Merciless

20

Halfway to Sheldon’s house I considered whipping a U-turn and heading back to the VS office.

But that little voice in my head and that gut feeling the FBI advised me to discount… were clamoring for attention. I had nothing else to do but fret about Mason, or count the hours until Lex was dismissed from school.

Or I could find a quiet corner in Stillwell’s and drink.

Nah.

I drove past Sheldon’s slowly, staking out the place, but with no traffic, it really didn’t matter who saw what I was doing. Thirty yards from the turnoff was a steel gate. The front entrance was secured with a heavy chain and a lock. Talk about overkill. Usually, a security system around here was a neon sign to robbers. We have something of worth that needs protection, please rob us.

What valuables did Sheldon have that required such security measures?

Then I remembered he lived with an elderly uncle. If the man suffered from Alzheimer’s, then I understood the need for extra precautions. I scanned the fence line. Sturdy fencing. KEEP OUT and NO HUNTING and NO TRESPASSING signs were attached at random intervals.

There wasn’t a gravel road running along the backside of the property, so I turned around, debating my next move. Park at the gate and wander up the driveway, claiming I was worried when he hadn’t shown up in the archives department?

Would that give him the wrong idea? Especially since Fergie was convinced the man had a crush on me?

Was there any logical reason for me to be here besides those niggling feelings that wouldn’t allow me to leave it be?

No, a stealth entry would be my best option.

Leaving my vehicle by the side of the road might raise questions. At the next entrance to the adjoining field, I drove over a cattle guard and bounced along the field, hoping it wasn’t a bull pasture. As soon as I reached the base of a hill, I shut off my pickup. I slipped on a camo Carhartt coat. I kept my gun on my hip and left the coat unbuttoned as I slid from the cab.

If I hadn’t needed to blend, I wouldn’t have bothered with the coat. The sun shone from a watery blue sky. A great day to be outside hunting, hearing the dried grass crunch beneath my feet as I followed the fence line.

Before I reached the shelterbelt on Sheldon’s property, I scrutinized the fence for an easy-access point. I found two saggy, rusted-out pieces of barbed wire and stepped on the lowest section, yanking the upper section high enough to let myself through.

I crept along, on full alert. This stealth behavior was easier when I wasn’t dressed in full combat gear or the restrictive garb of burkas or niqabs.

Approaching the house, I didn’t see a vehicle. My gaze moved to the detached garage twenty yards away. No windows in the garage doors. I crouched and made a break from the shelterbelt to the side of the garage. I reached around and tried the knob. Locked.

Now I had no choice but to walk up to the front door and knock.

Making sure my gun was easily accessible, I stepped from the shadows and skirted a rusted-out metal drum. Very little other junk around the perimeter.

I casually strolled up the wooden steps to the front door. I knocked three times. Waited a solid minute before I knocked again.

No answer.

After one last series of knocks and a loud, “Hello? Sheldon? Mr. War Bonnet? Is anyone home?” I was certain the house was empty. I tried the door. Locked. I couldn’t see in the windows-the shades were pulled.

Nothing here, Mercy. Just get in your truck and go home.

I turned around too fast. My right eye is pretty good during the day, but for some reason, I had a case of vertigo. I lost my balance and landed rather indelicately on my ass.

Glad no one was around to see that.

As I rolled to my knees, I saw something red beneath the wooden deck bench. Weird that Sheldon would have the same tacky ceramic mushroom yard ornament we had. I’d given it to Sophie as a joke, but she loved the damn thing. She’d moved it to the raised flower bed by the gazebo after I’d accidentally hit it with the weed whacker and chipped off part of the stem.

I reached for it and nearly dropped it when I saw the damaged stem.

Not exactly like mine… it was mine.

Shock warred with a burning sense of betrayal. What was wrong with this fucker that he’d show up at my house and steal something from me? Why had he been sneaking around?

Kind of like you’re sneaking around his place right now?

Not the same thing.

