Mercy Kill

FOURTEEN

As I zipped toward home, I tried to stop obsessing about what information the reports held and took a moment to enjoy the drive. Even my dirty windshield couldn’t mask the sky’s brilliance. Cloudless. Vast. An intense shade of blue that straddled the color spectrum between turquoise and sapphire.

Few artists had captured the magnificence of a spring sky. Plenty of talented hands showcased the bleak winter sky. Or the hazy, hot, dry hues of a stormy summer sky. Or the color-leached tones of an autumn sky. Spring was so transitory in western South Dakota it almost wasn’t a season. Which is why it’d always been my favorite time of year.

Shoonga bounded across the yard to greet me. Nothing like a dog’s slobbering, barking, yipping as the ultimate welcome home.

Jake’s head was buried in the engine compartment of the farmhand. Inside, Sophie sat at the kitchen table doing word searches as she hardboiled eggs. Hope watched TV, Joy asleep at her breast. Just a typical day at the ranch.

I locked myself in Dad’s office. While I waited for the computer to boot up, I rifled through the stack of bills, intending to divide them in the order they needed to be paid, when I remembered book work was no longer my domain. I did a quick tally:

Not doing ranch books.

Not helping with the cattle.

Not doing domestic chores.

Wow. I was getting to be as useless as teats on a bull around here.

Not entirely useless. You cough up cash out of your retirement pay every month for operating expenses.

That thought was even more depressing. Had I really become the type of hobby rancher I loathed? And would I feel guiltier if I was elected sheriff?

Did your dad feel guilty?

Good question.

I opened the manila envelope and slid the papers out, shuffling until I found Jason’s personal effects. The lists were separated into three categories: body, vehicle, and motel room.

Items listed found on and around the victim’s body:

Clothing:

Brown leather jacket

Jeans

Long-sleeved dress shirt

T-shirt

Briefs

Socks

White athletic shoes

Black leather belt

Loose change in front right pocket

Noticeably absent: any type of wallet or identification.

I checked off the items, one by one. Another item was noticeably absent. J-Hawk’s knife, which he claimed he never was without. He’d had it in Clementine’s because he’d been waving it around like a madman. Maybe it was on another list. I kept looking.

Items listed found in victim’s vehicle:

Vehicle registration

Proof of insurance

Manufacturer’s manual

South Dakota map

Cell phone and charger

Two boxes of folders filled with Titan Oil information

Four empty cans Red Bull energy drink

Twelve protein bar wrappers

Two pairs sunglasses

Three ball caps

Winter jacket

Windshield scraper

Leather gloves

Rubber boots

Duffel bag contents:

Athletic shorts

Sweatpants

Two T-shirts

Socks

Athletic shoes

Deodorant

iPod

Three water bottles

Four protein bars

Forty (40) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.

Holy crap. Forty? No wonder Dawson had spelled it out and listed it numerically. Be easy to assume a mistake had been made in the cataloguing.

My question? Why did Jason have that much OxyContin in his possession? Was working for Titan Oil that stressful?

I went back over the list. No mention of the knife. Anywhere. Something was wrong here. I scanned the next header.

Items listed found in victim’s motel room:

Three pairs jeans

Four pairs suit pants

Four dress shirts

Two suit jackets

Two ties

Two pairs dress shoes

Five long-sleeved casual shirts

Three T-shirts

Seven pairs underwear

Nine pairs socks

Belt

Toiletry bag contents:

Toothbrush

Toothpaste

Condoms

Dental floss

Electric razor

Aftershave

Mouthwash

Nail clipper

Four (4) pill containers of prescription-brand Nexavar

What the hell was Nexavar? I’d never heard of it. My stomach-flipped when I looked at the first item under the next heading.

Suitcase contents:

One hundred (100) unopened pill containers of prescription-brand OxyContin.

I stared at the paper, as if the meaning of the words would change.

The J-Hawk I’d known, the man who’d saved my life, had been a regimented career military man who walked the straight and narrow.

This Jason Hawley was either a drug addict or a drug dealer or both.

I scoured the paperwork again. I didn’t discover anything new, but I realized there’d been no personal effects. No pictures of his family. No wedding ring.

No knife.

If the knife wasn’t at the crime scene, in his SUV, on his person, or in his hotel room… where was it?

As much as I questioned Dawson’s investigative progress, I doubted he would’ve missed such an important piece of evidence-given the fact Jason Hawley had been stabbed as well as shot.

Had Jason waved the knife at his attacker, like he’d done in the bar? Had the killer grabbed the knife and used it on Jason? What kind of sick fucker did that?

