Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  Moulson nudged me with an elbow. “Okay if I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  His eyes flicked to the left side of my face. “Is that injury why you left the Army?”

  “No. This happened on my first rotation with the battalion, in Iraq. I was twenty.”

  “Fuck me. And you went back?”

  “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “It was me, I might have packed it in.”

  “Doubtful,” I said. “After earning my way into the regiment, I wanted to do what they taught us to do. I hadn’t gotten much of a chance.”

  Plus the idea of going back to civilian life, with a face still looking like a mountain lion had mauled it, had scared me a lot more than combat at that age.

  “I hear that,” Booker said. “It would feel like you were getting cheated.”

  “Plus I missed the sergeants’ smiling faces,” I said.

  A man climbed the stairs to the stage, one step at a time. He was somewhere past fifty, and built like a well-fed grizzly, his limbs thick but short in comparison to his substantial chest and belly. That impression was heightened by his deliberate movements and his heavy chocolate-colored wool shirt and pants.

  “That’s Macomber,” said Booker.

  I placed the slight stiffness in the general’s gait. At least part of his left leg was artificial. He stepped forward to the edge of the stage.

  “You’re all veterans,” Macomber said, his basso profundo voice carrying easily over the dimming sounds of movement and muttering, “so you know nothing’s official unless some asshole gives a speech.”

  The audience laughed. Macomber smiled, too, his open face growing even livelier.

  “Welcome. I see a lot of faces I haven’t met yet. And if I haven’t met you, that means you’re new to the Rally, because every man here last year shook my hand and shared his story. I look forward to hearing yours.”

  The crowd was hushed, listening. So was I. A small part of that silence was the reflexive attention of soldiers to anything that a senior officer said. But most of our focus was due to the man himself. He stood as solid as a marble pillar, his smooth bald scalp over a ring of dark hair the brightest piece of him, save for his eyes.

  “We’re growing,” Macomber continued. “In numbers, and in influence. Our mission is simple. Even a politician could understand it.” Another chuckle from the crowd. Behind me, I felt more spectators pressing into the hall, eager to hear Macomber’s words.

  “Every support possible, to every Ranger, at any time,” Macomber said, reciting it like a credo. “In the past six months alone, the Ranger Rally has contributed thousands of hours and tens of thousands of dollars to hospital and therapeutic services, mental health, family care for Rangers overseas or those out of work, education grants, and career guidance. That’s what we’ve done with only a dozen people on our year-round staff, our volunteers, and a couple of corporate sponsors. Imagine what we’ll do this year.

  “There are other organizations, with similar goals. The Army runs some of them, and good people have created their own groups to shore up what the Army can’t or won’t do. Which is a hell of a lot.” Macomber held up a hand to quell the hooting. “But the Rally is for us. Just us. Our brothers, and our families.” The jeers turned into sounds of encouragement. “Those lost, and those who carry on.” The sounds melded into a single shout.

  “If you’re new here . . .” Macomber waited until the noise quieted again. “If you’re new, you might be worrying that I’ll hit you up to volunteer.” He smiled. “I will absolutely hit you up to volunteer. And you’ll do it. Not just because it’s the right thing to do. Not only because when you need it, the Rally will be there to help you, too. You’ll step forward because that’s what we do. Rangers lead the way.”

  “All the way,” we answered the regimental motto.

  “One of the Rally’s guiding principles is that we share our experiences. From combat, certainly, but also life in the service, and your lives stateside since you’ve left. That’s what this is about. Once family, always family. Those of you who have been here before will recognize the Wall of Remembrance we’re creating on Main Street, where we record the sacrifices both we and our brothers have made and those that we continue to make. Introduce the newcomers to the Wall. It’s important that we know our history, past and current.

  “But in the meantime, we have some celebrating to do. This town hall will be our gathering point for the duration. All of the information on the Rally’s events will be posted outside. If you have questions or need directions to an event, ask a Redcap.”

