This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel (21 page)

“My mother lived in that house,” he said.

“Does she live there now?” He raised his hand like he didn’t want me to say anything until he’d finished.

“I hadn’t been inside that house in years, and I hadn’t seen her for a long time.” I opened my mouth to ask him why not, but he held up his hand and stopped me again. “And today, when I got there and knocked, nobody came. The door was unlocked, so I went inside.” He looked back at the restroom, and then he looked around the restaurant too. “And that’s when I found her,” he said. “And she was dead. Somebody’d come in and beat her up, Easter. I couldn’t even hardly tell who she was.” After he finished he sat there leaning across the table, and then he sat back against the seat and laid his hands flat on top of the menu. “I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I just knew that you and your sister were out there in the car, and all I could think about was getting back to you.”

My mind pictured what he’d just seen, and I felt myself getting dizzy. The smell of the food cooking on the grill and the sound of the country music coming from the jukebox made me feel sick. I took a drink from my water to push down what was trying to come up out of my stomach. “Who do you think did it?” I asked.

“I don’t know.”

“You think it was
him
?”

“I don’t know,” he said again. “I don’t know how he could’ve found her.”

“He found me,” I said. We sat there staring at each other for a second, but then the sound of the waitress’s voice made me jump. My knees hit the underside of the table and the ice rattled in our glasses.

“Y’all ready to order?” she asked.

Wade ordered a patty melt with hash browns, and I ordered waffles for me and Ruby and a bowl of cheese grits for us to share. I didn’t know how I was going to eat any of it.

Ruby came back to the table and sat down beside me. “I got you a waffle,” I said. “And I got some cheese grits for us to share.”

“I wanted pancakes,” she said, smacking the table with her hands. “I didn’t want a waffle. Why didn’t you ask me?”

“Because you were in the bathroom,” I said. “Besides, a waffle’s no different than pancakes. A waffle’s just a big pancake with dents in it.” I smiled, hoping she’d laugh.

“But I wanted pancakes,” she said. “And nobody asked me.” She crossed her arms on the table and put her head down. She said something else, but I couldn’t understand her. I touched her back, and she started crying.

“Hey,” Wade said, reaching out and putting his hand on the back of her head. “We’ll get you some pancakes. It’s no big deal.”

“I don’t want pancakes now,” Ruby said, looking up at Wade. “I want to go home!” She screamed it so loud that the people working behind the counter turned their heads and looked at us.

“You can’t,” Wade said. “I’m sorry, but you can’t. But we can go anywhere you want to go. Just name it. I’m serious. Anywhere you want to go, that’s where we’ll go.”

Ruby wiped at her eyes with her hands, and I took a napkin out of the holder and gave it to her. She wiped her nose with it. “Anywhere?” she asked.

“Anywhere,” Wade said. Ruby smiled and looked over at me. The newspaper was still sitting on the table, and I picked it up and showed it to her.

“How about St. Louis?” I said. Ruby looked at the picture of McGwire and Sosa, and then she looked over at Wade.

“St. Louis,” she said. I turned the paper around and showed it to Wade. He took it from me and looked at it for a second.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to St. Louis, and we’ll go see a game—maybe two.”

We sat there talking about the trip and all the things we’d see on the way. Wade told us we’d have to drive up into the mountains and it would be chilly at night and that we’d have to buy jackets and long pants. Ruby said she wanted a blanket or a sleeping bag, and Wade said he didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t have them both. He laughed and smiled, and it was like he’d forgotten all about whatever he’d seen inside his old house.

But when the food came it was a different story. Wade took one look at that patty melt, and something about it made his face turn white. He slid out of the booth and stood up. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Y’all go ahead and eat.” He just about ran to the bathroom. Ruby didn’t even seem to notice. She just ate her waffle and looked at that picture of McGwire and Sosa.

“Who do you think’s going to break the record?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably McGwire. He’s the closest.”

The waitress came back over and stood at the table. “Can I get y’all anything else?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Not right now.”

She looked down at Wade’s plate and saw that it hadn’t been touched. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes,” I said. “He just went to the restroom.”