I very carefully set the mushroom down and faced the door to Sheldon’s house. I didn’t have a lock-pick set with me-another handy tool I’d picked up in spec-ops training-and right now, I didn’t have the patience to mess with a deadbolt. Chances were high his back door wouldn’t have double locks.

Wrong.

The back door was more secure than the front door.

I jogged back to the front. I needed to get inside, but my options were limited.

Shooting off a lock doesn’t work unless you’re using a shotgun or a rifle. I wasn’t entirely sure Sheldon’s uncle wasn’t inside. Randomly shooting the fuck out of something, while fun and cathartic, would be dangerous. I didn’t have bolt cutters on me, and Sheldon’s garage was locked up as tight as his house. Trying to kick in a door… not smart unless you used a battering ram to weaken the wood.

Looked like I was breaking a window.

If I got caught, I’d say I’d smelled smoke and believed the house was on fire. Since I knew an elderly man lived there, I had to get inside by any means necessary and verify that he was all right.

More than plausible. And enough probable cause to cover my ass if someone showed up while I was breaking and entering.

I slipped my left glove on. No reason to leave fingerprints. I threw an elbow into the glass, and chunks dropped everywhere.

Adrenaline surged through me. I used the butt of my gun to break the jagged pieces free from the window frame before I found the string-pull and jerked up the blind.

Good thing it wasn’t a long drop through the window. I stepped into a small mudroom and kept my gun in my hand as I entered the kitchen and called out, “Sheldon? Mr. War Bonnet?”

No response.

I don’t know if I expected Sheldon to live in squalor-many rez residents did. No judgment on my part. That state was the societal norm. But Sheldon’s kitchen counter wasn’t piled high with crusty, smelly dishes; empty frozen-dinner boxes; and beer cans. The dishes in the drying rack were clean. One cup, one bowl, one spoon. Odd. I peeked in the refrigerator. Not much fresh food. I opened the cupboards. Every one was filled with meals ready to eat. That was weird. Why would he willingly eat MREs?

The kitchen doorway opened into the living room. A decent-sized TV hung on one wall. One plaid couch. One coffee table without a single object on it. Rows and rows of books covered two bookshelves on the far wall. All military themed. Fiction. Nonfiction. Nothing too out of the ordinary.

I moved to the hallway. Four closed doors. Keeping my gun in my right hand, I wrapped my gloved left hand around the handle and opened the first door. A closet packed with junk.

Keeping with the room-clearing tactics I’d had drilled into my head, I shoved open the second door. A bedroom I assumed was Sheldon’s. One side resembled the barracks from basic training, but from a single soldier’s view. One cot with an army-green wool blanket, one footlocker, pegs embedded into the wall for clothes. Christ. I could’ve bounced a quarter off the bed, it was so tightly made. He’d allowed a few concessions. A humidifier hummed in the corner. A gun safe abutted the closet. The gun safe was locked and the closet held work clothes.

The other side of Sheldon’s bedroom had been set up like a military command office. A desk. A computer. Maps on the wall. Little army men in a Plexiglas container with tanks and equipment that could be moved around. Different topographical dioramas were stacked along the wall.

It looked like a movie set, staged and pristine. Nothing like a real command center in wartime with broken shit piled up everywhere.

The third door opened into a bathroom. Typical 1950s ranch house. White tub, white toilet, white tile. Mirrored medicine cabinet above the white pedestal sink. I opened and scrutinized the contents. Herbal concoctions in plain bottles. No prescriptions. For either Shelton or Harold. Did that mean he had to lock up Harold’s medication?

The last door stood at the end of the stubby hallway. The lock on this door was an industrial padlock-on the outside.

Dammit.

I understood the necessity of a lockdown procedure if an elderly person tended to wander, but I hoped Sheldon hadn’t locked his uncle in his bedroom while he’d gone to run errands.

I couldn’t shoot this lock off. Couldn’t bust down the door. I might look for a crowbar to remove the latch the padlock was attached to, if I had lots of time.

Or… I could look for a spare set of keys. Remembering the big key ring Sheldon carried at the archives, I knew he had at least one extra set. Where would I keep them?

