Cry Mercy Read online

  ���You did what?��� Nick had come very close to shouting at Dominic, something he’d never done.

  ���Sold it,��� his granddad replied with more nonchalance than he’d probably felt. ���Got a great price for it.���

  ���We spent two whole years on that car.��� He was close to going into shock. ���How could you sell it?���

  ���It was an investment, Nick. It was always meant to be an investment. Nothing more.���

  Nothing more? As young as he’d been at the time, Nick had known rationalization when he heard it.

  Even now though, almost twenty years later, the car and his grandfather both long gone, Nick almost believed he could open that garage bay and he’d see that blue car-Acapulco blue, to be precise-up on the lifts, his grandfather underneath it, a small part in one hand, the other hand gesturing for Nick to come see, to watch and to learn.

  Magical days, indeed.

  But if he had that car back now, what would it be worth? The last one he’d seen go at auction topped $110,000 and hadn’t been in as good condition as theirs had been. But what was the point in looking back?

  Try as he might to keep his focus on the present, sometimes looking back was unavoidable.

  He entered the house from the side porch and noted two of the steps were sagging. Just something else for the list to go over with Herb. Once inside, he got himself a glass of water and a kitchen knife and went into the front hall where he’d stacked Belinda’s boxes. He opened the front door and the side windows to let the stiff, settled air escape and hopefully allow some fresh, dust-free air in.

  His eyes went from one box to the next and wondered where to start. He didn’t really want to start at all, he realized. If she were to come back, would she be annoyed that he’d rifled through her belongings? And if she wasn’t coming back, it seemed macabre to him to go through the clothes she wore and the books she read and the things that mattered to her. The thought that she might not come back at all was one he’d avoided as much as possible, because it was too sad to think about.

  Buck up, Perone.

  With the knife, he cut through the tape on the top of the first box and peeled back the cardboard. Determining that the box held only clothes, Nick put it aside and turned his attention to the next one. Same thing: clothes. The third and fourth boxes were filled with more clothes.

  ���How many times a day did this kid change?��� he muttered as he moved the unopened boxes to the living room.

  Ah, this was more like it-books, papers, tests, more papers, notebooks. Nick took out a stack and shuffled through them, but he found no reference to anyone named D.S. nor anything that would give him a sense of where she was going on January twenty-fourth.

  ���Come on, Belinda. Help me out here,��� he muttered.

  On to the next box. More textbooks-had he known she’d been taking a class in genetics?-and a blizzard of index cards scattered throughout. He reached into the box and pulled out the one thing he could see that had color. The orange folder held some printed sheets, which proved to be Belinda’s cell-phone bills. He recalled that the police had requested copies from the carrier, but they hadn’t been much help in identifying D.S. He put the file back in the box, stood and stretched, thinking about where he might go to grab some food. His stomach had begun to loudly remind him that he’d skipped lunch and it was well past the time when he usually ate. There was the Friendly Diner down on Wilkins Road; they were always good for a decent meal.

  He was out the door and behind the wheel of his car, about to make a K-turn, when he hesitated. Something nagged at him, something about the phone bills. Nick turned off the ignition and returned to the house, to the foyer, to the box he’d just closed up. The orange folder was visible through the crack made by the top flaps, and he stuck his hand in and pulled it out. The most recent bill was on top, and he scanned it for the date.

  July, 2008. Then he remembered that she’d gotten a new phone, a new plan, a new carrier-and a new number that summer. What had she said at the time? Something about an old boyfriend who wouldn’t stop calling. Deb would know.

  He flipped through the pages, taking note of all the out-of-state calls Belinda had made over the 2007-08 school year and into the summer of 2008. Maybe Deb knew something about those as well.

  He tucked the bill back into the folder with the others and took the whole thing with him. Back in the car, he plugged his phone into the charger to give it a little more juice. He had a feeling he’d need every one of those bars before the night was over.

  EIGHT

  So how’d your first day go?��� Mallory said, as she stopped in Emme’s office on her way home for the night.

  ���Good. Really good, actually.��� Emme ticked off her accomplishments on the fingers of one hand. ���I met with Nick Perone, Chief Dietrich, Debra Newhouse, and got back in time to pick Chloe up from school, though just barely.���

  ���I’d say that qualifies as damned good.��� Mallory dropped her briefcase near the door and came partway into the room. ���What’s the uncle like?���

  Emme thought it over for a moment, considering how best to answer. Tall, dark, and oh-my-goodness first came to mind, but this being her first case, she went for something a little more professional.

