Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Mr. Seebright,” I said. “Got a minute?”

  He tucked the roll of bills into his shirt pocket. “Kin I do for you?”

  “You had some trouble here last night. A man was attacked.”

  “What of it?”

  “I heard you tried to keep the fight from escalating.” I pointed at his face. “That how you got the shiner?”

  He lifted a hand to touch his eye, reflexively. “Lester’s elbow. Stupid move on my part, jumping into that scrap. You know him?”

  “Lester? No. I know the guy he was attacking. The one arrested for shooting Erle Sharples.” I held up a hand in peace, as Seebright grimaced. “I wanted to thank you for not letting Lester or whoever it was stomp his head in.”

  Seebright huffed. “Maybe I woulda, if I’d known.”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “You already know what happened. You just said it.”

  “I know what Leo can remember, which isn’t much. What started the fight?”

  He glanced meaningfully at the entrance. “We got lunch folks coming in.”

  “It won’t take more than five minutes of your time. I’ll help set the tables, if you want.”

  Seebright huffed again, but moved to half sit, half lean against the barstool two seats down from me. “I remember noticing your friend before all the commotion started. Real quiet sort. So much so that I supposed he might be a little stoned. He sat over there against the wall”—he pointed a long finger—“and ate his stew and drank Cokes for an hour. Seemed content to just be. It was a slow night, so I didn’t mind him taking up the table.”

  Erle Sharples had been shot in the early morning. Then twelve hours later, Leo walks into the Trading Post Saloon and orders dinner. What had he been doing all day?

  “Who is Lester?” I said.

  “Lester is . . . well, he’s a problem for us. Grew up here in town, and in and out of our jail, too, on account of his temper. I guess he heard about what happened to Erle and went hunting for your friend. Called him a couple names I ain’t gonna repeat, your friend being a Japanese or whatever. I was coming around from behind the bar to tell Lester to shuffle his ass down the road, and right then he punched your fella Leo out of his chair. Kicked him, too.”

  “Then you stopped Lester,” I said.

  “Stopped, naw. Slowed is more like.” Seebright touched his face again. “Haven’t been in a fight since I was a young buck. Forgot how much it hurts. Your friend got up and hit Lester with his dinner plate so fast I thought he mighta killed Lester dead on the spot. Those dishes are made not to bust when you drop ’em.”

  “And then Leo ran.”

  “Out the back, like he knew the place by heart.”

  He probably had. Leo would identify the entry and exit points in a new space instinctively, just as I had.

  “Those boys—some of ’em friends of Lester’s—they took off right after him,” Seebright continued.

  “One thing I don’t understand. How did Lester know to come looking? He found Leo even before the cops did.”

  Seebright shrugged and stood up. “Small town. Maybe he heard it from his brother Wayne. He’s our constable.”

  Constable Beacham. The town cop who’d bashed Leo with his baton. I was getting very interested in the Beacham family.

  The saloon owner must have caught my expression. “I wouldn’t read much into that. Our town here, a lot of us live in each other’s back pockets. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Especially if you go back a few generations, like me. Or Erle.”

  “If you and he were friends, I’m sorry,” I said.

  Seebright shifted uncertainly. “Not exactly friends. Erle weren’t really sociable. But we were young together.”

  “Thanks,” I said again. “You might have saved Leo’s life, jumping in.”

  “It’s my place,” Seebright said. “Can’t let it be soiled like that.” I put out a hand, and he shook it.

  “Van Shaw,” I said.

  “You seem a good sort, Mr. Shaw. I hope your friend is worth it.”

  Me, too, muttered a sly voice in the back of my mind.

  Six

  Outside, I found more heralds of the coming Rally. American flags fluttered over the shops, the folds from their packaging still apparent. A shoe store advertised terrain runs every day at 0600, targeting the active-duty Rangers who had to keep themselves razor-sharp, even on a weekend bender. Someone had hung a butcher-paper sign outside the hair salon calling for volunteers to help with Rally events—See a Redcap! it read. I didn’t know what a Redcap was, but I could already feel a growing energy in the town, like kids before summer vacation. Or maybe animals before an earthquake.

