Mercy

Chapter 33

The detention facility was clean, sleek, and modern looking, but it still had bars and secure doors to keep the bad people away from the good. Pine had learned there were more than five hundred prisoners kept here in the main facility and in a jail annex. She was only interested in one.

Callum had called ahead, and they were quickly led to Desiree Atkins’s cell by one of the guards. As the door opened and then clanged shut behind them, Atkins never once looked up. She was sitting in the one chair in the room that was bolted to the floor, and was dressed in prison duds.

She was staring at her hands like they contained all of her problems and none of the solutions. She had a bandage taped over her cheek, and the skin around her eye was now yellow and purple.

Pine leaned against the upper bunk while Blum stood near the door. The jailer had moved away to give them as much privacy as one could expect in a place such as this.

“What the hell do you two want?” asked Atkins, glancing up. “Come to gloat?”

“We came for a chat,” replied Pine.

“Go screw yourself. And I’m suing your ass for assault. I might have brain trauma.”

“Yeah, you definitely have something off in your head, but it had nothing to do with me. And you have the time to talk since you won’t be leaving here anytime soon. No bail because you’re a flight risk,” said Pine. “And they know all about Georgia.”

Atkins’ eyes glittered with hatred. “Good. And I can tell them how Becky killed my husband. They need to put her in prison for murder.”

“You can try, but your imprisoning her for all those years will mean whatever you say will not pass the smell test,” said Pine. “Even if she killed Joe, she had every right to. He was just going to lock her up again. Enslaved people have an absolute right to do whatever it takes to get free. We actually fought a civil war over that.”

“What do you care about Becky? It’s been, what, almost twenty years? Give it a rest.”

Pine curled her long fingers around the bunk support post primarily so she couldn’t form a fist with them and have another go at the woman.

Blum noted this, stepped forward, and said, “Why did you do it, Desiree? Why did you treat Mercy the way you did?”

Atkins snarled, “What exactly did I do? I’ll tell you! I took the kid in when no one else wanted her. This guy plopped her in Wanda’s lap. Like she could take care of a six-year-old? Give me a break. She smoked so many packs of cigarettes a day she got winded going for the mail. The kid would’ve died but for me. I should be getting a medal, not a prison sentence.”

Pine said, “You abused her. You tortured her. You locked her in a hole in the wall in the woods. You call that doing her a favor?”

Atkins turned pink with indignation. “She was wild. She was uncontrollable. We had to lock her up. If you had only seen her back then.”

“So she wouldn’t escape, you mean?”

“I don’t have to tell you anything else.”

“But if you do, I can put in a good word for you.”

“Right, shave two years off whatever I’m going to get? No thanks.”

“Did she ever mention her family?” persisted Pine. “Did she ever tell you what happened to her? What her real name was? Did you ever even ask?”

Atkins waved all this off. “I had my own problems!”

“You can tell us nothing?”

“I can tell you plenty. I choose not to. That’s my right! And there’s not a damn thing you can do about it, bitch.”

“Wanda told us you tried, but could never have kids of your own,” said Blum.

Atkins shot her a cruel look. “What’s your role here, granny, to be the good cop? Guilt me into saying something? Don’t waste your time, hag.”

“I mean, you must have wanted children. You took Mercy in, like you said,” Blum added, while Pine watched her with a curious expression.

“Damn right. I took her in when nobody else would, like I said. I did her a favor. And what did I get out of it? Heartache and misery.”

“So you did care for her, at some point?”

Atkins calmed a bit and the vindictive look in her eyes faded somewhat. “I took care of her. I dressed her and fed her. She was clean. Until... until we moved her where we did.”

Blum sat down on the bunk opposite Atkins and said in a quiet voice, “Because she was unruly? Because you were fearful of what she might do? That’s understandable.”

Pine shot Blum a look but remained quiet.