  ���Seems smart. Smart enough to run a profitable business. He’s what a cop I used to know would call a gearhead.���

  ���A what?���

  ���A gearhead. Really into cars. He repairs-excuse me, he restores old ones. Excuse me twice, that would be classic automobiles. He has this spiffy garage that doesn’t look anything remotely like a garage from the outside. It’s brick, Federal looking. Very nice.��� She paused before adding, ���I’d say he cares a lot about his niece. I think he suspects she might be dead, but he needs to know for sure. I don’t think he’s deluding himself, where she’s concerned. He pretty much reiterated everything in the report he had submitted, but I did learn something very interesting. I asked about getting in touch with the girl’s father, you know, thinking maybe she took off with him, but according to Nick, he’s never known who the father was. That had been in the report, but I thought it had been miswritten or something. I mean, you’d know who your niece’s father was, wouldn’t you?���

  ���The girl’s mother is his sister, right?��� Mallory frowned. ���How could he not know?���

  ���That was my reaction, too, but he said that his sister never told him, and when he hinted around about it, she shut down the conversation. So he let it go, figuring it was just something she didn’t want to talk about.���

  ���Like maybe a relationship that didn’t work out?���

  Emme nodded. ���I suppose. He said the only thing she ever told him about Belinda’s father was that he would never be a factor in her life.���

  ���So maybe she never told the guy she was pregnant, and decided to raise her baby on her own.���

  ���That’s what it sounds like to me.��� Emme rested her head against the back of her chair.

  ���Any chance the father might have found out somehow, and came looking for her?���

  ���There’s no way of knowing. Wendy-the mother of the missing girl-died in a car accident five years ago. Who knows who she might have been in touch with before she died?��� Emme swiveled the chair slowly, side to side. ���Now, the roommate did say that Belle-Belinda-once said that she didn’t have a father, but she assumed that meant the father was dead or was AWOL.���

  ���Did the roommate have anything else to say?���

  ���Only that while the police report reflects that Belinda took her laptop with her, Debra says that isn’t so. She claims that the laptop was still on Belinda’s desk when she woke up, hours after Belinda left the room. It was gone later that day, but she can’t pinpoint when it d
isappeared.���

  ���Did she report that to the police?���

  ���No, but I called the chief on my way back and told him. He was going to speak with the reporting officer about that. Debra thinks he merely misunderstood what she said.���

  ���Any other little gems surface?���

  ���Not that I can think of offhand.���

  The sound of two small feet running drew their attention to the hall. Seconds later, Chloe and Susanna appeared in the doorway.

  ���In case you were wondering, I’ve commandeered your adorable child,��� Susanna told Emme. ���She’s been a great help to me, separating colored index cards.���

  ���I made������ Chloe paused to count. ���Four piles. Blue ones, yellow ones, white ones, and pink ones.���

  ���Four very neat piles, I might add,��� Susanna noted. ���Maybe one day next week you can help me organize my pencils.���

  Chloe draped herself across her mother’s lap and nodded solemnly.

  ���Really, Susanna, you don’t have to-��� Emme began.

  ���It’s a pleasure to have her company,��� Susanna told her as she stepped backward toward the hall. ���Chloe, unless I misunderstood, I think Trula has something in the kitchen she wanted you to see.���

  ���What is it?��� Chloe’s head shot up.

  ���Let’s go find out.��� Susanna beckoned to her, and Chloe was out the door in a flash. ���I’ll see you both on Monday. Have a good weekend.���

  ���Have anything special planned, Susanna?��� Mallory asked.

  ���Not much.��� Susanna smiled and followed Chloe. ���You, know, just the usual.���

  ���What’s the usual?��� Emme asked as Susanna’s footsteps faded down the hall.

  ���No one knows. She leaves at the same time almost every Friday and isn’t seen or heard from until Monday morning, but she never says where she goes or what she does.���

  ���Maybe she doesn’t do anything. Maybe she stays home and reads. Or paints. Or��� something.���

  ���Uh-uh.��� Mallory shook her head. ���She goes somewhere. Charlie and I were on our way to Gettysburg one weekend and we were behind her in traffic all the way to the cutoff for the turnpike entrance.���

  ���Maybe she was visiting family.���

  ���She says she doesn’t have any.���

  ���That could be true. A lot of people have no family.��� Like me, she could have added.

  ���We-Trula and I-think she’s seeing someone.���

  Emme looked confused. ���But I thought she and Robert-���

  ���I thought that at first, too. There’s just some sort of buzz-some sort of electricity-between them.���

  ���Definitely. I assumed they were an item.���

  ���Trula says no. That Robert will never look at another woman as long as he doesn’t know whether Beth is dead or alive.���

  ���Wouldn’t she have contacted him by now if she was alive?��� Emme’s brows knit into a frown.

  ���One would think.��� Mallory nodded. ���But I think Robert still needs to believe she’s out there somewhere and there’s a reason why she can’t contact him. Amnesia, something like that, maybe. I think it’s easier than facing the probability that she and Ian are dead. I think he could accept the truth. He just doesn’t know what the truth is.���

  ���Meanwhile, there’s Susanna,��� Emme said thought fully.

  ���Yeah. There’s Susanna, and that buzz������

  Over her morning coffee, served with a smile from the same waitress who waited on her many a Saturday morning at the old-fashioned diner just east of Pittsburgh, Susanna studied the state map. Roads she’d already traveled were highlighted in green. It was somewhat disheartening to acknowledge that the green lines transversed half of western Pennsylvania and wove through the mountains like the twisted web of an enormous spider. Her challenge this weekend was to travel the next few miles that Beth Magellan could have taken. There were many possibilities to choose from, many roads through, over, or around the mountains.

