No Mercy

Chapter Twelve

In this part of southern Indiana, the scenery never changed. On either side of the interstate, rolling farmlands extended to the horizon. Rather than heading back to the office, where she would have to deal with the press, curious staffers, and the endless administrivia that defined the job of a sheriff in a small community, Gail Bonneville chose instead to go home.

In Samson, “home” meant the house of her dreams, complete with seven gables and a deep porch that wrapped the front and two sides. The backyard featured the overgrown remains of what had once been a magnificent garden. With a little imagination, she could still see within the out-of-control boxwoods the shadowy remains of a sculptured pig, turtle, and donkey. Or maybe a goat. A farm animal of some sort.

Fixing up the gardens and restoring them to their previous grandeur was high on the list of things that Gail was going to take care of once she got a little extra cash. Fixing the gardens, in fact, was trumped only by her goal of buying furniture for the living room, dining room, library, parlor, and three spare bedrooms.

Gail lived in the Petrie house, named for the family who’d built it in 1915. In the early 1990s, Natalie Petrie, the ancient family scion, had started listening more intently to television evangelists than she did to the pleas of her own children. By the time the children could convince a court to intervene, they had seen their inheritance plummet from something close to $10 million to something more along the lines of a dollar ninety-five.

It was literally the house of Gail’s dreams, à la Natalie Wood in Miracle on 34th Street. She offered the family’s asking price, and within days, the deed was done. Now, eight months later, workers still labored on to bring the plumbing and electrical services into the twentieth century, never mind the twenty-first.

Gail’s purchase of the Petrie house was a source of great scuttlebutt. How could a single woman on a public servant’s salary afford to pay $550,000 for a house, and then go on to fund extensive repairs and renovations? Her political enemies had their theories, of course, fueled by ugly rumors, but few people actually believed that she was selling drugs out of the basement, or had accepted hush money to protect those who did.

She protected the reality as nobody’s business. Her father had spun an independent accounting firm into a fairly successful investment practice, and when he passed away, he’d left her with enough of a nest egg that she could afford her love of law enforcement without suffering the financial hardship that most cops endured. She could afford to tell the Bureau where they could stick their good-old-boy network. She’d never been a boy, never would be, and ne, and she was doubly done with the small-minded resentment that accompanied the recognition when it finally came.

After her father succumbed to the cancer that had been eating him for over a decade, she’d left the Bureau with extreme prejudice, not caring if she ever saw a badge again. After a while, though, when you’re good at it, busting bad guys becomes a part of your DNA. She’d heard about the desire of the local Democratic Party to find themselves a good female candidate for sheriff in Samson, and the rest, as they say, was…well, you know.

The ten-block-square section that defined downtown Samson looked like something off a movie set for Depression-era urban living. Its main streets sported storefronts and taxpayer construction that looked at first glimpse to be the American dream-all the infrastructure for a midsize city combined with the feel of a small town. She liked the people here more than she didn’t like them, but a reality of law enforcement in a small community is that you could never allow yourself to get but so close. Every citizen was her boss, and one day, any one of them could end up on the business end of her nightstick. When the borders were as close as they were in Samson, and the line between accepting help and accepting graft was so fine, it helped to keep people at arms’ length.

Gail was just entering her driveway when her cell phone rang. “Sheriff Bonneville.”

“Afternoon, Sheriff,” said a very cheerful and very southern voice. “This is Max Mentor with the state crime lab. How you doin’?”

Gail smiled. She’d worked with Max a couple of times since her election and always found the experience to be pleasant. “I’ll be better when you guys can give me some hard data.”

Max laughed. “Then I’m about to make your day. You ready to copy?”

Gail opened her notebook to a new page, balanced it on the center console, and clicked her pen. “Couldn’t be readier.”

“Okay, I got info on ground impressions you sent in. Footprints first, because they’re going to be the least help to you. The boot prints are a standard Vibram sole that you can find on any one of dozens of different brands of shoes. Boots, most likely, the sort that you could find in a recreational equipment outfitter.”

“Or at a tactical supply store?”

The pause told her that Max hadn’t considered that. “You mean, gun nut stores? Where you can buy bulletproof vests for hunting? Yeah, I suppose you could buy them there. So, now you’re thinking this guy is a cop?”

“Nah, I’m just thinking out loud. What else do you have?”

“Okay, let’s talk about the tire prints. Somethin’ weird about those, you know? We only got prints. No tracks. It’s like it just appeared there. The tread’s unusual, too-not typical of any car or truck in the database.”

