Mercy (32 page)

, thinking of Maggie's skin, Maggie's throat. Then he dropped the knife and b olted up the stairs.

Allie found him sitting on the edge of the bathtub. He felt her take a seat beside him. She reached for his hand and pressed something greasy and slippe ry into it. He looked down to see the wishbone. "Ellen carved," she said. "B

ut I thought you might appreciate this."

He smiled, feeling better than he had all day. She was something, this litt le cousin-by-marriage. "Maggie liked the wishbone, but we used to decide to gether on the wish. She said we both had to wish for the same thing, so tha t no matter who won, it would be guaranteed to come true."

"Should I guess?" Allie asked. "World peace? Winning the lottery?"

"We used to wish for kids," Jamie said, glancing up at her. "So I guess ne ither of us won." He traced the shape of the wishbone with his finger. "Ho w come Cam doesn't take Thanksgiving off?"

"It's that or Christmas."

"He could take both days and dock his pay."

Jodi Picoult

"But who'd watch the town?" Allie grinned. "It's like being married to a doc tor. When someone's having a baby, it isn't going to wait for Thanksgiving t o be over. Same for robberies and car accidents and the rest."

"All the same, he ought to be watching you."

Allie turned a shade of pink. She took the wishbone from Jamie. "Name your poison," she said, gripping her fist around one tine. Jamie thought for a moment. Then he wrapped his hand around the other fork of the wishbone, flexing it slightly to gauge the tension. "Let's hope that the people we're crazy about come back to us," he said. "Soon."

/n his black-and-white, Cam turned the volume down on the radio so that he c ould hear the pebbles catching in the tires as he patrolled his town. He did n't have to worry about missing a call; his code leaped out at him no matter how low the dispatcher's voice was. He drove by his house for the third tim e that night, seeing the lights on in the dining room and the glow of the te levision through a picture window.

Thanksgiving wasn't a bad one. Christmas got depressing; all those old folk s setting fires in their kitchens or locking themselves out of their houses so they'd have someone to talk to, even if it was only a police officer. T

hat was what he hated most about his job: he could not pretend, like the ot her citizens of Wheelock, that it was a quiet little New England town. He k new who abused his children, who beat his wife, who pushed drugs in front o f the middle school, and who was most likely to be drunk at ten a.m. on a W

ednesday. He knew his town like a mother knows her child. When he got tired of prowling Main Street, Cam pulled into the lot of the W

heelock Inn and turned on his radar. He thought of Mia and wondered if she was upstairs, if she was with Kafka, if she was doing anything special for the holiday.

If she was thinking of him.

When the radio crackled, he automatically set the car into drive. The sound o f static translated into a coded language he understood effortlessly. A robbe ry, in progress, at the minimart.

It didn't become any easier with time. Cam floored the gas pedal and went s peeding down Main to the gas station on the edge of town, wondering if he'd catch the bastards before they lit out. The problem

225

was, these were always the assholes who shot first and thought about it later

.

He'd responded silently for obvious reasons, and shut off his reds as he ca me within a mile of the minimart. Through the plate glass Cam could see Gor do Stuckey, the teenager who worked there most afternoons, prone on the flo or, his hands jerking spasmodically with his sobs.

Where the hell was his backup? CJ. was on, somewhere, and Wheelock wasn'

t that big a town.

Pulling his Smith and Wesson from its leather casing, he held it arm's leng th in front of him and slunk along the front of the building. There were tw o men inside, one overweight and eating a Twinkie while he pinned Gordo to the floor with his gun, the other shoveling money out of the cash register into a Friends of the Wheelock Library tote bag.

Pointing his gun at the guy standing over Gordo, Cam eased his way in throu gh the door. There are two of them, some voice in his head said. There are two of them, but you don't know if the second one has a gun, and CJ. is com ing.

"Put down your weapon," Cam said.

The man laughed. "I don't fucking think so."

As Cam took a step forward, the man who had been emptying the register rai sed another pistol and leveled it at Cam's head. "Maybe you should listen to him, no?"

