Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3)

by Brett Battles

  I mean, that’s what she’d be doing if she were a real ghost and not just my subconscious playing games.

  God, I really need therapy.

  Jar moans, low, like a hum, then her eyelids slowly part. For a moment or three, our gazes lock, and I see the hint of a smile on her lips. Then she blinks and quickly sits up, her expression neutral again.

  “What time is it?”

  “Around six thirty. I’m making French toast and sausage.”

  She takes a deep breath and opens her eyes wide, forcing herself to wake up. “That, um, sounds good.”

  “I know blow-up mattresses aren’t the most comfortable, but I gotta believe they’re better than sleeping like that.”

  “I did not—didn’t mean to sleep here. I was just resting.”

  “For how long?”

  She looks toward the ceiling, thinking, then says, “Five hours and ten minutes. Maybe eleven.”

  Five hours is a lot for her. “Are you feeling all right?”

  She frowns at me as she gets out of her chair, then walks to the back of the house without saying a word.

  After breakfast, we begin monitoring the bugs at the Prices’ house. Church is indeed on their schedule, but while they’re eating, Chuckie announces he has work to do and will be staying home, torpedoing Jar’s and my plan.

  If this news upsets his wife, she keeps it to herself and only says, “Okay.”

  When breakfast is done, he locks himself in his office while the others clean up and get ready to leave. The first thing Chuckie does is retrieve the phone from the filing cabinet and turn it back on.

  After it powers up, it vibrates softly, indicating it has received a message. Chuckie reads the screen, types in a reply, hits SEND, and turns off the phone again. He then sits at his desk and wakes up the computer.

  For the next twenty minutes, he looks at reports from his dealerships, adding notes here and there, basically doing what he told his wife he needed to do.

  While this is going on, the boys come down the stairs, dressed in shirts and ties and slacks and nice shoes. Evan has Sawyer take a seat in the living room and says, “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be right back.”

  Evan enters the downstairs hallway and sneaks down toward his father’s office. When he reaches the door, he leans in close, listening.

  In the office, his dad continues to look at spreadsheets, unaware his son is so close.

  I don’t know what Evan is hoping to hear, but I doubt it’s the clack of Chuckie’s keyboard.

  I’ve got to hand it to him. He’s taking quite a chance. If his father suddenly opens the door and finds him there, Chuckie would be furious.

  What finally gets Evan moving is not his father catching him eavesdropping, but his mother saying, “Okay, time to go,” as she heads down the stairs.

  Instead of returning to the living room, Evan slips into the guest bathroom, quietly shuts the door, and flushes the toilet. He then exits and walks into the living room as if he was up to nothing unusual at all.

  This kid has some seriously good instincts.

  “You both look great,” Kate says to her sons. “Grab your jackets.”

  As they do this, she walks a few steps into the hallway and says in a raised voice, “Charles, we’re leaving.”

  Chuckie turns from his desk and replies, “All right. Bye.”

  I can see disappointment on Kate’s face, like she was hoping he might come out and give her more than a few words through the door. But there’s resignation in her look, too, the kind worn by someone who’s grown used to this kind of disappointment.

  In the office, Chuckie is out of his chair now, standing next to the door, listening in the same manner his son did less than a minute earlier. I can’t tell if he hears Kate walk away, but he definitely hears the front door open and shut, because as soon as it’s closed, he leaves his office and moves to the end of the hallway. We don’t have a camera that gives us an angle on what he’s looking at, but it’s easy enough to guess that he can see out the front window from where he is, and probably all the way to the SUV Kate uses, which is parked at the curb.

  The sound of an engine rumbles to life, then its pitch intensifies as the vehicle is put into drive. Before the noise completely fades away, Chuckie moves closer to the window, watching his family leave. He hangs there for a minute, no doubt to make sure they don’t suddenly return, then hurries back to his office, where he retrieves the hidden phone, turns it on, and stuffs it in his pocket. Next, he removes the envelope hidden under the file drawer and puts it in the other front pocket of his jeans.

  Back in the hall, he locks up his office, rushes through the house and out the side door facing the garage.

  Crap.

  “Come on,” I say, and grab the keys to the truck and the bag containing our drone.

  Jar snatches up her backpack and slips her laptop inside as we hurry out of the house. It’s not that we’re going to lose him. The tracker on his Mustang will let us know where he is at all times. But I don’t want to be too far behind him when he arrives at his destination. If this trip is secret enough that he doesn’t want his family to know about it, I don’t want to miss anything.

  By the time I pull out of our driveway, Jar has the tracking app open. “He just turned north on Central Avenue.”

  It takes two minutes before we have eyes on him. In another two, I’ve closed the gap between us and the Mustang to half a block.

  The thought pops into my mind that maybe he’s having an affair. A hidden phone would be good for that, and meeting up with his lover when his family is otherwise busy would be ideal. But Chuckie doesn’t really need excuses like church to find some alone time. From what we’ve seen, he’s away from home twelve hours a day during the week, at a place where he’s the boss, and can come and go at will. If he wants to conduct a secret liaison, he could do it anytime.

