Mercy River

by Glen Erik Hamilton

  “Lieutenant Yerby. He claimed it’d be light work.”

  “Sounds like him.”

  “You met the man. Then you know.” Paulette took a spray bottle and a stack of rags from her pile of supplies and began wiping fingerprint dust from the glass counter.

  “Are all the cops around here like Yerby?”

  “Naw. Most of the deputies are marking time until he’s gone. He’ll run for sheriff next election and lose, you watch. Larry Yerby will be tossed like yesterday’s fish.”

  I pushed the wet mop through the powder, which turned an instant vibrant pink. The blood smeared thickly across the sealed concrete floor. Half a dozen swipes, and I rinsed it in the bucket, getting into a rhythm. “What about the town cop? The constable.”

  “Wayne? He’s making do. Can’t be a regular deputy.” She waved a hand, knowing I was about to ask. “Wayne Beacham was supposed to be in the NFL. Or at least get hisself a full ride through U of O. Best quarterback this county ever produced.”

  “Injury?”

  “Both knees, sophomore year. He can walk okay now but that’s about all.”

  “And the constable job is what the town can do for him.”

  “The boy’s lucky to have it. He raised some serious hell around here after he lost his scholarship. Like a dog that’ll bite before it even growls. But he straightened up, got married. Showed he could walk the line.” She tapped her Cash shirt and snickered again.

  “So who inherits all this now that Erle’s gone?”

  “He’s got no family here. There’s an elderly cousin over in Grant County. Henry would know for sure.”

  Gillespie. The town’s lawyer. Of course he might be Erle’s executor, either from their friendship or because the town had appointed him. I kicked myself for not thinking of it earlier.

  “Henry have an office in town?” I said.

  “On Tyne Street.” She motioned westward. “Why you so interested in Erle’s stuff?”

  “It’s a nice town. Nice shop.” I grinned at her. “Maybe I can buy it and settle down here.”

  Paulette whooped with laughter. “All right, then, don’t tell me.” She shook her head bemusedly as she returned her attention to the countertop. Without the fingerprint dust, the room was a touch brighter from the reflection off the glass.

  “Erle did have money,” Paulette said, scrubbing with a brush at a stubborn spot. “Hated to spend it, but he had it.”

  My mind flickered to the vials of pharmaceutical heroin.

  “From the gun shop?” I said.

  For the first time, Paulette wavered. “It’s just talk. Small-town nonsense.”

  “So keep talking, and I’ll keep mopping.”

  She snorted. “I suppose speaking ill of the dead isn’t the worst thing I’ve done. Erle hadn’t had this shop forever. He built it ’bout ten years ago, with some of the money he got when Cecily Rae died.”

  “His wife?”

  “Only just. She caught the cancer—ovarian, worst kind, you can fight me on that—and there was Erle, ready to help with any little thing. I’m not saying it weren’t a good thing for Cecily. But I also wasn’t the only person who noticed how Erle quickly bought hisself new shirts and saw the barber every two weeks. He weren’t a bad-looking man when he tried.”

  “And Cecily had money.”

  “Couple a million, I ’spect. From her career and her late husband’s. He was a bone surgeon down in Bend, making money off all those sports nuts down there. They had houses. Mercy River was more where they came on vacation, even though Cecily grew up here. She were never the strongest gal, even before the sickness. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I think so.”

  “Truth told? I don’t expect it was Cecily Rae’s idea to make a new will. But she was close to the end and her mind gummed up with all kinds of medicine for the pain, and Erle convinced her they should marry and to let him handle things. He was good at that.”

  I understood. Not swindling, exactly. Coercion was closer to the mark.

  “But they’re both dead now,” Paulette said. “So I suppose if you really want Erle’s shop, it’ll be up for sale. Mercy River’s a decent place. We make sure of it.”

  “A deputy at the station said something similar. That the town used to have some kind of bad element.”

  “You could say.”

