A Bad Day for Mercy by Sophie Littlefield Page A

here.”
    “Look, just trust me, okay? I’m not going to faint on you or anything.”
    Chip sighed heavily as he led the way to a homely-looking concrete structure attached to the backside of the University Hospital like a barnacle. No-nonsense metal letters screwed into the sides of the building spelled out BOBERG CLINIC.
    “They’re doing a special weekend seminar today. The lab manager probably already has it set up. Only this isn’t strictly kosher, me bringing you here, so if we see anyone, let me do the talking, okay?”
    Chip took a heavy set of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door. Inside, the building was cool and chemically smelling, with an odor somewhere between a dentist office and the Ace garden center. A neat glassed-in announcement board featured want ads for house sitters, roommates, lost puppies, yoga classes, massage therapy. They passed a nook housing a row of glowing vending machines.
    Chip paused in front of a wide set of doors, searching his large key ring for the right key. “Now like I said, Stella, you might want to, like, brace yourself a little here. You haven’t seen—”
    “Whyn’t you let me worry about what I’ve seen and not seen, Chip,” Stella said gently. “I’ve been around things you can’t even imagine. Besides, I’m going to be fifty-one to— uh, soon.”
    Tomorrow. She was going to be fifty-one years old tomorrow, and rather than spending it at home with Noelle and her beauty treatments, and a special lunch with Chrissy at the China Paradise followed by a gallon of pistachio ice cream, and possibly even a little further exploration into BJ’s amorous intentions, she was going to be stuck up here in the middle of Wisconsin. Even if the door opened to reveal not just Todd but Benton’s killer holding an I DID IT sign, there was no way she could turn around and make the drive all the way home today, not without some sleep.
    So, best case scenario, she’d spend her birthday driving home with a pain-in-the-ass teenage copilot. No cake, no gifts, no birthday nooky—only a sore ass from sitting in the driver’s seat, all swollen up from the road food and coffee.
    Worst case … well, the worst case was so much worse. She’d tracked down a kidnapped child once before, when the mob had snatched up Chrissy’s son, Tucker, and she’d had to go down to the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks and fight off a slew of Kansas City mobsters to get the little boy back. But in that case the abductors wanted the child for themselves, and he was an adorable flaxen-haired blue-eyed angel of a baby, too. Todd was none of those things—he was a foul-mouthed noxious-smelling slouch-spined big-footed clumsy oaf of a teenager who made about as good a first impression as a mutt who’s been rolling in roadkill. She adored the boy as though he were her own, but that had been after several years of him growing on her. His kidnappers didn’t have that advantage, and if they didn’t much care for his sass mouth and defiant attitude, well, what then?
    “It’s just that most people don’t realize—” Chip tried again, hanging on to the door and blocking the view of the room inside with his body.
    “I said I’m fine,” Stella said, a little more testily than necessary, and pushed past him.
    And stopped dead in her tracks.
    Inside the room were half a dozen long tables, about the size of the buffet tables on which they served Sunday doughnuts at Calvary United Methodist, but a little sturdier looking, with sinks at either end and cabinets below and stools tucked neatly underneath. On top of the tables’ pristine white surfaces were aluminum trays like you might use to cook lasagna, lined up true and square, four to a table.
    Nestled on top of the trays were human heads.
    “Oh holy fucking mother of…” Stella stammered, feeling her stomach pitch and roll, bile burbling up and threatening to send her heaving into the aisles between the neat rows. “Those are … oh my