Acts of Mercy by Mariah Stewart Read Free Book Online Page A

forty-five that it had been a while since she’d seen him. At first, she figured he’d stepped outside to talk to someone and lost track of time—she said he’s a talker—or maybe he was in the men’s room. So they start cleaning up and she asks the others if anyone knew where he was, and no one did. No one could recall the last time they’d seen him. So she’s getting worried and she calls his cell phone, but there’s no answer. So she waits a few minutes more, then calls again. Still no answer. Finally the kitchen cleanup is done, the others are getting ready to leave,and he still hasn’t turned up. They search the house, inside and out, and even go out to the street to see if he’s out there chatting, but he was nowhere to be found.”
    “Could I see the statements you took from the people who were there that night?”
    “Yeah. There’s not much substance. I mean, they serve a couple hundred people there every week, so during mealtime, it’s pretty hectic. No one has time to look around to see who’s doing what. They’re understaffed and the kitchen is laid out in a sort of L-shape, so you can’t see who’s working there with you. Ross Walker could have walked out the back door at any time and no one would have known, but sure, you can take a look.”
    “Who responded to the initial call?”
    “Couple of cruisers. They finally convinced Mrs. Walker to go on home, that maybe her husband ran into an old friend or for whatever reason needed to be alone. Both officers said their first thought was that he might have sneaked out to hook up with a girlfriend and things got carried away, but they weren’t about to say that to the wife. She went home around midnight, but called back in around three, and then again at six. By this time, she was hysterical, said she knew something terrible had happened to him. Another car went back to the mission and the officers searched the place from stem to stern without finding a thing. But after the breakfast shift, one of the volunteers took a bag of trash out to the Dumpster, and found Walker slumped behind it on the ground, between the Dumpster and the fence.”
    “I’d like to see the crime-scene photos if possible.”
    “I can email some of them to you.”
    “Hold on for just a minute.” Sam put the phone down and went into the hall, counted doors until he found the one he believed to be Mallory’s. He stuck his head in and said, “I need an email address.”
    She recited the address they’d set up for him without looking up from the file she was reading. “Sorry. I meant to give you that earlier. I’m assuming you found your laptop on your desk?”
    “I did. Thanks.” He hurried back to his office and repeated the address for Coutinho as he opened the laptop and booted up.
    A minute later the email appeared, the photos attached. He opened the document and studied each one carefully.
    “Sam?” Coutinho said after several minutes had passed in silence.
    “Yeah. I’m here.”
    “Sorry, I don’t know what else to call you.”
    “Sam is fine,” he said somewhat absently, the photos of Ross Walker drawing all his attention.
    He went through them, one by one. “No suspects?” he asked when he reached the last one.
    “We had a few of the usuals. The lowlifes that you bring in from time to time then have to let back out on the streets, but you know it’s only a matter of time before they’re back in for something big? You know the ones I’m talking about?”
    “All too well. None of them panned out?”
    “They were all someplace else doing other things with other people.”
    Sam ran through the photos again, the detective waiting patiently on the line for him to finish.
    “I thought it was real odd that the cause of death is listed as strangulation when you have all that carnage,” Coutinho said. “The ME said the guy had been strangled before any of the slashing took place.”
    “All the blood at the scene, the vic was killed right there. So