Mercy Kill

by Lori Armstrong

“No problem, Sheriff.”

  He didn’t offer me his hand, just a curt, “Miz Gunderson.”

  I managed not to roll my eyes at his formality. But he wasn’t aware John-John knew about our playing slap and tickle; I felt a little smug in the secret.

  We settled in the chairs opposite the desk. John-John spoke first. “I know it’s been less than twelve hours since Mercy discovered the body, but do you have any new information?”

  “Just our suspicions from last night, which haven’t changed.”

  “What suspicions?” I asked.

  “We suspect it was a robbery gone wrong.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Are you fucking serious?”

  John-John kicked my foot to shush me.

  “Yes. His wallet was gone, and preliminary tests indicate the fatal injuries were consistent with a robbery.”

  “A robbery. Out in the middle of nowhere? Jesus. Why didn’t the would-be robbers try to rob Clementine’s? There’s a helluva lot more cash inside the bar than trying to roll customers in the parking lot for a few bucks. And I usually close up by myself, which isn’t exactly a secret either. I can’t believe—”

  “Mercy,” John-John cautioned. “Listen.”

  Dawson looked at me. “The point is, a list of who was in the bar last night, from all Clementine’s employees, would help us narrow down the possible suspects.”

  I started to speak, but John-John beat me to the punch. “Absolutely, Sheriff. I was there for a good portion of the night, so I’ll compile a list. Winona’s and Mercy’s lists will be more complete since they both worked a full shift.”

  Again Dawson’s gaze pinned me. “Are you willing to cooperate, Miz Gunderson?”

  I flashed my teeth at him. “Absolutely, Sheriff.”

  That shocked him; he’d expected me to resist. My only reason for insubordination last night? It was John-John’s call whether we violated our customers’ privacy, not mine. I, probably more than anyone, wanted to see that whoever killed J-Hawk was caught.

  “Good to hear.” He unearthed a small notebook and flipped to a clean page. “Can you tell me what happened last night? From the start of your shift up until you came across Jason Hawley’s body?”

  “Sure.” I have an eye for detail, which Dawson had counted on. As I rambled, I figured he might get a hand cramp. Served him right. If he wanted no stones left unturned, I’d give him a rockslide of information.

  But I wouldn’t offer up details about my previous relationship with the victim, unless he specifically asked me.

  Dawson kept writing long after I answered his last question. He paged back through his notes before tucking the notebook in his desk drawer. He addressed John-John. “I appreciate your cooperation. Let me know as soon as you’ve completed your lists.”

  “You’ve got it, Sheriff.”

  I asked, “Has the victim’s family been notified?”

  “Yes. They’ve requested immediate transport back to North Dakota.”

  “Is Titan Oil taking care of the costs of transporting the body? Or is the family?”

  Dawson gave me an odd look. “Why does it matter?”

  “It just does.”

  “That’s a crap answer, Mercy.”

  Oh, so now he was addressing me by my first name? “Fine. You know how I feel about Titan Oil and what they’re trying to do in this county. It’d reflect even more poorly on them, after they’ve claimed to be such a family-friendly company, if word got out that they balked at paying to send their field operative back home after he was brutally murdered while in their employ.”

  “How would ‘word get out’?”

  I shrugged. “People talk. Maybe locals will think twice about going to work for Titan Oil when it’s obvious the company doesn’t give a damn what happens to their employees. Maybe then they’ll shitcan their plans to destroy our county and move on.”

  “Mercy,” John-John warned.

  “As far as I know, the coroner is doing the exam at Clausen’s Funeral Home today, and Clausen’s is transporting the body. Don’t know who’s paying for it.”

  The lighting tubes above us buzzed in the silence.

  “If that’s all?” John-John said.

  When the sheriff nodded at John-John, we both stood.

  But I had one more question. Before I could speak, my boss grabbed my elbow and hustled me out.

  In the parking lot, I jerked out of his hold. “Since when do you manhandle me?”

