Free Mercy by Jodi Picoult Page A

he was le aning forward.
    Mia's dark blue eyes locked tight on his. "When we lived in India, he though t he was a cow. He crossed streets in front of cars and learned how to moo. In Paris he tracked a finch onto a win-dowsill and leaped off, thinking he c ould fly." She lifted a shoulder. "With him, you never really know what's go ing to happen."
    "No," Cam said. He could smell her now, clean like rain, not at all like th e Zest in the shower upstairs. His thoughts of Jamie MacDonald were gone; a ll he could see was Mia running through the streets of places he'd imagined his entire life. "You lived in India? In Paris?" When she did not answer, he leaned a little closer. If he moved his thumb, he would brush her wrist. He wanted to ask the question that had been dancing at the back of his min d since yesterday. "Do I know you?" he whispered. Mia could hear Allie's footsteps coming down the stairs, and the healthy me w of Kafka in her arms. She turned away from Cam, stayed silent. Yes, she s aid to herself, / think maybe you do.
    FOUR
    "ITTV'hen Cam walked into the police station later that morning, Vr his un cle Angus was sitting with Jamie MacDonald in the lockup, dressed in his b athrobe and playing a game of chess.
    "For God's sake," he muttered, unlocking the cell. "Angus, what are you do ing in there?" He looked around for Casey MacRae, the patrolman he'd left guarding the prisoner.
    "I told Casey I'd spell him," Angus said. "I havena seen wee Jamie since he was seven."
    Cam threw his cap onto the booking counter. He glanced at Jamie MacDonal d. "Sleep well?"
    "No," Jamie admitted. "Did you?"
    Cam turned his back and began to leaf through the court book, praying he'd get Jamie MacDonald in front of a magistrate before lunchtime.
    "What are you doing here, Angus?" Cam sighed. "And get out of the damn lock up. I can't let you in with a prisoner."
    Angus tightened the sash of his bathrobe, grumbling, but stood from the ceme nt slab that doubled as a bed in the cell. "Young Cam, I dinna think that's any way to be speaking to your elders."
    Cam hated it when his uncle called him that, as if he were still six years o ld, as if the old Cameron MacDonald hadn't been dead
    Jodi Picoult
    for two hundred years. He gestured at Angus's wet bedroom slippers. "You come here in your pajamas and get yourself locked up with a murderer, and you can't understand why I want to hire someone to take care of you duri ng the day?"
    Angus stepped out of the lockup. "I dinna want some wee lassie telling me how to eat my parritch in the morning and washing my privates for me in th e bath." He tapped Cam on the shoulder. "I didna come to speak about that, anyway."
    Cam sighed and began to swing the heavy cell door closed again. "We're goin g to court within the hour," he said to Jamie, matter-of-fact, and then he slammed it shut.
    He turned around to find his uncle in his office, sitting behind the desk wi th his feet propped up. Cam shrugged out of his coat, hanging it on a hook o n the back of the door. "Sometimes I think I should have left you at Carrymu ir," he said.
    "Sometimes I wish that ye had."
    Cam sat down in the chair opposite his uncle and rested his elbows on the des k. "Angus, I know what you're about to say to me, and don't think I haven't t hought of it myself. But the fact is I've got a body lying across the street, and a signed confession that the man in that lockup killed her."
    "Aye, well," Angus said, as if he hadn't heard a word Cam had said, "I was o n Culloden Field last night."
    Perhaps because they were the very last words Cam had anticipated as a re sponse, he sat forward, speechless. Recovering, he shook his head. "You w ere where?"
    "Culloden. Ye canna tell me that in spite of everything else ye've forgotten
    , ye dinna remember that."
    For a long time Cam had resisted sending Angus to a retirement home becaus e the closest one was over the mountains, a good forty-five minutes away. Moreover, someone who had grown up