Now I would’ve liked someone’s company besides the radio.
Jake called on my way into Eagle River after he’d heard from John-John that Sophie was so distraught over Penny’s disappearance that she’d gone straight to bed.
He advised me to turn around.
I kept right on driving.
The shades were drawn at Sophie’s house. There weren’t a bunch of cars on the street. Was no one here supporting them? After all Sophie had done for her grandkids?
John-John wouldn’t let me past the front door. “She doesn’t want visitors, Mercy.”
“But I’m …” Family.
Wasn’t I? Sophie had been an enormous part of my life, seen me through some bad times, and I wanted to return the favor.
The raw anger on John-John’s face indicated I’d be wasting my breath, trying to convince him to let me in.
“Fine, I’ll go. But you’d better tell her I was here.”
He looked off into the distance, his jaw set so rigidly the tendons in his neck stood out. Then he nodded and closed the door in my face.
• • •
On my way to work Tuesday morning I’d just turned off the gravel onto the blacktop when I saw Shay standing beside his vehicle, parked on the shoulder.
What the hell? I threw my truck in park and jumped from the cab, clenching my teeth against the wind slicing through my clothing. “You have an aversion to my ranch? It’s just three miles up the road.”
Shay wore dark sunglasses. “Couldn’t chance slurping coffee with the people in your household, Mercy.”
People, meaning Dawson. “This couldn’t wait until I got to the office?”
“We’re not going to the office.” He shifted his stance against his car, which was one of Shay’s few tells.
Bad news. My stomach dropped to the tips of my boots. “Tell me what’s going on.”
“Another body. This one ID’d by Officer Spotted Bear as Penny Pretty Horses.”
Blood whooshed in my ears. “What? When?”
“An hour ago.”
“Does Sophie know? John-John? Devlin?”
“Not that I’m aware.”
I blinked at him. Cocked my head as if I’d misunderstood. “Are you serious?”
“Yes. And since, for all intents and purposes, you’re related to members of the Pretty Horses and Red Leaf families, you’ll have to ride with me to the scene and refrain from using your cell phone.”
That chapped my ass. “You think I’m gonna … Why would I want to call Sophie and give her this shitty news?” This would destroy her.
His agitation was laced with sadness. “Just get in, okay?”
I fished my cell phone out of my front pocket, shut it off, and tossed it to him. “You know it’s the only cell I’ve got. Keep it to assure yourself that I’m not making any unauthorized calls. But no way in hell am I riding with you, Agent Turnbull. I need some time to get my head on straight.”
Shay couldn’t argue with that logic. He climbed into his vehicle and pulled a U-turn, I followed him.
Penny Pretty Horses. Dead.
Then it occurred to me that Turnbull hadn’t said anything about it being a murder. Only that they’d found a body. So maybe Penny, in her drugged-up state from cancer medication, had wandered off. Or maybe she’d gotten tired of the pain and the looming death and had decided to take matters into her own hands. End her life where and how she wanted.
That fit with the arguments Sophie had been having with Penny about treatment—or the lack thereof.
Still. It made me sick. Poor Sophie. Poor John-John.
I hoped I wouldn’t be tasked with telling them the news.
Frosted bits of white swirled in the air as the sky tried hard to snow. The wind picked up, and I had to hold tight to the steering wheel to keep from blowing across the damn road.
I hated days like this. Gloomy, with just enough water in the air to turn the normally dry air humid, but without enough precipitation to make snow.
Tumbleweeds the size of compact cars drifted and bounced across the highway. The yellow metal sign warning of slippery road conditions twisted in the wind like a piece of cheap cardboard.
Mentally bitching about the weather kept my mind off what I’d be facing. Turnbull’s vehicle hung a right at the last residential street on the rez. There’d be no jurisdictional issues this time. Several emergency vehicles already lined the street.
Turnbull waited, and I noticed he’d added a heavy jacket over his clothing, the back emblazoned with FBI in enormous white letters. Before I had an attack of jacket envy, he handed me an identical coat.
