B.J. Daniels - Mercy

Like the other rooms he’d glimpsed, this one was bare except for the mice nest, part of a bed frame and what was left of several thin soiled mattresses pushed to one corner. He stared at the stark room and wondered why he had bothered. What had he hoped to find here?

“Are you all right?” the pilot called up from the ground below.

He gingerly stepped to the window. “I’ll be right down,” he called back, his voice echoing eerily. As he started to turn away, he brushed the windowsill with his fingers and felt something.

As badly as he wanted to get out of the building as quickly as possible, he turned back to the windowsill. Crudely carved into the weathered wood was one word. CALIGRACE.

* * *

“CAN WE GET out of here now?” Pete asked as the P.I. came out of the old abandoned building. He sounded anxious and a little creeped out.

Edwin felt the same way as he stopped out front to look up at the gaping dark square of glassless window on the third floor. He took a photo with his cell phone for his client, just as he had of the name carved into the wood.

“There is one more place I have to go first.”

“If it’s back inside that building—”

“It isn’t,” he said. “I need to check the cemetery.” They had to move fast. They were losing their light, and Edwin was already dreading the flight. “Are you coming with me?”

Pete glanced around as if trying to decide what would be worse—staying here by himself or going along to the nearby cemetery. “Can you at least tell me what we’re looking for?”

“A grave,” Edwin said as he started toward the small hill. The deceased residents of Westfield Manor had been buried in a small cemetery away from the residents of the town. Old wooden markers leaned into the wind behind the barbed-wire fence. A makeshift gate lay on the ground. Edwin stepped over it and entered. Again Pete hung back, crossing his arms and looking around as if he felt a presence that had him on edge.

Some of the wooden markers had once held names, but the wind and weather had worn them away. He was wasting his time, he thought as he moved through the small cemetery, trying to read even a few letters on the markers. Most of the wood lay rotting on the ground where it had fallen years before.

He almost missed the stone marker because one of the wooden ones had fallen over it. This gravestone was only a slab of concrete, rudimentary in its construction. He figured it was the deputy’s doing. The words on it looked as if they had been drawn into the wet cement with a stick: Finally at peace poor Caligrace. God forgive.

Edwin bent down next to it, ran his fingers over the words, then rose and took a photo with his cell phone. The wind at his back, he looked out across the empty prairie. A few dozen yards away, he saw a small weathered stone angel, the kind often seen on graves. It sat in the middle of the field among the dried weeds.

He shuddered, knowing he would never forget the loneliness and despair he felt at that moment here with these lost souls.

On the walk to the plane, neither man spoke. It wasn’t until they were in the small aircraft ready to take off that Pete said, “The waitress I was talking to? She says her mother knew some woman who knew some woman who took in a few of the girls after the home closed.” He shrugged. “She might be of help.” He handed Edwin a telephone number. “I had the waitress call her mother, who called the woman... You get the idea.”

Edwin had been feeling morose, but now perked up a little.

“The woman lives in Billings. I could fly us there before it gets any darker. We’d have to spend the night. It’s going to cost extra.”

“Not a problem.” Edwin checked his seat belt. “What’s the woman’s name?”

“Leta Arthur.”

He thought about calling Rourke and telling him what he’d found out so far. As Pete taxied the plane down the bumpy wheat field, Edwin decided he’d call after he talked to Leta Arthur. He closed his eyes, held on and prayed as the plane engine revved. He prayed for the girls of Westfield Manor and for the feel of solid ground again as the plane lifted off and turned southeast.

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