Mercy Read online

  She was too busy lugging a tub of lilies out of the car to see Mia and Cam exchange a look. "An accident," Mia said, and then she slammed the car door as if it could truly keep Cam in.

  The trial of the State of Massachusetts versus James MacDonald was set for January 16, which meant that Graham MacPhee had little more than two months to pull a rabbit out of a hat. He had been sleeping with a notepad beside his bed and scribbling down whatever entered his mind for Jamie's defense. He was still planning to use insanity, but he was going to throw a few wrenches into the prosecution's machine as well. For example, Allie had found some friend of Maggie's who could confirm that she had asked Jamie to kill her; that would take some of the deliberation out of the act. And Graham also planned to drum up sympathy by subtly playing a euthanasia card. He pictured himself in a grand courtroom, his voice echoing as he saved Jamie's pound of flesh, having rewritten his own speech on mercy.

  Graham had been filing pretrial motions for a couple of weeks now--ordinary motions that would help delay the case a little. He had Audra Campbell served with a motion that she'd be expecting-- one that said they'd be using an insanity defense, so she could come up with some state shrink to evaluate Jamie for twenty minutes and pass judgment. Then, just to piss her off, he filed a motion to review the prosecution's evidence. It wasn't that Jamie thought she had any aces up her sleeve, but it would take a while to get a copy of the confession, the lab results, et cetera, and he liked the idea of Audra Campbell using up valuable time she could have spent preparing a strategy for prosecution.

  Today, though, he had come all the way back to Pittsfield in front of Judge Roarke, fighting a motion that Audra had handed down to him, which requested that the words "mercy killing" not be used in the trial at all. Jamie would be referred to as the defendant, or as Mr. MacDonald; the soft edges of the deed he had performed would be rendered in the prosecution's colors of black and white. Audra was smart enough, damn her, to know what aspects of the case Graham could use to his advantage. The first time he'd read the motion, Graham had doubled over in his chair, staggered by the image of a courtroom that was stripped of mercy. Judge Roarke, a big black bear of a man, upheld Audra's motion. "But Your Honor," Graham said, "we're not talking about cold-blooded killing here. We're talking about something that was done to spare someone else pain. What kind of defense wouldn't claim mercy?"

  The judge leveled his gaze at Graham. "I imagine, Mr. MacPhee," he said, "that this is your problem, not mine." Out of the corner of his eye, Graham could see Audra's smile, white against the flushed blur of her face. "You will be aware that during the trial, you will not use the words 'mercy' or 'mercy killing' or . . . well, you get my drift. Not in your questioning, not in you cross-examination, not in your opening and closing arguments. And you will instruct your witnesses not to bring the term up, or I will consider you personally accountable and hold you in contempt. Do I make myself clear, Mr. MacPhee?"

  "Crystal," Graham muttered, stuffing his folders into his briefcase and leaving the courtroom before Audra had a chance to gloat.

  He got into his car and headed toward Wheelock. It was dark; in mid-November, nights came much earlier. He didn't know whether to drive to Angus's and meet with Jamie right away, or spare him a sleepless night and just wait till the morning.

  Graham took the left-hand pass into Wheelock, the one that skirted the center of town and continued straight toward Angus's place. The road happened to pass the graveyard, too, which Graham never really noticed as he was driving by--except in the winter, when it was covered in snow, and Graham would wonder if that made death any colder or more claustrophobic, a train of thought that fairly convinced him he wanted to be cremated. As Graham drove by now, he noticed a thin green beam bobbing up and down somewhere in the rear of the cemetery.

  It was past Halloween, so he didn't think any kids were playing pranks, but you never did know; and after all, Graham's own grandparents were buried somewhere in the northwest corner. He parked the car and cut the ignition. Then, following the single slice of light, he made his way between the worn headstones.

  Pulling the lapels of his coat up to his ears, Graham wondered briefly what the hell the police force of Wheelock did to earn a living, if he was prowling a graveyard looking for trouble.

  He turned at a huge Japanese maple, naked and bent like an old woman against the silver profile of the moon. Sitting on a folding deck chair in front of a grave was Jamie MacDonald.

  His hurricane lamp was balanced precariously on Maggie's headstone, which was so new that Graham could see from this far away the deep crevices on the granite which spelled out her name.

  Jamie was nodding to a voice Graham did not hear. "I know it. Angus tries to get me out; I just don't have much of a desire to go." Jamie stood up and paced the edge of the grave, careful not to step on the long run of matted earth where the coffin had been interred. "I've been thinking of you," he said softly. "I try to get one picture of you in my head and keep it all day long. Today I kept seeing you at the surprise party for my thirtieth birthday. I ruined it, remember?--I came home from work early because I wanted to call you and take you out to dinner, and there you were letting in my old college roommate at the front door. Christ, that was amazing. You actually convinced people to come from California, and Florida--guys I hadn't seen in years. But what got me the most about that party was sometime in the middle of it, when I came into the kitchen for another beer. You were stirring this big log of chop meat into a huge pot--I think you were making chili--and smiling up at me with the steam curling your hair all around your face. You were a vegetarian, but here you were grinning over this block of raw meat like it was the greatest thing in the world. And that's when I understood how much you loved me."

  Jamie sank down into the deck chair again, which was just close enough to the stone for him to be able to touch it with his fingertips. Graham took a step backward, watching his client's hands caress the cold, smooth marker as if it were as vivid and resilient as a woman's skin.

  She wouldn't see him. Cam had sent notes to the Wheelock Inn, had left messages at the front desk when Mia would not pick up the phone, had once even banged on her door when he was on the midnight to eight a.m. shift and he knew she was there, but she hadn't answered. He began to wonder why he had ever asked her to come back. Having her in the same town and noticeably distant was twice as hard as having her far away.

  He began to drop into Allie's shop twice a day, just in the hopes of seeing Mia.

  Most of the time, she was in the back arranging something. Cam watched her while trying to carry on a conversation with Allie. He noticed that she favored strange shapes and textures, using these for patterns instead of color. He also noticed that she had either a sixth sense or a canny knack of hearing--she always looked up when Allie rook a step toward him, no matter how silent; twice he had seen her answer the phone before he or Allie heard it ring.

  One day when he walked in Allie was pulling on her coat. "Bad timing," she said. "I'm on my way to Graham's office." She threw Mia a glance. "Think about it. You can bring your aunt."

  "Bring her where?"

  "Thanksgiving." Allie reached up on her toes to kiss Cam's cheek as he held the door open for her and followed her to the parking lot. "I want Mia to come, but she says she's got plans with her aunr."

  "The sick one?"

  "Well," Allie said, swinging into her car, "now she's better."

  Cam bent down and smiled at her. "Put on your seat belt." He waited until she had fastened it, then he adjusted the strap so it lay flat over her shoulder and between her breasts, disappearing in the folds of her coat. "Have a good time."

  He crossed to his black-and-white and sat down, fiddling with the radio for a minute until he knew that Allie had driven out of sight. Then he got out of the car and walked back into the flower shop.

  Mia was waiting for him, perched on the overstuffed arm of one of the couches. "You're working on Thanksgiving."

  "I always d