  Where did you go, Beth? Where did you turn off the highway? Where did your detour take you?

  Questions she’d been asking for two years. Where were Beth and Ian?

  Until she knew-until Robert knew-Susanna’s life would remain trapped in the same limbo as his.

  Law enforcement from many agencies-the local and state police along with the FBI-had searched the entire width of the state, from Gibson Springs, where Beth had attended a baby shower at the home of her sister, to Conroy, without success. Search parties had scoured the mountains and valleys of western Pennsylvania for weeks following the disappearance of Robert’s wife and child, Susanna reminded herself. Did she really think she, alone and unassisted, could find what they had failed to find? She wasn’t sure.

  All she knew for certain was that Robert would never move on until he knew Beth wasn’t coming back. And while Susanna could admire that sort of loyalty-if she were the missing wife, she’d surely cherish such devotion-the simple fact remained that she’d been in love with Robert Magellan since she met him all those years ago and he’d hired her as his administrative assistant.

  They’d worked closely together, and Susanna had come to know him well-his faults as well as his virtues. She held out the hope that someday he’d look at her in that way, even after he’d met the beautiful Beth Tillotson and it became apparent that he was falling in love. Somehow, even after Beth and Robert had married, Susanna hadn’t been able to sever herself from him. She was one of his best friends, he’d told her one day when she’d tried to hand in her resignation. He and a partner, Colin Bressler, were starting up a new company-an Internet search engine they were calling Magellan Express-and he needed her to help set up the company. No one had better organizational skills than she did, and there was no one he’d trust more to get the new venture up and running. So she’d stayed through the years, through his marriage and the birth of his son, through the nightmare of the past two years.

  She couldn’t remember the exact moment when it occurred to her that if they were ever to be together, she was going to have to take matters into her own hands. She knew that in the months following the disappearance of his family, Robert had contemplated taking his own life many times. She knew, too, that only the possibility that they might be found kept him from going through with it. She’d been the one who’d pointed out to him how furious Beth would be if she came back and found out that he’d given up.

  The only way to save him-and maybe herself as well-was to find Beth and Ian.

  Susanna had studied every topographic map she could get her hands on, and was by now familiar with the terrain. The Appalachian Mountains ran through Pennsylvania in a series of highs and lows that stretched in every direction, and the turnpike was built over, through, and around the mountains. It had been established that upon leaving her sister Pam’s home late Sunday morning, Beth had gotten on the turnpike. Right after the first exit she came to, however, a tractor-trailer had jackknifed on ice, and the state police had shut down the road. As a consequence, all traffic was diverted off the turnpike to one of the feeder roads. It was suspected that all of the detour signs had not been in place when Beth pulled off the toll road, and she might have had to depend on her own sense of direction to get around the accident site and back to the turnpike. The police had combed the hills and mountains and ravines closest to the main road for miles, but there’d been no sign of the car Beth had been driving that day.

  In one of those odd twists of fate, Beth’s new car, with its GPS system, had been blocked in her sister’s driveway by her brother-in-law-he’d left with a friend early that morning to play golf. Impatient to get home, Be
th had borrowed an old Jeep from Pam, one without a tracking system. In her haste, Beth had left her cell phone hooked up to the charger in her own car. At the time, the newspapers had made much of the fact that Robert Magellan’s wife may very well have been found had she had the benefit of any of the modern technology through which her husband had made his fortune.

  With a pencil, Susanna traced the route she would take today. Satisfied with her agenda, she wondered if this would be the day she’d come across that shred of evidence that others had missed, if today would be the day she’d help to set Robert free. Not that she wished Beth and Ian harm, but she was clearheaded enough to have analyzed the situation objectively and had come to the only rational conclusion. If Beth had run away-left her husband for another man, say-surely she would have accessed her own bank accounts, or used her credit cards. If Beth and Ian had been kidnapped, there’d have been ransom demands. If they’d merely gotten lost, Beth eventually would have stopped somewhere along the way and called for help. If they’d been in a nonfatal accident, they’d have ended up in a hospital.

  Susanna had known Beth well enough to know she’d have slit her wrists before she’d leave Robert without first securing a very comfortable financial cushion, but none of her accounts had been touched. There’d been no contact from kidnappers, and no calls for help. Hospitals from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia had been contacted, but there’d been no patients with amnesia matching Beth’s description.

  To Susanna’s mind, absent any of the alternatives, there was one explanation for their disappearance. Having traveled many of the mountain roads, she could see how easily a Jeep could go off one of those hairpin curves and straight down the mountainside into a ravine without being noticed. There’d been many times when she’d been the only car on the road for several miles. On a Sunday, there was even less traffic. If Beth had become confused, it would have been easy enough for her to get lost. As the roads wound around the mountain, one into the next, she could have gotten turned around in any one of a number of places. Beth had been impatient and impetuous and had unflagging confidence in her own ability to do anything. It was no stretch for Susanna to imagine Beth’s certainty that she’d find her way on her own. Add that to unfamiliar roads that had reportedly been icy that morning, and you had the very real possibility that the Jeep had gone over the side at some point, and was still waiting to be found.