Gail felt an excited flutter in her chest. “Are you thinking helicopter?”

“Bingo. Given the wheelbase and the depth of the depressions relative to the weather conditions, we’re looking at something pretty big.”

“Help me with ‘big,’ Max. We talking Vietnam-era Huey?”

“Oh, God, no. Not that big. Probaby something more like the slick Aerospatial units they’ve got out there now. Besides, Hueys had skids, not tires. I’ve got a buddy of m theory on the dreams, as Dom had his own theory on every aspect of Jonathan’s life: normal people woke up to escape their nightmares; for Jonathan it was the other way around-he sought sleep to avoid the reality of his days.

Tonight, the telephone sounded ultra-amplified, and he knew before he moved that bad news was on the way. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember a time when a phone call had brought good news. Add the fact that it was the middle of the night, and the sense of dread trebled. As he swung his head to look at the clock, the ghosts of last night’s eighth and ninth beers haunted him with bed-spins. The LED readout burned 9:10 into his retinas. Okay, forget the part about being the middle of the night.

He snatched the phone off its cradle. “This had better be one hell of an emergency,” he grumbled.

It was Venice. “Digger, I’m sorry. I know how hard repentance is on your liver, but I had to call you. The police are looking for you.”

Wrong about the middle of the night, but dead-nuts right about the bad news. “What did I do?” He forced himself to sound even grumpier to cover for the knot that just formed in his gut. As much as he talked bravely to Thomas Hughes about being invisible, he did harbor a special fear of crossing swords with the law.

“You didn’t do anything,” Venice said. “It’s Ellen. They’re at her house, and something bad has happened there.”

As if someone had thrown a switch, Jonathan came completely awake and his head was clear. “What happened to her?”

“I don’t know. They wouldn’t tell me. They called the office looking for you and I told them that I’d be in touch the instant I hung up with them. I have a number for you to call.”

Jonathan swung his feet to the floor and stood. “You do it,” he said. “Call them and tell them that I’m on my way. Without traffic I can be at Ellen’s house in an hour.” He didn’t wait for her to confirm before he dropped the receiver back onto its cradle.

The Rothman home-Ellen’s home-sat on five acres atop a hill in Vienna, Virginia, a tribute to Tibor Rothman’s ego. Serviced by a 300-foot driveway, the 5,000-square-foot colonial was so perfectly proportioned that from the road it looked a fraction of its actual size. It wasn’t until you approached up that long driveway that you saw the grandeur of the place. Every time he saw it, Jonathan couldn’t help but admire the three acres of front lawn-the very lawn that was now packed with all manner of police vehicles, most of them parked in the grass. Closest to the garage, parked on the pavement, was a large van labeled CRIME SCENE UNIT in the distinctive red, white, and blue lettering of the Fairfax County Police Department.

Of the half dozen or so officers milling about, all of them reacted defensively as Jonathan piloted his BMW M6 up the lawn to park near their vehicles. Watching their hands twitch near their sidearms, Jonathan realized that during his days in IraqI’ll bring the detective out to you.”

“She was my wife, Officer. I have a right.”

The cop pointed emphatically at the ground. “Here,” he said.

For the first time, it occurred to Jonathan that he might need a lawyer, that he was very possibly being considered as a suspect in whatever had happened.

A barrel of a man with a huge head and a fleshy face appeared at the front door. He scowled as he listened to the uniformed officer, and he followed the man’s pointing finger to make eye contact with Jonathan. The detective nodded curtly, and walked down the stairs to the front yard. As he closed to within a few feet, he extended his hand. “I’m Detective Weatherby,” he said. There was a humorless intensity about the man that reminded Jonathan of a thousand other pricks he’d met over the years who confused professional intimidation with the need to be an asshole.

Jonathan shook the cop’s hand and wasn’t the least surprised to find that he was of the bone-crushing school of hospitality. “Jonathan Grave. What’s going on here?”

“Are you the husband?”

“Ex. Is Ellen all right?”

“When did you see her last?”

Jonathan felt his blood pressure rising. “Look, Detective, I swear to God I’ll answer any and all questions you may have, but I want to know if she’s hurt.”

Weatherby stewed, and then nodded. “Yes, sir, I’m afraid she is. It appears that someone broke into the house and hurt her very badly.”

Jonathan’s anger transformed to fear. “How badly?”

“I’m not a doctor. I don’t know how to answer that.”

“She’s alive.”

“Yes.”

“And expected to remain that way?”

Weatherby averted his eyes.

Jonathan’s world spun. “Jesus, what happened to her?”