In my office. In a place where they’d be clearly marked, but out of plain sight. I returned to Sheldon’s bedroom and started opening drawers in his desk.

Bingo. In the back of a filing cabinet was a metal box containing keys. And score, they were all marked. I snagged the sets for the spare bedroom and the garage.

The padlock to the bedroom clicked open easily.

In hindsight, I wished it hadn’t worked at all. Because what I found behind that door was beyond disturbing.

I’d kept my gun out and swept the room. At first, I thought I’d walked in on a sleeping man. Easy to do with a human shape stretched out on the bed with the covers pulled up. But something about the too-pale, too-still form resting atop the pillow bothered me. I stepped closer.

My breath stalled.

Not only was the guy on the bed dead, but he was mummified. Mummified.

Holy shit.

I’d never seen anything like this.

The top of the head hadn’t been wrapped in gauze, so graying black hair stuck up in dull tufts. The strands looked as if they’d disintegrate upon contact. It also looked like an entire can of shellac had been poured on the face and neck. The mouth was open, covered in gauze, in a parody of The Scream.

The star quilt had been tucked beneath the man’s mummified neck, blocking the rest of the body from view. I knew I had to pull that quilt back. I studied the lump under the covers for a solid minute to make sure nothing was moving, like rats or mice feasting on rotten flesh and living inside a dead-body cavity. Critters that would shriek at me with high-pitched outrage that I’d discovered their secret snack and home combination.

Inhaling deeply, I grabbed the corner of the quilt hanging on the floor. I hesitated and felt like a total pussy for it. What was my problem? I had no issue dealing with soldiers whose innards were dragging in the dirt after being gut shot, so why was I hesitating when this guy was already dead?

Just jerk it back like a bandage.

So I did.

The rest of the body was wrapped in gauze. The arms were secured alongside the body, not wrapped separately. The legs were wrapped as one unit, too. The entire form held a shiny glaze, like this was a kid’s art project. I half feared if I looked closely, I’d see glitter. But I knew it wasn’t papier mâché crafted to resemble a human when I noticed the feet hadn’t been wrapped. A greasy, soiled spot on the sheet gave the impression of decayed flesh beneath the skeletal bones.

Fucking nasty. I shuddered.

The body didn’t smell like rotten flesh, but there was a sour herblike odor. I had no way of knowing how long this dude-who I presumed to be Harold War Bonnet-had been dead.

No wonder Sheldon kept his house locked up tight.

Why would he do this?

Some kind of loneliness?

No, Sheldon hadn’t struck me as the sentimental type, if mummifying your relative’s body could be considered sentimental.

Another thought turned my stomach.

He’d done this for money.

With no one the wiser about his uncle’s death, Sheldon had kept collecting his uncle’s Social Security checks and tribal pension checks after the man had died.

Another shudder rippled down my spine. What if Sheldon had killed his uncle? He could’ve done it five years ago, right after he’d taken over the archives job. Officer Ferguson mentioned she hadn’t seen Harold War Bonnet for a long time.

Sheldon War Bonnet was one sick puppy. This creepy asshole had a lot more to answer for now than stealing a goddamn ceramic mushroom out of my garden.

I left the mummified body exposed and backed out of the room. No sense in trying to cover my tracks. I swept the perimeter of the house one last time for signs of a basement or a crawl space but found nothing. I unlocked the back door and left it wide open. Same with the front door. I shoved the token he’d stolen from my garden in my outside jacket pocket.

As I stood in front of the door to the garage, manipulating the lock, I tried to figure out a way to tell Turnbull what I’d found here and why I hadn’t reported my suspicions right away.

Mainly because I hadn’t had any suspicions about the man. The archivist hadn’t been on my radar at all. He’d seemed the mild-mannered type, content with his (boring) role in life. Curious, but no more curious than Margene, the snoopy gossip at the Q-Mart. And I hadn’t considered her a suspect, either.

Did I consider Sheldon War Bonnet a suspect in the murders because I’d found a mummified body in his house?

It certainly put him on my bring-in-for-questioning list.