  The water in my bucket was as red as cheap fruit punch. It reeked of rot. I set it out on the porch and retrieved a second pail. Another ten swipes of the mop, and Paulette’s urge to chat overcame her hesitancy.

  “Mebbe five years ago, we’d get drifters,” she said. “They’d camp their trailers out by the forest and come into town for beer and food and giving the coupla Mexican families we have here the evil eye. Men, mostly, but some trashy women, too. Spouting about white people bein’ God’s chosen and all other races bein’ made of mud. That sort of turd talk. Pardon me. But they’d always move on. Then a few of them squatted or rented houses, and it got so they thought of Mercy River as kind of their home base, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Their kind was easy to spot. Tattoos on their hands and necks and all. But it were still a free country. Long as they didn’t pee on the sidewalk, weren’t much the sheriff could do. After a year there was a bunch more of them, and they got organized. A leader. Meetings. They made bids to buy land right in town, and wanted to start a church so they could hang their flags out in the open and call it religion.”

  “They give themselves a name?”

  “The First Riders.” She snorted. “I guess after the Ku Klux Klan, galloping on horses. Mel Blodgett wrote to the county paper when one of the Riders got arrested for parole violation, complaining that the government should give alerts to citizens about ex-convicts so we’d know if they were consorting. Somebody firebombed Mel’s car the very next day. I saw it. The baby seat in the back was melted down to jelly. Henry Gillespie, he talked about filing lawsuits on property rights, but other folks didn’t see the point after what happened to Mel. People whispered”—Paulette shrugged like whispers were all the proof required—“how Mercy River was gonna become like them compounds or little mountain towns where nothin’ moves without the Riders’ say-so.”

  “This was about three years ago?” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Before General Macomber formed the Rally. But not long before.”

  Paulette kept her focus on clearing dust from the plywood worktables. “I suppose the general came to town around then.”

  “And he saw what was going on. What happened to the Riders?”

  “What goes ’round comes ’round. One night a couple of weeks after Mel’s car, we had some arsonists come through. Burned everything those First Riders had. Trailers, cars, motorcycles. Even houses they’d rented. Five different places around town. And the Riders in those trailers and houses, most of ’em were tied up with plastic handcuffs or duct tape and left in ditches nearby, with hoods over their heads.”

  “By arsonists.”

  “Must have taken them all night. The Riders were mad as ants on a stomped hill, yelling about how a gang in masks had broken in and yanked them all right out of their beds. Of course the sheriff investigated.”

  “Let me guess. No clues.”

  “Nope. Sheriff figured it was an insurance scam, that the Riders set it all up themselves. Nobody would rent to them after that. The folks who lost their houses—the general found a way to get them situated again.”

  “I bet.”

  “Weren’t long after that the First Riders were gone from Mercy River. I heard a lot of them were frightened enough by what happened that night that they left the bunch entirely. Put the fear of God into ’em.”

  I was sure it did. Waking from a dead sleep, bound and hooded within seconds. I knew exactly how that was done. My platoon in Afghanistan could have filled a bus with the high-value targets we’d taken in the Rangers.

  “But that’s all done now,” Paulette sa
id. “So are you, looks like.”

  “Just about.” The floor was clean, and the wall was at least less likely to terrify anyone. I took another minute to scrub the groove at the top of the baseboard. A bit of flesh was stuck there, wiped white by the mop. I plucked it out and threw it in the bucket.

  Paulette made a noise. “You weren’t joshing, about blood not bothering you.”

  “No.”

  “You been to the war, then. Like most of these boys in town now.”

  “Yes.”

  “Suppose saying thank you don’t quite cut the mustard for that.”

  “I don’t mind. Thanks is better than most vets get.” I picked up the second bucket. “I’ll dump these outside.”

  “Appreciate it. You remember where to find Henry?”

  “Tyne Street. Got it.”

  “If you say any prayers, forget about Erle and say ’em for poor Cecily Rae Desidra. That woman never did have luck.”

  I stopped, nearly slopping the bloody water out of the bucket and back onto the floor.