  “Since you were gearing up to spar with Dawson even though our business with him was done,” he retorted.

  “Maybe I just wanted to ask when it became county policy to hire a racist receptionist.”

  “Doll, I get treated worse than that in my own bar. Let it go.” He kissed my forehead. “But, thank you, kola.”

  “You’re welcome. I’ll come to the bar and get the other lists in a few hours so Dawson can get going on this case.”

  I stopped at Besler’s grocery store and loaded up on single-girl supplies. Coffee. Soda. Peanut butter. Apples. Crackers. Batteries. On an end cap I noticed a display of Memorial Day remembrances, including a red, white, and blue stuffed frog. What the hell a puffy patriotic frog had to do with Memorial Day, I didn’t know. But the bug-eyed critter was cute, and Joy might like it, so I tossed it in the cart.

  My self-congratulation on avoiding eye contact with anyone was premature. Effie Markham bumped her cart into mine to get my attention.

  “Why, Mercy Gunderson, I didn’t expect to see you out and about after you found a man bludgeoned to death last night.”

  I started to correct her that J-Hawk had been shot and sliced up, not bludgeoned, but she kept talking.

  “And you poor thing, finding another body. What’s that? The fourth one since you’ve been home?”

  “The third,” I said tightly.

  “You seem to have the worst luck.” Effie leaned closer and confided, “Pity that man was murdered, but I’m not surprised. His presence was … unwanted, and I hope Titan Oil takes notice.”

  The he-got-what-he-deserved attitude wasn’t new, or surprising, but it set me on edge. “Your concern is noted, Effie.”

  I raced to the checkout line and hoped my back-off vibe would keep other nosy busybodies at bay.

  While I deposited the bags in the truck bed, my cart made a break for freedom. A man stepped out from between two parked cars and snagged the runaway before it smashed into a Gran Torino.

  The cart savior was none other than the Indian hottie who’d been drinking at Clementine’s last night.

  The same man Dawson snarled at for lurking around the crime scene in the wee hours.

  A weird vibe rippled through me. “Who are you? And why do you seem to be everywhere?”

  He shrugged. “Eagle River County is a small area.”

  My gaze took in his long hair, fringed leather coat, plain black T-shirt, khakis, and steel-toed boots. “Are you from the rez?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Who are you?” I repeated.

  He cocked his head. The move might’ve looked flirtatious, but it wasn’t. His assessing eyes weren’t quite threatening, but not friendly either.

  My fingers curled into the metal bars of the shopping cart as I awaited his response.

  Finally, he said, “My name is Shay Turnbull.”

  “Should I know you?”

  “No.” He passed me the bag from my runaway cart, quirking an eyebrow at the stuffed frog.

  I didn’t explain the toy was for my niece. Let him think I planned to kiss the damn thing, hoping it’d turn into a prince. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I guess I’ll see you around.”

  “Count on it.” He took about ten steps and stopped, turning to look at me. “The lady in the store was right.”

  Jesus. Had this dude been stalking me in the store, too? “About what?”

  “About your bad luck in finding dead bodies. Major Hawley won’t be
the last one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You died, and your spirit is still drawn to death. Especially the newly dead. It’s the price you pay for your life.” Shay Turnbull climbed into a black Ford Explorer and drove away.

  How could he know about that? And if I had the “I see dead people” vibe, why hadn’t the people around me, like John-John, Sophie, and Rollie, who believed in all that cosmic mumbo jumbo, warned me?

  Because you haven’t told them what happened in Bali.

  Halfway home it hit me: he’d called J-Hawk by his military rank.

  Son of a bitch.

  Groceries put away, dog fed, laundry sorted, I knew I had to quit stalling and make the damn list.

  As I doodled in the margins of the notebook paper, I understood Dawson’s push for detailing the information ASAP. Even twelve hours later the faces weren’t as crystal clear as I expected.