  Macomber waved a hand toward the rear of the hall. We all turned to see a dozen young women, some carrying clipboards and rolls of paper tickets. Each of them wore a scarlet baseball cap with a Double-R insignia on the crown. A predictable chorus of whistles erupted from a few younger men in the crowd.

  “Stow that,” Macomber said. “Redcaps are Rally employees, and they run the show when it comes to organizing our events and contribution booths. I’ll put my plastic foot up the ass of any man fool enough to disrespect them. And I expect all of you to do the same.”

  I had to admire the pivot. Macomber had turned every right-minded guy at the Rally into the Redcaps’ protective older brothers. At least temporarily.

  “One last thing,” said the general. “You may already have heard that a lifelong resident of Mercy River was shot and killed yesterday. Leaving aside the terrible crime, this town has suffered a loss, and every one of you knows firsthand how that feels. Please treat our generous hosts with the respect they deserve, and play safe out there this weekend. Hard, but safe.” That earned another laugh.

  “Now, given the forecast is for rain, we figured that holding tonight’s barbecue inside the town grange might help keep the sauce on the ribs. Get your butts over there and get some food. You can consider that an order.”

  Applause and a final emphatic roar gave Macomber a fanfare in his slow walk off the stage.

  “Man,” Moulson said, “he was even better than last year.”

  “Who is he?” I asked. “Macomber wasn’t a CO while I was around.”

  Booker nodded. “I talked to one of the older guys last year who served under him in Kosovo, back when the general was just a captain. That’s where Macomber lost the leg. He stayed with the regiment another few years after that. The shake-ups after 9/11 put him in the Pentagon for a while, my guy said.”

  “A hard-charger?”

  “He retired as a major general before he hit his thirty.”

  Unusual. I looked around at the crowd of over three hundred, drifting out of the hall and toward the free food. “So now he does this.”

  “Don’t piss on it,” Booker said. “The Rally paid the balance on our buddy Tag’s tuition and books last year, whatever the GI Bill didn’t cover. I’m aiming for the same help when I get loose.”

  “No urination at this station,” I said. “Macomber knows how to motivate. What was that about corporate sponsors?”

  Moulson said something about an auto parts chain with a former Ranger on its board, whom Macomber had convinced to subsidize car repairs for families in need. I wasn’t fully listening, distracted by one of the Redcaps handing out drink tickets to eager men. She was striking enough to draw attention on her own merit, with big dark eyes and a toned body.

  Dez, Leo’s secret girlfriend. Working for the Rally.

  And as I allowed myself to flow with the crowd back toward the street, I saw more townspeople wearing red windbreakers acting as guides, motioning the way toward the grange and handing out flyers printed with the weekend’s schedule. Volunteers, or maybe another way that the Rally channeled dollars into the sleepy local economy.

  The grange turned out to be a short walk away, on a side street parallel from the Methodist church that Ganz and I had passed during our conversation. I smelled the savory aroma of cooking meat long before I saw the Grange itself. Moulson and Booker quickened t
heir steps.

  I hung back. A silver-gray Ford Interceptor was angle-parked in the middle of a cross street, blue and yellow lettering on the side. police in capital letters, mercy river in a smaller type underneath. The vehicle was about ten years off the assembly line, and I guessed it had been bought on the cheap from a larger department, lights and push bumper and all, and repainted for the town’s use.

  It had to be Constable Beacham’s. I looked around and spotted the man through the crowd, half a block away, talking with a local. I’d expected some rent-a-cop with a beer belly, but Beacham was young, wide-shouldered, and clean as a needle in a crisp white shirt, navy-blue pants, and blue cap. His shoes had a mirror finish that was echoed in his service belt.

  The belt held Beacham’s sidearm on the right and the nightstick that had clubbed Leo hanging on his left. The sight of the baton made me aware of my own pulse.

  I walked over.

  “Hey,” I said. Beacham and the townie he’d been talking to, a bearded guy as broad as an armoire, both turned. “The general told us there was a shooting yesterday, and my girlfriend, she’s kind of freaked out now. Everything secure?”