“Thanks.”
“No problem. I hope to hell we aren’t out here long. I’d really like to get the body down soon.”
I looked at him. “Down?”
“The scene is behind the house. Mostly hidden from the street.”
I rounded the corner and stopped in my tracks.
I squeezed my eyes shut. Counted to ten and reopened them.
But the same grisly sight greeted me.
Penny. Naked. Hanging upside down from a tree branch. A meat hook jammed through both her Achilles tendons and chains secured around her ankles.
Just like an animal kill.
Dried blood trailed down the backs of her calves and thighs.
I forced my eyes to travel the length of her naked torso. Her arms hung down like misshapen animal limbs. Her wrists had been slit, and blood pooled in the dirt beneath her in irregular splotches. As if the wind had blown her around as she’d bled to death. Or like she’d been moving, trying to get away, trying to stop her lifeblood from slowly dripping out.
The turbanlike covering she’d worn to hide her bald head was gone, leaving her skull bare, showing where her hair had started to grow in and the patches where it hadn’t.
That turned my stomach. Penny had been so self-conscious about being bald. For her, having her head exposed would’ve been worse than being naked.
And the indignity went on.
I wanted to look away, but I forced my gaze to stay on … this. On what some sick bastard had done. Killed a woman with cancer. Stripped her, humiliated her, and hung her up like a prized kill. Slit her throat and left her to die.
Rage filled me. Then sorrow. Then a combination of both that lodged in my throat like a logjam.
Another hour passed before the members of the Emergency Response Team arrived from Rapid City. They were thorough. Which equaled slow.
A crowd gathered. The tribal cops were doing their best to contain it.
Then I heard that awful noise. One I recognized. A howl of outrage, pain, disbelief, shock, and grief. But I’d never before heard that sound coming from my friend John-John.
I heard it again, this time from Sophie. The word no, followed by a long wail. Over and over.
If I heard that sound in the wild, I’d find the animal and put it out of its misery. But I could do nothing but stand there and bear witness to their sorrow.
After five minutes of mournful keening, I looked at Shay. “How fucking much longer are you gonna leave her up in that goddamn tree?”
“Agent Gunderson—”
“Get her down or build a damn barricade around her. No one should see this. Least of all her family.”
“That’s the first smart thing I’ve heard from the FBI since we got the call,” Chief Looks Twice said.
He and Shay conferred. Then Shay finally motioned for his crew to take her down.
Because Carsten wasn’t on scene yet, I went to deal with the family.
The family. Like they weren’t my family. Like I could keep professional distance in this situation.
Sophie sat on the ground, rocking back and forth and wailing in a low-pitched tremolo, nearly catatonic in her grief.
John-John also sat on the ground. His face was stoic through the tears streaming down.
Devlin wasn’t overtly grieving. Devlin was mad. As soon as he saw me, he stomped over.
&n
bsp; “This is your fault,” he spat.
“Devlin, I’m sorry. We’re doing everything—”
“But it’ll be too late for her, won’t it? Penny is dead. Murdered. Fucking slaughtered. Just like was forecast in John-John’s vision. And just like in that vision, here you are in the thick of it. Pretending you care—”
“I do care.”
Devlin screamed obscenities at me.
I let him.
But Shay wasn’t having any of it. He got in Devlin’s face. His eyes were the coldest I’ve ever seen, and his voice cut through the bullshit spewing from Devlin like a scythe. “Stand down. Now.”
Devlin’s mouth snapped shut.
“I understand you’re grieving. But just because you’re personally acquainted with Agent Gunderson—”
“It’s her fault my sister is dead!” He pointed to me. “Look at her! She’s acting guilty because she knows it’s true.”
“One more word, Mr. Pretty Horses, and I will have you forcibly removed from the scene and locked up in the tribal jail. Don’t tempt me on this.” Shay motioned to Officer Ferguson. “If this man speaks, cuff him. If he resists arrest, use whatever level of force you need to ensure he cooperates. Understood?”
