by K. C. McRae
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Shotgun Moon © 2013 K. C. McRae
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First e-book edition © 2013
E-book ISBN: 978-0-7387-3734-8
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Cover design by Lisa Novak
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dedication
For Bob and Mark
acknowledgments
It truly takes an amazing number of people to get a book into print, and I’m so very grateful to everyone who was involved with this one. The hardworking team at Midnight Ink includes Terri Bischoff, Courtney Colton, Bethany Onsgard, Connie Hill, and Lisa Novak. Without them this would just be a pile of paper on the corner of my desk. My writing buddies Mark Figlozzi and Bob Trott provided advice, detailed feedback, and unstinting support, especially for this book—thanks, guys! The ladies of the Old Town Writing Group—Janet Freeman, Dana Masden, Laura Pritchett, Laura Resau, and Carrie Visintainer—keep me on the straight and narrow, make me laugh, and ask the tough questions. Bizango.net is responsible for my awesome website. And thank heavens Kevin Brookfield is my forever cheerleader, inspiration, and moral support when I’m pretty sure I have no freaking idea how to write a book.
Additional thanks go to Debbie Main and Joe Werner for name suggestions. Maurice Robkin gave me loads of information about guns (pardon the pun), and Leslie Budewitz answered my legal questions early on. The folks at Washington Outdoor Women taught me to tie flies and cast, and Caitlin Hartford taught me how to ride western. Anything I got wrong is my own fault, not theirs.
Then there are the people who read the book—or parts thereof—that contained the seeds for this one. They include Tom Martin, Jeff Weaver, Ed Cattrell, Rod and Nita Lindsay, Margot Ayer, Kevin Fansler, Stacey Kollman, Jody Ivy, Mindy Ireland, Tamera Manzanares, Marjorie Reynolds, Stasa Fritz, and Aimee Jolie.
Finally, let’s not forget the real McCoys—my cousins Gary and Marsha, from whom I borrowed the name, and my great-grandmother, Essie McCoy.
one
Daylight beckoned from the far end of the dark, cement-walled corridor. It seared her pupils, blinded her to what lay beyond. But she strode forward. Eager. Seeking the light’s promise. Then the great metal gate clanged open, and Merry McCoy stepped through to the dusty asphalt outside for the first time in four years.
Her eyes adjusted. A yellow, placarded cab waited fifty feet away, the driver craning his neck to look at her. Ignoring him, she tipped her face to the relentless Texas sun as if the exact same light didn’t shine down on the prison compound behind her.
“You got a place to stay?”
The guard accompanying her wasn’t a bad sort. Not as bad as most of the others. But Merry wouldn’t be adding the woman to her Christmas card list. Or anyone else from inside those high walls, for that matter.
Merry nodded.
“Where?”
“None of your goddamn business.” That felt good. Really good. Merry allowed a smile to curl her lips and turned to face her former keeper.
The guard scowled. Too bad, Merry thought. Nothing she could do about No. 26492’s bad attitude this time. The woman made a noise in her throat and went back inside. As the gate slid closed between them, their eyes met. The smile on Merry’s face hardened, then dropped. She turned back to the road.
The cloying, muggy heat pressed against her cheeks. Soon she’d be home in the dry clime of western Montana, on the family ranch outside the little town of Hazel. Some things might be bigger in Texas, but they didn’t call where she came from Big Sky Country for nothing. The Last Best Place. The only place she ever wanted to be again.
If only Mama could have been there to welcome her back. Anger flared again at the thought that cancer took her while Merry had been locked away. She hadn’t been there to help her mother during the long illness, to be there during her final days, to properly say goodbye. The funeral had been well-attended, but Elsa McCoy’s only daughter hadn’t been there for that either.
But now, just after turning thirty-two, she was out. Mama’s sister, Shirlene Danner, would be waiting for her at the airport in Missoula tomorrow. That would do. That would most certainly do.
It had to.
Plucking at the shoulder of her T-shirt where her cellmate had soaked it with goodbye tears, she straightened her shoulders and strode toward the taxi. She’d leave behind the wasted years in the huge concrete institution. She’d eat whatever she wanted. Get up when she wanted. Go to bed when she wanted. And only be nice to people she actually liked.
She got in and told the driver to take her to the nearest Motel 6. As the car began to roll, sudden fear stabbed Merry’s chest. What did the people she’d known her whole life think of her now? She’d heard her ex-husband had lived in Hazel for a while after she’d been sentenced. Who had he talked to? What had he told them?
It didn’t matter. Hazel was her home.
Merry stared at the seat in front of her and focused on good memories. The tart-sweet flavor of chokecherry jam on white bread. Green tomato mincemeat pie. Cottonwood fluff floating through warm air, gathering next to curbs and swirling behind passing cars. The perfume of the dry, packed forest floor in the Bitterroot Mountains. The calls of bold camp robbers, tiny striped chipmunks and querulous Stellar’s jays. The sound of wind blowing through pine needles and yellow grass.