The detective answered carefully. “She was beaten up pretty bad. The house has been torn apart.”

“What, like she stumbled in on a burglar and he panicked?”

“Actually, no, sir, it was nothing like that at all. To my eye, it appears as though she was targeted specifically, and that the people who did so were looking for something they thought she had.”

Jonathan let the pieces drop. “You’re saying she was tortured?”

Weatherby studied Jonathan’s face. “Yes, sir, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Now, I don’t have any more details, okay? That’s all I know. You’ll have to get the rest from the hospital.”

Jonathan turned back toward his car. “Which hospital?”

“Whoa!” Weatherby commanded. “Not yet. I need to ask you some questions.”

“Am I a suspect?”

“Of course you are. You’re the ex-husband. Next to the current husband, you’re number one on the list. By the way, where is Mr. Rothman?”

At one level, Jonathan admired the cop’s candor. Mostly, though, it annoyed him. “It’s not my turn to watch him.”

“I gather from your tone that you don’t like him much?”

Jonathan snorted. “Understatement of the decade. I can’t stand the son of a bitch. A quick hike to the courthouse will right to own.”

Weatherby scowled. “So there really is bad blood between you all.”

“Run into a lot of friendly divorces, Detective? Of course there’s bad blood. But I assure you there’s no homicidal blood.”

Weatherby regarded his prey with slit eyes, then gestured toward the front door with a toss of his head. “Come on inside.”

On a different day, the first thing a visitor to the Rothman home would have noticed was the splendor of the hardwood floors and the intricacy of the moldings and wainscoting. It was a home designed to dazzle visitors, and it rarely failed in its mission.

Today, though, the intricate architectural details were invisible against the savage dismemberment of the place. Inside the front door to the left, every book had been pulled from the shelves of Tibor’s library, his pride-and-joy collection of first editions of French and English literature. Pages were torn from the bindings and the cushions of the dark leather furniture had been slashed, with feathers and stuffing erupting from massive wounds. The same level of damage pervaded everywhere. It was as if someone had turned the house upside down and shaken it.

Weatherby led the way as if he owned the place, marching Jonathan down the main hall into the kitchen and then a hard right into the dining room, where the police had established a makeshift command post. The detective pointed to an upholstered hardback chair. “Take a load off,” he said.

Jonathan continued to stand, not so much on principle as a need to keep examining the house. “Where did you find Ellen?”

“Upstairs. In the bedroom.”

“I want to see.”

“I don’t think you do.”

The gravity of Weatherby’s tone made a connection. “Jesus, Detective, what did they do to her?”

The cop took a long, loud breath through his nose. “Start with the worst you can imagine, and that would be only the beginning. Twenty-three years on the force, Mr. Grave, and this is the worst I’ve seen. Sorry to put it to you that way, but I’m shocked that she survived.”

Jonathan’s mind whirled out of control. The worst he could imagine was pretty goddamn awful. His brain conjured images of Rwandan women with their breasts sliced off, and of Croatian women raped by bayonets. Surely, Weatherby assessed “the worst” on a different scale than that. “Was she raped?”

Weatherby answered with his eyes the instant he looked away. “Savagely. Repeatedly, I would guess. And there was some torture, though I’d rather not go into the details. She was also stabbed.”

Now it was time to sit. Jonathan helped himself to the offered chair. “Who would do something like that?”

“That’s why we called for you.”

“For Christ’s sake, Detective, you couldn’t possibly think I had something to do with that.”

Weatherby let his guard drop an inch. “As I mentioned outside, I sort of have to, but in my gut, no, I don’t believe you did. Can you account for your whereabouts last night?”

“I was downing beers with a buddy. A priest, in fact. Father Dominic D’Angelo, pastor of the St. Katherine’s parish in Fisherman’s Cove.” Responding to the cop’s confusion, he added, “It’s a community down in the NortheActually, she didn’t call me, she called my office and spoke with one of my managers. At the time of the call, he hadn’t been missing for more than twenty-four hours, and, frankly, I didn’t much care if he was missing or not. I told Venice, the manager, to do a quick credit card trace to see what she could turn up.”

“And?”

Jonathan shrugged. “I don’t know. I woke up to the call to come here, so we haven’t discussed any of it this morning.” Jonathan was in the business of parsing information, and he determined that this much was easily traceable and therefore safe to relay. If he was less than forthcoming, Weatherby would know it within hours if not minutes. The rest of it-his ride home with Ellen-was nobody’s business.

“Does Mr. Rothman have any enemies that you know of?”

