This Dark Road to Mercy: A Novel by Wiley Cash Page A

better than feeling kidnapped.”
    “She also said there wasn’t enough money.”
    “It’s state government,” he said. “There’s never enough money. You know that as well as anybody.” He sighed. “She told me they’re your kids.”
    “They are,” I said. “Since May.”
    “Well, come on, then.” He turned, and I followed him down through the yard around to the left side of the house. We’d been partners for a few years before I left the force. I’ve heard detectives say that having a partner is like having a second wife or a second husband, and I think I’d have to agree with that. Just like any other married couple, me and Sandy both got the same phone call in the middle of the night and met up at a place where something terrible might’ve just happened, bleary-eyed and frustrated, hoping that what we found wouldn’t be half as bad as the responding officer had made it sound. And, just like a real marriage, if a partnership goes to shit it can feel like a rocky divorce, and sometimes I saw myself as the spouse who’d been left behind, keeping tabs on the ex to see if he’d met anyone new and hoping there was a chance that it could all work out and everything would go back to how it used to be.
    Sandy had moved up to detective faster than I had, and I knew he’d dreamed of being in the FBI or at least making the State Bureau. I figured he wouldn’t be a detective for too much longer.
    We crossed the driveway of the one-story brick ranch and stopped and stared up at an open window covered in black fingerprint dust: Easter and Ruby’s bedroom. A plainclothes detective walked by inside. “All the doors were still locked this morning,” Sandy said. “And none of the kids have a key, so this is the only way they could’ve gotten out. We pulled some prints: most of them small, but some of them big enough to belong to an adult.”
    “Easter wouldn’t have unlocked that window unless it was somebody she knew,” I said.
    “Is that the oldest one?”
    “Yep. She’s twelve.”
    “They got any family around here?”
    “Their mama died in May,” I said. “And their daddy gave them up years ago, but that don’t mean nothing.”
    “Is he a good guy or a bad guy?”
    “Hell, I don’t know,” I said. “He’s probably somewhere in between. Most of them are. He showed up at their school a week and a half ago, and he was over here on Saturday morning, trying to see them.”
    “That’s what I heard,” Sandy said. I started to walk around to the front of the house. “Where are you going?” he asked.
    “Inside.”
    “You can’t do that,” he said. “This is a crime scene.”
    “But they’re my kids.”
    “And you’ll see any reports you care to see as soon as we’re done writing them.”
    I looked toward the front of the house, where I figured Miss Crawford was still standing right inside the door. “She’s inside there.”
    “She’ll listen to me when I tell her not to touch anything; she’s too scared to touch anything anyway,” he said. “You don’t listen, and you ain’t scared of shit.”
    I stared at him for a second, waiting for him to flinch, but he wouldn’t. I dug one of my cards out of my wallet and handed it to him. “Just fax over whatever you’ve got as soon as you can. Today.”
    He took the card and looked at it. “You know that’s not the rules,” he said, smiling.
    “When did you start following the rules?” I turned to walk back to the car, and Sandy followed me. I’d been right; Miss Crawford still stood by the front door. I could see the fear on her face. She looked up at me and tried to smile. I waved. “It’ll be okay, Miss Crawford. This kind of thing happens all the time.”
    “It ain’t never happened to me,” she said.
    “Well, I know, but it’s happened to other folks, and they . . .” My voice trailed off because I didn’t know what else to say. I pointed toward the patrol car in the driveway, where the officer was still filling