I continued, “You had to have known that your wife was screwing Nick Ludwig and then coming home to you.”
He didn’t respond. He was silent. The fact that everything was silent registered in my head next. I glanced at the patio door. Lucky wasn’t there, and she wasn’t barking. My eyes quickly went back to Mercer.
“I mean, she was having sex with him for almost a year,” I said. “Maybe even the entire time you were married. We have their phone records at the station.”
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
He looked at me for a moment then focused back on Amy. He jammed the shotgun deeper into her face.
“And it wasn’t even just about the sex,” I said. “The two were in love. She talked about leaving you for the guy.”
Mercer’s head snapped toward me. “Yeah, they both got what they deserved, didn’t they?” he said. “Just like this bitch is going to.”
In my peripheral vision, a movement caught my eye . I wouldn’t look and alert Mercer, but someone, presumably Bill, was standing on my patio. I resumed trying to get Mercer’s attention.
“In the end, I guess they got what they deserved, sure,” I said. “But, I mean, it was going on for so long. I just can’t believe that you wouldn’t know. Even subconsciously. Some guy kissing on, putting his hands on, making love to your wife. If it was me, I think I’d know.”
Mercer swung the gun toward me. He took a step in my direction. “Yeah, I did know. And now both of them are dead. I planned it. I watched her leave his house, then I walked up and killed him. Then I got a hooker, screwed her, and killed her. Then I went home, had a good night’s sleep, and killed that cheating bitch over my morning coffee. They wronged me, and I took their lives. Just like I’m going to do to Amy—probably you as well. And when I’m done with you two, I’m going to blow that goddamned dog’s head clean off its—” Mercer must have noticed that Lucky was no longer at the patio glass and barking. He swung the shotgun in the direction of the door and locked eyes with Bill, who was standing just outside. Bill held a cell phone to his ear. He froze in place.
“Get down, Bill!” I shouted.
Just as the words left my mouth, I heard the shotgun blast, and the patio doors shattered and fell. Outside, Bill’s body lay on the ground. I had to act. I took two lunging strides at Mercer and put my shoulder directly into his chest. I wrapped my arms around him and lifted as my momentum carried him backward. Mercer, with me holding on to him, slammed to the floor a foot or two shy of the kitchen. The shotgun flew from his hands and skidded toward the refrigerator.
“Get out of here, Amy!” I shouted. I couldn’t see whether she did.
Mercer swung lefts and rights at me. He caught me with a left that was more swat than punch. I drove an elbow down into his cheek. The second I did, I felt something jab me in the left side. And then yank away. Whatever the hell happened was something I’d never felt before. It felt as if someone had lit a match inside my body. I glanced down to see a bloody knife in Mercer’s right hand. He must have pulled it from his pocket. He slammed it into my side again. I coughed from the impact. The burning sensation multiplied. I drove another elbow into his face and felt teeth crunch beneath it.
The moment after I hit him, I felt the blade of his knife slide from my body. I couldn’t let him deliver another strike. I rolled off his chest and onto his arm with the knife. I could feel him trying to pull it free from beneath me. My eyes shot to the living room. I didn’t see Amy. My eyes went to the blown-out patio door. I didn’t see Bill or Lucky.
Mercer’s right hand with the blade ripped free from beneath me. He rolled away from me then planted both hands down into the floor. Blood poured from his mouth. He put his right knee under him then his left and began to push himself up. I didn’t go for him or even try to get to my feet. I rolled over and stuck a foot down just shy of the blood pool forming beneath me.
I used everything I had left to kick down and launch myself across the kitchen for the shotgun. I landed a foot or two short and flat on my belly. Pain shot through my body, and the wind left my lungs upon impact. I struggled for breath as I reached for the gun. Just as my hand grasped the stock, a foot came at my face. I closed my eyes, tensed my neck, and took the kick, which snapped my head to the side. A split second later, the shotgun was ripped from my hand. I turned onto my back, and a barrel was inches from my face, with Mercer on the other end. I stared down the barrel and waited to hear the shot. I heard a snarl, a bark, and a scream. I saw tan fur.
