Lori Armstrong - Mercy Kill

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 Iphotocopied 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 formy 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 Iwas 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.”