Acts of Mercy by Mariah Stewart Read Free Book Online

was contactingthe Foundation, but I had to leave a message for him. I’m sure there’s plenty in his file that he didn’t let me see.”
    “I’ll give him a call and let him know we’re on the case at your request, see if I can schedule a time to sit down with him.”
    “He’s been very kind through all this. I’m sure he’ll be happy to work with you. Will you stop in here while you’re in Lincoln?”
    “I’d like to do that. I’d like to know more about your husband.”
    “He was a really nice man, Agent DelVecchio.”
    “I’m not an agent, Mrs. Walker.” He thought it over for a moment, realized he wasn’t sure what his title was. Detective? Just plain Mister? Sam?
    “Thanks. I’ll wait to hear from you.”
    He hung up, still wondering if, as a private detective, he should call himself detective. He chided himself for getting hung up on something so inconsequential and searched his notes for Christopher Coutinho’s phone number at the Lincoln PD.
    The call was answered on the second ring.
    “Coutinho.”
    “Detective, this is Sam DelVecchio. I’m with the Mercy Street Foundation.”
    “Who?”
    Sam started over.
    “Mercy Street,” the detective muttered. “That thing on TV?”
    “You might have seen something on television, but—”
    “Big money guy fronting some private agency?”
    “That’s the general idea, yes. We’ve been asked tolook into a case that I understand you handled last year. Ross Walker.”
    “Walker, yeah.” Coutinho paused. “What’s your involvement?”
    “His widow applied to the Foundation, asked us to take a look.”
    “You mean, see if you can solve the case for us.” The detective’s voice developed a sudden edge. “Thanks a lot. We sure appreciate it. Since, you know, we’re basically incompetent.”
    Sam sighed. He’d expected it.
    “Look, here’s the thing,” Sam said. “It’s not a reflection on you. But we both know that when a case goes cold, when the evidence isn’t there and there are no leads and no suspects, it takes a hell of a lot of digging to find even one thread to tug on. If you had nothing else to do, no other cases to deal with, you’d probably find that thread, if in fact there’s a thread to be found. But you don’t have the luxury of handling one case at a time for however long it takes. I do.”
    Sam let that sink in before adding, “Mrs. Walker came to us, Detective. We didn’t go looking for this case.”
    Coutinho fell silent for a few moments, then said, “I appreciate you not rubbing it in that we weren’t able to solve the case. It’s been on my mind since the minute I walked onto that crime scene.”
    “Let’s get something out of the way right up front. I’m not looking at this case as one you ‘weren’t able to solve,’” Sam said. “I know that if we are going to make any headway at all with this, it will only be because of the work you did when you caught the call, so let’s look at this as a sort of collaboration.”
    “Do you have any idea of just how patronizing that sounded?”
    “Yeah, well, it is what it is. I’m sure you guys did a bang-up investigation.”
    “You know this how?”
    “You got a do-gooder found behind a soup kitchen with a burger stuffed in his mouth, his chest slashed up, someone is going to want some answers. Everyone’s going to be on their best behavior because the case is going to have a profile. The heat would be on you on a case like this.”
    “You got that much right.”
    “So let’s stop the bullshit, and talk about the case.”
    Coutinho’s manner changed and he became all business.
    “A call came in around eleven on a Tuesday night. Woman said her husband was missing, that they’d put a few hours in at the mission down on Fourth Street, Pilgrim’s Place. Said she and her husband were volunteers who cooked and served dinner there every Tuesday night, that they usually finished up around ten thirty, but that night, she realized sometime around nine