Soon. She’d be home soon.
———
Aunt Shirlene drove her old pickup down the gravel ranch road and stopped in front of the house. Merry gave her a quick hug and grabbed her duffel from the bed of the truck. Angles plied her aunt’s face, which was striking if not conventionally attractive. The nose provided a hawkish air, laugh lines graced her gray eyes, and fine wrinkles from smoking all of her adult life radiated from her lips. Her hair shone the same bottled Titian blonde it always had, only now it was cut quite short. She’d kept her birdlike figure over the years.
Shirlen
e leaned her head out of the open window. “You’re coming for dinner on Sunday.” It wasn’t a question.
“I promise,” Merry said. “But for the next few days I’m probably going to stick around here. Get acclimated.” She wanted a few days to settle in by herself before braving the rest of the world.
“Of course, hon. You call if you need anything.” She put the truck into gear and waved as she pulled away.
Merry watched her aunt leave, eventually turning west onto the county blacktop. Then she turned and climbed the porch steps, opened the door with the key Shirlene had given her, and walked into the living room. During the whole drive to Hazel, her anxious anticipation to see the house where she’d grown up had increased with each mile marker flashing past. But now she stopped, swamped by the juxtaposition of the familiar irrevocably changed.
They were all dead now. First Daddy. Then Drew. And now Mama.
The furniture was all the same, from the dark green velveteen couch with the crocheted cream-and-rose afghan draped across the back, to the regal sideboard that sat against the opposite wall, handed down from her mother’s grandmother. Four well-worn bookshelves filled the remaining wall space. Silky fringes ringed the bottom of the lampshade. But her knowledge of these things was a hollow intimacy. This house no longer had a soul. Absence rode the air.
Daddy had died of a heart attack when Merry was seventeen. Her older brother Drew had been long gone from home by the time he died, working on a freighter that ran up and down the eastern seaboard. It caught fire and went under, taking Drew and several other crewmembers with it. There was no burial, for there was no body. Her mother had arranged a memorial service in the highest meadow on the family ranch, and then life had disconcertingly picked up its usual rhythm. Merry had expected death to have more impact on the living.
And now, in this empty house, she realized it had more impact than she could have ever imagined.
———
Lauri Danner looked up the address in the phone book: Barbie Barnes, 511 E. 8th Street. She waited until after sunset—well after nine o’clock so far north in late June—before she drove by. A white picket fence surrounded the small white house. A tidy porch looked out on a postage-stamp lawn. Unbearably traditional. Barbie doll wasn’t home. No one was home, but the door was unlocked. How convenient. The perfect opportunity to further her campaign to get Clay back. Fingering the knife in her pocket, she slipped inside and closed the door quickly behind herself.
———
Later, back home, Lauri couldn’t sleep. She lay awake, anxious and angry, watching the fitful dance of light and shadow cast by the two candles burning on her bedside stand. Had Barbie returned home to find what Lauri had done? Or was she spending the night over at Clay’s? It would be easy enough to find out. A few peeks in the windows. Just to see. And if Barbie doll wasn’t there? Well then, Lauri could go ahead with the other part of her plan. Clay had always been a night owl, staying up late unless he had to work the early shift. Her spirits rose at the thought.
Passing her mother’s bedroom, she heard light snoring. A heavy sleeper, Shirlene wouldn’t hear the Honda start. Not that it mattered. Lauri was old enough to stay out late, or not come home at all. But she found it easier to avoid the questions. Mom didn’t really nag that much, but she kept trying to talk to her. Like Daddy had before he died. But it wasn’t the same with Mom. She didn’t understand like Daddy had. And now she kept talking about her cousin being back. Merry’s coming to dinner. Be nice to Merry.
Screw Merry and her bad luck. Lauri had a life to live.
Almost midnight. Empty streets and parking lots, except for the gamblers and drinkers making the most of a Friday night. Lauri guided her little Honda down the street where Clay lived, parking two blocks away. She’d dressed in black. Black stretch pants, ankle boots, a silky long-sleeved T-shirt, and a cute little baseball cap with “Girl Power” stenciled in pink across the front. She slid her keys inside her sock to prevent them from jingling and kept to the shadows as she worked her way toward the duplex. Little moonlight reached the neighborhood, but streetlights shone down at regular intervals, and bright fixtures illuminated some of the doorways. Their reflections littered the wet streets.
A dog barked behind a fence. Adrenaline surged through her extremities as she hurried past. She heard the pop of bottle rockets, and from the next street over came the crackle of a much larger firework. Kids practicing for the Fourth. She’d better be careful; some tight ass would soon call the cops.
