Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

Fain nodded. “I saw the old man there, too.”

  “So when did Wayne shoot Erle?” I said.

  They looked at one another.

  “I don’t follow you,” Macomber said.

  “If Erle sent Zeke that text, and the constable was in sight the whole time, then Wayne couldn’t have been the killer.”

  “But Wayne Beacham confessed,” the general said, “in his suicide note.”

  “If it was a suicide note,” I said. “Let’s put it together. Erle turned off the security cameras when he arrived at the gun shop. He’d stashed the box of Trumo in his personal bunker, up in the forest behind his shop.”

  “Damn. No wonder we didn’t find it,” said Rigo.

  “I expect Erle planned to take his ATV up the hill and retrieve the box. He wouldn’t want that captured on camera and sent into the cloud. It could be used against him someday. But he was murdered before he could leave.”

  “By Beacham,” said Fain.

  “No. Constable Wayne was already up at the top of the road with the owner of the dress store. They saw Erle pass them on his way. It’s in his report. Then forty minutes later, Zeke gets that text. Gillespie arrives. Erle wasn’t shot after that, not by Wayne or anyone else. Gillespie didn’t hear any gunshot. The lawyer’s old, but he’s sharp, and his hearing is fine.”

  Macomber frowned. “Perhaps the constable simply lied on his report, and managed to slip away from the dress store long enough to shoot Erle before Gillespie arrived.”

  “Then who sent Zeke the text,” I said, “if Erle was already dead?”

  I waited. The surviving members of Macomber’s crew exchanged uncertain glances.

  “There’s only one answer,” I said. “Wayne sent Zeke the message. Zeke killed Erle Sharples, with Wayne’s help. They were working together.”

  “Fuck off,” Zeke said to me. “I didn’t shoot anybody. Wayne did it.”

  “No,” I said. “You were Erle’s guy. He turned off his cameras that morning, as expected. You were behind the gun shop, watching the electrical feed to the rear camera. I found the stripped wire, and the impressions left by the alligator clips from a meter. When the power dimmed, you knew it was safe. You went in through the back door in coveralls and paper boots and you killed Erle with the gun from Leo’s workbench. You took the burner phone Erle had been using to communicate with you. You hid the bloody clothes next door and ran to meet Fain at the coffeehouse at seven o’clock. Wayne was already parked up at the top of the dead-end street. My guess is that Wayne had vandalized that window himself the night before, to give himself a reason for being there. Wayne was your lookout. And you were going to be his. Fair trade.”

  I crossed the living room to Fain. “The text Zeke got when you were at the coffeehouse wasn’t from Erle. It was from Wayne. The go signal. You can see a long way south on Main Street from the dress store. Once Wayne saw Leo coming, he texted Zeke. Zeke would join him on Larimer Road. Wayne would follow Leo into the shop and kill him. Both Wayne and Zeke would swear they heard the shot that killed Erle. But then Gillespie wandered onto the scene and screwed their plan. They couldn’t pretend Leo had killed Erle anymore. Erle was dead, but they never got their crack at Leo.”

  “This is bullshit,” Zeke said. “I got no reason to do any of that. Pak’s my boy.”

  “Leo was a sacrifice,” I said, “to Wayne. Wayne wanted his wife back, or at least wanted her lover dead. He probably hoped to get a slice of Erle’s fortune in the bargain, if he could stave off the divorce. But he was wrong about getting the money. Maybe you misled him, Zeke.”

  “Erle was working for us, Shaw,” Macomber said. He stepped from the dining table to Zeke, a show of solidarity. “The Rally. Caton wouldn’t jeopardize that.”

  Zeke held the carbine in the crook of his elbow, the butt of the stock under his arm. As relaxed as a cat in sunshine. “Wayne killed Erle. Anything else is a fairy tale.”

  “I met Bob Bell today,” I said.

  Zeke’s stubbled face drew tight.

  “Bob Bell?” Macomber asked.

  “He’s Erle’s cousin, over in Grant County. The man who just inherited everything Erle owns. The gun shop, a couple of million that Erle snaked by marrying Cecily Desidra, and whatever other money he might have squirreled away from dealing arms to Nazi shitheads. Bell gets it all, for however long his health holds out, which might be counted in weeks.” I folded my arms. “Bob Bell is also Zeke’s foster father.”

