No Mercy (32 page)

In the small reception area, I sat on a chair and studied the framed map of South Dakota. During my childhood I’d been fascinated by the thick red marker lines outlining our small county. In the hundreds of times I’d been in this office, sitting in this same hard plastic orange chair, I’d never been in this position: waiting to explain to law enforcement why I’d killed a man.

After Jake and I parted ways, everything went according to plan. He dumped the body; I dumped the car. I closed my eyes as a bout of nausea washed over me. The endless walk through the foggy pastures had been a nightmare. My body nearly shut down from the pain. My mind had suffered enough trauma. My main focus had been trudging to the road before I passed out from shock.

The office door opened. I heard Dawson’s boots thumping on the tile floor. When the noise stopped, I opened my eyes and looked up. His face read pure business. A frisson of fear danced up my spine. I’d be damned if I’d show it. “Sheriff.”

“Miz Gunderson. Come back to my office.” Expecting I’d follow, he ducked into the room that’d belonged to my father.

The overwhelming urge to run beat at me with a child’s guilt. Like somehow Dad would know I’d done a bad thing. Like the walls would pulse his disappointment until it reverberated through me and made me confess. I swayed as I rose to my feet, swallowing the cry of pain racking my body.

“You okay?” Kiki said behind me.

“Just tired.” I gritted my teeth and shuffled to the office, sliding into the ladder-back wooden chair directly across from Dawson’s neat-as-a-pin desk. Kiki sat between us at the corner of the desk and pulled out a notebook.

“I’ve asked Deputy Moore to record your statement,” Dawson said. “Start whenever you’re ready.”

For a moment I was at a loss on where to begin. I exhaled with deliberate slowness and talked about what I’d overheard at the Warrior Society meeting regarding Albert Yellow Boy’s accidental death. How I realized the adult leader of this group was Theo Murphy, the man my sister was sort of seeing, and Levi’s teacher. I relayed my conversation with Hiram Blacktower and his claim that Theo worked for Kit McIntyre. I shared my frustration about not being able to track down Hope after the meeting. Then Theo’s early-morning phone call demanding I bring him money so he could leave town. Being forced to listen as he assaulted Hope.

My retelling of the events sounded clinical. Precise. Probably made me sound cold, but I was used to detailing everything to my CO with as little emotion as possible.

Both Dawson and Kiki were quiet after I finished.

Finally Dawson asked, “Let me get this straight: Theo Murphy confessed to killing Sue Anne White Plume?”

“Yessir. That is correct.”

“After you shot him in the knee?”

“Yessir.”

Dawson angled across the desk. “Theo Murphy also confessed to killing your nephew, Levi Arpel?”

I looked him right in the eye and lied. “Yessir.”

Another round of silence.

“Tell me again about how you came to shoot Theo Murphy twice in the chest, once in the head.”

“He was on the ground after I’d immobilized him by shooting him in the kneecap. After he’d told me what I wanted to know, I instructed him to get up and take me to my sister. He took a long time getting up, which I attributed to the injury. When he turned, he threw a rock at me and I fired at him.”

“Instinctively?”

“Yessir. My training as a soldier is to shoot to kill, not to wound.” Maybe I should’ve phrased that differently.

“But at no time during your confrontation with Theo Murphy did he fire at you?”

“He threw a rock at my head, sir.”

Dawson scowled. “Let me rephrase that. Did Theo Murphy fire his
gun
at you?”

As I answered, “No sir,” I realized I was completely screwed.

“Thank you. Hang tight. We’ll be right back.” Dawson motioned to Kiki, and they exited the room.

But I heard them arguing in the hallway.

“I’ll remind you that Wyatt Gunderson would do exactly the same thing.” Pause. “No. Wyatt hired me because we both believe in following the letter of the law. No exceptions. Not even for the former sheriff’s daughter.”

More voices joined in. The argument escalated until Dawson bellowed, “Enough.”

The door creaked. Dawson’s heavy footsteps stopped behind me. “Mercy Gunderson, I’m placing you under arrest for the shooting death of Theo Murphy.” He read me my rights.