Lucky latched onto Mercer’s leg. He’d taken his aim from me. I grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. With everything I had, I yanked it from his hands. Lucky growled and yanked her head back and forth, her entire mouth filled with Mercer’s calf. Mercer screamed and tried to get her off him. I got to my feet and turned the weapon on him. He was trying to slash Lucky with his knife. I didn’t have a command for her to attack or stop attacking and was fine with her ripping Mercer to shreds, but I didn’t want him to hurt her in the process.
“Lucky, outside!” I shouted. “Go on, get!”
She didn’t let go. Mercer continued to slash at her, not making contact, but it was only a matter of time before he did. I squeezed the trigger of the gun, putting a shell of birdshot through the drywall of my ceiling. The sound sent Lucky off Mercer and outside. I pumped the shotgun and turned it back on Mercer. He hobbled and tried to maintain balance.
“Drop the blade,” I said.
He swayed from side to side. Mercer turned the blade in his hand. He wasn’t going to drop it.
“Put it down or I’m dropping you,” I said.
Movement to my right caught my eye. I looked over at Amy. She had the Glock from the gun vault beside the bed. She was more than capable with the weapon and had dead aim on Mercer. He took a step toward her. I was certain he’d keep advancing and certain that she’d shoot him if he got within another step.
“Mercer,” I said and took two steps to him. His head snapped toward me. His bloody mouth hung open. I turned the shotgun in my hands and slammed him with the butt between his eyes. He dropped like a stone. I put a knee to the floor at Mercer’s side, rolled him, and mounted his back. “Amy, get my cuffs from the safe,” I said.
She stood there like a statue, keeping aim on Mercer.
I yanked his hands up behind his back. There was no resistance. He was out cold. My eyes went back to Amy, who hadn’t moved. The gun shook in her hand.
“Amy,” I said. “Get the cuffs, babe. We have him.”
She slowly lowered the gun.
CHAPTER 38
I heard sirens in the distance. The adrenaline that had fueled my fight with Mercer had begun to fade, as did the hot-like-a-thousand-torches pain that had taken over my side. While the burning feeling had subsided, the pain had not, and it was accompanied by the feeling of cold. I chalked it up to blood loss. I held a kitchen towel to my left side with my right hand. I hadn’t raised my shirt to see the wounds and had no interest in doing so. I knew enough from my line of work to know I needed medical attention and the sooner the better. Mercer’s knife had a good three-inch blade. Three inches that had slammed into my side twice. What had been hit inside of me, I didn’t know. The only thing I was fairly certain of was that he hadn’t hit my lung. My breathing wasn’t labored, and I wasn’t coughing up blood.
Bill had been on the phone with 9-1-1 when I’d seen him outside. Lucky’s barking had brought him to the fence line to look over. From where he stood, he could see me in the living room. Bill said he could tell something was off from my body language. When he came over to see what was going on, he saw Mercer and called 9-1-1. Thankfully, Bill had gotten himself far enough from the door and dove out of the way before catching any birdshot that might have gotten through the glass.
Mercer was linked up and propped against my kitchen cabinets. He was still unconscious. Blood wet his chin, which rested on his chest. I sat on a chair at my kitchen table. The shotgun rested on the table, within
my reach. Lucky sat beside me. Amy stood behind me with her hand on my shoulder.
The lights from patrol cars lit the front windows of my house. Bill had been standing just outside the open front door, waiting on the PD to arrive. I could hear him talking with someone outside. A moment later, uniformed officers from our midwest district came into the house with Bill in tow. I figured that more officers and the EMTs would be in and out nonstop.
“Amy, can you see if Bill will take Lucky next door?” I asked.
“Sure,” she said. “Come on, girl.”
Lucky didn’t leave my side. I reached my left hand down and gave her a rub on the head. “It’s okay,” I said. She licked my hand. I figured the dog and I were probably about even. I saved her from the side of the road, and she saved me from a shotgun. “Go on, pup,” I said. She gave me another lick and went with Amy.
