Lori Armstrong - Mercy Kill

“Mercy. I didn’t know you were here,” Hope said.

“Seems to be a theme today.”

Sophie said, “That nap didn’t last long, eh?”

“No.” Hope turned to talk to Sophie, and Joy faced me.

The one-two punch of her sweet baby face settled low in my belly. Joy’s anime eyes were the same golden brown as Levi’s. Her dark hair stood straight up in a funky baby Mohawk. With her chubby cheeks and perfect rosebud mouth, she epitomized adorable. Then she blinked those haunting eyes at me and gave me a drooly grin.

Damn kid was wearing me down.

“Hey, Poopy. Nice threads.” Joy was dressed in the bright purple onesie I’d bought for her; it was dotted with golden crowns, the word Princess in fancy lettering above each tiny tiara.

She immediately screwed up her face and wailed.

Shit.

Mama Hope whirled on me. “What did you do to her?”

“Me? I just poked her in the eye a little.” When my sister’s mouth widened in horror, I backtracked. “Hope, I’m kidding. I did nothing. I didn’t even move. Hell, I didn’t really even look at her.”

“Like that’s something new,” Hope sniffed.

I forced a smile. “You know, Sophie, thanks for the lunch offer, but I’m gonna head out. See you.”

“But-” The rest of her protest was lost when the screen door slammed behind me.

I’d had my fill of overprotective mamas-bovine and human-

for one day.

Seemed I was the one who needed a damn nap.

On the rarenights Dawson and I both had off, he’d show up, ply me with food, challenge me to a game of cards before we fell on each other and into bed.

Last night he’d been a no-show. On one level it bothered me; on another level I admitted Dawson had a right to his anger as much as I did. We’d always butted heads when it came to his job, or maybe my issues with the way he did his job. Since we were both stubborn, we’d need a few days apart to cool off. Not that I missed him or anything.

I’d spent the morning helping Jake and the afternoon finishing ranch paperwork. Following a supper of peanut butter crackers and an apple, I’d crawled into bed. I counted the chinks in the log walls, the ceiling, and the floor, instead of counting sheep. Damned insomnia. But I was determined not to drink myself into a coma. I’d drifted off, dreaming of a fifty-two-inch big-screen TV, when my cell phone buzzed on the pillow. “Hello?”

“Mercy? Thank God you’re still up. I don’t know what to do. He won’t even let me see her-”

“Whoa. Slow down, Geneva. What’s going on?”

“Dawson arrested Molly!”

“Where are you?”

“At the jail.”

“Hold tight. I’ll be right there.” After three decades of rock-solid friendship, Geneva and I had hit the skids upon my permanent return to South Dakota last summer. It’d taken effort on both our parts to repair the rift, and we were almost back to normal.

Twenty minutes later, a loud argument involving a half-dozen people greeted me as I entered the sheriff’s department.

“-absolutely ridiculous! This has been going on for years!” a plump redhead insisted.

I recognized her as Brenda Simmons. She’d graduated two years before me.

“Which is why it’s past time it was stopped, Brenda,” Dawson calmly replied.

“So rather than giving them a warning, you’re throwing them in jail?”

“They’re all eighteen.”

Some wormy-looking guy with sandy-brown hair stepped forward. “It was sneaky as hell, how you and your deputy just waited out there in the field for them to show up.”

“And when they did show up, they broke the law.”

“Where’s the harm?” Brenda demanded. “It’s just a prank. Otis always gets his damn ugly statue back.”

“That’s hardly the point,” Dawson said.

Geneva waved me over.

I muttered, “Who are all these people?”

“The other parents. In addition to Molly, Sheriff Dawson arrested Jaci Carr, Robby Brinkhouse, and Lyle Evans for attempted robbery and trespassing.”

I whistled. “Heavy charges. What’d they do?”

“Snuck into Otis Brandhier’s pasture to borrow his prairie chicken statue for graduation.”

That was still an Eagle River High School tradition? I’d heeded Dad’s wishes not to participate in the annual event, but he’d never taken it as a serious crime.

“Don’t you think jail is excessive punishment?” BeeBee Carr asked me. “God knows your dad never would’ve done anything so harsh.”

I avoided meeting Dawson’s eyes.

“Wyatt Gunderson isn’t sheriff, and I don’t give a good goddamn how you all think he’d react. If he’d nipped this ‘prank’ in the bud years ago, we wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

That shut them up.

“Look, it ain’t gonna hurt any of them to spend the night in jail. Maybe next time they’re tempted to instigate a dumb prank, they’ll remember their stint behind bars and make a better decision.”

Everyone talked at once. The verbal sparring was pointless: Dawson wouldn’t budge.

Then Geneva leveled the final blow. “This is grandstanding, Sheriff. Maybe you think these pissant arrests will convince voters you’re finally doing your job, but there are plenty of us in this county who know better. And guess what? We vote, too.”

“And guess what else, Missus Illingsworth? You’ve wasted enough of the taxpayers’ time by harassing me into changing my mind.” His hard gaze encompassed the group. “We’re done. You can bail your sons and daughters out tomorrow morning at nine a.m. Deputy Jazinski will escort you out of the building.”

The beanpole deputy started herding angry parents. But Dawson said, “Miz Gunderson? A word, please?”

The parents waited, even Geneva had a hopeful look, like I could magically change Dawson’s mind.

Wrong. I shook my head at her.

As soon as they were gone, Dawson said, “What are you doing here?”

“Geneva called me for moral support, you know, since I’ve spent time in the county slammer. She’s afraid Molly will become a hard-core criminal after a single night behind bars.”

No smirk. No biting remark. Were we beyond a smile or a snarky comment easing the tension between us?

“I won’t apologize for doing my job, Mercy.”

“You made that clear.”

His focus shifted to my right cheekbone. “Jesus. Is that another bruise?”

Under normal circumstances I’d tell him about the stupid sow knocking me into the stock tank. We’d laugh. He’d tease me about being blind as a bat. But I kept the tale to myself. “Yeah. I seem to be collecting them.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

We stared at each other uneasily.

I brought the conversation back around to business. “Did you get the lists?”

“Yes. I haven’t had much of a chance to look at them.”

“Been too busy staking out teenage pranksters?” Right after it tumbled from my mouth I knew it’d been the wrong thing to say.

His lips compressed into a thin white line. “Like I said, I won’t apologize for doing my job.”

“But are you doing it?”

Flared nostrils, clenched jaw, eyes hard as granite. I’d struck another nerve, this time intentional. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If you’ve got time to waste in Otis’s pasture, does that mean you’ve made progress on finding out who killed Jason Hawley?”

No answer. No change in his demeanor. He offered a flip “Why do you care?”

I had my answer.

“Maybe the question should be why you don’t.” I turned on my heel and walked out.

The parents grilled me the instant I cleared the doorjamb. I suggested that if they were worried the incident would show up on their kids’ permanent record, they should head out to Otis Brandhier’s place and convince him to drop the charges.