Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  The sun was fully over the hills now. Despite the cloudless sky, the day would be cool. I sat and looked out over the ravine. Birds had begun to settle on the rocks and brush near the Tahoe. Cautious, but interested. Attracted by the smell.

  Jaeger saw me watching.

  “My men?” he said.

  “No.”

  As if agreeing, a crow cawed below us, chasing off some of its smaller competitors.

  Jaeger moved. Bending his leg first, then his arm. He pushed himself onto his side, and then onto his belly. Inch by inch, he turned so that he was facing up the slope. It took many long minutes. He got to his hands and knees, somehow. Then he began to crawl.

  It was not a fast crawl, but it was forward movement. I watched from my place on the stone. He made it around eighteen feet before he stopped for the first time. A racking cough shook his body, and he was still for a long while. A wounded version of his preternatural calm. I thought he was done. There might be all manner of parts broken and hemorrhaging inside of him, getting worse with every motion.

  He continued. Ten feet more before he stopped again. Only three on his next try. The sun was much higher in the sky now.

  I could end it. Pinch his nose closed and cut his suffering short.

  That would be more than he’d given Daryll. Or Fain. Neither of them had been granted a fast trip into the dark. I stayed where I was, and watched.

  Around noon, Jaeger sagged sideways. I stood up and slowly climbed the slope to where he lay. Dried blood speckled his lips. The green eyes were dull and half-lidded. Behind me, a wing flapped against the black rock with scrabbling haste.

  I pulled myself back up to the road, coiled the rope, and went on my way.

  The forsaken town could accept a few more ghosts.

  So could I.

  Fifty-Two

  Neutral ground again, just barely. The border of Luce’s domain, near the Morgen and her apartment above the bar, a stone’s throw from Pike Place. I sat on a bench in Steinbrueck Park, my back to the fountain that looked like whale flukes, watching the ship traffic on Elliott Bay.

  My cup of coffee and a sack lunch I hadn’t gotten around to eating rested next to me, on a weighty stack of Portland Tribune and Seattle Times editions from the last week. I could have read the same stories online, or similar coverage from a dozen other news sources nationwide, but I liked the tactile sensation of turning the pages of the local papers. There was an implied truth to the new facts uncovered each day, and more thought given to the conjecture. Many facts, and at least as much guesswork.

  The bodies of Zeke Caton and John Fain had been discovered in General Macomber’s home on Sunday. Macomber, it was reported, had left Mercy River the day before and had been letting Fain use his house. That story broke in the Portland paper as the investigation into the armored car robbery in Seattle was finally pushed off the front page of the Times by a burgeoning teacher’s strike.

  On Tuesday morning, a third bit of news: hikers in central Oregon came across the wreckage of a Chevy Tahoe with four dead men nearby, the apparent result of a tragic accident. Recovery efforts were initially hampered by mud from heavy rains the two days prior. By that evening, however, the Griffon County Sheriff was on the horn to the Portland press, trumpeting that nearly two million dollars in HaverCorp National delivery satchels had been found in the destroyed Tahoe, and that the FBI would be stepping in.

  The three stories combined like wind and clouds and heat forming a tornado. The Feds claimed that the HaverCorp robberies had already been linked to a small but highly militant supremacist organization called the First Riders—Jaeger’s coat and fake ID we’d left in the armored truck had undoubtedly helped them reach that conclusion—and that the bodies found in the ravine were members of the same group.

  The Bureau’s special agent in charge also stated that the FBI had connected the murders of Zeke and Fain to the dead men found at the Tahoe. I had to do some guesswork myself on that. The papers had mentioned that both bodies at Macomber’s house had been shot in the head. Maybe Jaeger had finished the job he’d started with Fain, using the same revolver I’d taken from his pocket.

  Journalist and police attention shifted to General Macomber, who had not yet made a public statement. One reporter cited an unnamed source in law enforcement, who had theorized that the skinheads had been on the run and desperate after the debacle in Seattle. Addresses near Mercy River had turned up in searches on previous residences for a couple of the busted First Riders. The Riders may have been seeking to add to their Seattle score with the cash donations gleaned from the three-day Ranger Rally.

  That theory had some holes in it, I knew. There was no mention of Fain’s original gunshot wound or why Jaeger and his men had been driving up a remote butte in central nowhere, or how the skinheads had even known about the Rally—the background and goals of which earned its own sidebar story in the Tribune, free and gushingly positive publicity for Macomber’s cause. But no one was going on record with a better tale.

  I wondered how much leeway the Feds would be allowed to run down those open questions. Internal pressure might be applied to staple Jaeger’s file together with the HaverCorp investigation and put the cases to rest. The cash had been recovered and the bad guys neutralized. As much as the cops preferred things tidy, running down every loose end would strain the overtime budget.