Cam raised his hands as the one at the register came forward to relieve him of his own weapon. Fuck fuck fuck, he thought. And then a non sequitur: Bu t it's Thanksgiving.

The man walked around the counter, past the coffee machine with the Styrofo am cups and lids and the milk decanter that always leaked onto Cam's regula tion black boots. He slipped and landed on his back, and the gun went saili ng under the metal shelving that held the rolls and bread.

"Drop it," Cam yelled, pointing his gun at the second man. On the floor, G

ordo was whimpering.

He felt, rather than saw, the moment when the man went to pull the trigger. There was a displacement of the air around him, then an alteration of pres sure that compressed his chest and burst upon his eardrums. His own shot landed in the man's shoulder and sent the robber's Jodi Picoult

bullet wild, shattering the tempered glass window of the minimart into a co nflagration of spiderwebs. "Don't move," Cam shouted, as the accomplice inc hed toward the rolls.

By the time CJ. arrived, Cam had them sitting back to back, cuffed to the n ewspaper rack. "Shit," CJ. said. He looked Cam up and down. "Shit," he said again.

"There's a gun under the bread aisle." Cam wearily rubbed the back of his n eck. "Ambulance is on its way." He nodded to the back storeroom. "I'll impo und the car. Gordo Stuckey'll come down to the station to give a report aft er he changes."

"Pissed himself?"

Cam nodded. CJ. walked toward the two prisoners. "I'll take them to the lo ckup." He knelt in front of the wounded man, who spat. Then he looked up a t Cam. "Were you aiming for the shoulder, or did you miss?" Cam snorted and walked out to the black-and-white. It had been all of seven minutes.

He was still dazed as he pulled into the station. He had to file a report, he had to account for the discharge of his gun, he had a million and one things to do now that these two lowlifes had decided to infiltrate his town on Than ksgiving. But instead, he called into the dispatcher and announced that he wa s going home, that CJ. would be back with the prisoners shortly. He suggested calling one of the part-time cops in for the rest of the night, just in case these guys had friends.

Then Cam walked out to his car, which was parked behind the station. He sat down and gripped his hands to the wheel as his entire body started to shak e. His vision bobbed and his shoulders grew rigid. He briefly thought of hi s house, overrun with people he had no desire to see, bright and holiday-ha ppy. With great care, he drove less than fifteen miles an hour down the roa d to the Wheelock Inn.

Mia opened the door and the cat slipped from her arms. As she reached acros s the threshold to grab Kafka back, she noticed that Cam was trembling, a v iolent, frantic shaking that she had never seen before on a grown man. She dropped the cat, who ran down the hall toward the ice machine. "What happened?" she asked, drawing Cam into the room. She was expecting the worst: My mother died. I have cancer. Allie knows.

Cam sank down on the bed and Mia crawled behind him,

cradling him as best she could in spite of his size. He told her about the di spatcher's call, about how he'd been sitting in the parking lot just below he r window, about the robber with the braided tail of hair and the way Gordo ha d shivered on the floor and the spill of milk which had ruined his shoes and now had saved his life.

When there were no more words, Cam opened his eyes. Mia was lying on the be d facing him, curled into a fetal position just as he was. Her arms were ta ngled with his, her feet were caught behind his ankles. He was reminded of those Chinese ring puzzles that you would work on for hours to pull itee.Ju st try, he thought. You just try.

With the fear gone, his body seemed too big for his skin. He was bursting. He rolled Mia onto her back and kissed her, crushing himself against her an d driving his tongue into her mouth. It was not the gentle lovemaking he wa s used to with her; it was the quickness and fury he'd always had with Alli e, and somewhere in the back of his mind he noticed how easily, in certain dangers, the lines could be crossed.

He never took off his shirt. Mia tightened herself around him, stroking his h air and squirreling closer until the rhythm became a slow rock. At the last m oment, he pulled out of her, spilling across the neat white sheets of the bed

.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Mia smiled at him. "Imagine. A cop who's just no good at protection." He brushed her curls off her face. "I missed you." He leaned down to kiss he r neck, and shifted slightly away from her. His finger reached down to trace an angry mark over her breast, a welt left by the badge that had been on hi s shirt, digging into her skin.