I imagined my conversation with Agent Turnbull about the situation: So… Fergie swore this Sheldon guy had a mad crush on me, so I thought I’d check it out. You know: Sneak onto his property. Break into his house to see if he’d penned love letters to me. Find out if, as an amateur herbalist, he’d been concocting a love potion that would make me fall madly in love with him. And during my search for those incriminating items, can you believe I found his uncle? Mummified.

Yeah. That was a feasible and reasonable explanation.

Not.

The padlock opened, and I removed it from the latch. I turned the doorknob with my left hand, keeping my gun in my right.

Damn dark in here.

I paused and listened.

Nothing.

I patted along the wall until I found a light switch, then I flipped it on.

What I saw was beyond déjà vu.

Pictures were spread out on a long wooden bench. Random pictures-except they were all of me, copies of the ones I’d found in my truck yesterday. But there were more. Most photos were recent, but… where had he found a picture of me in my uniform? I peered at it more closely and wanted to throw up. He’d taken this out of my dad’s office.

Not only had he been sneaking around outside my house, he’d been inside. When?

Whenever he wanted-I’d forgotten to lock the doors since Dawson had been in the hospital. He could’ve dropped food off, just like my friends and neighbors had, the day after the accident. Word had spread fast, and if anyone had questioned him about who he was, he wouldn’t have had to lie. I had been working with him.

When had this gone beyond crush behavior? Sheldon had always been too… earnest and helpful. And now I realized it hadn’t been a coincidence when he’d shown up that night at Stillwell’s, or when he’d just happened to be walking past my truck yesterday. He’d broken in and left an envelope of disturbing images, then he’d hung around to see my reaction. Why? In hopes that I’d confide my fears in him?

Fuck that. Fuck him.

I gathered all the pictures, methodically searching every nook and cranny for more. On the very bottom shelf, I found a photo printer with a memory card still in it. I took the memory card and the camera hidden behind the printer.

I’d really believed that Latimer Elk Thunder had left those pictures as a warning. If I was that far off base with him, how far off base had I been with everything else? What else was Sheldon capable of?

Maybe you don’t want to know.

But I’d gone this far. I pulled back the heavy plastic curtain and stepped to the other side of the garage.

My gaze scanned the wall. A whole lot of dried herbs hung from hooks in the ceiling. How had I forgotten Sheldon had told me he was an herbalist? I had no idea what foxglove looked like, but I’d bet the ranch it was up there.

I squinted at the rafters and froze. Those hooks. I recognized them. It was the exact same type of hook used on Penny Pretty Horses. Yes, they were common hunting tools around here… but coupled with the herbs… I spun around and saw a collapsible cot. Leather restraints hung from both sides, top and the bottom. Bloodied restraints. Bloodied ropes.

Oh God. Oh sweet Jesus.

Freaked out by what I was seeing, I stumbled back into the shelving, knocking bottles loose, sending them crashing to the cement like glass bombs.

Clapping my hand over my mouth, I attempted to calm myself. But any chance at calmness fled when I noticed dark black blotches on the plastic curtain.

I knew what blood spatters looked like when they dried.

Just. Like. That.

I bit the inside of my lips to hold the bile down when I realized I’d stumbled into Sheldon War Bonnet’s House of Horrors.

The floor had dark stains. Could be from oil, but I doubted it. The bloodstains on the plastic tarp could be from an animal kill, but I doubted it.

The entire hideous scenario flashed through my brain. Sheldon dragging the victim from his car, stripping her, and strapping her to the gurney. Letting her get thirsty and then offering a drink of digitalis-laced water. He could leave her out here for a day or two while he made his demented plans. That’s why he’d planned the murders in the fall months. Not only was it hunting season, there’d be less chance of the body bloating in summertime heat, gathering insects and interest.

Sheldon War Bonnet was a serial killer.

I had no feeling of pride I’d found this information. Pure dumb luck on my part.

I had no feeling of accomplishment that this discovery would provide closure for the victim’s families.

Right now, I didn’t care.

Because someone in my family was next on his list.