Lori Armstrong - Mercy Kill

“Did you just leave him there?”

“No. But I couldn’t face Dawson and his suspicion about me finding yet another body, especially when he already thinks I’m a walking catastrophe, so I called Kiki. She’s taking credit for my accidental police work.” I drained my Coke. “I need to go home. Thanks for the ear.”

“Anytime, doll.”

Anna wasn’t aroundwhen I returned to the cabin. Chances were she was at Pete’s Pawnshop, pawing through junk and jawing with Pete. I didn’t get her fascination with the place, but I was secretly happy she wasn’t underfoot.

So far, Anna’s purchases, besides the TV/DVD player, consisted of a crusty milk can, a rainbow crocheted tissue box, and a pair of spurs. When I asked her about the spurs, since she’d never ridden a horse, she handed them to me as a gift and explained the spurs were a daily reminder for me to face my fears.

Maybe it was snarky, demanding to see what she’d bought for herself. She showed me a tiny plain tin box. I opened it, expecting to find a treasure, but there was nothing within.

Anna explained the box represented her: small, unadorned, tough on the outside, but inside… empty.

I’d stopped asking about her purchases after that.

With no campaign events scheduled, and no job demanding my time, I looked forward to a night at home. But I needed something to take my mind off finding Victor’s body. Or from wondering if Cherelle had played me. Or from wishing I’d never agreed to run for sheriff.

I wasn’t in the mood to target shoot, but I could quiet my mind and keep my hands busy by catching up on reloading.

Catch up. Right. I had bins of shell casings. Not only because I’d spent a lot of time shooting, but in my boredom, I’d stumbled across my dad’s storage cache of casings. His “storage” method consisted of throwing spent shell casings in Sheetrock buckets in the barn. It’d taken me a solid week to sort, throw out, clean, and organize the shells.

Not all shooters reload their ammunition. I did it in a limited capacity. Shells were damn expensive and harder to come by for larger calibers. Since my dad taught me to shoot, he’d also taught me to reload. The tangy scent of brass reminded me of him, and today I had the overwhelming urge to connect with some part of him.

A clement breeze, overloaded with the scent of the chokecherry blossoms, eddied around me as I headed to the storage shed. I grabbed the reloading bench and carried it into the cabin. Most people didn’t reload in the house, but the shed was too small, too dark, and just plain uncomfortable. Any activity with firearms, including bullets, made Hope nervous, so I’d hauled everything-the bench, the tools, the die sets, the scale, the tumblers, and the cans of gunpowder-from the barn to the cabin. If I wanted to set up my reloading bench in the damn kitchen, I could. My house, my rules.

I’d already “cleaned” the cases by tossing them in the tumbler with ground walnut shells. Then I sealed them in plastic bags so they were ready to reload when I had time.

I chose the die I needed for pressing out the spent primers and resizing the cases, screwing it into the top of the loading press. Getting the first case properly sized took the most time.

My mind was blessedly blank as I focused on each step. I’d managed to finish half the lot in blissful silence when I heard a car in the drive. Anna had returned.

She wandered in and tossed her ball cap on the couch. “Hey, you’re doing something useful, imagine that.”

“Fuck off.”

“Do you ever just sit around and do… nothing?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“Sad. You want a beer?”

“Nah.” Mixing alcohol and gunpowder? Not a good idea.

Anna plopped down next to me after helping herself to a Corona. “So. Reloading, huh?”

I tapped powder into the scale and adjusted the weights. “Yep.”

“I’ve never reloaded.”

“You’ve never had to buy your own ammo,” I pointed out.

“True. And usually I don’t have time to hang around and pick up brass. I’m too busy hauling ass away from the scene.”

We drifted into companionable silence as she sipped her beer and watched me work.

“How many empty casings do you have?” she asked.

“Depends on the caliber. I’ve got bins in the tool shed if you wanna take a peek. I must have a thousand of this type for my dad’s Remington 722 bolt-action varmint rifle. Because it’s an off caliber,.222, it’s hard to find casings.”

Anna whistled. “Man. I guess it’s true what they say about rednecks having a secret arsenal.”

“Ain’t a lot to do out here besides shoot, A-Rod.” I tipped the powder into the shell.

“No kidding. Don’t mind telling you, I never thought I could miss the millions of people in California, but I do.” She picked up a casing. “So what was the last varmint you shot with your dad’s rifle?”

“Prairie dogs.”

“I don’t know if I could kill a prairie dog. They’re so cute.”

My mouth stayed firmly shut. Anna had no issue shooting a person? But she balked at shooting a rat with a brain the size of a dime? I ignored the dichotomy and said, “I should’ve smoked the damn mountain lion that crossed my path, but I didn’t.”

“I’m actually really happy you didn’t kill it.”

I bristled. “Whatever pity that kept me from shooting her that morning came back to bite me in the ass. A couple days later she got into the herd and attacked a calf. The mama cow stomped the hell out of her and eventually killed her, but the calf died anyway.” That’d been a fun conversation with Jake.

“You people have such a different life out here. It’s like you’re from another planet.

“Says the woman who grew up in L.A.” I changed the subject. “What’d you do today?”

“This and that. Hung out with Pete and Re-Pete.”

“What’d you buy?”

“A funky old cane. You should check out Pete’s place, Mercy. He brings in all kinds of new stuff every day.”

“After he buys it for pennies on the dollar and jacks up the price,” I muttered. Not nice, Mercy. “How’s their coffee shop biz?”

“Opening next week. Since I’m ‘citified,’ they wanted my opinion on their new pumpkin-spice coffee.”

“And?”

“And I told them they didn’t have to put actual chunks of pumpkin in for it to be authentic.”

I stopped measuring powder and looked at her. “Are you serious?”

“No.” She laughed. “You never used to be so gullible, Gunny.”

“Seems to be a theme today.”

“Trouble on the campaign trail?”

I shrugged. I couldn’t tell her about Victor. Doubtful she’d shed tears for him anyway. “I’m just having trouble processing a couple of things.”

“Like?” she prompted.

Like are Shay Turnbull and John-John’s claims true? Am I predisposed to a connection with the newly dead?

“Like making a decision and not knowing whether it is the right one.”

Anna drained her beer. “Be specific. We talking life-and-death decisions? Or dealing with those murky gray areas?”

“Murky gray,” I admitted.

“You’ve always had trouble with them, Gunny.”

I bristled again. “No, I haven’t.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Name one time.”

“The time we were on convoy detail and you couldn’t take out that old man.”

Goddammit. I hated that I’d goaded her into bringing it up because I’d tried like hell to forget it’d ever happened.

During our stint at the start of the Iraq War, while we were awaiting new transfer orders to St. Mere, aka Camp Fallujah, we were stationed at Camp Ramadi and tasked to provide escort “services” along with the marines as part of their Tactical Movement Team. Our job was to protect the supply convoys traveling between Camp Ramadi to Combat Outpost to Camp Corregidor and back.