I thought I didn’t have a drop of adrenaline left in my body. I was wrong.

“Please stand.”

I rose slowly but became light-headed. Dawson’s hand on my right shoulder righted me.

“Easy. Just take it nice and slow. No hurry.”

I asked, “Where am I going?” even when I already knew.

“Downstairs to booking.”

Despite the dread churning in my belly, my back snapped straight. I marched out of the room to the set of locked doors at the end of the hallway. I’d been downstairs dozens of times. Always by choice. Not so this go around.

Dawson punched in a code, and the guard buzzed the door to let us in.

Kiki joined us. I studied my mud- and blood-spattered boots. No one spoke during the walk downstairs. I was booked and fingerprinted. Kiki helped me undress. I wore the faded blue baggy pants and shirt of the jail uniform. My personal effects were tagged, but I was allowed to keep the sling. Magnanimous of them.

Kiki didn’t say a word as she led me to the empty cell. I settled myself on the cot, trying to act brave, when I felt anything but. Her face was bright red with embarrassment as she hit the button and the doors clanked shut, locking me in. She whispered, “Sorry,” and I was alone.

Not really alone. I stared at the surveillance camera before I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

We crested the last steep slope, me and my trusty steed. I dug my knees into the horse’s withers. In a burst of speed we reached the peak. The horse was covered in sweat, and I could barely hang on.

The mountainous area spread out before me, like the Alps in the opening scene of
The Sound of Music.
I rubbed my eyes. This wasn’t where I was supposed to be. This wasn’t the ranch. This wasn’t home. I heard a noise, a cross between a war whoop and the higher pitch of an Indian woman’s tremolo. Then I saw them. My mother. My father. Levi. Running across the fertile plain, replete with wildflowers. Laughing. Mom and Dad swinging Levi high into the air like he was a small child.

I waved, shouting for their attention. No one noticed me. I kicked the horse into a full gallop. Muddy clods splattered my face. As I swiped the sludge from my eyes, I lost control of the horse. It was headed straight for them. Blindly, I tugged on the reins. The thick leather strap in my right hand morphed into a rattlesnake the size of a python. It slithered from my grasp, sinking enormous fangs into the horse’s left flank. The horse screamed and reared, bucking me off into the muck.

Then the Palomino twisted and plowed my mother to the ground like she was a bowling pin and those gigantic hooves pummeled her head like a boxer’s speed bag.

Levi pulled a gun out of his grass-stained shoe. He fired. The horse shrieked; flames shot out of its muzzle. An owl screeched above us. The horse shrank to the size of a mouse. The bird of prey plucked up the rodent and disappeared.

I crawled to my mother, only to watch her bloody, mangled body disintegrate into a pile of snow-white ash.

Panicked, Levi turned to my father.

A snub-nosed revolver appeared in Dad’s hand. He braced his feet in an official cop’s firing stance and took two shots. One bullet lodged in Levi’s brain, one in his heart. Levi crumpled to the ground. He, too, fragmented into nothing.

The bright day blurred to gray.

Dad pivoted my direction. He wore his sheriff’s uniform. The gun morphed into a shovel and he swung it at me like a mace. “It’s your fault. She’d be alive if not for you. They’d all be alive if not for you.”

Words I’d always feared—but he’d never uttered—sliced through me.

His face aged. He shriveled into a stoop-shouldered old man. The scenery distorted. We were in the desert outside of Baghdad. Sand stung my face, obscuring my vision. The roar of tanks. Low-flying aircraft buzzed. Bombs boomed. Placid wisps of clouds changed into plumes of angry black smoke as the city behind us burned.

As Dad stalked closer I shouted, “Stop!” He kept coming until a land mine detonated and blew his leg off. The blast didn’t knock him down. He stood, one-legged, in the middle of a minefield, bleeding. Dying. Waiting. For what? For me to run to him and save him?

