Mercy Read online

  "No," Cam said shortly. He turned Jamie away from the flowers abruptly, so that the lily fell to the floor and was crushed beneath the heel of his own boot. "Let's go."

  It started almost two years ago, when we were ice-skating. Maggie was good at it; she'd do little axels and toe loops and impress the hell out of the kids who came to play pickup hockey on the pond. I was goalie, and feeling every bit of my thirty-four years as I blocked the shots of these high school guys. When the action was down at the opposite goal, I'd turn to my right to catch what Maggie was doing.

  It was only chance that I happened to see her fall down. Something stupid, she said when I raced across the ice to her side. A twig sticking out of the surface that caught on the pick of her skate. But she couldn't stand up; thought maybe she'd heard something pop when she fell. I pulled her up the hill on a Flexible Flyer we borrowed from a little girl, and even though she was crying with the pain, she managed to make a joke about us trying out for the Iditarod next year.

  They showed me her X rays, not just the clean break of her ankle, but the little holes in the white spaces, like bone that had been eaten out. Lesions, they said. Bone cancer was a secondary site.

  When they found the original tumor, they removed her breast and the lymph nodes. They did CT scans, bone scans, sent for estrogen receptors.

  It stayed dormant for a while, and then it came back in her brain. She would hold my hand and try to describe the flashing red lights, the soft edges of her fading vision as this tumor ate away at her optic nerve.

  The doctor said that it was a guessing game. It was only a matter of time but there was no way to determine where the cancer would show up next. Another lobe of the brain, possibly, which would mean seizures. Maybe it would depress respirations. Maybe she would go to sleep one night and never wake up.

  A few months before our eleventh wedding anniversary, we went to Canada. The Winter Carnival, in Quebec. We danced and sang in the streets and in the thinnest hours before morning we sat on benches in front of the ice sculptures with only each other to keep ourselves warm. Maggie unzipped my coat and unbuttoned my shirt and placed her cold hands on the flat of my chest. "Jamie," she said, "this thing is taking me from the inside out. My bones, my breast, my brain. I think I'm going to look down one day and realize that nothing is left."

  I hadn't wanted to talk about it; I tried to look away. But directly in front of us was the ice sculpture of a woman, all curves and lines and grace, her arms stretching over her head toward the limbs of a tree she would never be able to reach. I stared at the sculpture's dead eyes, at the lifelike form that "was a lie--it was only a shell; you could see right through to the other side.

  Maggie tightened her fingers, pulling at the hair on my chest until I stared at her, called back by the pain. "Jamie," she said, "I know you love me. The question is, how much?"

  By the time Jamie MacDonald finished telling Cameron how he had killed Maggie, he was kneeling on the floor, his hands clasped together, tears running down his face.

  "Hey," Cam said, his own voice thick and unfamiliar. "Hey, Jamie, it's all right." He reached down awkwardly to touch Jamie's shoulder, and instead Jamie reached up and grasped his hand. Instinctively, Cam put his other hand down, too, cupping Jamie's clasped hands in a silent show of support.

  It was also a gesture of obeisance, Cam realized with a start, the one a Scots clansman had used two hundred years back to accept the protection of his chief.

  According to the sworn voluntary statement of James MacDonald, his wife had been suffering from the advanced stages of cancer, and had asked him to kill her. Which did not account for the raw scratches on his face, or the fact that he'd traveled to a town he'd never set foot in to commit the murder. Maggie had not videotaped her wishes, or even written them down and had them notarized to prove she was of sound mind--Jamie said she hadn't wanted it to be a production, but a simple gift.

  What it boiled down to, really, was Jamie's word. Cam's only witness was dead. He was supposed to believe the confession of James MacDonald solely because he was a MacDonald, a member of his clan.

  Except for the time he had come back to Wheelock against his own wishes to succeed his father as police chief, Cam hadn't given much thought to being chief of the Clan MacDonald of Carrymuir. It was an honor, a mark of respect. It meant that when he married Allie, he did so in full Highland dress regalia, kilt instead of tuxedo, snowy lace jabot instead of bow tie. It was an anachronism, a cute link to history, and it might have made him a little more protective of his town's inhabitants than other police chiefs, but it did not override his other responsibilities.

  He certainly wasn't about to let a murderer off the hook because the man was his cousin. And bending the laws would be unethical. If there was any principle Cameron MacDonald lived by, it was doing things the way they were supposed to be done. After all, as both police chief and clan chief, it had been the pattern of his entire life.

  But Jamie MacDonald had specifically come to Wheelock, Massachusetts, to kill his wife because he wanted to commit a murder in a place that was under the jurisdiction of the chief of Clan MacDonald. He was not expecting special treatment, but he knew he could count on being listened to, understood, judged fairly.

  Cameron suddenly remembered a story about Old MacDonald of Keppoch, who centuries ago had punished a woman for stealing gold from his castle. He'd chained her to the rocks on the islands, so that when the tide came in she drowned. None of the clan had helped her; none had protested their chiefs judgment. After all, the woman who had stolen from the chief had indirectly stolen from them as well.

  It was premeditated murder; Murder One.

  It was done out of mercy and love.

  He knew the town would take sides on a case like this. He also knew that, like three hundred years ago, whether he chose to let Jamie MacDonald go free or whether he recommended life in prison, no one in Wheelock would contradict his decision.

  But that didn't make it any easier.

  It was after four-thirty when Allie returned to the flower shop. She pushed past Mia, slipping on cuttings that were strewn across the floor, and locked herself in the bathroom in the back. She vomited until there was nothing left in her stomach.

  When she stepped out of the bathroom, Mia was standing nearby with a bowl of water and a Handi-Wipe. "You should sit down," she said. "The smell of all those roses is going to make it worse."

  "It's a little overwhelming," Allie agreed. She sank into her desk chair and leaned her head back, letting Mia's cool hands position the towelette across her brow. "Oh, God," she sighed.

  When Allie closed her eyes, Mia started for the door. She paused with her hand on the frame. "Is it true? Did he kill her because she was dying?"

  Allies head snapped up. "Where did you hear that?" "A woman named Hannah called. I told her you weren't here." Mia paused. "I made the cemetery baskets and the wreaths," she said. "You can take a look."

  With her head throbbing, Allie pulled herself to her feet. She'd glance over Mia's work, although she was sure they were fine, put them into the cooler, and close up a half hour early.

  Mia's arrangements were lined up at the bottom of the cooler, three simple conical shapes that did not look much like cemetery baskets at all. They were very traditional arrangements of carnations, fennel, barberry, larkspur, yellow roses, and Michaelmas daisies, colorful but standard. Allies eyes swept their lines, a little disappointed. After what she had seen of Mia's green, grassy setting this morning, she had hoped for something original.

  "Oh," Mia said, wiping her hands on an apron Allie had forgotten she owned. "Those aren't for the funeral. I saw the purchase order for that MacBean woman, and I didn't know whether you'd be back in time to fill it for tomorrow's luncheon." She lifted a thin shoulder. "I figured a library wouldn't want something that goes against the grain, so I tried to remember what the centerpieces looked like at my cousin Louise's wedding." Allie lifted her eyebrows, and Mia blushed, filling in her nervou