  I counted eight construction workers, all of whom I knew. Ditto for the pack of cowboys. Maybe a half-dozen women hung around those groups of guys. Four college kids. Lefty. Kit. Trey. Bill. Shay Turnbull. The fifteen or so campaign supporters. The two couples playing wife swap. Four two-person dart teams. Eight league pool players. With my quick calculation I’d already written down sixty possibilities.

  Up front were at least ten bunco ladies. Vinnie and his six buddies. The Indian bikers, five strong, and their female companion, who’d darted in and out so I’d never gotten a good look at her. Several couples danced in front of the jukebox, but I wasn’t positive they weren’t part of other groups.

  Plus the usual bar rats. Most of our regulars had vanished after one drink last night because “their” bar had been overrun. We’d also done a steady stream of sales with the package side. If I had to venture a guess? I’d say over 120 people partied in a building that’d been rated for a maximum occupancy of 80.

  Lots of suspects.

  Lots of suspects I didn’t know.

  Hopefully Dawson had more to go on than I did, because looking at this incomplete list, I couldn’t fathom who hated Jason Hawley enough to kill him.

  • • •

  At Clementine’s I photocopied all three lists. The originals went into a Gunderson Ranch envelope, which I sealed. I shoved the extra copies in my messenger bag.

  When I turned around, John-John was in the doorway. “You’re still here? Get those lists to the sheriff before he arrests us for obstruction of justice.”

  “You’re probably safe. Although we both know he has no problem arresting me.”

  John-John pierced me with his schoolmarm look. “Does volunteering to take those to Dawson mean you’re mending fences with him?”

  “Not hardly after he took my damn gun.”

  He sighed dramatically. “Mercy. Doll. Dawson’s not the type of guy to put up with this much longer.”

  “Put up with what?”

  “The shot to his ego. The fact you won’t publicly acknowledge there’s something going on between you two. Even when the two of you fight like the dickens all the time.”

  “Dawson doesn’t give a damn what the public knows, just as long as we keep spending private time together between the sheets,” I retorted.

  “Don’t be so sure. He’s not just the sheriff. Why do you insist on seeing him only in that role?”

  “Because when it comes right down to it, especially stuff like this?”—I flapped the envelope at him—“I can’t separate the man he is from the job he does.”

  John-John floated a deliberate pause. “Think about what you just said, Mercy.”

  I think I should’ve kept my big mouth shut.

  “Dawson looks beyond what you did for a living in the army and what you do for a living now. Maybe you should do the same for him.”

  He turned abruptly, his braids swinging haughtily.

  Petty, but I flipped him off.

  While waiting for my audience with the sheriff, I asked Deputy Moore if the coroner had finished her exam, half expecting that snoopy question would get eagle-eared Dawson out of his office. But it didn’t. However, she informed me that when the medical examiner from Rapid City was done, the body was being transported.

  After five minutes of watching me pace in front of her desk, Kiki let me into Dawson’s office. His argument on the phone escalated, but he gestured for me to stay until he finished the call. I shook my head and handed him the envelope, my mind elsewhere.

  I parked down the street from Clausen’s Funeral Home, where I had an unobstructed view of the back. One of Clausen’s hearses was parked by the fence, which meant the other one was inside the closed doors. I sat in my truck for an hour, waiting, brooding, feeling ridiculous, when the garage door finally scrolled up.

  Do it. He’d do it for you.

  Scrambling out of my truck, I silently bemoaned my lack of proper attire. Major Jason Hawley deserved full military dress. As the hearse passed by me, I stood at full attention, offering my salute. I held that final salute until the hearse was a black dot on the horizon, and he was really gone.

  I owed him. Finding out who’d killed him was a piss-poor way to pay him back for saving my life. But it was all I had.

  Three shots later I was as ready to make the call as I’d ever be.

  The stone path around the foreman’s cabin was ringed with logs of varying heights and widths. Perching on two logs that formed a natural chair, I flipped open my cell phone and dialed, watching the watery beams of light contort shade and shadow.

  One ring. Two rings. Three. Four. Five. I was prepared to wait until twelve, but she answered on ring nine.

