Mercy

CHAPTER 47

Jordan slumped to the floor, exhausted and breathing hard. Sweat mixed with blood where the bullet had grazed his temple. The bleeding came briskly, and Jordan’s dazed expression suggested he was in shock.

Julie was not faring much better. Her face and head throbbed where she had taken blows, and the taste of the killer’s blood continued to foul her mouth. With great effort, Julie stood, wobbly on her feet, and staggered over to Jordan. She did a quick visual exam and used the flashlight feature on her phone to check his pupils. They reacted briskly to light and constricted consensually. Good sign.

Her senses and balance returning, Julie found a box of gauze, which she applied in generous quantities to stanch the bleeding from Jordan’s head wound.

“Keep pressure on it,” she said, while wrapping a bandage around Jordan’s head to hold the gauze in place. “We need to get you to a hospital.”

Jordan actually laughed. “Aren’t we in one?” he said.

Despite it all, Julie could not suppress a little smile. It dimmed, though, when her gaze traveled to the security guard with the needle holder sticking up grotesquely from his eye socket.

“I don’t mean this one,” Julie said. “We have to get out of here. Now.”

“I can’t hear very well from my left ear,” Jordan said.

“The ringing should go away with time, but we have to go.”

Adrenaline coursed through Julie’s veins like a river. She could not quiet the shaking of her body.

“No,” Jordan answered.

Julie looked at him, bewildered. “What do you mean?”

“Give me the badge.”

“Why?”

“Because if we both go down for what happened here, nobody is going to get the sample tested.”

“What story could you possibly give?”

“The truth. I got the badge from Allyson Brock, who I know through Lucy. I came here to do some research in the lab. I was here with her permission and the security guard attacked me.”

“The police aren’t going to believe you,” Julie said. “You have a record.”

“I’ll take my chances.”

Jordan clutched his bandaged head and winced in pain. Talking hurt. So did standing, which Jordan could do only with Julie’s help. Jordan retrieved the specimen jar and handed both the jar and the cooler to Julie.

“Whatever is in Albert’s tissue is worth killing us over,” Jordan said. “If we don’t do this now, whoever is behind it will go underground. They’ll hide the evidence the way they did hives in the victims’ medical records. Get the sample to Dr. Abruzzo and get it tested. Call Allyson Brock and make sure she knows what’s coming her way.”

As much as Julie hated to agree, Jordan made good points.

“Who do you think he really is?” Julie asked, pointing to the guard. “He’s been spying on me, following me.”

“I don’t know,” Jordan said. “But I got a feeling that Dominick, the punk who tried to carjack you, he knows. He kept saying someone paid him to scare you. What I think is someone paid him to try and kill you, and when that didn’t work, whoever is behind this got us both kicked out of White and set the trap here.”

“You think Allyson is involved?”

“I don’t, but that’s just my gut. Same as I don’t think Lucy set us up. She wouldn’t. But how did he know we were going to be here?”

Julie thought it over and pointed at the dead security guard. “He’s been watching me. Maybe he’s been listening to my calls as well.”

She held up her phone and showed Jordan the call she received from Allyson.

Jordan agreed. “These days, with all the spying and whatnot, it’s not that hard to do. I’m not going to be able to check into it, but maybe Trevor can. Tell him to look for root type programs. If he doesn’t know what that means, tell him to Google it. He’s smart like you. He’ll figure it out.”

“Jordan, I can’t just leave you.”

“I’m putting Albert’s body back where it belongs, and then I’m pulling the fire alarm. Go. I’ll be all right. I’m going to be arrested and I’m not going to get bail. I know that. But I have faith in you. I trust you and I want you to trust me. We have one chance at this. Let’s not blow the opportunity.”

Julie bit at her bottom lip and held Jordan’s gaze a moment. Then she hugged him and gently touched his cheek. Her vision was watery from the gathering tears.

“I’ll come through for you,” Julie said. “That’s a promise.”