At the edge of the driveway running along the right side of the duplex, she paused. His pickup was parked next to the house, and behind it sat an older primer-gray van. She squinted at the dented passenger door. She hadn’t realized Clay and Denny knew each other. That couldn’t be good.
She slipped between the vehicles, sidled along the front of the house. Blue light from the television flickered against the drawn living room curtains. Standing on tiptoe she could see over the sill, but not through the heavy fabric. A brighter sliver gaped at one end
of the window. Craning her neck rewarded her with the view of a shoulder and the corner of the television screen through the gap. She recognized the shampoo commercial playing.
Was the shoulder Clay’s? He leaned forward, and she saw it was Denny. A woman sitting next to him got up and walked toward the bathroom, long black hair swinging behind her. Barbie doll had much shorter hair. Lauri had been worried that she’d moved in with Clay but now knew she hadn’t because Lauri had been right there in Barbie’s own little white house earlier. She’d read the mushy birthday card from Clay. Seen the waterbed in her bedroom. A smile crossed her face as she thought about what she’d done.
She didn’t bother looking in the unlit kitchen window. She moved around to the back of the house, to Clay’s bedroom. Lower to the ground, this window had easier access. Open to the night, only a screen separated her from the dark interior. Moving close, she peered inside. The red digital glow of the clock on the nightstand revealed the faint outline of a form on the bed. A single form. Good. She kept her breath shallow, silent. He was right there. He was sleeping right there on the other side of that window.
Sleeping. If only she’d come earlier. He couldn’t deny their chemistry. He couldn’t deny the way she’d make him feel. She wanted to do things to him that would make him forget that Barbie doll. Completely, totally forget her. It would only take one more time. That was all she needed.
———
The first night Merry slept on the porch. Then for four days she’d spent as much time as she could outside. The freedom to do so was one reason, but she was also reacquainting herself with the land. With the sense of her old, yet new, home. Maybe if she could touch the past firmly enough she’d be able to figure out how to make a future.
Outbuildings marched in a clockwise arc northeast of the ranch house, which faced almost due north. Farthest out, the hay barn-turned-shop rose into the clear blue above. One step nearer, the big red horse barn towered almost as large. Then the defunct chicken coop, and closest to the house, the garage constructed of unpainted wood so weathered it glinted silver in the late morning sun. Prairie grass turning from green to yellow ran out toward the blue-gray Sapphire Mountains to the east and to the foothills of the Bitterroot Range to the west. With her eyes fixed on that vista, breathing the sweet dry air felt like inhaling the sky.
The insistent trilling of the phone pulled Merry back inside. The screen door banged shut behind her as she grabbed the telephone off the kitchen counter.
Aunt Shirlene’s cigarette-etched voice rasped down the line. “Hey, it’s me. I’m down at the police station with Lauri.”
A tiny icicle of fear slid up Merry’s spine. “Why? What happened?”
“She … oh, God, you’re not going to believe this. She found Clay Lamente dead this morning. Sergeant Hawkins is getting ready to take her statement.”
“Jesus. Is she okay?”
“She’s a mess.” A pause. “I don’t know—there’s probably nothing you can do. I just thought …”
“Do you want me to come down there?” Pleasepleaseplease don’t ask me to go into the police station.
“Well, it’s not like she did it, or anything.”
Merry’s temples throbbed. “Did what?”
“Clay was shot.”
Shit. “Call a lawyer. Right now.”
“What?”
“You can’t let her talk to the police without a lawyer.”
“You make it sound like they’re accusing her of something. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong—”
“So was I, Shirlene. Wrong place, wrong time. Right side of the law. Look what happened to me.”
Not that she’d been thinking about anything except survival. Zeke had wanted to kill her.
Several long seconds passed in silence.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Shirlene said. “I wasn’t thinking. You just never mind about all this, and I’ll call you when we get home.”
“Call a lawyer. I mean it.”
“The only lawyer I know is Eric Morris, and he only does wills and probate. It’ll be fine. This isn’t Texas.”
Like Texas had the monopoly on wrongful convictions. “Shirlene—”
“I’ll call when we get home.” She hung up.
Merry cradled the phone. She closed her eyes, leaned her forehead against the cool side of the refrigerator. Through the open window the liquid call of a red-winged blackbird beckoned from a fencepost.
She turned so her cheek lay against the smooth freezer door.
“Shit.”
She swept her keys off the counter and into her fist. By the time the screen door slammed behind her, she was behind the wheel of Mama’s old K5 Blazer.
two
Following the retreating shimmer of early summer swelter rising from the highway pavement, Merry broke the speed limit all the way to town. But when she reached the end of Main Street and pulled to the curb in front of the Hazel Police Station, she switched off the engine and sat unmoving in the heat. Sweat trickled between her breasts.