“Yes, Agent Turnbull.”
Turnbull herded me toward the street. Then he loomed over me. “Say something, Gunderson.”
I couldn’t.
“How long would you have allowed him to dress you down?”
I looked over at Sophie, rocking and crying. Then my gaze moved to John-John, staring through me, his eyes vacant with shock. I met Shay’s gaze again. “I don’t know. I just … froze.”
“There’s something else going on with them. Tell me.”
Turnbull and I had seemed to be on a sharing kick—at least from my end—since the night of Verline’s wake, so I told him what I knew of John-John’s vision. Penny’s death. My presence as the little black rain cloud of doom.
If I believed Shay wouldn’t discount it, well, I was wrong.
He towed me behind the ambulance. Then he stepped in front of me, blocking me from everyone’s view. His strong fingers circled my wrist, and he lifted my own hand in front of my face. “You see this? Is there blood on it?”
“No.”
“Did you string up your former housekeeper’s daughter like a hunting trophy?”
“No.”
“Then you can’t shoulder the blame.”
I blinked at him.
“A vision is no more relevant than a dream, Mercy. No one can assign real meaning to it. And those who claim they can have usually been smokin’ too much peyote, or hitting the firewater too hard.”
“But you’re the one who told me—”
“About your tie to the spirit world?”
I nodded.
“Not the same thing. I can understand why they didn’t call you when Penny went missing. But your tie doesn’t have a damn thing to do with someone else’s vision.”
Numb, I mumbled, “Thank you.”
“This is gonna be hard. But you can handle it.”
“Because I’m a good agent?”
Shay curled my hand into a fist before he released it. “No, because you’re a good person.”
I watched him walk away. Then I forced myself to seek out Sophie. I sat in the dirt next to her, at a loss about how to help her.
Wasn’t long before she was leaning on me. Just her head on my arm. She stopped rocking. Her tears continued to fall.
So did mine.
Finally, she wiped her nose and her eyes on her sleeve. “I’m tired, Mercy.” Her voice was a breathless rasp of defeat.
“I’m sure you’ve spent the last day without getting much rest. You want me to take you home?”
“No, John-John will need to. It’ll help him if he can fuss over me.”
“What can I do?”
I sat very still as Sophie’s back straightened and she looked me in the eyes. Her lip wobbled. She firmed it and bit off, “Find who did this to my daughter.”
“I will. I promise. And if you need anything …”
“I’ll let you know.” Sophie touched my face, almost absentmindedly, the way she used to when I was an awkward teenage girl. “How is the Sheriff?”
“Well, he hasn’t left me yet.”
She tsk-tsked. “You’re strong, Mercy. But I like that you don’t have to be so tough with him. You’re a good match. Now with Lex living there … you have a family of your own. You need that more than you know.”
This woman I should be giving comfort to … was trying to comfort me. More tears fell down my face. “I miss you.”
“Ah, I miss you, too. You and your grumpy ways.”
I blurted, “Then why did you quit?”
She patted my cheek. “Because I thought it was my job as Penny’s mother to make her last few months bearable. As much as she claimed she was getting better and the herbal medicine eased her pain, I only had to look in her eyes to know she was lying. She was dying. I just can’t believe it came to this …” She briefly closed her eyes, then those sorrow-filled black pools were back on mine. “I never put much stock in the way John-John interpreted that vision. I want you to know that had nothin’ to do with me leavin’, no matter what he says, hey.”
I held my breath.
“I believe the reason he saw the darkness surrounding you was because you’re the only one to make this right. But you’ll need to return to that dark place it took you so long to get out of, takoja. Don’t let the blackness swallow you up again.”
My skin became a mass of goose bumps.
Then Sophie was on her feet, shuffling away.
John-John spoke to her before heading toward me.