THE ONLY person Julie knew who might be at home and alone on Thanksgiving was Dr. Lucy Abruzzo. Lucy made her dislike for the holiday known every year when it came around. She would say it was gluttonous and complain it memorialized the genocide of an indigenous people. Julie would jokingly call Lucy a “Debbie Downer.” She would also invite Lucy for Thanksgiving dinner, an invitation invariably declined, but always with a show of thanks.

Julie was not about to call Lucy to announce her pending arrival. Phones were not to be trusted. Her attacker had spied on her, perhaps using her phone as a window into her life.

Julie’s nerves crackled for the entire drive into Boston, while her thoughts swirled. What was happening to Jordan? What were the police saying? Would they come looking for her? Every police car Julie came upon sent an icy chill down her spine. Who set them up? Everything, she believed, hinged on the test results-meaning everything hinged on Lucy.

Julie found street parking and rang the buzzer to 6C. Lucy lived in an apartment building on Commonwealth Avenue within walking distance of Kenmore Square. The apartment, which Julie had visited on several occasions, featured a lighted glass staircase, a clear-sided Jacuzzi tub resembling an aquarium, and a marble steam room with an intricate inlaid mosaic design, all of which enthralled everyone except for the apartment’s lone occupant.

“The architect had bad taste, but the place has a great view,” Lucy said in reference to her home’s ultramodern design.

Julie rang the buzzer and waited. A moment later a voice came through the intercom.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Julie, I need to see you right away.”

There was no hesitation. The buzzer sounded to let Julie inside.

LUCY HAD been in the middle of a game of chess with an opponent from Seoul, who was not very good at keeping control of the board’s center, when her intercom sounded. One look at Julie’s pale and drawn complexion implied trouble. Her friend’s battered face suggested trouble on a large scale. Julie’s breathing was so erratic she practically had to spit out the words.

“Someone tried to kill us, Jordan and me, but we killed him, I mean Jordan did. Jordan’s in jail or he’s headed there, I don’t honestly know, and I need your help testing a tissue sample I took from a cadaver at Suburban West.”

Lucy blinked several times and kept quiet as she took it all in. Then she said in a calm voice, “Well now, that’s quite the conversation starter. Tell me again, who did you kill?”

“A security guard at Suburban West. He attacked us. But I don’t think he was real security, or if he was, he was there to kill us both.”

“What on earth were you doing at West?”

This puzzled Julie. “Allyson Brock.”

“Who?”

“The former CEO at West. She called me because of your note,” Julie said.

Lucy tilted her head to the side. “My note?”

“Did you send Allyson a note telling her to call us, that she could be of help with the tissue sample?”

Now it was Lucy who looked puzzled. “I did no such thing.”

Julie stared at Lucy with mouth agape.

“We need to talk,” Julie said.

Lucy led Julie over to a plush sofa in the center of a sparsely furnished and rather undecorated living room. She left only to pour them each a glass of Jameson. A few sips proved enough to calm Julie somewhat. Then it was Lucy who did the listening and Julie who did the talking.

Afterwards, Julie asked, “Do you believe me?” She sounded nervous.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Lucy said.

Julie looked bewildered. “Well, because of Shirley Mitchell, of course.”

Lucy waved her hand as though brushing the incident aside.

“I go by logic and facts,” Lucy said. “With Shirley Mitchell there was evidence to counter the narrative you supplied. In this case, I have nothing to go on but your word. And I do trust you. Why would you lie?”

“To convince you to test the tissue sample I took.”

Lucy patted Julie’s leg. “If that were the case, I’d help you out of respect for your creativity.”

Julie hefted the cooler she’d carried in. “I need to know what’s inside this sample. There is an allergy-causing antigen at work here and we need to find it. Whoever sent Allyson that note knows it, too. They just didn’t think we’d get out of there alive to test it.”

Lucy considered all possibilities. Logic dictated that if she believed Julie about the attack at Suburban West, about it being a trap, she also had to believe Julie’s claims about Shirley Mitchell. Which meant someone must have replaced saline with heparin. In Lucy’s mind, she was left with only one option.

“You may have been fired from White, but I wasn’t.” Lucy kept a deadpan expression.

“So?”

“So, to learn what’s in that tissue, you and I have to go to the lab.”