  “Desidra,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did Cecily have a daughter?”

  Paulette’s eyebrows arched, adding another stratum of lines to her forehead. “Now, how did you know that? Susan. She still lives here in town.”

  Dez, Leo’s girl had said. Short for my last name.

  I’d just found someone with a motive.

  Fourteen

  Dez worked for the Rally, which meant she could be damn near anywhere around Mercy River right then. I recalled overhearing another Redcap tell someone that the Rally had business offices off the town hall. Maybe someone there could tell me where Dez was assigned today.

  The rain had stopped while I’d been talking to Paulette. Pavement and cars shone as if the world were brand-new. I stashed my new collection of Trumorpha vials in the hidden compartment of the truck, pocketing one vial on the chance I could suss out a way to read its bar code, and set out to find the Rally offices.

  My path took me across Main Street. Booths had been erected along the sidewalks, each touting a different aspect of the Rally’s efforts and stumping for volunteers. It was a dizzying range of effort. Recruiting former medics for home care and hospice work. Online tutoring for children of deployed soldiers. Even retirement planning. I had to give credit to General Macomber’s ambition. And his marketing savvy. The booths with the pretty Redcaps had the most success in attracting candidates.

  I’d spent an extra second looking at a booth that offered counseling for families of Rangers with mental health needs—mental challenges are not moral challenges, the tagline read—and my hesitation was enough to draw the attention of the guy running the booth.

  “Hey, there,” he said, his friendly smile widening. An active, or maybe fresh out of uniform. He had the same haircut that I’d sported about a year earlier, only a week or two’s growth off regulation. “Where’d you grow up?”

  “Third Bat,” I said, “but I’m passing by.”

  “Hang for a minute.” His eyes were on my scars. “You got family? Because they need someone to talk to just like we do. If you’ve got people, the Rally can set you guys up with a therapist who takes VA.”

  “No family. And I already see a shrink.”

  “Then you’re the kind of guy we need,” he said, expertly changing tack. “Another Ranger can be a huge help. What’s your name?”

  “Later,” I said. “I have work to do.”

  He didn’t let the smile waver much. “You say ‘later,’ I’ll hold you to it. Come back and let’s talk. We got a mom and dad in Sacramento, their son—our brother—is going through a bad patch. They need you.”

  I nodded and moved on.

  The Rally’s heart seemed to be in the right place, even if its approach was all over the map. My own charitable work was a lot more localized. I had a Ranger brother right here with his own bad situation, and I was determined to help him first. Even if he didn’t want it.

  “Shaw,” a voice called. Booker, jogging toward me with a rain jacket in his hand and a pair of cleats slung over his cannonball shoulder. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt and running tights under shorts. His biceps tested the limits of the stretch fabric. Booker was too short to be the man who’d tried to strangle me last night, but I would bet my attacker had the same monster build. “You headed to the football field?” He pointed up the street toward the high school.

  “I’m walking that direction.”

  “Come on.” He bounced back into his easy jog, and I lengthened my stride to keep up. “I already missed the start, and I’m playing the second half.”

  “Only the half?”

  “So many guys wanted to play this year, they drew lots to assign teams and times around the rifle competitions. Three games today, twelve different teams. There’s even organized betting.”

  “All profits to the Rally.”

  “Would the general miss that opportunity? Uh-uh, jack.”

  At our accelerated pace, we made it to the school in under five minutes. I followed Booker down the stairs onto the sidelines to get a closer view of the mayhem.

  Predictably, the heavy rain had turned the field into a mud pit. The clock on the scoreboard told us the game was still in the first quarter. If the players were wearing anything to tell the teams apart, it was lost under a layer of muck. Even the referees were splattered head to toe. Booker and I watched as the quarterback fumbled the ball and a horde of linemen dove for it, throwing up waves of brown water and grass chunks. Just as obviously, the multitude of locals and Rangers packing the bleachers loved it.

  “Oh, my crap, this is going to be bad,” Booker said.