  My new friends Moulson and Booker had told me over lunch that the shooting competitions were the most popular events, and that General Macomber and the organizers offered serious prizes for the top shooters. I guessed that Erle Sharples had hired Leo to get the gun shop ready for the rush of customers. Booker had taken pains to point out that there were entry fees, too, and all proceeds went to a charitable trust. Booker was a convert to the Rally’s mission.

  The draw of the Rally, the younger Rangers had confessed, was that it wasn’t a family event. No WAGs—wives and girlfriends—no kids, no responsibilities, just blowing off steam for the entire weekend. Moulson had claimed that he’d nursed a hangover for two full days after the last one.

  Actives like Booker and Moulson couldn’t go entirely off the rails. There would be a few officers attending. Rangers were expected to represent the regiment no matter where they were or what they were doing. To earn the scroll—the signifier that we had passed the brutal assessment and selection program and claimed a place in the 75th—every single day. But smart officers turned a blind eye to an acceptable level of madness, and even offered some leniency when that eye couldn’t avoid seeing something.

  I’d been on the receiving end of that kind of clemency once myself. In the wild celebrations not long after passing selection, I had joined some buddies at a massive beach party on the Chattahoochee River. The beach had been closed, not that that slowed anyone down. Between the soldiers and the locals we had enough beer cans on hand to build a battleship out of the empties. Hardly any of us were old enough to legally drink in the state of Georgia, including me. Someone had rolled oil drums onto the beach. A few gasoline-soaked logs in each made for fine campfires. Happenings got very loud. Signal flares and fireworks may have been deployed. Authorities were called. I had a vague memory of being corralled into an unsteady mass of other Benning soldiers—we outnumbered the available sets of handcuffs by something like twenty-to-one—and ordered to wait for the MPs.

  I was just sober enough to be terrified that my career was over before it had begun. The training cadres had pounded the lesson into us that if we were found wanting, the result would be RFS—released for standards. Exiled. What the fuck was I going to do now?

  Luckily, a major from the 75th lived close and arrived first. He cut the newborn Rangers out from the milling herd of drunk soldiers, marched us far enough down the nearby access road to be out of sight of the Georgia cops, and proceeded to curse at us so long that some of our group might have been halfway to sober by the time he’d finished.

  Our only saving grace was that we hadn’t actually destroyed anything on the beach, probably because there was nothing there to wreck except ourselves. An M923 cargo truck rolled up. The major ordered the bunch of us onto its flatbed, which we proceeded to paint with a lot of vomit on the way to a waiting barracks at Benning.

  The next day was one of the worst of my military life. A squad of merciless robots disguised as cadre sergeants screamed our bleary troop awake after two hours of sleep. They hounded us out to where the major awaited us at the Darby Queen—the grueling two-mile-long obstacle course that had broken dozens of candidates in our class alone. Our groans could have been heard from back at the mess hall. Having earned our scrolls, we thought we had seen the last of the Darby, at least
for a while.

  The major taught us better. He and the sergeants ran us in barfing, lurching teams of four through the Darby. Timed. After three hellish rounds, the major began allowing the fastest team to return to base and light duty. All of the other teams had to run the course again. I saw the Darby half a dozen times before my team finally finished in the top spot. Only downing a handful of Aleve allowed me to walk like a Homo sapiens the next day. I heard a rumor that the last team ran the Darby eleven times, which was probably bullshit, unless the major had also arranged for their dead bodies to be quietly buried.

  But none of us lost our place in the regiment. No one got busted down in rank or arrested. Smoking us into the dirt and making sure we remembered it forever was punishment enough. If any active Rangers got out of hand in Mercy River, I imagined they would regret it one way if not the other.