The
buzz buzz
of warning alarms grew more insistent. I scanned the heavens. Not a compelling turquoise, but black. Rockets shrieked past, white vapor trails clung in the sky. Everything was black-and-white. Seemed I was stuck in a
MAD Magazine
comic book,
Spy vs. Spy.
Was I a bad guy? Or a good guy? I glanced down and saw black flak gear, head to toe. When had I become a bad guy?

The warning
buzz buzz
reverberated around us. I yelled, “Dad. I’ll be back.”

An enormous white cowboy hat concealed his face. “You always say you’ll come back, but you never do.”

“I will. This time I swear I’ll come back for good.”

Buzz buzz.

Dad hopped forward on his good leg. The blinding explosion knocked me flat. When I couldn’t see him anymore, I screamed.

“Mercy?”

I awoke with a jolt. A cement ceiling and gray walls swam into view. I wasn’t in Iraq. I blinked, remembering I was in jail. I didn’t know which was worse.

My name was repeated again, louder, amid another buzz.

“Mercy. Answer me.”

I swung my legs to the floor and faced Dawson.

He hung on the other side of the bars, concern lining his face. “You were screaming.”

“The price of being a soldier.”

“Does that happen often? Combat nightmares?”

“Often enough.” I kept my expression bland. “You here checking to see if there’s any rest for the wicked, Dawson?”

“Not even close.”

Our gazes clashed. The questions in his eyes went unspoken.

“Then what are you doing down here?”

“Came by to check on you and to give you these.” He held out a plastic bottle containing my pain meds from the hospital. “Kiki found them in your jacket pocket.”

“Isn’t that against the rules? Giving a prisoner drugs?”

“Probably. But I’ve dislocated my shoulder and I know it hurts. No reason for you to suffer.”

As I wobbled toward him, I noticed he wasn’t wearing his gun, and he wasn’t keeping a discreet distance between himself and the iron bars like he was supposed to.

“If I was a tough girl, I’d insist I didn’t need the painkillers.”

“Not to worry. You’re plenty tough.” He cleared his throat. “I brought you a bottle of water.”

I curled my hand around the bar and studied him. “Why are you doing this?”

Dawson’s dark gaze never wavered from mine. “You know why.”

I frowned.

“Here. Hold out your hand.” He dumped the pills into my palm.

I popped the pills in my mouth and snagged the water bottle he’d wedged through the biggest slat. I drained the whole thing and passed the empty back to him. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. You want some food brought down? Kiki said you didn’t eat earlier.”

“I’m not hungry.”

We stared at each other in the utter silence.

“I thought you might like to know I talked to Hope.”

“She’s awake? How is she?”

“Bandaged up, but okay. She’s worried about you.”

“Did you tell her… ?” I hadn’t thought how I’d break the news to her that I’d killed Theo. A big part of me worried she’d think I belonged in jail.

“Yes. She knows about Theo. She isn’t upset with you, Mercy.”

How had he learned to read me so quickly? “She knows he killed Levi?”

“That, too.”

“Is she by herself?”

“No. Jake and Sophie are staying with her.”

At least she wasn’t alone. Not like me. I squeezed my eyes shut as I rested my forehead against the cold metal. I wouldn’t cry. I wouldn’t feel desolate. I wouldn’t feel go goddamn isolated. God. I should be used to it by now.

Rough, but warm and gentle fingers tentatively caressed my cheek through the bars. I couldn’t make myself pull away. I needed simple human contact, if only for a minute or ten.

“Dawson,” I said hoarsely. “The camera. Someone might see.”

“I don’t care.”

His breath drifted across the top of my head in a soothing, steady stream. He continued the tender strokes up and down my jawline until I finally retreated, even when I didn’t want to.

He stepped back. “You’d better crawl onto the cot before the meds kick in and you crash on the floor.”

Only after I’d stretched out did he make any move to leave.

“Get some rest. I’ll see you in the morning.” The buzz of the doors unlocking sounded, and he was gone. I had the strangest feeling he hadn’t gone far.

I laid there staring at the ceiling until the painkillers made me sleepy. Dawson hadn’t apologized for arresting me. It was weird to think I would’ve thought less of him if he had.