  “Why is it you always interrupt when I’m watching porn online?”

  “You’re always watching porn online, A-Rod.”

  She laughed. “You know me too damn well.”

  “Does your porn watching mean you’ve got home-field advantage?” Anna never liked talking about where she was. Home-field advantage meant she was in the States. Playing for the other team—our private joke since we’d fielded the are-you-a-lesbian question numerous times—meant she was somewhere else in the world.

  “Yep. So why’re you calling me, Gunny?”

  “I need a reason to call you?”

  “No. But you always do. You aren’t asking about updates on the soccer team. As far as I know, the roster hasn’t changed since the last time we talked.”

  We’d christened our elite army squad the soccer team. “Good to know. Have you talked to the coach lately?”

  “No, but I checked in with the team captain last month. She said the rainy season was brutal this year.”

  That meant the team had been grounded, stuck at some base without new orders. “That’s a shame. Hopefully they’ll get to travel to an away game soon and utilize their new talent.”

  “As nice as it is to know that you can make idle chitchat, Gunny, cut to the chase.”

  My stomach twisted. And I thought I was ready for this conversation? I blew out a slow breath. “Okay. Remember the last time we talked, and I bitched about the Canadian oil company that’d been looking to put a freakin’ pipeline right across my land?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, they passed the first hurdle. They sent a rep to try to convince us that millions of gallons of oil traveling underground to some refinery in Louisiana would be a great benefit to our county.”

  “Get to the point,” A-Rod grumbled. “I don’t give a damn about your land issues, because, dude, city girl here. I hate nature and shit.”

  “The point is … the rep they sent to Eagle River County? None other than Jason Hawley.”

  Dead silence.

  “You’re fucking kidding me, right?”

  “Nope. Titan Oil has a base of operations in North Dakota, near Minot, and they hired him.”

  “When?”

  “Last year. He’s been making his way down the proposed pipeline route.”

  “Jesus. I know you and J-Hawk joked about your states being incestuous,
and the normal six degrees of separation was about two degrees of separation, but that’s beyond bizarre. Of all the places you guys could cross paths again … What are the odds?”

  I swallowed a mouthful of whiskey. “J-Hawk stacked the odds, Anna; he requested to be sent here.”

  Her bout of silence scared me to the bone. Anna could morph from personable to stone cold in the blink of an eye.

  So can you.

  “And?” Anna said quietly. “Why did J-Hawk ask to be sent there?”

  Like a total chickenshit, I hedged. “I think he came to collect on his debt for saving my life.”

  “Bullshit. He flat-out said that to you?”

  “No.”

  “See? That’s not Jason’s way, and we both know it.”

  I bristled. “It’s been what? Five years since you’ve seen him? Are you positive he hadn’t changed?”

  “Yes, because I know him down to the core. You don’t have a fucking clue why he saved you in Bali, do you? I guarantee it wasn’t so you’d owe him an unnamed favor that he’d have to track you down to repay.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Jason saved you because he’d lost two Ranger team members in a bomb attack the year before. Why do you think he never wanted to talk about it? Why do you think he didn’t strut around acting like a hero? That night in the club when he saw both you and Nigel in the rubble? It was déjà vu for him. He flipped out, Mercy. He swore you weren’t dead, just playing possum—whatever the hell that meant. As soon as he had you breathing again, he wanted to work on Nigel. The rescue team had to tranq Jason to get him to stop.”

  “Why didn’t I know any of this?”

  “Because the files were sealed, remember? Any military personnel records associated with the training ops with JCET in Indonesia became classified, because we weren’t supposed to be in Bali, let alone pretending to be civilians when those bombs went off in the nightclub district and at the U.S. Consulate.”

  Stunned by her disclosure, I was even more guilt ridden.

  “So you and J-Hawk get into a pissing match or something?”

  “No.”

  “Then why’d you call me?”

  “Because he’s dead.” I repeated it so Anna didn’t have to ask me to repeat it. “Jason is dead, Anna. That’s what I called to tell you.”