Wrath (The Lieutenant Harrington Series Book 1)

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Sounded like someone was here,” Amy said.

  “Colt,” I said. I walked the steaks to her. “Do you need a hand in here?”

  “Nope,” she said and smiled. “Kelly is going to be here in about fifteen minutes. She can help me out if I need it. You just go back to sitting outside and looking cute.”

  “That I can do,” I said. I’d noticed Amy had seemed down. I imagined it was due to us having a gathering minus Laurie, who probably would have received an invite had she been alive. I walked to Amy and leaned against the counter beside her. “How are you doing?”

  “Fine.” She shrugged. “I miss my friend.”

  I nodded, said sorry, and took her into my arms for a hug. I kissed the top of her head while she leaned into me. I didn’t have any words that were going to change what had happened or ease her pain, though I wished that I did.

  “How does he want those?” Amy nodded at the steaks. “Like the rest or what?”

  “Yeah, nothing special,” I said.

  “Okeydokey.” Amy grabbed the wrapped meat and placed it next to another stack of filets that we’d picked up.

  My eyes found the fresh scar on the side of her neck. She’d had the fifteen or so outer stitches removed a few days prior. The interior stitches, we were told, would dissolve themselves. The plan was for her to see a cosmetic surgeon after it healed a bit to do some work on cleaning up the inch-and-a-half-wide zipper-like scar. She had briefly talked about the scar with the attending doctor at the hospital. He seemed fairly confident that with the help of a cosmetic surgeon, and time, the scar could become almost unnoticeable.

  “What time are Steve and Sasha coming?” she asked.

  “The race starts at two. I told everyone to come over whenever they got up and around. I’d think Steve would probably be here anytime, though.”

  “All right. What time are you going to fire up the grill?”

  “Um.” I looked at my watch. It was inching up on twelve thirty. I figured I should probably get the process under way. “Now, I guess.”

  “Okay. Send Sasha in when she gets here.”

  “All right. I’m going to go get the charcoal lit. Shout if you need me.” I gave Amy a kiss on the cheek. “Come on, pup. Outside.” I swung my hand toward the patio door, and Lucky followed me out. As soon as she saw Colt at the bar, she ran over to him to get a petting.

  “You need anything?” I heard.

  To my left, Bill was looking over his fence.

  “Ice, beer, water, soda, coolers?” he asked.

  “I think we’re good,” I said.

  “All right. Cindy and I will be over in a second.”

  I gave him a nod.

  Within ten minutes, Garcia, Ramirez, and Ryan were gathered around the bar with Colt and Bill. Each had a beer in front of them. They all shot the breeze while staring at the television. I figured one or more of them were flipping Lucky chips or various other snacks, as she didn’t stray too far from the guys.

  I loaded the pair of chimney lighters I had with charcoal briquettes on top of some brown paper and was about to get it lit when Steve came through the side gate with Sasha in tow. Steve held a folder under his right arm and a case of beer under his left. The two walked up to me. Sasha was tall and thin with long, straight dark hair. She held a glass dish of food.

  “Cheesy potatoes,” Sasha said. “Did you want them inside?”

  “Sure. You can just set it on the kitchen table with everything else. Amy’s in there with Cindy, our neighbor,” I said.

  Sasha disappeared through the patio doors into the house.

  Steve tossed the file onto the outdoor table near the barbecue. He set the case of beer on the ground, tore it open, and got one out. Sitting on the corner of the table, he cracked his can of beer and took a drink.

  “You want those on ice?”

  “I’ll toss them in a cooler in a second.” He crossed his arms over his wide chest and jerked his chin toward the file he’d set down. “There’s a little after-dinner reading for you,” Steve said. “Everything up to Friday that we put together on the case. That and a bullet-points version of Mercer’s confession. We have the entire thing on audio at the office, but in transcript, it probably would be novel sized. He liked to hear himself talk.”

  “So who is the mystery wife Emily that we couldn’t find anything on?” I asked.

