Acts of Mercy by Stewart Mariah

Author:Stewart, Mariah [Stewart, Mariah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2009-04-02T04:00:00+00:00

FOURTEEN

There’s the crime scene.” Fiona slowed down and pointed to the bright yellow tape that marked off a long rectangle from the side of the road to well past the middle of the field.

“I guess you can park anywhere along here. We’ll walk out,” Sam said.

“Walk all the way out there?” She frowned.

“Why wouldn’t we?”

“No reason,” she mumbled.

She pulled to the side of the road and parked, then got out and looked across the field. The grass and weeds were almost knee-high. Sam was already in the field. He turned and looked back at her and stopped. “Are you coming?” he called.

“Sure.” She stepped into the grass and felt it tickle the bare skin under her pants legs. She shuddered and tried to decide which was worse. Not looking, and therefore not knowing what manner of creature lurked in the tall grass, or watching every step and therefore possibly avoiding anything that might be there. And anything could be under the grass and weeds. Snakes. Mice. Ticks. Spiders. Rats.

She reminded herself that she’d read somewhere that field rats were nothing like city rats, that they were smaller and much less aggressive. She decided to follow in Sam’s footsteps—literally. She walked the path he’d made into the field and prayed that he’d scared off anything that might be living there.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” she told him, feeling more than a little foolish. She’d faced serial killers and child murderers and kidnappers, but the thought of some unseen furry or crawly thing making its way up her leg made her blood run cold. “We all have our little quirks,” she muttered.

“What?” Sam turned to her as he stepped over the yellow tape.

“I said, I guess it’s impossible to tell exactly where Wilke was killed. Since he was strangled here, there’s probably no physical evidence. All the blood would be over near the fence, where he was stabbed.” With one arm she brushed away the low-flying squadron of insects that had been flushed out of the grass.

She caught up with Sam in the middle of the section that was cordoned off. “Well, I suppose even as late as last week it would have been easier to see where the killer parked the car. This much later, there’s nothing.”

“I’m surprised the tape is still in place,” he remarked. “I’d have thought between the press and the curiosity seekers, it would have been down by now.”

“Maybe people are just being respectful. I suppose it does happen now and then.”

“Or maybe they’re concerned about him.” Sam turned toward the prison.

“Who?” She followed his gaze to the watchtower that overlooked the field. “Oh. Him.”

“I wonder why the killer wasn’t too worried about being seen the night of the murder,” he said. “We’re standing, what, fifty feet from the outer fence, and the tower is another fifty feet from the inner fence. That’s roughly one hundred feet away.”

“And the guard would have been elevated, so it would have been easy for him to see a car from that distance.

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