  “No sweat,” said the big man through the tangle of his beard. He had the solid swell of gut that Beacham lacked, and a bottle of ale in his hand to keep it in tune. His soiled corduroy coat and tattered watch cap completed the look of a man well past giving a shit. “The motherfucker’s gonna burn, thanks to Wayne here. He coldcocked the punk.”

  “I was just first on the scene,” Beacham said with a tight smile. He was excessively chiseled—strong jaw, straight nose, long sideburns forming perfect rectangles. So proportional that his left profile could have been a mirror image of his right.

  That wasn’t the only symmetry about his face, I realized. Beacham and the big guy had the same nose, the same brow ridge and blue eyes. The larger man’s sagebrush beard and their differences in size and general hygiene had thrown me off at first.

  Brother Lester. My luck was running hot.

  “Holy shit, man.” I clapped the constable on the shoulder. “Way to kick ass.”

  “A team effort,” said Lester, protesting. “I was the one found the little turd in the saloon.”

  “Wait.” I pointed at Lester. “Was this the bar fight I heard about? Was that part of the same deal?”

  “Hell, yeah,” Lester said. “I was the first sumbitch on the scene, if you get right fuckin’ down to it. I tagged that egg roll so hard it’s amazing he ever got up again.”

  “Lester,” Beacham said.

  “You’re like a bounty hunter,” I said to Lester. “The cops give you the wanted poster, and you track ’em down.”

  Lester roared. “Yes! Where’s my reward, bro?” He touched his head, prodding at the watch cap with thick fingers. “Hazard pay.”

  But Beacham was scrutinizing me. “You’re here with the Rally?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Best party anywhere. Not counting your saloon.”

  “Did I see you around the sheriff’s station earlier today?” Beacham pressed.

  I was rescued by a Redcap with a blond ponytail pulled through the hole at the back of her scarlet hat, who appeared with a heaping plate of ribs and macaroni salad.

  “Wayne, we’re bringing food out to all the officers on duty. You want some?” she offered. I wasn’t sure she was only talking about the ribs.

  “Good to meet you guys,” I said, and beat it before Beacham’s memory got a firm lock on me.

  It might not hold up in court, but I was certain that the constable had—intentionally or not—sicced his big bad brother on Leo. Maybe it had been pure chance that Lester had found Leo in the saloon before the cops did. But it didn’t improve my opinion of law enforcement in Mercy River.

  Dez crossed my path. She spotted me, and her eyes darted away quickly. I wanted to ask her whether it was normal for Leo to go into Erle’s shop so early in the morning, but she had hastened her walk and was stretching the distance between us. Maybe wary of people connecting her to Leo through me. Whatever their relationship was, Dez and Leo both appeared dead set on keeping it private.

  Nine

  At the back of Erle’s Gun Shop, in the deep dark provided by the hill looming behind the building, I picked my way around wheelbarrows and stacks of old rebar and other signs of abandoned projects. Maybe Sharples had planned on expanding the shop or building an outdoor shooting range. As it was, the clutter made for a slow and cautious path to the back door. Ahead of me, small animals scurried away into the safety of the brush. Rats or opossums.

  I was ninety percent sure that the alarm and cameras had been left deactivated by the cops. But safety first. I shielded my face and reached up to drape a rag over the camera housing.

  And paused.

  The power line leading from the camera into the shop was twisted where it met the hole in the adobe wall. I risked turning on my penlight, closing the beam in my fist and allowing a sliver of the light between my fingers to show me more. I tugged the wire away from the wall. The rubberized housing had been carefully stripped away to expose the wires beneath. Not cut. Cutting the power or the fiber-optic line to a Kjárr camera would have the same noisy result as kicking in the front door.

  I could make out jagged impressions left by an alligator clip. Someone had been checking the power flow to the camera, before pushing the line back into the wall to hide the damage. I replaced the line where I’d found it, and returned to my original task of picking the lock.