Officer Doug Ratcliffe, forties and overweight by fifty pounds, walked up to me. We’d been on a number of scenes together over the years. He looked at Mercer, cuffed and knocked out, then me. He ran his hand over his balding head. “What the hell happened out here? Who’s this asshole?” He nodded toward Mercer.
“Chris Mercer,” I said.
“The nut who has been on a killing spree?” Ratcliffe asked.
“Yeah.”
“Something was going around the station about him attacking your girlfriend. I’m assuming this is something like that again, or what?”
Before I got into it, I needed to know that I had help coming. Bill had requested an ambulance while he was on the line with the 9-1-1 dispatcher, but I needed to know one was en route. I wasn’t going to say anything to Amy, but I was feeling a bit weak. “Before we get into it, I need to know that an ambulance is coming,” I said. I pulled the towel away from my side, showing him the blood. “We requested one through the emergency dispatcher but—”
“Let me check,” Ratcliffe said, cutting me off. He used his shoulder radio. The call back was that a unit had already been dispatched. They’d be on the scene within minutes.
Ratcliffe nodded toward Mercer. “Is he dead?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. Just taking a nap.”
“Odd time to catch up on some z’s,” Ratcliffe said.
“Yeah. Pretty weird,” I said.
He gave me a grin. “How did he get in, or what went down?”
I told Ratcliffe what I knew and spent a couple of minutes giving him some background. I kept it fairly succinct. I wasn’t really interested in rehashing a week’s worth of an investigation while I was getting dizzier by the moment from blood loss.
Amy returned a moment later, minus Lucky. She came to my side. “Bill said he’d watch her.”
“Thanks,” I said.
She put her hand on my shoulder and stared down at me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m all right,” I said.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
I nodded at the chair beside me. The doctor had told me that she should be taking it easy. All this excitement probably wasn’t very conducive to her healing. “Sit down next to me. You shouldn’t be up and about. Remember what the doctor said.”
“You’re worried about me while you have blood leaking out of your side and are turning gray?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Where is your ambulance?”
“Coming,” I said.
“Let me get an exact ETA.” Ratcliff called the request over his radio. Two minutes was the response.
“Harrington, you want me to get this garbage out of here?” Ratcliffe asked. He motioned toward Mercer.
“Stuff him in your car until the EMTs come. He probably needs some medical attention. Make sure he gets it. I don’t want him to die and not get to spend the rest of his days in a cage.”
“Yeah, that would be a shame,” Ratcliffe said.
He scooped Mercer’s unconscious body from the kitchen floor with the help of another officer. Mercer woke as the officers moved him. He yanked back and forth and fought against their grip. It would do him no good. Mercer kept eyes locked on Amy and me as the guys dragged him from my house. He never said a word.
Amy didn’t move from my side until the EMTs arrived and asked for some room. They immediately cut the shirt from me and got to work. It seemed my injuries required more than just a few stitches. They wrapped me up and loaded me onto a gurney. The two guys wheeled me from my dining room. The paramedics attending me gave me the short version—I’d be taking an ambulance ride to the hospital and spending the evening there, at minimum. I wasn’t too excited about it, having just wrapped up a few days at the damned hospital, but didn’t have much choice in the matter. Amy stayed at my side, walking to the ambulance with the EMTs who took me from the house. She hopped up inside after they loaded me in.
The EMTs were about to close the rear ambulance doors when I heard someone outside holler for them to wait a second. The men did. A second later, Ramirez was at the ambulance’s back door.
“Are you two okay?” he asked. “What the hell happened?”
“I’ve been better,” I said. “I think he was in the house waiting on us. I woke up on the couch to see him with a shotgun on Amy. There was some back and forth, then my neighbor showed up on the back patio. Mercer took a shot at him, and when his attention was focused on my neighbor, I tackled him. We wrestled around a bit, and he got me in the side with his knife a couple times.”
“How bad is it?” Dave asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m still alive at the moment. I probably should get to the hospital if I want to stay that way.”
“Where’s Mercer?” Dave asked.
“He’s in the back of Ratcliffe’s car, I believe. Make sure he gets to where he needs to go after the EMTs take a look at him.”
