Mercy Read online

  Graham grinned. It took all his self-control not to jump off the corner of the desk. "That is why we're going to win this case."

  Jamie shook his head slowly. "They have a body, a signed confession, fingerprints, scratches."

  "Maybe so," said Graham MacPhee, "but we have you."

  Martha Sully, one of the magistrates at the Wheelock District Court, was a sassenach, but she usually agreed with Cam when it came to setting amounts for bail. She sat behind her podium desk reading Cam's arrest and custody report, noted that the complaint was based on "information or belief." She had already asked Jamie to enter his plea.

  "So," she said, glancing up at Cam. "Been busy out on your end of town?"

  Cam grinned. "You could say that."

  He liked Martha Sully; he liked her clipped English voice, with its trilling dips and draws. She sounded remarkably upper-class, like she was hiding cakes and crumpets just behind her gavel stand. Cam knew her to be a fair magistrate. He had only been the subject of her wrath once, when Angus, in a fit, had started screaming at her in the town coffee shop about the need to get those goddamned Windsors off a Stuart throne.

  Martha ran her courtroom very casually, at least at the beginning stages. She lifted her eyes, signaling to Cam that she was ready to begin. "Your Honor," he said, having done this a thousand times, "in light of the evidence uncovered by the voluntary statement given by James MacDonald and taken from the scene of the crime, we've booked him on charges of Murder One. Because he was the perpetrator of such a violent crime, we recommend that bail be set at fifty thousand dollars."

  When he said the sum, Jamie's eyes sought his out. Cam was not certain if he read disillusionment there, or respect.

  "Your Honor," Graham began, clearing his throat, "my client is an upstanding citizen of his community. He's never received a traffic ticket, he's a member of the Small Business Association, he's served on the Cummington selectmen's board for three consecutive terms. Since he does not in any way pose a threat to the Wheelock community, we feel that he should be released without bail, provided he stays in the area pending trial."

  Martha rubbed her temples and scanned the papers before her once more. She had, of course, heard of this case yesterday when it happened; had in fact been waiting for it to appear in her courtroom today. She knew what Cam was up to; she also knew what he was up against. She doubted he really wanted James MacDonald locked away at the county jail, in spite of his outrageous request.

  "Conditions for bail are as follows: Mr. MacDonald will remain within Wheelock proper pending trial; and he is obligated to check in with Chief MacDonald at the police station every day, excluding Sundays, before noon." She peered over her half-glasses at the small group in front of her. "Bail," she said, "is set at five dollars."

  Cam stayed in the courtroom after Jamie and his lawyer had left. He sat down at the prosecutor's table and stretched his legs in front of him, peering at the seal of an eagle over the judge's podium and squinting to read its motto.

  The last thing he wanted was to be Jamie MacDonald's keeper.

  Damn Martha Sully.

  With a sigh, Cam got to his feet and headed out of the court. He had a hundred things to do at the station, administrative duties that hadn't been finished in the bustle of the past two days. He had to talk to Allie too. He hadn't seen her yet this afternoon. He had driven Mia to the flower shop, but Allie had only left a note saying she'd be back soon.

  At the foot of the stairs he saw Jamie, standing before the bail bondsman's office, talking to someone. He considered just walking out the door, but realized it went against his better judgment. Taking a deep breath, he walked forward.

  "Fifty thousand dollars?" Jamie said.

  Cam opened his mouth, ready to reply, when he realized who Jamie had been speaking to. Allie was just shoving her wallet back into her purse, having obviously sprung Jamie free on his ridiculously low bail. "Really, Cam," she admonished, smiling up at him.

  Her heart-shaped face was pink from the cold and her tongue came out to wet her lips. Her hair spilled over her shoulders, catching here and there in the collar of her coat.

  Within an hour, everyone in Wheelock would know chat Cam had asked for fifty thousand dollars bail, that it had been set at five dollars, and that Allie had been the one to pay it. He found himself wondering how high she would have gone. A hundred? Five hundred? Five thousand?

  She slipped her hand through the crook of his arm, and at her touch, he felt his fury begin to recede. "Jamie's going to stay with Angus," she said, as if she were announcing Che seating at a dinner party. She smiled a goodbye and steered Cam out the door.

  They had taken separate cars, so they stopped at the center of the parking lot, hands bunched into their pockets against the unseasonable cold, like two fighters squaring off. "Allie," he said, "I have to know what you were doing here today."

  Allie stared at him as if he could create a whole different world for her, as if he already had. He thought of Mia, and suddenly he could not breathe. "Why, Cam," Allie answered, her voice clear and true and comfortable, "I came because of you."

  FIVE

  When Mia was in seventh-grade Latin class, she learned that her name derived from the classical word for "mine." The teacher made a joke about it, saying it was surely the most selfish name in the class. But Mia had only smiled weakly, wondering what her parents had had in mind. Whose was she, exactly? Her father's? Her mother's? In spite of their devotion to each other, they hadn't named their daughter "Ours," leaving her to believe she had to choose a side.

  She had played hooky for the rest of the day, coming home to sit in the rose garden her mother had abandoned several years earlier when she found that pruning took her away from Ed Townsend too many hours of the weekend. Mia had remade it into her own image, twisting the thorny bushes around wire frames and clipping them so that they resembled dragons and centaurs and big-bellied ships, trained to stay exactly as they'd been told. Her parents thought she was very clever, quite a little horticulturist. They had set a hammock in the garden, big enough for two, so that they could watch her work.

  But they weren't in the garden when Mia arrived, and she didn't go to her gardening shed immediately. Instead she sat on the cool, damp grass, picking apart a leaf with her nails. She thought about her name. She reached the conclusion that even at birth, her

  parents had wanted her to be separate and apart from the magical unit they fashioned when they were together. Self-sufficient, she was. Independent.

  Mia. Mine. And she knew then, perhaps had always known, that she could only belong to herself.

  Cam sat in the middle of a dark pew, staring at the body of Christ. It was a waxy sculpture that hung over the altar at the town's church. When Cam was a young boy at Sunday mass, he'd held himself awake by keeping his eyes wide and unblinking until the sheen of tears made the painted blood at Jesus' hands and feet look real.

  MacDonalds had always been Catholics. It was why some of the clan chiefs had decided to support the restoration of Prince Charles--and the Stuarts--to the British throne. By now, most of Scotland was Presbyterian, but the MacDonalds of Carrymuir, when they came to Massachusetts in the late 1740s, had brought with them their original religion.

  Cam was not a terribly religious man, but he knew that when he was overwhelmed, he had somewhere to turn. He had several reasons to be in church at this time: He wanted to light a candle for Maggie MacDonald; he had to pray for Jamie MacDonalds soul. He wanted to talk to someone about his own indiscretion, too-- and although the confessor he had in mind was Mia Townsend herself, he knew this was not possible.

  Unfortunately, as he sat there waiting for Father Gillivray to begin hearing confessions, he could only picture his wedding day five years before.

  Allie had been a beautiful bride, small and elegant in white satin that curved at her breasts and her hips. Cam had watched her walking down the aisle, and all he had been able to think was, She's so light. It seemed that with ever