One smart enough not to leave evidence behind.

Frustrated and sickened, I flipped back to the first page. The coroner’s report.

No autopsy had been performed, the coroner examined the body basically as it’d come to her. The first page was a diagram of the body. Each wound was listed with precise measurements. Each bruise, each scratch. The diameter of the bullet holes. The sizes of the exit wounds. The length of the knife gashes. The depth of the knife gashes. But no gashes on his forearms.

I found it interesting that the knife wounds had been inflicted after the gunshot wounds. Had the killer been afraid Jason would survive? So slicing and dicing him after riddling his body with bullets was extra insurance?

If Jason had been bleeding out, no defensive cut wounds on his forearms made sense; he’d had no need to protect himself.

The coroner’s conclusion stated the victim had died between eleven p.m. and two a.m. There was no scientific way to know how long it’d taken him to die. If I’d gotten off shift early at Clem-entine’s that night, would it have mattered?

Had Jason lain there dying, hoping I’d swoop in and save him from the grim reaper just like he’d saved me?

Sick to my stomach, I had to close the file and let that guilty thought soak in. I took a deep breath and flipped the page.

Blood work information. A list of the standard tests, which I didn’t understand the necessity for. J-Hawk had obviously been murdered. What difference would it make if drugs were found in his body after the fact? Drugs hadn’t killed him.

I scanned the list, because like Kiki had warned me, it contained a whole lot of medical gibberish. A couple of details caught my eye. High levels of OxyContin. The second number was abnormally high-a drug I’d never heard of: Nexavar. But it was the same one found in his motel room. I typed the name in the search engine.

Immediately 275,000 references popped up. Clinical trials. Testimonials. Research papers. FDA approval.

Nexavar was a drug for the treatment of cancer.

Cancer.

J-Hawk had cancer?

No. Fucking. Way. Had to be a mistake. Maybe a misspelling of the common pharmaceutical name. I spelled it differently.

Same results.

Stunned, I sank back in my chair and stared at the screen, thoughts racing around my head like escaped lab rats.

If Jason had cancer, why hadn’t he stayed close to North Dakota so his physicians could monitor his vitals?

My mouth dried. After what he’d told me, I knew he’d rather deal with a cancer diagnosis on his own, on the road, away from his family, instead of allowing his attention-monger wife to care for him.

Didn’t cancer treatment make you tired? Wear you down?

Yes, but cancer treatment could be painful, so that explained the large amount of OxyContin in his system.

But it didn’t explain the massive amounts of OxyContin in his possession.

So Major Jason Hawley, who’d hated taking even a simple aspirin during his army years, had started popping pills to erase the pain and side effects from the cancer meds? Or had he become addicted to drugs because they helped him cope with how much he’d hated his life?

What a vicious circle. I wished he’d confided in me earlier. Not that I could’ve done a damn thing about his cancer or his drug dependency, but it might’ve offered him some comfort that he did have friends he could talk to.

I wondered who’d known about his use of painkillers.

His wife? Not likely.

His employer? Not likely.

I wondered who’d known about his cancer.

His wife? Likely.

His employer? Likely.

Anna? No.

J-Hawk couldn’t risk telling Anna he was dying. She would’ve said fuck it and stayed by his side until his life ended.

I couldn’t tell her. I couldn’t tell anyone, because technically, I wasn’t even supposed to have this information. But really, what did one more secret matter? I’d just pile it on the 10 billion others I was keeping.

As enlightening and disheartening as this information was, it didn’t get me any closer to finding out who’d killed him.

Might be a long shot, but I had to find out more about the woman he’d talked to that night.

I called Winona’s cell. “It’s Mercy. I’m still trying to put faces together with names on the lists. George Johnson mentioned a woman Jason talked to.”

“What’s her name?”

“Cherelle. She’s young. Indian. Got a nasty scar on her face. I guess she’s been in Clementine’s a couple times, but I don’t remember seeing her. Do you know her?”

“Yeah. Cherelle Dupris. She’s bad news.”

Damn static. “Could you repeat that?”

“I said she’s with Victor Bad Wound.”

I frowned. Another name I vaguely recognized. “Who is Victor Bad Wound?”

“Victor Bad Wound is Barry Sarohutu’s younger brother.”

“If Cherelle comes into Clementine’s, no matter what time, will you call me right away? Please?”

“I guess. But I’m being honest when I say I hope she never comes in again.” She hung up.

I tapped my fingers on the desk and stared into space. I needed more information on this Cherelle person. Who’d have access to that kind of information?

Bingo.

One person knew everyone and everything that went on around the Eagle River Reservation.

I called Rollie.