“Yes! She terrorized us. By the time she was eleven she was taller than Joe. When Becky hit thirteen she grew like a weed. She was huge. At fifteen she was over six feet and strong as a horse. Joe always took the gun when we went out to the woods. I insisted on that. And when he was gone during the day, I had to keep the gun on her while she was doing work for us. It got so we had to make her do most of her chores after Joe got home because I was scared to be around her alone, even with the gun! If we’d let her stay in the house she would have killed us in our sleep. It was like... having a wild animal around. Even when she was out in the woods, I barely got any rest. I was a nervous wreck all the time.”

Pine inwardly seethed at these callous remarks. As though Atkins’s misery had been greater than her sister’s. As though Mercy was at fault somehow. But she said nothing. Blum was obviously working on something, and Pine wanted to let it play out.

“And she probably kept secrets from you,” said Blum. “People like that often do.”

“She did!” said a now-animated Atkins. “Exactly. Joe said she didn’t. But what did he know? He tried to trust her when she was still little. She just suckered him.”

Blum said, “Men are clueless about reading women. We both know that. When you get to a certain age, like we both are, it becomes very clear.”

Atkins pointed at Blum and grinned. “You hit it right on the head. Men! They’re moronic when it comes to women. They don’t know how we think. The head games we play. The manipulation we use.” She said in a little-girl voice, “ ‘Oh, big, strong man, you’re so much smarter than me, can you come over here and do everything I tell you to do?’ ” She grimaced. “And see where that got Joe? An early grave.”

“But you weren’t fooled,” said Blum.

Atkins shook her head and tacked on a cackle. “I saw right through her. I knew what she was about. She didn’t fool me for one minute. All this innocent crap. Trying to get Joe on her side. It was disgusting.”

Pine reached into her pocket and her fingers closed around her phone. She slid it out but kept it behind her back.

Blum noted this, but Atkins didn’t. She was staring at the floor, lost in her own self-pity. Blum rose and moved so she was in front of Pine, blocking Atkins’s view of her.

Pine quickly flicked through her screens and tapped on a couple of images.

Blum said, “But unlike Joe you were probably able to get her to talk. To reveal things she didn’t want to reveal because you were smarter than she was.”

Atkins looked up with a desolate expression. “Joe never gave me credit for anything. I was the one who told him to go into the security business when he lost his job. I helped him get started and then got him clients. And I was the one who told him we needed to put that girl in a cage. I knew she was nuts. The man that took her? Wanda said he told her Becky’s parents wanted to kill her. And they probably had good reason. I came to see that. He saved Becky from whatever she was involved in, but he did us no favors, that’s for damn sure.”

“It must have been really intrusive for you.”

“At first, I thought it might be okay, you know. Having a kid. You’re right, I did want children, but I had a problem there and couldn’t. But I wasn’t sure this was the right way.”

“But you still took her in. That was good of you.”

“At first Joe thought it was so great. See, he was the one who really wanted her. A frilly little daughter to dote on. But six months after she came into our lives, it was like I didn’t exist. All Joe saw was cute little Becky,” she added in a derisive tone. “He totally ignored me. And then she grew up. That cute little puppy turned into a wolf. A monster!”

“That all must have been difficult to accept,” said Blum in a supportive tone.

Atkins exclaimed, “It was impossible. Who was this stranger? What right did she have to come into our lives and take my husband away from me? What right? Oh she was so cute, so pretty. And I was what, a lump of coal?”

“Yes, I see that.”

“Well, Joe didn’t. Made me so mad. I wanted to kill him. And her!”

“But you talked to Mercy? You learned things about her?”

Atkins smiled slyly at Pine. “I knew that was her name. She told me it was. But then I spent years wiping that out of her memory, out of her life.”

“How did you do that?” asked Blum, keeping her gaze on Atkins. “It must have been difficult.”

“I had my ways,” said Atkins with a wicked grin. She mimicked a little girl’s voice again. “ ‘Don’t, Mommy, don’t do that. Don’t burn me. Don’t cut me.’ ‘Your name is Becky,’ I would say. ‘Becky. Only Becky. Mercy is dead, do you understand? Mercy is dead.’ Over and over and over. It finally got through. Finally. No more Mercy.” She smiled. “See, I won. I beat the little brat. She thought she was so smart. Well, I was smarter.”