  Everyone had turned to Zeke. Zeke was focused on me.

  “So what?” he said.

  “Everybody knows everybody here,” I said. “You told me that yourself, Zeke. You’re Bob Bell’s kid. You played football with star quarterback Wayne Beacham. You were friends, or at least you knew him well enough to bond over your shared problem, Erle Sharples. Wayne would be rich if Erle hadn’t swiped Dez’s inheritance. You’d be rich soon if Erle was dead. I’m guessing Wayne got enough drinks in him one night to sob on your shoulder about Leo screwing his wife, and you started thinking how you and the town constable could help each other. Alibi each other.”

  “Wayne confessed, dickhead.”

  “He died. He didn’t confess. I think Wayne’s death was inevitable. You weren’t going to trust him to keep quiet about Erle’s murder, especially once he missed the chance to kill Leo in return. You weren’t going to share Erle’s money, either, no matter what you might have told him. Wayne was always going to be your fall guy.”

  I pointed to Fain. “The bloody clothes were left where they would be found eventually. You stumbled on them first.”

  “It was odd, the clothes dumped in plain sight like that,” Fain mused. “I said that to you at the time.”

  “Hey, I heard what the cops found, too,” Zeke said. “Wayne’s fucking footprints in the boots. That’s conclusive.”

  “Prints from a worn pair of dress shoes,” I said. “Not the spit-and-polish pride that the constable usually showed. That was the second thing, after Erle’s missing cell phone, that seemed out of place to me. Wayne’s body had dirty shoes on a sharp dress uniform. You’d been thinking about framing Wayne for a while, but you didn’t think hard enough.

  “It’s not tough to guess the rest. When the time came, you gave Wayne a drink with a couple of his prescription Halcion ground up into it. The rest of the pills washed down his throat after. Drive him out to Dez’s house and set him up there with the note. It couldn’t have been hard to get copies of his unusual handwriting. Who would check that close? Any shakiness could be chalked up to the drugs and booze.”

  “You guys aren’t buying this crap.” Zeke looked around.

  “But you are gonna be rich,” Rigo said to Zeke from his place by the fire. “Right? I keep getting stuck on why you didn’t tell us about this family connection with Erle before.”

  “Who had the idea for Leo to be your plant at Erle’s Gun Shop?” I said.

  “Zeke,” said Rigo.

  I turned to Fain. “Who suggested that you and Zeke meet that morning at the coffeehouse, where Wayne would be in plain sight?”

  Fain kept his eyes on Zeke. Same answer.

  “None of that means anything,” Zeke snarled.

  “Leo means something,” Rigo said. “Daryll did, too. Maybe none of this last week would have gone down like it did without you.”

  Fain hissed, not entirely from pain.

  “If Shaw is right, you used me to set up Leo,” he said. “Used me to try and murder him. And you’ve told us a dozen times in the past week how Shaw couldn’t be trusted. That he might flip Pak to turn us in. Poison dripped in our ears.”

  “There’s an easy way to clear the air,” Macomber said. “Caton, give us your cell phone. The one with the text from Erle, telling you it was safe to go to the gun shop. If that checks out, so do you.”

  Zeke scoffed. “I destroyed that. After Erle died, it would be stupid to keep it around. Who are you going to believe?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said, taking
out my phone. “Fain can give me the cell numbers. I’ve got a friend who will chase down the records. Times and content of every text between Zeke and Erle. We’ll check Wayne’s messages, too. I’ll bet he got a little careless. Maybe even incriminating.”

  “You’re well connected,” Fain said.

  “I wasn’t always a soldier,” I reminded him.

  Zeke was nearly as pale as Fain. His eyes flicked between me and Rigo. Rigo’s hands were empty. Mine, too, except for my phone.

  “It’s not true,” he said.

  I started dialing.

  “He’s lying,” Zeke said, turning to the general. “He’s a fucking outsider.”

  “We’ll know soon enough,” said Macomber, his hands on his hips.