  At least one person wasn’t fully satisfied. Angela Roussa—formerly Deputy Roussa, now the newly promoted detective lieutenant of Griffon County—had let it be known through Ganz that she would appreciate my accompanying Leo when he returned to Mercy River to make his formal statement as part of dismissing the charges against him. She wanted me to clarify a few facts about my movements during the past week.

  I didn’t have to tell Ganz my answer to that. If I ever laid eyes on Mercy River again, it would be from the window of a jetliner at twenty thousand feet. Just one dark speck in a vast range of hills and fields.

  Leo and Dez had called me from the highway somewhere between Leo’s family home in West Jordan and Bryce Canyon, where they were leading his parents on an impromptu camping trip. I caught them up on the sorry fates of John Fain and Zeke Caton and Jaeger.

  Dez wept at the revelation that her estranged husband hadn’t murdered Erle Sharples after all. She said she didn’t believe Wayne would have gone through with the plan to kill Leo. Then she hedged her words slightly, saying it would be better if she believed that. We’d never know the truth, so why not have faith? I agreed.

  Leo’s anger with me had ebbed. We still clashed on whether I should have returned to Mercy River alone. But he’d been keeping an eye on the news, too, and had seen photos taken by locals of the destroyed Tahoe, and of Oregon Search and Rescue extracting the dead men in and around it. I thought I had detected some relief in Leo’s voice at having missed their final moments. Maybe he’d heard something different in mine for having been there.

  The breeze gusted, lifting the top newspaper pages and threatening to dump my coffee. I rescued the cup and offered the thick stack to a homeless guy in three layers of coats who’d shambled past more than once, as part of what seemed to be his endless patrol of the park. He’d gazed longingly at the papers, maybe for reading material, maybe for insulation. The autumn air carried the first snap of winter. I threw in the sack lunch.

  An oil tanker trundled along the bay, headed for the calm waters of the open Sound. It was nearly out of view when Luce stepped off Western Avenue and crossed the park. She wore the same coat of deep red as when I’d seen her at the 5-Spot two weeks ago, with a soft white scarf looped around her neck, its ends tucked tidily into the coat. She angled her face to the left a few degrees so that the breeze swept her loose hair out of her way.

  “Thanks for coming,” I said when she was close.

  “Of course.” She sat down on the bench, keeping her hands in her pockets. “Cold today. How does this air feel on your lungs?”

  “My chest is fine. It looks like someb
ody painted it with yellow and green markers, but it’s healed inside.”

  “Good. I—we—were worried.”

  “That’s why I wanted to see you. To apologize. I shouldn’t have drawn you into my troubles last week. It was selfish.”

  “You didn’t even know you’d called me, Van.”

  “Not consciously. But I did, and you helped, and you didn’t ask questions. Same for Carter. You both had to make a choice and take a risk for me without knowing what you were signing up for. That’s a crappy position to be in. I’m sorry.”

  Luce hunched her shoulders. Half a shrug, half against the chill.

  “Later that night,” she said, “when all anyone at the bar could talk about was the armored car and the shoot-out downtown and all of that, I wanted so badly to talk to you. To ask.”

  It figured that Luce would have immediately linked that day’s havoc to me. “You can ask now, if you want.”

  “No. I didn’t need to know what you’d done. Still don’t. Whatever it was, I know you had the right reasons. I’d just wanted to make sure that you were safe.”

  We both sat for a moment. This close, even with the breeze, I could catch a hint of the rose-scented skin cream Luce used each morning. If I cared to try.

  “Leo called you for help when he was afraid,” Luce said finally, “and you called me.”

  “If my skull hadn’t been full of cotton—”

  “When I found you in your truck, I thought you might be dead. You woke up when I opened the door and spoke to me.” She wouldn’t meet my gaze. “You said something before you told me to call Hollis.”

  “I told you that I loved you.”

  Luce looked stricken. “You remember that?”

  “No. But it’s what I would have said.”

  “God.” She rubbed her fingers over her brow. “This is crazy.”

  “Carter’s a good guy,” I said.

  “He is. I’m going to marry him.”

  “You know yourself better than anybody I’ve ever met, Luce. If you say he’s the one, I don’t doubt it.”

  “That’s not the question. The question is what I should do about you. I don’t want you to be out of my life completely.”

  “But.”

  “There will be trouble,” she said. “Again.”

  “That’s also not a question.” I took a breath of chill air. “I can’t lead a regular life. Maybe I might have once, and maybe someday the chance will come around again. But it’s not who I am now.”

  “Well, that’s just giving up. You’re better than that.”

  I had a sudden image of Jaeger’s dead eyes, those shards of clouded green glass.

  “I try to be,” I said. “It’s not always possible.”

  “So, what? We cut all ties with each other? Can you do that?”