  And then, of course, there’s the paper the old guy gave him yesterday. Why would Chuckie be bringing that to a girlfriend or boyfriend?

  No, wherever he’s headed has to be about something else.

  Two blocks before he reaches the north end of town, Chuckie turns left onto Schoolhouse Drive. I slow to give him a bit more of a lead before I take the turn, too. The first few blocks are lined with homes, none too big, none too small. A nice neighborhood. Then again, I haven’t seen a bad one in this town yet.

  I keep expecting Chuckie to pull up in front of one of the houses or turn down a side street, but he continues straight.

  Soon, the houses give way to Timothy Morgan Elementary School, which in turn passes the torch to Mercy High School. The latter is spread out on both sides of the road. Most of the classrooms and buildings are on the left, and on the right are the gymnasium and fields for almost any sport you could think of. Attached to the gym is an indoor swimming pool that’s apparently available for the whole town to use in normal times. A temporary sign strung above the entrance reads:

  POOL CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

  The shutting down of the public pool is not surprising. Despite the obvious reluctance of many…Mercy-ites? Mercites? Mercians? Mercenaries? (Heh, heh. That last one’s funny.) Despite the obvious reluctance of many in town to take the pandemic seriously, a statewide mandate has meant in-school attendance stopped at least a month ago and all classes were switched to online.

  Mercy High sits near the northwestern corner of town, and once we pass it, we enter an area of scattered homes and businesses with plenty of land between them.

  A quarter mile on, Jar looks up. “He’s slowing.”

  As I ease back on the gas pedal, the Mustang’s brake lights come on for several seconds before the car turns off the road to the right, into what appears to be a parking lot in front of a small building. Not a home. Some kind of business, I believe.

  “Pull in there.” Jar points at a larger building on the driver’s side of the road, about sixty meters ahead.

  I do as she directs.

&nb
sp; A sign on the front of the building identifies it as Mercy Storage. Its parking area arcs around the front of the building and down both the east and west sides. Behind the structure is a fenced-in parking lot, about half full of RVs and boats on trailers and other vehicles people apparently don’t have room for at home.

  The building has only one window, and it’s at the front next to the entrance. The room beyond it is dark, and a sign in the window reads OFFICE CLOSED. A keypad is mounted to the wall next to the door, which I’m guessing allows people with stuff stored inside to enter whenever they need to. Apparently no one is interested in doing so at the moment, because the main parking lot is empty.

  I take us to the west side and stop at an angle facing where Chuckie pulled off the road. Though there are several vehicles parked over there, the Mustang’s orange paint job sticks out from the crowd.

  “What is that place?” I ask. “A bar?”

  “It is not a bar.”

  Jar hands me the binoculars and removes the drone from its bag.

  I adjust the focus and take a look at the building. It’s square with a metal roof and a glass door entrance. Definitely a business, but I see no signs identifying what type it is.

  Windows on either side of the door are large enough for me to see some clothing racks and shelves inside the building. A retail space. What kind, I’m still not sure. Even at max magnification, I can’t narrow things down further.

  One thing I can see is Chuckie. He’s inside talking to a man behind a counter. The store appears to be otherwise deserted. Which begs the question, where are the people from the other parked cars?

  With what appears to be a laugh, Chuckie turns from the counter and heads for the door.

  I glance at Jar. She’s about to open her window to send the drone aloft.

  “Forget that,” I say. “He’s leaving.”

  I reach out to shift the truck into reverse, but before I can, Jar says, “Are you sure?”

  “He’s leaving the store right now.”

  “Look again.”

  I frown and narrow my eyes. She seems to know something I don’t. I raise the binoculars.

  “Yes, he’s leaving. He’s walking back to his car.” I probably say this with a little more sass than I should.

  “Just wait.”

  “For what? He’s leav—”

  I stop myself. While Chuckie has indeed returned to the Mustang, he’s opening the trunk. From inside, he withdraws a golf bag. I switch my view back to the building, this time focusing on the area beyond it. The land is so flat here, it’s hard to see much of anything.

  “Is he at a golf course?” I ask.

  “Driving range,” Jar says.

  “You could have told me that at the beginning.”

  “I take it he is not leaving?”

  I look at Chuckie again. He’s walking toward the building, the bag strapped over his shoulder. “Not leaving,” I say through gritted teeth.

  She’s gracious enough not to look too smug as she opens her window and holds the drone outside. With a few taps on her phone, the device lifts into the air and disappears.

  For the next twenty minutes, we watch from above as Chuckie hits balls on the driving range. On occasion, he shares a word or two with one of the other golfers, but mostly he seems to stick to himself. Twice, a guy who works for the range brings Chuckie baskets of balls and removes the empty baskets.

  When the employee starts to bring over a fourth basket, Chuckie checks his phone, waves the guy off, and works on the few balls left in the current basket.

  “I think he’s finishing up,” I say.

  I start the truck. There’s one more thing we need to do, and it involves getting as close to Chuckie as possible.

  As I pull back onto Schoolhouse Drive, Jar, who’s been monitoring the drone feed, says, “He has hit the last ball.”