  Leo had said his gear and prescriptions were stowed at a girlfriend’s place. Forty-one Piccolo Road. I checked the map. Piccolo was at least four miles from town, as the crow flew. I walked back to the truck and drove south, following the blue line on the phone’s screen. It didn’t take long for the crudely paved streets to become gravel roads. Each intersection stretched farther from the last, until the flat sheets of land between each road could be measured in hectares. I passed a series of greenhouse tunnels made of transparent polyethylene sheeting, each a hundred yards long and tall enough for a man to stand inside. A rabbit dashed in front of the truck, missing its tires by a whisker. It vanished into the roadside brush before I got another glimpse.

  Piccolo Road didn’t even rate gravel, just hard-packed dirt. The first sign of habitation was a steel mailbox with 41 stenciled in cracked white paint on the side. About fifty yards down a lane behind the mailbox, a small gray-green house with white shutters waited, as if shading itself under the broad leaves of the surrounding cottonwood trees.

  I drove up the lane. The house was even smaller up close. Three or four rooms at most. A concrete slab in the earth served for a driveway. There were no other cars in sight, and I wondered if Leo hiked into town every day, rain or shine. That would be like him.

  I knocked, without getting an answer. Walking around back, I gazed out over the fallow field behind the house. No one nearby. A Suzuki dirt bike rested against the rusty screen door, its knobbed tires and body so uniformly covered in soil I had to look twice to identify its paint as blue. Leo knew motorcycles. Maybe the bike was his.

  I tried the front door again. Nobody at home. To hell with it. Leo needed his meds, and I wasn’t about to wait for Ganz to convince Lieutenant Yerby to open the house for us. I used Dono’s old set of picks to open the Schlage dead bolt in less than half a minute. Easy.

  When I’d first returned to Seattle, my extralegal skills had been for shit. Years had passed since I’d so much as stolen a car. But the past eighteen months had knocked off all of that rust. I hadn’t been ripping off Clyde Hill mansions or looting customs warehouses like Dono and I used to, but circumstances had given me good reason to regain the old touch.

  Maybe it was a mind-set thing. I had a need to be good at burglary, so my fingers recollected how to use the picks. If I wanted to crack a safe, my instincts guided the drill bit.

  On one of my first serious jobs with Dono, shortly after I’d turned thirteen, we broke into a transport hub for train cargo. After he’d finished greasing the alarm, he let me take my shot at unlocking the interior door while he unloaded the power tools we would use to bust open the crates inside. I beat the multipoint dead bolt before he had unzipped the second kit.

  “Tá sé ó gcliabhán aige,” he had muttered, mostly to himself. Meaning I’d had it since the cradle, the Irish way of saying I was a natural. Dono wasn’t a man given to idle compliments. I remembered the ones I’d heard forever.

  The front door opened directly into the living room. I caught a scent of lavender. The tiny house was almost a shotgun shack. A stubby hallway past the combination kitchen and dining nook led straight to the back door.

  Someone had gone to the effort to make the place as cheerful as the scuffed drywall and garage-sale furniture allowed. Bright colors won out over consistency. Wicker stools in each corner served as stands for potted ferns and cacti. A red batik sheet had been pinned up on the largest wall like a tapestry. On the mantel, a painting with no frame leaned against the chimney bricks, showing a sun inside a spiral of golden stars.

  All that, and a pink scarf draped over the reading lamp. The jackets hung on pegs by the front door were all women’s, except for one anorak that might fit Leo. Below the pegs, a pale blue motorcycle helmet rested by a dish of keys and spare change.

  I felt the padding of the helmet. Still warm.

  “You can come out,” I called into the house. “I’m a friend of Leo’s.”

  Ten seconds passed before a woman emerged into the short hall from what I guessed was the bedroom. It was difficult to see much more than her lean outline in the unlit interior, but I caught brunette hair that descended in spikes to her shoulders and a white tank top over cropped blue jeans and boots. She stood poised on her toes, half turned toward the escape offered by the back door.

  “Stay there,” she said. “I have a gun.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll use it.”

  “I believe you. My name’s Van.”

  She risked a step closer, one hand held behind her back. The extra three feet brought her into the light from the kitchen window. Her large dark brown eyes dominated a heart-shaped face that didn’t lack for pleasing features. One pierced brow lent her expression an extra measure of doubt.