  The gun shop was dead black inside. The low creak of the door echoed faintly, hinting at an expansive space beyond. Shining the penlight around, I saw that I’d opened the emergency exit of an indoor firing range. The exit stood at the end of a row of half a dozen shooting stations, with the span of the range off to my left. White rectangles of silhouette targets hung at the far end like shy phantoms.

  I closed the door behind me and walked down the row to the front of the shop. My nose picked up scents of oil and burnt powder permanently seeped into the pine walls.

  In comparison to the range, the store section of Erle’s business was small, most of it taken up by the employees-only area behind the register. Erle had kept things orderly. A few tall, tight rows of ammunition and cleaning sets and other supplies. A pair of homemade plywood workbenches flanked the main display counter. Each bench had neatly organized tools hanging on pegboards behind it. The bench on the right was set up for hand-loading ammunition, with shell presses in different sizes bolted to its edge and a precision scale for weighing powder.

  That’s where Leo would have worked. Taking shells from the firing range, perhaps, or making custom loads on order. If he’d been loading .45 ACP rounds, that could explain his prints on the rounds removed from the vintage Colt that Erle had been shot with. The killer might have grabbed the handiest weapon in the shop, maybe the .45 waiting on the workbench to test-fire the custom loads, and had used it on Erle. He’d wiped his prints from the gun but wouldn’t bother with the rounds left in the magazine.

  An array of handguns and fancy hunting knives lay on tiered shelves inside the glass display counter. The counter’s surfaces were smeared with powdery brushstrokes, traces of the lab techs from Prineville.

  I was seeing nothing but normal merchandise for a gun shop. Nothing to indicate why Erle Sharples had had such a mania for security.

  There was another smell here, a miasma under the higher scents of oil and propellant. Old blood. Not the coppery tang of a fresh wound, which was so sharp you tasted it as much as smelled it. This reek was like the spoiled juice in a Styrofoam packet of hamburger, left too long in the trash.

  Coming around the counter, I stopped short. A broad stain, larger and darker than the other scuffs and scars on the poured concrete floor, blocked the way. The discolored patch shone like clotted wine under the beam of the penlight. At its closer edge, the stain was smeared and erratic. Where Erle had thrashed until he could move no more, I guessed.

  The wall behi
nd the stain held a selection of holsters and soft-sided pistol cases on hooks. Most of the cases were made of black fabric. Those revealed nothing in the gloom. On the khaki-colored gear, blood spatters and spots were more truthful. A second stain lay thick at the baseboard of the wall. Flesh there, as well as blood. Residue from a large exit wound.

  Either the cops or the crime lab had removed the shop’s computer. The hardware peripherals remained—the mouse and keyboard, and Erle’s flat-screen monitor.

  A second monitor sat at an angle to the first. A wireless router leaned crookedly against the back of it, a Winchester rifles decal stuck to its top. I didn’t have to peel the decal off the router to know it was hiding another logo from the Kjárr alarm company. Both monitor and router had lines running below the counter, and I followed them down to find the backup battery for the alarm system, which would come into play if the building’s power was unexpectedly cut. The battery should serve the cameras, too. I found the switch at the top and turned it on. The monitor buzzed faintly to life.

  Four quadrants appeared on the screen, in full color. Or as much color as night allowed through the cameras. The first three images showed the steps outside the front entrance of the shop, a black blankness where I’d draped the rag over the rear door’s camera, and the length of the indoor firing range. And in the fourth quadrant: me, standing at the counter, just a faceless mass in a slightly less dark room with my jacket illuminated by the glowing screen. Almost a fractal image, me looking at myself looking at me.

  With Erle’s computer gone, there was no danger of the live feed being recorded, or sent out into the cloud. But nor could I search back through the video to verify what the police report had said—that Erle had shut off his extremely expensive security system not long before he was killed.

  Below the four quadrants, the bottom of the screen read CHANNEL1—OCT11—21:41 in a menu tab. There was a second tab reading C2. I clicked it. The readout changed to CHANNEL2 with the same date and time, and the screen changed along with it.