  I speed down the road and turn into the driving range parking lot. Two cars from the Mustang a slot has opened up. I pull into it, turn off the engine, and Jar and I lean our seats back into the crew cab section so that we’re below window level. Jar then transfers control of the drone to my phone.

  I watch as Chuckie reaches the building and starts to walk past it. “Here he comes. Anything?”

  Jar has opened a new app on her phone. “Not yet.”

  Chuckie pauses at one of the shop’s windows, waves to the man inside, and continues on.

  When he’s about three vehicles away from us, Jar says, “Contact. They’re both on.”

  I let out a relieved breath. We’ve both been worried he’s turned off his secret phone, but Jar has picked up signals from both the phones he’s carrying.

  She taps her device several times and watches a progress bar on the screen.

  Chuckie walks past the back of our truck, without so much as a glance in our direction. When he reaches the Mustang, another car pulls into the lot and parks a few vehicles away on the other side. Chuckie opens the trunk of the Mustang and places his bag carefully inside. As he shuts it again, the driver of the other car gets out of his vehicle and says loudly, “Morning, Charles.”

  “Hey, Robert. Good morning. How are you?”

  On the drone feed, I watch them meet up halfway between their vehicles and shake hands. They talk—maskless—for a few minutes. They’re far enough away from us, and from the bugs in the Mustang, that we can’t hear what’s being said. The conversation appears jovial, like a couple of old friends shooting the breeze. Soon enough, they’re saying their goodbyes and Chuckie heads back to the Mustang, while Robert returns to his car and pulls out his clubs.

  “You’re almost out of time,” I say.

  “I need forty-five seconds.”

  Chuckie will be gone before then.

  Which means it’s up to me to buy more time.

  I start the engine, back out of our space, and pull in behind the Mustang a second before its reverse lights come on.

  Chuckie slams on his brakes and I slam on mine, like I’m as surprised as he is about how close we came to hitting each other.

  He can’t see our cab from where he is, but he can see that our truck bed is still partially behind him. He honks his horn twice.

  “Have you got it?” I ask.

  “Almost.”

  “I can’t stay here.”

  “Hang on.”

  Another honk, this one longer, more irritated.

  “Jar.”

  A third honk, which I’m sure is about to be followed by Chuckie getting out of his car to see what the hell is wrong with us.

  “Okay,” Jar said. “Done.”

  I hit the gas and speed over to the exit. Instead of turning left and heading into town, I go right. Given Chuckie’s sparkling personality, I’m sure if I went in the other direction, he would tailgate us for a while and maybe even try to find out where we were going.

  As it is, when I look in the rearview mirror, I can see his Mustang sitting at the parking lot exit, as if he’s debating whether he should follow us or not. In the end, he chooses to let us go, which I think has more to do with wanting to get home before his family returns from church than deciding against teaching us a lesson.

  Once he’s out of sight, I make a U-turn and head back toward town. Just before we reach the driving range, I stop long enough for Jar to recall the drone, which, after we drove away, automatically went into hover mode.

  We make our way back to the duplex, monitoring the Mustang’s homeward journey to make sure we don’t cross paths.

  We pull into our driveway at about the same time Chuckie exits his garage and enters his house, so we stay inside the truck and watch him on Jar’s phone. As I expected, he’s made it back before Kate and the boys. After grabbing a Coke from the fridge, he heads into his office and returns the secret phone to its place in the filing cabinet.

  I expect him to do the same with the note, but he sits down at his desk and starts surfing the internet. It’s possible he’s forgotten he has it, but that doesn’t
seem likely. I would think the note isn’t something that would slip his mind so easily. Plus, putting the phone back should have been a reminder to do the same with the envelope.

  But he just sits there, looking at his spreadsheets.

  The only other possibility is that he gave the envelope to someone. That would explain hiding what he was up to from Kate.

  The question is, who received it?

  “What if he gave it to someone at the range,” I say. “We know he talked to the guy inside the store. And there was the other guy, the one who brought him the balls.”

  “And the man when he was leaving,” Jar says. “Perhaps when they shook hands.”

  I like that idea a lot. “Just the three possibilities, right?”

  “He could have talked to someone else before the drone got there.”

  That’s true. It would have had to be a brief conversation, because the amount of time from when he moved out of view of the binoculars and into the view of the drone was short. Of course, he wouldn’t need much time to pass the message along.

  “It is also possible he did not give it to anyone at all,” Jar says. “And instead put it someplace for someone to find later.”

  Also a good thought.

  In fact, if I had to rank the likelihood of what happened, I put that at the top of the list. Second would be handing it off to the guy who arrived when Chuckie was leaving. Chuckie had checked his phone right before turning down the offer of another basket of balls. He could have received a text letting him know the guy was almost there, and then transferred the paper during the handshake.

  I think for another few moments. “Why don’t you stay here and check the video. Maybe you can figure out if and when a handoff occurred. I’ll go back to the range and have a look around. If we’re lucky, the note will still be there.”

  Jar nods and shrugs on her backpack.

  “If Chuckie leaves his house, let me know,” I say.

  She nods and climbs out of the truck. “Be careful,” she says before closing the door.