  Zeke practically vibrated with frustration and fury. A pine knot popped in the fireplace.

  With that same fluid motion as his quick draw, Zeke spun and shouldered the carbine and pointed it at my chest. Metal tap-tapped on metal, his trigger finger reflexively pulling a rapid-fire burst until his mind caught up with a hard fact.

  “Empty,” Rigo said, patting his pocket where he’d placed the rounds from the carbine.

  Zeke stared at him, looking almost hurt.

  “You’d have had to kill us all,” Fain said to him. “But you knew that.”

  Zeke’s eyes cut to the table, and the line of waiting pistols.

  “Fuck it,” he said, and dropped the carbine. His hand was halfway to the nearest Glock when General Macomber shot him above the ear with a compact pistol he’d drawn from the small of his back. Zeke’s head snapped to the left and he fell to his knees atop the carbine. As if going to sleep, he leaned slowly to one side, falling against the wall and sliding to rest facedown.

  Forty-Nine

  Rigo had his own Glock in his hand. My Browning was already leveled. But Macomber had beaten us both to the draw. We all stared at Zeke Caton’s prone body. His arms lay at his sides, almost in a posture of standing at attention. Blood dribbled out from his shaggy hair to drip on the gray flagstone floor. The flow was already diminishing.

  “I’m sorry, General,” Fain said.

  “So am I,” said Macomber. He placed the little pistol on the table and sat down heavily.

  Rigo holstered his weapon. “Goddamn.” He looked at me. “When you told me your suspicions up on the hill, I thought you were dog nuts.”

  “I wasn’t sure,” I said. “I had to see if Zeke would crack.”

  Fain hissed again. When the pain subsided, he managed to talk through gasps. “Shaw. Do you truly have a way to check those cell records?”

  “No.”

  He exhaled. “I don’t know whether to thank you or curse you.”

  “Thank him,” Macomber said. “If Caton was willing to let Pak die, I don’t know what he might have decided about the rest of us. We’ve committed enough crimes to hang one another. Without trust we are lost.”

  “If we live,” Rigo said. He picked up the dropped carbine, popped its magazine, and withdrew a fistful of rounds from his pocket to begin reloading.

  “I won’t,” said Fain. “I can’t even stand. But there’s time for the three of you to get away. To make sure Aaron and Schuyler are safe.”

  “We’re not leaving you,” Macomber said. Rigo agreed, without looking up from his task.

  Fain took a moment to breathe. “Gentlemen, I respect the hell out of each of you. I include you in that, Shaw. I took you for a coward; I’m truly sorry. But I’m done. If I go into the hospital or even turn up in a morgue, there will be questions you can’t answer. That the Rally can’t answer.”

  “The Rally is finished, Captain,” said Macomber, looking at where Zeke lay. The firelight gave the body the illusion of movement. “I built it on sand. It has to crumble.”

  “So rebuild. Start it again the right way. Call it my dying wish, if it helps.”

  “John.”

  “Go to hell,” Fain said through gritted teeth. “Sir.”

  “This place isn’t secure, General,” said Rigo, as he moved to check the street from the front window.

  “Go,” I said to Macomber. “Protect your family. I’ll stay with Fain.”

  “Pointless,” Fain started to say, but I shot him a glance that said, Wait.

  “What do you need?” Rigo said, motioning to the table.

  “Hand me one of the shotguns,” I said, “and leave the NOD.”

  Rigo and I went out the back and circled the house in opposite directions, around to the front to make sure the road was clear. I covered him as he started the general’s Lincoln and drove it across the arid lawn to the front door.

  “Good luck, Sergeant,” Macomber said. I shook his proffered hand without taking my eyes off the road. “I don’t know how to thank you, or what I can do—”

  “Do what Fain said. Rebuild. You’ve got a whole wall full of guys and their families who need the Rally. It may be tainted now, but it doesn’t have to stay that way.”

  I moved back to the open doorway and waited as the Town Car swung in a circle over the lawn and onto the pavement. Macomber got in. Rigo and I nodded to each other through the windshield.

  In a moment the Lincoln was out of sight, heading away from the heart of Mercy River. I watched until I was sure no one was following it, and then slipped back into the little cave of the house.