She smiled and looked at Ruby. “You a baseball fan?”

Ruby looked up at her. She had a little bit of syrup on her chin. “Yes,” she said, pointing at the newspaper. “We’re going to St. Louis to see them break the home-run record.”

“Well, that sounds fun,” the waitress said.

Wade came back to the table and the waitress stepped aside so he could slide into the booth. His face was still white and his hair was damp where he’d splashed himself with water. It made it look like he was sweating.

“Doing okay?” the waitress asked.

Wade nodded his head. The waitress smiled and walked back toward the grill. I took another bite of my waffle and looked out the window. Something caught my eye across the street in the convenience-store parking lot where we’d been just a few minutes before.

I recognized him as soon as he opened the door to his truck and put one foot out onto the asphalt. I knew him without even seeing his face, but when he turned and looked around I knew for certain it was him: the baseball hat, the sunglasses, the huge arms, and the skinny legs. I dropped my fork onto my plate and reached across the table for Wade without taking my eyes off the parking lot.

“It’s him,” I said.

“Who?” Wade said. He looked at me, and then he turned his head to see what I was staring at.

“Him,”
I said. “In that black truck.” The guy slammed the truck’s door and stood there looking around the parking lot. Then he walked toward the store and went inside.

Wade looked at me, and then he looked over at Ruby. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his wallet; he grabbed some money and tossed it onto the table. “Get in the car,” he said. “Now. We’ve got to go.”

Pruitt

C H A P T E R   22

H
er side of the street was lined with police cars, their lights flashing. A fire truck sat half in the driveway. An ambulance had backed up into the yard, its back doors open, a couple of paramedics standing by the front door. My truck coasted down the street toward the house where a cop waited before stepping off the curb and shouting for me to stop. I rolled my window down to hear what he said.

“You’re going to have to turn it around,” he said, looking up at me. He was maybe forty years old and overweight. A bead of sweat ran from his blond buzz cut down the side of his face. “This street’s open to emergency vehicles only.” He slapped the truck’s door and stepped away like he’d said all he had to say.

“What happened?”

He walked back toward me. “Somebody died who lives here.”

“Mrs. Chessman?” He nodded his head. “What happened?”

He turned to look at the other cops he’d been standing with at the curb; they were too far away to hear him. “Looks like she was murdered.”

“My God. Why would somebody do that? She never bothered anybody.”

“Did you know her?” he asked.

“Yes. My house is just up the street.”

He fished a pen and a pad out of his breast pocket and opened it and turned to a clean page. “Mind if I ask you some questions? It’ll save us both time later.”

“Sure.”

“What can you tell me about her?” he asked.

“She was blind. And she was scared to death of her son, always talking about how he owed her a bunch of money. He seems like a bad guy.”

“You know his name?”

“Wade Chesterfield.”

“Wade Chesterfield,” he repeated.

“He changed his last name. Isn’t that strange?”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“No. Nothing comes to mind. Just hope you catch whoever it was that did this.” He scribbled something onto the pad, and my eyes raised to spy the paramedics as they carried a gurney into the house. “Who found her?” The cop stopped writing and looked up at me. “Just asking since she lived alone.”

“We don’t know,” he said. “The call came in from a gas station up the street.” He raised his eyes and looked up the road behind me, and then he looked back at his pad. “We’re checking on it.”

He stood there jotting down notes on his pad. It must have been Wade Chesterfield who’d found her, and it must’ve been him who’d driven to a gas station to make the call. Anyone else would’ve called from inside the house. Anyone else would’ve waited for the police to arrive. “Which one?”

“Which one what?” the cop asked.

“Which gas station?”

He raised his eyes and looked at me, and then he turned his pad to a new page. “What did you say your name was?”

“Why?”

He shook his head like I shouldn’t worry about what he’d just asked me. “Just in case we need to get ahold of you.”

“No reason to get ahold of me. There’s nothing else to tell you.” The Glock was tucked under my seat, the doctor’s kit full of syringes and vials stuffed somewhere under the passenger’s side.