I stood and waited, my head so fucked that I felt I’d drifted to another plane of existence.
“Unci doesn’t blame you, but I do.”
And … I crash-landed right back down to earth.
“She didn’t have the vision. I did. I won’t put a rosy spin on it.”
“I will figure out who did this to your mother. Not because I need to prove that your vision painting me the big, bad monster is wrong. You seem to have forgotten I’m the good guy. Go ahead and use your anger, John-John. You’re entitled to it. But don’t direct your anger toward me. And keep one thing in mind.”
“What?”
“This may not be the end to your family troubles, but the beginning. You might not like what I turn up when I really start to dig.”
“Don’t get dirt on my grandmother. Stay away from her. Don’t call her. Don’t stop by. Don’t send her flowers. Don’t bring her food. Don’t do nothing. Leave her be. It’s my job to protect her. Even from you. Maybe especially from you.” His trench coat made a dismissive flapping sound when he whirled around.
Took a long minute before I could move. Before I could breathe.
Ironically, I found my cool detachment in his heated words.
For the first time I noticed the crowd.
Gawkers were a part of crime scenes, something I hadn’t really paid attention to or understood until I took a psych-ops class at Quantico. The crowd was a comfort of sorts. It allowed humans to connect after a tragedy, letting them show sympathy while at the same time allowing for the thank-God-it-wasn’t-me sense of relief. But all too often with a violent crime, the orchestrator of said crime came to the scene and fed off that shock and horror.
I took a more in-depth look at the dozen and a half people milling about. The crime-scene photographer discreetly snapped photos of the crowd. Probably wouldn’t mean much as far as comparing this case to the other two, since this scene was public while the others had been off the grid.
Another round of sorrow rolled through me as Penny’s body was loaded into a black bag and lifted into the ambulance.
Shay ended his phone call and ambled toward me.
“That was Director Shenker. Given your close association with so many members of the family—”
“He’s p
ulling me off the case?”
“No. Take a deep breath, Gunderson. We think it’d be best if Carsten and I handled the family interviews this afternoon. Shenker’s requiring you to take the remainder of the day off, but he expects you at the VS offices on Eagle River tomorrow at the usual time.”
• • •
I went home.
Dawson was working.
Lex was at Doug’s house doing yet another school project.
I went for a ten-mile run. I could’ve run another ten.
Sweaty, cranky, and carrying an armload of mail, I didn’t hide my annoyance when Jake pulled up next to me as I walked down the driveway.
He rolled down the window. “You busy?”
“Yes.”
He shook his head. “Nice try. Come on, you need to clear your head. You ain’t been out and about on the ranch since you got back from Virginia.”
I squinted at him. “Did Hope send you over here?”
“Yep. When we heard about Penny … Hope knew you had to deal with it, since that’s your job, and she wanted me to make sure you were okay.”
My sister’s concern touched me. So I hopped into the passenger’s side of the truck … and hopped back out when we reached the first gate. We bumped along the existing truck tracks. I opened three more gates. Just as I began to get annoyed, Jake stopped at the top of the rise and parked instead of cutting to the left and following the ridge down to the closest pasture.
I climbed out and avoided stepping on a clump of cactus. The soil was sandy and dry enough to support that type of vegetation. I didn’t understand how those flat and barrel-shaped succulents survived the winter months, when the wind on this plateau blew a million miles an hour and a heavy crust of snow covered everything.
The cactus would be here long after I was gone.
I skirted a pile of scat—it appeared rabbits enjoyed the view here, too—and stood on the remaining chunk of a butterscotch-colored rock. Most of it had cracked and tumbled away down the steep incline, leaving a chalky white trail of sun-bleached shale.
Wrapping my arms around myself, I faced the wind. Not bitterly cold like this morning, but with enough bite to remind me night would be approaching soon. I gazed across the expanse of the valley. Skeletal trees followed the path of a dry creek bed.
Merciless Page 23