“Yeah.”
“We have to go,” one of the EMTs said.
“I’ll get in touch with you when I can, Dave,” I said.
“Sure. Do you need anything from us here?”
“If you can, ask my neighbor to make sure my house is locked up once everyone clears out.”
“You got it.”
“And find out who the hell an Emily is that you can tie to Mercer.”
“Emily?” he asked. “Any kind of last name?”
“No,” I said.
“I’ll give it a look.”
I gave him a nod, and Dave walked to my house.
One of the EMTs stepped up into the back of the ambulance with Amy and me. He swung the doors closed. A moment later, the sirens started to sing, and we headed to the hospital.
CHAPTER 39
I’d spent another two days at the hospital and another week and a half at home resting. The doctors said that if I wanted to go back to work, which I did, I’d be on desk duty for another two to three weeks. I had two cracked ribs and a lacerated spleen when I arrived at the hospital. My spleen injury required surgery, which was the reason for the long recovery. During the time I spent at home, resting, Amy was at my side doing the same. We had our own little stations in the living room—her in the recliner, me on the futon. Both of our parents had popped in a number of times to check on us. Mine had stayed for two days, but for the most part, it was just Amy and me. We talked a lot. I’d brought up the fact that Steve had, at his wife’s request, asked about me popping the question. Amy claimed to have no clue on the topic, but something in her face told me she did.
I’d heard from everyone at the station multiple times. Halloway had called almost every day, as did Steve. They both had been over three or four times. Garcia and Ryan stopped in once or twice, as did Ramirez. I got bits and pieces of what was going on with Mercer. He was being held at the Miami-Dade County Pre-Trial Detention Center. The facility was a few blocks from the hospital where Amy had been admitted. Steve had seen him twice. Mercer had been talking, and the word was that he’d given Steve a full confession of his crimes. Mercer had told Steve who the Emily woman was—a wife. Steve had said that he was going
to bring the latest copy of the case file and fill me in on the details when he came over. Amy and I had invited everyone to the house for the big race in Daytona.
“Anyone back here?” I heard.
“Yeah, come on back,” I said.
I heard the side gate of my fence open, and a wiry blond guy in a T-shirt and jeans walked through—Colt. He held a six-pack of beer in one hand and a bag in the other. “What’s up?”
“Not much,” I said from my seat behind the bar.
Colt walked up and plopped his beer down. The bottles clanked together. “Got some new IPAs to try out,” he said. He set the bag next to the beer and adjusted his glasses. “And a couple of community rib eyes.”
“Sweet,” I said. I pointed up at the television. “The pre-race should be starting in a half hour or so.”
Colt glanced up at the screen and back at me. “Nice shirt. Early retirement?”
I glanced down. Amy had gotten me some flowered button-up short-sleeve shirts a couple of weeks back. She’d said it was stylish. I figured she knew better than I did and didn’t tell her that I thought it looked like an old-man shirt. Plus, I kind of thought the floral pattern clashed with my tattoos. “That’s called style,” I said.
“Yup. You’re the pinnacle of sixty-five-year-old Floridian style right there.”
I chuckled. “Do you want the beer in the fridge or on ice?”
“Whatever,” Colt said. “As long as it’s cold. I’ll do it.” He started to get up from his chair.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I need to move around and get my range of motion back.” I stood from my barstool, grabbed Colt’s beers, and jammed them one by one down into an ice-filled cooler behind the bar.
“Salt and pepper on the steaks, or do you want them seasoned a certain way?” I asked.
“However we normally do it,” Colt said.
“Okay. I’ll take these in to Amy so she can get them ready for the grill.”
I scooped up the bag with the butcher paper–wrapped steaks inside of it and went to the patio doors. I walked through to see Amy in the kitchen, wrapping cut potatoes in tin foil. She flicked a chunk of raw potato down to Lucky, who apparently had been observing her food preparation. Amy and I had a system for when we had people over and cooked out. She did the preparing, and I did the grilling. We shared in the cleanup. It worked fairly well.
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