“Just give me your name and address just in case,” he said, tapping the pad with his pen, trying to see my eyes through my sunglasses. “You never know what can come up.” He stared at me for another second, and then he pointed at me with his pen. “Your nose is bleeding.”

“Yeah. It’s cut.” The back of my hand wiped at my nose, and the amount of blood left behind told me it wouldn’t stop.

“It’s cut?”

“Don’t involve me in this.” My foot stepped on the brake and my hand pulled the gearshift down. My foot lifted off the brake and the truck rolled back slowly.

“Whoa, whoa,” the cop said, stepping toward the yard.

After going back about fifty yards, I eased the truck into a driveway and then pulled onto the street. In the rearview mirror the cop stood in the middle of the road watching me, his hand lifted to his face like he was trying to keep the sun out of his eyes. At the first stop sign, my hand felt along the door panel for something for the blood, and my other hand flipped down the visor to check the mirror. The blood around my nose was still damp, but it was already starting to harden and turn brown.

The closest gas station had a pay phone in the corner of the parking lot. The girl’s picture was somewhere in the glove compartment, and my hands riffled through the papers looking for the same face that had been stapled to the cafeteria wall back in Gastonia.

Inside the station, a tall, skinny kid with a ponytail and an older woman stood behind the counter and stared while the picture was unfolded on the counter in front of them. My finger pointed down at the photo. “Have you seen this girl?”

The kid with the ponytail took his eyes off the photo and looked at me, but the woman put on a pair of glasses that hung from a string around her neck and stretched her neck until her face was close to the picture. She took her glasses off and looked up. “And who are you?” she asked.

“It doesn’t matter. Have you seen this kid or not?”

“It certainly does matter,” the woman said, leaning her hip into the counter and folding her arms across her chest. “Are you the police, or are you just some kind of weirdo?”

“Police.”

“Well,” she said. “I’d like to see a badge.”

Both the kid’s and the woman’s eyes followed my hand as it reached for my back pocket. They waited, expecting to see a badge, but instead they saw five twenties laid out on the counter. “Have you seen her or not.”

The kid looked at me, and then he looked down at the money. He reached out and scooped it up and folded it into his pocket. “She was in here,” he said. “It wasn’t even twenty minutes ago.”

“Damn it, Cody,” the woman said. She smacked his arm.

Cody raised his finger and pointed out the door behind me. “They went across the street.”

Inside the Waffle House, a young blond-headed waitress was cleaning a booth by the door. She turned and looked when she heard the door close, a newspaper folded under her arm. The girl’s picture was still in my hand, and when the waitress saw it the newspaper fell out from under her arm, and she lifted her hands to cover her mouth.

“Oh my God,” she whispered. “They just left. They were sitting right here.” She turned and pointed to the booth she’d been cleaning, the plates still full of food, two crisp twenties in the middle of the table.

“Did you see them leave?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Do you know where they went?”

She looked down at the newspaper at her feet. It was open to the sports section, a picture of McGwire and Sosa looked up at her. “St. Louis,” she said. “To see a baseball game.”

Brady Weller

C H A P T E R   23

S
andy’s car was parked out in front of my office on Friday morning, and when I pulled into my spot he stood up from the sidewalk like he’d been waiting on me. He had a cigarette in his hand, and he looked like he’d been awake for hours. I opened my car door and stood up. “When did you start smoking again?”

“I’ve got some bad news, Brady,” he said.

“What is it?”

“It’s bad,” he said.

“You already said that. What is it?”

“It’s about Wade Chesterfield.”

“What about him?”

“The cops in Charleston found his mother’s body yesterday afternoon.” He took the last drag off his cigarette and flicked it into the parking lot behind me. Then he fished a pack out of his breast pocket. “It’s bad, Brady: the way they found her.” He held the pack out to me. I took a cigarette and so did he.

“What happened to her?”

He lit his cigarette, and then he held out the lighter and I lit mine. “She was murdered: blunt force to the head. She had a lot of injuries. Somebody took their time.”