  “My heart already broke once this month.”

  Luce laughed, even as her own eyes glistened. “That’s terrible.”

  “And true.”

  I looked out at the bay. A towering anvil of clouds was rolling slowly in off the water, pushing the layer of lighter cumulus ahead.

  “I can love you and let you go,” I said. “You can care about me and let me go, too.”

  “Don’t pretend you’re doing that for me. I don’t need some noble gesture.”

  “No. This is better for me. Safer. Everybody gains more than they lose.”

  Luce’s gaze on me was almost tangible.

  “We could choose to see it that way,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “Then this is goodbye.”

  “Yes,” I said. And then, without any conscious decision from me to say them, the words came out. “For now.”

  Luce gave my arm a squeeze. “I can take for now. I don’t accept forever.”

  I nodded.

  She stood up. “Good luck, Van.”

  “Good life, Luce.”

  She walked away, toward her home. I didn’t watch her go. Instead I studied the rain clouds as they built in size and force. The coming squall would make land before nightfall.

  Luce was right. I didn’t have to think of it as forever. No choice was irrevocable. Except what I’d done to Jaeger and his men.

  Within half an hour, the first drops tapped the cement paving. They sent the few remaining people in the park hurrying for shelter. I watched a shy flicker of lightning touch the upper strata of clouds and listened to the gentle drumroll that followed. More drops fell, more urgently. The next electric flash was bolder, reaching with long sharp fingers toward the bay.

  I left the park to the storm. Night would be here soon. I’d take Hollis up on his offer of a lot of food and even more whiskey.

  Soon after, I’d try my luck at sleeping. And find out what kind of dreams awaited.

  Acknowledgments

  My sincere thanks to the following people for letting Mercy River flow:

  To my agent, Lisa Erbach Vance, of the Aaron Priest Literary Agency, for lighting the path ahead and pointing out the roots and stones which might otherwise trip me up. Her guidance is invaluable.

  To my editor, Lyssa Keusch, for her tremendous encouragement and razor-sharp insights into ways to make the tale better. And the whole team at William Morrow: our terrific publisher, Liate Stehlik, Pamela Jaffee, Kaitlin Harri, Richard Aquan, Dave Cole, and Mireya Chiriboga, along with those behind the scenes I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting. You guys are fantastic.

  To editor Angus Cargill at Faber & Faber, with Ruth O’Loughlin, Josh Smith, and Alex Kirby, for their great skill and support. I hugely appreciate my good luck in working with such a deservedly historic house.

  To Caspian Dennis of the Abner Stein Agency, for stamping Van Shaw’s passport to the UK, and for making that journey both good business and a real pleasure.

  To Jerrilyn Farmer, and the rest of our Saturday morning group—Beverly Graf, Alexandra Jamison, and John McMahon. A brilliant and wickedly talented bunch.

  And the technical experts: Christian Hockman, Bco 1/75 Ranger Regiment, for his professional eye on everything from tactics to armament. Áine Kelly, wonderful friend, for gifting young Van with a little Irish Gaelic. Mark Pryor, mystery author and assistant DA, for lending his expertise in legal particulars. They have all made the story richer. The details that make me look smart are their doing, and I own any errors.

  My standard disclaimer: This novel is fiction, and I reserve the right to mess with jurisdictions, geography, methods, or anything else that will keep the story moving, keep the lawyers bored, and keep potentially dangerous information where and with whom it belongs. Readers familiar with central Oregon may note that I’ve taken a few features of that landscape, renamed or tweaked them, and shoved them closer together into the fictional Griffon County. Still, I encourage travelers to go and see extraordinary sites like the Newberry Volcanic Monument or Smith Rock for themselves. I tried to do them justice.

  Thanks to every reader who picked up this book and spent the time; I sincerely hope you enjoyed every page. And to every bookseller, reviewer, and fan who might have helped that reader find the book in the first place. You are an irreplaceable part of our community.

  And finally: to Amy, Mia, and Madeline, for their love and understanding in letting me live inside my head half the time. Our life together is the real adventure.

  About the Author

  A native of Seattle, GLEN ERIK HAMILTON was raised aboard a sailboat and grew up around the marinas and commercial docks and islands of the Pacific Northwest. His debut novel, Past Crimes, won the Anthony, Macavity, and Strand Critics awards, and was nominated for the Edgar, Barry, and Nero awards. He now lives in California with his family, and frequently returns to his hometown to soak up the rain.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Also by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Hard Cold Winter

  Past Crimes

  Every Day Above Ground

  Copyright

  This is a work
of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  mercy river. Copyright © 2019 by Glen Erik Hamilton. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  first edition

  Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

  Cover photograph © David Paire / Arcangel

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Digital Edition MARCH 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-256741-3

  Print ISBN: 978-0-06-256743-7

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