  “All we really have is what Mercer said. And his story doesn’t have a lot of connected dots. Just little tidbits. From what he said, after he got out of jail from the Laurie Jillette thing, he started an online relationship with a woman named Emily Barr, who lived in Costa Rica. After his parole obligations were up, he says he moved to Costa Rica to live with her in twenty ten. They were married, and he lived there for three years. He claims he never became a citizen there. Mercer said that she was well off, and after she died, he moved back to the states and used her money to open the franchise sandwich shops.”

  “What happened to the wife?” I asked. “How did she die?”

  “We’re still looking into it to see if the story he weaves is true or not,” Steve said. “As of right now, all we have is the fact that a woman with that name lived at an address in Costa Rica. As far as how she died, Mercer said he killed her. He believed she was cheating on him, and he called her on it. She claimed that she was not. Mercer followed her and saw her meet up with an older man. The two shared a long embrace. The next day, Mercer said he poured a bottle of drain cleaner down her throat for lying to him. He said he used the whole bottle, thinking it would kill her, but she just kept throwing it up. He said he poured a second bottle down her throat and taped her mouth shut. She must have drowned on her own vomit. Mercer claimed he regretted doing it. He said he found out a few days after he killed her that the man he thought she was having an affair with was actually her estranged father. That’s the short version. The long version is on audio.”

  “Grace Mercer had drain cleaner in her stomach,” I said.

  Steve nodded as he took a drink of his beer. “Yeah, he talked about that too, which gives us a little more on what kind of person he was aside from, you know, being a cold-blooded murderer. He said he spiked her morning coffee with drain cleaner before he killed her. Just for kicks. He knew it wouldn’t kill her. Obviously from experience. He said that he wanted to be a dick to her one last time before he killed the bitch. His words, not mine.”

  “Geez,” I said. “So he confessed to all of them?”

  “Yup. He confessed to each person’s death that we attributed to him. Plus he gave his reasoning behind each. Nick Ludwig was having sex with his wife Grace, dead. His wife was having an affair, dead. Laurie had screwed around on him and sent him to jail, dead. I think you said that he told Amy why he came after her.”

  “Yeah, he did,” I said.

  “What did he say about the neighbor, or prostitute, or woman who lived a few blocks from here?” I asked.

  “The woman a couple blocks over, he simply said that he needed a place to address his wounds. Plus he needed her car. He saw an older woman he figured to be an easy mark in his injured state. As far as the neighbor, Stanley, I guess he came to Chris’s house and insisted upon seeing Grace Mercer. So Chris Mercer allowed him upstairs under the pretense of seeing Grace. Well, he saw her all right, dead and wrapped in plastic in the master bathroom garden tub. Mercer said that as soon as Stanley lay eyes on Grace’s body, he killed him where he stood.”

  I shook my head. “The prostitute?”

  “His reasoning for that was he was drunk and not really in the right state of mind at the time.”

  “There’s a hell of a reason for killing someone.”

  “Out of everyone he killed, she was the only one where it almost seemed like he had remorse for his actions,” Steve said. “It was weird.”

  “Who the hell knows,” I said.

  “So how’s the spleen?” he asked.

  “Okay,” I said. I lit the charcoal chimneys. “Back at work tomorro
w. After a couple weeks of pushing a desk, I’ll be back at it.”

  “Pain?” he asked.

  “Not too bad now. The first few days sucked. Now an aspirin or two pretty much knocks out anything nagging.”

  “Good, good. How about Amy. How’s she doing?” he asked.

  “All right. Healing up pretty well. She’s got a follow-up appointment with the doc on Tuesday. She’s hoping they tell her she can go back to work, or if not, she at least wants to get a time frame as to when. I think she’s getting cabin fever.”

  “Hopefully soon enough, this will all be in the past. Try to just forget about the whole shit.”

  “That’s pretty much the plan,” I said. “Anything else going on at the office?”

  “Same old same old. You can worry about work tomorrow. Let’s get this beer on ice and get some steaks sizzling,” Steve said.

  “Sounds good to me. Let me toss this file in the house.”

  Steve scooped up the case of beer and walked to the rest of the guys. I dumped the file on my desk in my office, glanced for a second at the open closet door, and returned to the party.

  The End

  Thank you!

  Thanks for reading Wrath, Book 1 in The Lieutenant Harrington Series. I hope you enjoyed it!

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