“Did you have to make her forget anything else?” asked Blum.

Atkins’s features calmed and she looked down again. “There was one thing I could never make her forget,” she said.

Pine tensed and said, “What was that?”

“Eeny, meeny, miny, moe.” She glanced up at Pine. “Stupid nursery rhyme. She read it in a book we had. She went ballistic. She tore the book apart. She was screaming. Joe had to come in and hold her down. And she was only seven or eight at the time. I had no idea what the hell that was about. Crazy, stupid kid. Worst mistake of my life taking her in.”

Blum glanced at Pine, who had closed her eyes and looked away. Blum turned back to Atkins. “So the night Mercy escaped...?”

“Idiot Joe forgot to lock the damn door. Before we knew it here she comes, running past the house. Joe had seen it on his TV screen. He went after her. But the moron didn’t take the gun. I remembered it, though. I went after her with it.”

“Because you couldn’t let her get away?”

“Of course not. We’d go to prison if she did.”

“But I don’t understand. If you had the gun, why didn’t you stop her?”

“Joe grabbed her but she slugged him, and he fell and hit his head on a rock. Blood was everywhere. He tried to get up but I think he had a concussion. He fell back to the ground and didn’t move. Mercy saw the blood and him lying there not moving, and she ran like a damn racehorse. I don’t think her feet touched the dirt.”

“What happened next?”

“I fired twice at her, both barrels. But she was already into the trees. I was going to go after her and finish her off. But then Joe came to, got up, and tried to stop me. He tried to take the gun away.”

“Why?” said Blum. “He must have known what would happen if Mercy got away.”

“He was soft,” Atkins said in a disgusted tone. “He didn’t want to kill her. He wanted to let her get away instead, if you can believe that. Said enough was enough. The idiot!”

“That must have upset you.”

She smiled maliciously. “So I told him, ‘Look, Joe, there she is, she’s coming back.’ When he turned, I picked up the stone and hit him in the head. Knocked him cold. I wanted to shoot him, but the shotgun was empty. So I ran into the house, got a knife and...”

“...finished the job?” said Blum.

“When it was done, I wiped my prints off the knife and called Wanda. I told her Becky had killed Joe. And then I grabbed my stuff and they helped me disappear.”

Pine swallowed nervously and asked in a tentative voice, “And Mercy got away? She was alive?”

“Yes, the bitch damn well did.”

Pine gripped the bed post hard, her eyes shut, her heart soaring with hope.

Atkins suddenly looked alarmed, as though she had just come out of a trance. She stared at them stonily. “But I’ll deny everything I just said, and you can’t prove otherwise.”

“Oh, I think we can,” said Pine, opening her eyes. She held up her phone and then hit the Play button on the recorder function. Atkins’s voice came through loud and clear.

Realization of what had just happened spread over Atkins’s features, and then her face hardened. “You can’t do that. You... you tricked me. It’s illegal.”

Pine shook her head. “Technically, I’m not the arresting officer. You’ve been read your rights, including the right to remain silent. If you choose to spill your guts that’s up to you. And you haven’t engaged counsel yet nor stated that you wanted one. This wasn’t an interrogation. You just spoke of your own free will. And I just happened to have my recorder on.”

“I’ll get that thrown out, you bitch!”

“Well, you can try,” Pine said. “I’m sure the Georgia police will be in touch. Particularly since you made their job of convicting you so much easier.”

Pine stepped forward and leaned down so she was eye to eye with Atkins.

“And just keep in mind that Mercy took the best you had and still kicked your ass. And she’s out there somewhere free and living her life. And you’re going to spend the rest of your sorry life in a place a lot worse than this. And I wish you many, many more years of living.”

Pine called the jailer, and she and Blum left.

As they were walking down the corridor Pine said, “Great job on getting her to open up.”

Blum unexpectedly sighed. “I still wish you could have kicked her butt.”

Pine put her arm around her friend’s shoulders. “Oh, we did better than that. Way better.”