  One dead man on the floor. Another soon to follow in the chair. Fain seemed to have burned the last of his reserves in the excitement. His breath was even, but his head lolled in semiconsciousness.

  I bolted the back door and checked that the blinds were closed at every window, and turned out all the lights except one small lamp near Fain. By the time I returned to the living room, he’d come to.

  “You’re not here to guard me,” he said in a whisper.

  “No.”

  “Revenge, then? For Seattle? I don’t know what you could do to me—”

  “No. Disinformation is what I had in mind.”

  He looked blank for a moment. Then a sickly grin unfurled on his sallow face. “You’ll leave me for Jaeger. So that I’ll tell him—what?”

  “That I betrayed you all. That I’m on my way to Pronghorn to dig up the armored car money from where you stashed it and drop General Macomber into the mine shaft at the same time.” I glanced toward Zeke Caton’s corpse. “That should help sell the story.”

  Fain made a noise. A kind of laughter. “I’m understanding better why your COs wanted you back in their platoons. To keep a close eye on you.”

  “Can you do it?” I said.

  “I’ll stay alive for a full month, if it means screwing Jaeger. But get me a piece of paper. I’ll write a note that will tell him the money’s at the mine. Just in case.”

  I put a pillow and a large book on his lap, so Fain didn’t have to move his hand much to scrawl. In ten minutes, he’d finished, and his head drifted back onto the chair. I collected the shotgun and Daryll’s rifle. As an afterthought, I took a hatchet from a bucket of kindling wood on the hearth. The last thing I did before leaving was open the front door wide. Encouraging visitors to come right in.

  Fain raised a hand off the chair’s armrest as I passed him.

  “Go with God, Shaw,” he said.

  Tomorrow, maybe. Tonight I had too many sins ahead of me.

  Fifty

  Hollis called me at one minute after midnight, just as I reached the stretch of road outside Pronghorn that followed the river. I couldn’t see it in the dark, not even by the bright starlight, but I could hear water rushing over rocks and swirling against the tree roots at its shore. The river must be running high and fast for the sound to carry over the Barracuda’s throaty engine, and the wind whistling past the open window.

  I pulled over to the side of the cracked pavement and killed the lights. It took me an extra second. I wasn’t used to the controls in my new car yet.

  “Hollis?” I said.

  “Van. I’m never sure if this time of night is late or early fo
r you,” he said.

  “You called it right tonight.” I stepped out and took the shotgun with me. “Any later and I wouldn’t have a signal.”

  “You’re working, then. Good, good.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Not on this end. Just . . . after all of the bedlam during the past few days, I felt the need to check in. Premonitions, maybe. Are you well?”

  I walked down to the river’s edge, feeling the grind of rocks shifting under my soles. The water was visible only through the absence of light. A wide dark ribbon that made its speed known by sound and by the smell of clean droplets thrown into the air. I took in a lungful. Breathing hardly hurt at all.

  “I’m all right,” I said to Hollis. “My chest is healing.”

  “That’s a blessing. Luce asked after you.”

  “Tell her I’ve recovered. Scratch that, I’ll call her myself.” I could apologize—again—for being a jackass.

  Hollis chuckled. “It’s just as well. I never—”

  “Hang on.”

  I set down the phone and listened closely. The night enveloped a lot of sounds. Splashing water. Frogs in the marshes. The slow tick of the car’s engine cooling. Nothing else.

  “I’m back,” I said.

  “And busy, right. I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Hollis.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did Dono ever kill anyone?”

  The pause was long enough for me to count five ticks of the engine.

  “Why do you ask?” Hollis said. “No, never mind—not the point. And it’s over the phone, for heaven’s sake.” There was another pause. I let him think.

  “You don’t speak much about your time overseas,” he said finally. “Not to me, at any rate. I’m not sure which of us that’s meant to shield, but no matter. Your grandfather, now. He was much the same. Close to the vest.”

  “About when he was young.”

  “About a lot of things. His family in Belfast. His life during the Troubles. I learned more about those times from your grandmother in the short years I knew her than I did in the decades I was Dono’s friend.”