  “I know that name. Let me see you,” she said, as if demanding equal time.

  I took my own step forward and turned my head to show her the scars. Once in a blue moon, the damn things came in handy.

  She relaxed a hair, but stayed where she was. “Why did you break in?”

  “You know that Leo’s been arrested?” I asked.

  She gave a slow nod.

  “I’ve come for his prescription meds, if he’s got any. And some clothes.”

  “You saw Leo? Is he okay?” she said.

  “He’s banged up, but yeah. He’ll be all right.”

  “They’re saying in town that he murdered Erle.”

  “Leo says it’s a mistake.” I wouldn’t trouble Leo’s latest girlfriend with the damning evidence against him. That would become public knowledge soon enough. “I brought an attorney. He’s with Leo now.”

  “Good.” She glanced behind me at the door, still ajar. “How did you open that?”

  No point in dodging it. “I picked the lock.”

  Her head tilted, appraising. “Van the thief. From Seattle.”

  Jesus. I was going to have a conversation with Leo about his choice of pillow talk. How long had he been seeing this girl? The Leo I knew could time most of his relationships with an hourglass. This new one might be in the top echelon for looks, but he’d been in town only a week or two and he was already sharing my secrets along with his own.

  “Pepper spray?” I said, glancing toward the hand still behind her back.

  She brought the neon-colored can out to confirm it. “Guess I’m not much on bluffing.”

  “Worth a try.” Though someone who’d really held a gun would have shown it, to drive the threat home.

  “Leo’s medicine is here,” she said, motioning to the bedroom. “I had the same idea to bring it to him.”

  “Leo didn’t tell me your name.”

  “No,” she said, as if that choice were obvious. “It’s Dez. Short for my last name, Desidra.”

  “Okay, Dez. I’m guessing I shouldn’t say anything about you and Leo around town.” The tiny house was feminine from top to bottom, but that didn’t mean Dez didn’t have another boyfriend somewhere.

  “That would be better,” she said. “Thanks. We—we keep things private.”

  “How were you going to explain dropping his meds off at the jail?”

&
nbsp; “I was going to find his public defender and tell him that Leo had left these in the bathroom of the coffeehouse. Leo goes there every morning, for his black eye. A drip coffee with two shots.”

  “No wonder he needs sleeping pills.”

  “I’ll get them.” She went to the bedroom and returned immediately with a shoulder bag slung over her back, and a large plastic grocery sack containing shirts and pants. She’d packed Leo’s things before I showed up and interrupted. She handed me the sack. It rattled like a pillow-sized maraca with the pill bottles.

  “I can’t visit Leo,” she said. “At the jail. But I want to. Would you tell him that?”

  “Sure. You two didn’t meet for the first time just this week, did you?”

  Dez smiled. It was only about halfway to amused.

  “I’m why he came here,” she said.

  She retrieved her helmet and walked down the hall and out the back door. A moment later the Suzuki engine chattered to life. It revved once and then moved away.

  She hadn’t asked for any details about Leo’s arrest. Maybe she already knew. Mercy River was a small town, as everyone kept telling me.

  I walked to the cramped kitchen, no bigger than a sailboat’s galley, and looked out the sliver of window. Dez was racing the dirt bike across the fallow field behind the house, blue helmet on her head and the shoulder bag bouncing with each rut she hit. Dust obscured her, yellow clouds chasing her on the wind as the angry wasp buzz of the bike faded into the distance.

  Seven

  Ganz had texted me to pick him up at the county courthouse, a utilitarian building adjacent to the sheriff’s station.

  “Did the cops screw up the evidence?” I said as Ganz climbed into the truck. “Enough to matter?”

  “Hello to you, too. Nice to see you. You’re no doubt aware that this entire burg is filled to the brim with extremely lethal individuals like yourself?”

  “I’ve learned.”

  “Well, the occupying force had secured—I use the military jargon deliberately—every single damn room and rental property available in the county. Probably every dry ditch, too.”