exterior of the neighborhood’s buildings to the color of bloodred clay, as if the river’s soil were giving birth to the edifices themselves. Behind them rises the massive structure of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, serving the area’s youngest, most vulnerable citizens.

“Wow. It’s huge, Dad,” Joel Stevenson exclaimed from the front passenger seat, his freckled face squinting upward as the Honda turned left on Forty-Fourth Street and came to a momentary halt in front of the hospital.

Ben smiled at his son’s awed exuberance. It doesn’t take much to impress an eight-year-old, he thought. Joel had complained of being bored for most of the hour-long ride from Wintersville, and Ben had been second-guessing his decision to bring him along. Now he was glad to have him here. He’d needed the company, and the boy’s incessant chatter had kept Ben’s mind from lingering on the horridness of what he’d been summoned here to witness.

He turned right at the next intersection and entered the mid-campus garage. They wound their way up several tiers and Ben nosed the Honda into an available spot. He’d received the call from Sam Garston at about 3:30 P.M. this afternoon. The girl had been in surgery for most of the morning and early afternoon. She’d sustained multiple life-threatening injuries, had briefly gone into cardiac arrest twice in the OR, but had managed to make it out of the operating room alive and was now listed in critical condition in the hospital’s pediatric ICU. Could Ben come up and speak with the trauma surgeons? Sam had asked. Maybe take a look at some of the wounds to compare them with those from the first victim?

Ben and Joel descended the garage’s stairwell, then took the enclosed walkway to the hospital’s first-floor information desk. After a brief consultation with the volunteer at the desk, they received visitor ID badges and were directed to the pediatric ICU waiting room, where they found Chief Garston and two detectives conversing quietly with a man and woman whom Sam introduced as the girl’s parents.

“This is Paul and Vera Dressler,” he informed Ben. He turned to the couple. “Dr. Stevenson has been assisting us with the investigation.”

Ben recognized Paul Dressler from a golf tournament they’d played in together a few years back. The man’s arm was wrapped protectively around the shoulder of his wife, who stood among them but looked at no one. Her right hand was clapped tightly across her mouth, as if ready to stifle a scream that threatened to erupt at any moment. Her gaze fixed itself on the front of Ben’s jacket as he stepped forward, offering his hand. “I’m so sorry this happened,” Ben heard himself saying. “If there’s anything I can do…”

The woman made a small, indecipherable sound. Her husband nodded his head slightly in appreciation of Ben’s condolences.

Sam gestured toward the man standing to his left. “You know Detective Schroeder.”

“Yes,” Ben said, shaking hands.

“And I don’t believe you’ve met Detective Danny Hunt,” Sam continued. “I’ve assigned him to assist us on the case.”

Ben shook the young man’s outstretched hand, as well. “Detective.”

Danny nodded. Compared to the rest of the men, he appeared young and baby-faced, as if daily shaving had not yet become a necessary component of his morning ritual. With his button-down brown shirt and beige sport jacket, he looked relaxed and almost casual. But beneath the parted cascade of his light blond hair his eyes were sharp and intelligent, flitting from one face to the next and missing nothing in between.