Mia curled her way off the bed and walked into the bathroom. She stared at th e welt. "It doesn't hurt," she assured him. "It'll go away." But it remained livid and red for the three hours Cam stayed in her room, through the second time they made love and a long, hot soak in the tub. In the end, before he le ft, she pulled on her thick, gray sweatshirt again; as if that might hide it, as if either of them might forget that she had been branded his. o

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/t had taken Graham MacPhee over ten minutes to get up the nerve to call t he Chief of Police. Ten minutes of rubbing his palms against his expensive trousers and getting Hannah's voice on the phone and then hanging up. He now had less than two months left before trial, during which he'd be inter viewing witnesses. Cam would be called by the prosecution--there was no do ubt about that--but Graham wasn't leaving anything to chance. If he could just get a foot in the door, he could feel Cam out about his cousin. Every good defense attorney knew that even when you cross-examined, you never a sked a question you didn't already know the answer to.

"MacDonald." Cam's voice was as blunt and abrupt as the rest of him.

"Chief, this is Graham MacPhee." He took a deep breath. "I was wondering i f you'd have the time to meet me for a few minutes." Cam was silent for a second. "Is this about what I think it is?" Graham nodded before he remembered that Cam wasn't able to see him do it.

"Jamie's case."

"Not in this lifetime," Cam said, and he hung up the phone. Well, that was no surprise. Graham sighed and tipped his chair back, proppin g his feet on his desk. The police and the DA were always in each other's po ckets in situations like this.

Jodi Picoult

Normally, that wouldn't have bothered him. The truth was he had a copy of C

am's arrest report and the notes the chief had made on Jamie's arrival in t own. He had all the statements of the evidence taken at the crime scene. He ll, he'd been given a duplicate of the Wheelock police file, courtesy of Au dra Campbell.

He remembered being in high school, when Cam had busted him for partying at the construction site. "Fuck you," he had said over and over as Cam cu ffed him, pushed him into the station, and opened the door to the lockup.

"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you." Cam had only laughed at Graham. "Believe me, you can find someone you'd consider a lot more pleasurable." Cam had known that Graham fully understood he'd done something wrong. He d idn't feel that Graham had to be punished, really; he just had to be remin ded of it, scared by it.

Graham thought of this as a strange kind of justice, but an honest one. And now, years later, Cam had come into Graham's office to hire him for his co usin, a man he'd booked for murder hours before. Yet Cam had asked for anon ymity. Maybe because he truly thought a public defender wouldn't do a polis hed job; maybe because he was rooting for the underdog in spite of his supp ort for the DA's office. Either way, it meant that no matter how stiff-neck ed and uppity Cam got when it came to this case, he had to have some sympat hy for Jamie; he had to care how this all turned out in the end. That's what Graham had to do: show the jury that Cam was just as worried a bout Jamie as they ought to be.

Graham stared at the black modular phone on his desk. He glanced out the wi ndow toward the police station. If he kept careful watch, he could arrange to accidentally bump into Cam when he went to the coffee shop for a late lu nch; he could happen to be on the street when Cam arrived at the station in the morning.

Or he could simply use the best weapon in his arsenal. With a triumphant s mile, Graham picked up the phone and dialed the number of Glory in the Flo wer.

A Hie unwound a long length of copper wire from her bonsai tree, letting it s traggle from the branches in an uneven kink. "Look at that," she cried, tuggi ng at Cam's shirt. "It's taking hold!"

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Cam glanced at the little tree. "That's something," he said noncommittally, "i f you like that kind of stuff."

Allie carefully began to rewrap the wire over parts of the trunk and branches that hadn't rubbed raw from the last placement. "Well, as a matter of fact, I do. Mia's going to be very proud of me."

"Mia's going to be very proud of you for what?" The voice came through the b ack door of the flower shop, and then Mia herself came around the corner, ca rrying an armful of holly and ivy and pine boughs. She let her eyes dart to Cam and slide back to the worktable. Then she dropped her bushel onto the fl oor, brushing the needles off her jacket. "I hate Christmas,' she said. "I h ate all the sap."