  “Maybe they’re playing touch.” It was a joke, but Booker looked at me like he wished it were true. We’d both noticed the first-aid station the Rally had erected behind the scoreboard.

  Booker started to untie his cleat laces. “If I die, tell Moulson fuck you for me. This was his idea.”

  “Good luck.”

  I was halfway up the stairs to the road when I spotted Dez, in her red hat and black running wear, on the opposite side of the field. Even among the Redcaps, she stood out. The Rally had constructed a large booth by the concession stand, and from the whiteboard and the frenzied activity of the Rangers around it, it had to be the betting HQ.

  I reversed course and jogged around the field, my hiking boots squelching on the rubberized track.

  The whiteboard listed odds on everything from the outcomes of complete games to spreads for each team during their halves, and more obscure wagers. They had squeezed in one extra line at the bottom that listed a prop bet: number of quarters today without a completed pass. The over/under was 4. Somebody was betting on the slick mud to win it all.

  “I have to talk with you,” I said to Dez.

  She finished filling out a betting slip for a corn-fed young Ranger, fifty bucks on his team to dominate during the second game.

  Leo? she mouthed silently.

  I tilted my head, implying we shouldn’t talk here. Whatever got her moving.

  Dez turned and handed off her clipboard and money bag to another Redcap. I led her around the side of the bustling concession stand, which smelled of popcorn and buffalo sauce.

  “Is he okay?” Dez said the instant we were around the corner, grabbing my jacket sleeve.

  “He’s safe. But he has to get some things straight in his story. Did you see Leo the morning Erle was shot?” I said.

  She looked past me, making sure no one could be listening. “He was asleep when I left at six.”

  “You punch in early.”

  “It’s our week.” She gestured toward the field. “Like April for accountants.”

  “Working at the Rally office?”

  “No, I drove the company truck to Bend that day. Picking up all the food and other supplies for the barbecue.”

  “What time?”

  “What time did I pick them up?”

  “What ti
me did you leave town? What time did you get there?”

  “I have keys to the Rally office. I opened up and signed out the truck and left.” Realization dawned on her heart-shaped face. “You aren’t asking for Leo. You’re wondering if I have an excuse.”

  “Driving trucks isn’t your usual job.”

  “My job is whatever the Rally needs doing. Which right now is a lot,” she said. “Edwin usually picks up party supplies, but he was sick. Better?”

  No. As alibis went, it was looser than a granny knot. Dez might have started the two-hour drive south to Bend immediately. Or she might have parked the truck somewhere quiet and made her way to Erle’s. There was no way to tell which was true.

  “All right,” I said. “Sorry. I’m on edge. The cops are going to ask when you saw Leo, or if you spoke to him that day after Erle was shot. He never called you?”

  “No. I thought he was at work, like usual.”

  “He wasn’t. He said he blew off work and went hiking.”

  “Then that’s what happened. You aren’t much of a friend if you won’t take Leo’s word.”

  Dez walked around me, only to stop and turn when she reached the corner of the stand.

  “Thank you for bringing a lawyer,” she said, “for Leo’s sake. But leave me alone.”

  I watched her walk away, skirting the field where the mud-covered players tried to run the ball without pitching headfirst into the slime. Leo and Dez were acting nearly as slippery.

  Did Leo wonder about Dez, too? She’d left him sleeping that morning. He’d gone to work and found Erle dead, and not told anyone. Protecting Dez could be why Leo was throwing up walls every time I asked him for an explanation.

  And the vials of Trumo. Were they a simple coincidence? A relic of Erle’s life, but nothing to do with his death?

  If Dez stood to inherit, Erle’s killing could be a move to regain her mother’s lost legacy. Or maybe she had shot him out of simple revenge.

  I had one last notion involving Miss Susan Desidra, a theory slinking around the edges. That Dez had convinced Leo to murder Erle for her.

  That wasn’t true. Despite everything, I wanted to believe in my friend’s innocence.