Jonathan scowled. “You know what he does for a living.”

“I know he’s a writer.”

“But you don’t know what he writes?”

Weatherby shook his head. “I’m pretty much a sports page guy.”

“Well, you won’t find Tibor Rothman articles there. He’s a syndicated columnist. A muckraker. A career killer. He’d call himself an ‘investigative reporter,’ but that’s just code for legitimized gossipmonger. He says whatever he wants, then hides behind the First Amendment when he gets the details wrong. If you could line up every person with a reason to harm Tibor, I imagine it would take you three weeks to get through the interviews.”

“Is he political?”

“Aren’t they all? They wake up every morning and proclaim themselves to be the smartest guys in the room. If you disagree, you get hammered in their column.”

Weatherby’s eyes narrowed, and Jonathan caught the subtext.

“Oh, relax, Detective. I freely admit to motive and means. And probably opportunity, too, if you stretch far enough. What I don’t have is the desire. If you want me to speak frankly to you, then you need to suspend your suspicion for a while. Otherwise, I’ll call for a lawyer, and give you nothing. Which will it be?”

Weatherby took his time answering. “You can speak freely,” he said.

Jonathan studied the man’s face. Weatherby could be lying through his ass, and none of it would matter. The cops were going to check out everything he said anyway. As long as he stayed as near the truth as he could afford, he’d be okay. And the more cooperative he was, the sooner he’d get the hell out of here and on to the hospital to be with Ellen. “Thank you,” he said.

“Let me ask you one other thing, Mr. Grave. Is it at all likely that the person who ransacked the house was in fact looking for you?”

The question shocked him. “I don’t see how.”

Weatherby recrossed his legs. “Well, you’re in the window-peeping business, right? Private detective? Isn’t that what ‘security’ really means in Security Solutions?”

That was a gratuitous shot. “My clients include insurance companies and Fortune 500 firms who need to gather intelligence data for one reason or another. I’ve never thought of it as window-peeping. Do you think of yourself as a child-shooter?” His own gratuitous jab recalled a recent incident in which an off-duty county cop shot an that it was all going to hell, and that he was going to prison, he transferred most of his holdin’t want to know.

“Broken bones in her fingers and toes. Broken tibias in both legs. Bruised liver and kidneys. Broken ribs. There’s really quite a lot wrong, sir.”

“Any head trauma?”

Malstrom broke eye contact as he nodded. “Yes, sir. One really solid strike to the head.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jonathan breathed, and then he shot a quick apologetic glance to Dom. “This is inconceivable to me.”

Malstrom said nothing. What was there to say?

“So, what’s next?”

The doctor launched a soliloquy about treatment strategies and possible surgeries. He talked about Ellen being “in the woods” for a long time, by way of explaining that it could easily be weeks before she would be “out of the woods.” Throughout the speech, Jonathan’s head was in a different place entirely. What the hell had Tibor Rothman done to bring this kind of evil into his home?

Finding Tibor was the key to everything. Suddenly he wanted the doctor to be done so that Jonathan could call Venice and discover what she’d found in her search. As if on cue, Jonathan’s cell phone rang. It was Venice. Malstrom seemed offended that Jonathan took the call.

“Hey, Digger, how is she?”

“Bad,” he said. “We’re just now finding out the extent of it.”

“Well, as soon as you can get out of there, I need you in the office.”

“What’s going on?” He didn’t like the panicky edge to her voice.

“Not on the phone.”

“Can’t you at least tell me what it’s about?”

Venice made that growling sound. She told him what she’d learned. Not all of it, just enough to whet his appetite.

Jonathan clapped the phone closed and stood. “Doctor, I have to go.”

Malstrom looked as if he’d been slapped. “Excuse me?”

Dom stood with Digger, but he looked confused. “Yeah, excuse me?”

“I have to get to my office. An emergency situation has arisen and I have to attend to it.”

“Now?” Dom asked, stunned at the rudeness.

“Right this second.” He offered his hand to the doctor. “Doctor Malstrom, I’m sorry for being so abrupt, but I really have no choice. Thank you for taking care of Ellen. I owe you.” He nodded to Dom. “You, too, Dom. I’ll talk to you soon.”

But Dom hurried after him. “Digger,” he hissed at a stage whisper, “where the hell are you going?” It was a struggle keeping up with Jonathan’s rapid pace.

“I told you.”

“You said there was an emergency. Since when do you have emergencies in the office?”

Jonathan still didn’t slow. “Since Venice found Tibor. He’s dead.”