Mariah Stewart - Acts of Mercy

“I’ll do that, thanks. And thanks for breakfast.”

“You’re welcome. We usually have lunch around one for whoever is around.” She left the house by the back door, leaving Sam alone in the kitchen.

He poured himself another cup of coffee after rinsing his plate and tucked the file Mallory had given him under his arm. He looked out the back window and saw Trula sitting on the ground next to Chloe, making a chain of clover flowers. So much for getting the child to school on time. He smiled at the unlikely pairing, and went off in search of his office.

Two hours later, he’d read the file through and made several pages of notes. He’d had the benefit of having seen the file contents briefly when he’d met with Mallory for his interview, but now found himself poring over every page, looking for the bits and pieces of real information scattered throughout the wordy documents. When he felt he’d extracted as much as he was going to get from the official reports, he pulled out the contact sheet and lifted the receiver to dial Lynne Walker’s number. He caught the address of the Walker home-4172 Clinton Street-and for a moment, wasn’t sure he’d read correctly. Hadn’t his first apartment in Lincoln been on Clinton Street? He tried to remember what the building had looked like but couldn’t bring it to mind. He shrugged. Maybe it had been Calhoun Street, or the name of some other president. Buchanan, maybe. Whatever.

He took his time dialing, remembering some very good times at the University of Nebraska. There’d been that hot little blonde at the Phi Mu house. Cheryl something. At the last reunion he’d attended, he’d heard she’d gone into TV reporting. He wondered what she was doing now…

“Hello?” a woman’s voice answered the phone.

“Is this Mrs. Walker?” Sam asked, his college memories swiftly put aside.

“This is Lynne Walker, yes.”

“Mrs. Walker, this is Sam DelVecchio. I’m with the-”

“Mercy Street Foundation,” she said with obvious relief. “Miss Russo said you’d be calling today or tomorrow. Thank you for being on the early end of the range. I’ve been on pins and needles all day.”

“Sorry to have made you wait.” He paused for a moment. “I’ve finished reviewing the materials you sent. Have there been any follow-up calls from the police, or any other articles in the newspapers there in Lincoln since you submitted your application?”

“No calls, no articles that I’ve seen lately. I called Detective Coutinho to let him know that I was contacting the Foundation, but I had to leave a message for him. I’m sure there’s plenty in his file that he didn’t let me see.”

“I’ll give him a call and let him know we’re on the case at your request, see if I can schedule a time to sit down with him.”

“He’s been very kind through all this. I’m sure he’ll be happy to work with you. Will you stop in here while you’re in Lincoln?”

“I’d like to do that. I’d like to know more about your husband.”

“He was a really nice man, Agent DelVecchio.”

“I’m not an agent, Mrs. Walker.” He thought it over for a moment, realized he wasn’t sure what his title was. Detective? Just plain Mister? Sam?

“Thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.”

He hung up, still wondering if, as a private detective, he should call himself detective. He chided himself for getting hung up on something so inconsequential and searched his notes for Christopher Coutinho’s phone number at the Lincoln PD.

The call was answered on the second ring.

“Coutinho.”

“Detective, this is Sam DelVecchio. I’m with the Mercy Street Foundation.”

“Who?”

Sam started over.

“Mercy Street,” the detective muttered. “That thing on TV?”

“You might have seen something on television, but-”

“Big money guy fronting some private agency?”

“That’s the general idea, yes. We’ve been asked to look into a case that I understand you handled last year. Ross Walker.”

“Walker, yeah.” Coutinho paused. “What’s your involvement?”

“His widow applied to the Foundation, asked us to take a look.”

“You mean, see if you can solve the case for us.” The detective’s voice developed a sudden edge. “Thanks a lot. We sure appreciate it. Since, you know, we’re basically incompetent.”

Sam sighed. He’d expected it.

“Look, here’s the thing,” Sam said. “It’s not a reflection on you. But we both know that when a case goes cold, when the evidence isn’t there and there are no leads and no suspects, it takes a hell of a lot of digging to find even one thread to tug on. If you had nothing else to do, no other cases to deal with, you’d probably find that thread, if in fact there’s a thread to be found. But you don’t have the luxury of handling one case at a time for however long it takes. I do.”

Sam let that sink in before adding, “Mrs. Walker came to us, Detective. We didn’t go looking for this case.”

Coutinho fell silent for a few moments, then said, “I appreciate you not rubbing it in that we weren’t able to solve the case. It’s been on my mind since the minute I walked onto that crime scene.”

“Let’s get something out of the way right up front. I’m not looking at this case as one you ‘weren’t able to solve,’” Sam said. “I know that if we are going to make any headway at all with this, it will only be because of the work you did when you caught the call, so let’s look at this as a sort of collaboration.”

“Do you have any idea of just how patronizing that sounded?”

“Yeah, well, it is what it is. I’m sure you guys did a bang-up investigation.”

“You know this how?”

“You got a do-gooder found behind a soup kitchen with a burger stuffed in his mouth, his chest slashed up, someone is going to want some answers. Everyone’s going to be on their best behavior because the case is going to have a profile. The heat would be on you on a case like this.”

“You got that much right.”

“So let’s stop the bullshit, and talk about the case.”

Coutinho’s manner changed and he became all business.

“A call came in around eleven on a Tuesday night. Woman said her husband was missing, that they’d put a few hours in at the mission down on Fourth Street, Pilgrim’s Place. Said she and her husband were volunteers who cooked and served dinner there every Tuesday night, that they usually finished up around ten thirty, but that night, she realized sometime around nine forty-five that it had been a while since she’d seen him. At first, she figured he’d stepped outside to talk to someone and lost track of time-she said he’s a talker-or maybe he was in the men’s room. So they start cleaning up and she asks the others if anyone knew where he was, and no one did. No one could recall the last time they’d seen him. So she’s getting worried and she calls his cell phone, but there’s no answer. So she waits a few minutes more, then calls again. Still no answer. Finally the kitchen cleanup is done, the others are getting ready to leave, and he still hasn’t turned up. They search the house, inside and out, and even go out to the street to see if he’s out there chatting, but he was nowhere to be found.”

“Could I see the statements you took from the people who were there that night?”

“Yeah. There’s not much substance. I mean, they serve a couple hundred people there every week, so during mealtime, it’s pretty hectic. No one has time to look around to see who’s doing what. They’re understaffed and the kitchen is laid out in a sort of L-shape, so you can’t see who’s working there with you. Ross Walker could have walked out the back door at any time and no one would have known, but sure, you can take a look.”