Mercy Kill

EIGHTEEN

After a quick rundown of my daily duties the next morning at the Blackbird Diner, Geneva left me to brood in the far back booth, isolated from the restaurant activity.

A shadow blocked the patchwork of sunlight. I glanced up, expecting another nosy supporter, but Shay Turnbull slid into the high-backed bench seat across from me.

I folded the newspaper and slapped it on the table. “If you want this booth, you can have it.”

The waitress appeared. “Can I getcha something?”

“Coffee. And bring candidate Gunderson a refill.”

After she waddled off, I said, “I was leaving.”

“Was being the operative word.” Shay didn’t speak again until the coffee arrived.

Screw this. I wasn’t interested in whatever cryptic comment he’d make. I started to leave.

His hand shot out, and his fingers tightly circled my wrist. “I said you’re staying.”

“If you like that hand without broken bones, you’ll let go of my arm right now.”

“Threatening me will only cause more problems for you, Sergeant Major.”

He knew my rank? “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m so happy you asked.” Shay used his free hand to drag a wallet out of his front shirt pocket. Except it wasn’t a wallet. It was a badge. He flipped it open and thrust it in my face.

My eyes focused on the tiny text.

Fuck me. Shay Turnbull was a fed. Specifically, an agent with the ICSCU-whatever the hell that was.

“It stands for the Indian Country Special Crimes Unit,” he said as I continued to scrutinize the gold metal and black lettering.

“I still don’t know what means, Agent Turnbull.”

He released my wrist and pocketed the badge. “It means this division of the FBI works with everyone.”

“So you’re what… a super-duper double-secret agent? Able to leap from agency to agency with a single bound? Slice through bureaucratic red tape with your wit and charm? Allowed to skulk around wherever the hell you want with absolute impunity?”

“You asking if I have autonomy? Yes. And no. You asking if I answer to anyone? Don’t we all?”

Smug jackass. “So you work with the BIA?”

He nodded.

“The DEA?”

“Yep.”

“The Department of the Interior?”

“Them, too.”

Agent Turnbull studied me with the air of detachment all government clones had perfected. How had I missed the signs? His sudden unexplained appearances. Disappearances. The ominous warnings. The snappy, hip clothing and brooding good looks had thrown me off.

He angled across the table; his eyes snapped fire. “Tell me, how is it that you can fuck up a multiagency investigation, one that’s taken over five months, in a little over a week?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Which was not a lie… for a change.

“Don’t try my patience, Sergeant Major, I’m not in the mood.”

I hated that he’d used my military rank. Hell, I hated that he even knew my military rank. “You know about me, but I know nothing about you, and I don’t mind saying… that seriously pisses me off. You’ve had occasions to tell me exactly who you were, Agent Turnbull, and you haven’t. So I’m inclined not to cooperate with you.”

No response.

“If I’d known what you were up to, maybe you wouldn’t be pissy about me supposedly fucking up your op.”

Stone-cold glare.

I kicked my antagonism up a notch. “But just like all the other spooks, you prefer to follow your own agenda and place blame after the fact, right?”

“You don’t have a high opinion of the government after being in Uncle Sam’s employ for so many years,” he said dryly.

Inside I seethed, but I kept my tone even. “My opinion of the armed forces is just jim-dandy. My opinion of governmental agencies that showed up and tried to tell us how to do our jobs, while infringing upon our ability to do those jobs? That makes my blood boil. I’ve been down this road before, far too many times. Ask a question, and your ilk pulls the standard ‘We can’t discuss classified cases’ line of bullshit. Jesus. Sometimes it was easier dealing with the Taliban than the inner workings of U.S. government agencies.”

“Your past experiences with other agencies-good or bad-are not my concern.”

“Then why are you here?”

That gave him pause. “Why do you think I’m in Eagle River County, Mercy?”

“Besides to annoy me? I’m guessing if all those federal agencies are involved, it’s something big.”

“That’s vague.” Agent Turnbull folded his arms over his chest. “Come on, you’re a smart cookie, yet you’re struggling to believe what’s right in front of you.”

I allowed the same cool stare he’d leveled on me.

“Indulge me,” he prompted. “What conclusions have you drawn in your quest to find out who killed your buddy, Major Jason Hawley?”

Don’t do it. Maybe he doesn’t know diddly and he’s trolling for information.

As much as civilians claimed the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing, elite government agencies made it their business to know every goddamned thing.

My mouth engaged before my brain. “I’m betting you’re here because Jason Hawley had more than a couple of bottles of OxyContin in his possession. Since he crossed state lines, it becomes a federal matter, so the DEA is involved. But the group that runs the drug trade in these parts is based out of the Eagle River Reservation, which means involving the BIA. Since the BIA deals with the FBI, they’re also brought on board. So every agency knows the particulars, except local law enforcement. For some reason you’ve kept the Eagle River County Sheriff’s Department in the dark.” I mimicked his posture-arms crossed, head cocked pertly. “Am I close to getting a cookie, Agent Turnbull?”

“Not bad. With a couple of exceptions. One, the DEA turned the cases involving reservations over to us-the multigroup task force-early this year. We’ve maintained a low profile, even while we’ve been tracking the movements of the suspected key players on this specific case. Two, we haven’t kept Eagle River County Sheriff’s Department out of the loop. Sheriff Dawson is cooperating with us fully.”

My jaw dropped. I must’ve misheard him. “What?”

“Sheriff Dawson is aware of our multiagency objective. He’s not happy about us taking over all aspects of investigation of this case.”

“All aspects of it?” I repeated inanely.

“Every bit. He’s not allowed to discuss this case with his deputies or anyone else. He cannot proceed with any line of investigation he initially started. He cannot issue a statement of any type about this case without contacting me first.”

The breath whooshed from my body. I’d jumped in the race for sheriff because I believed Dawson hadn’t been doing his job clearing up J-Hawk’s murder. When in reality, Dawson had no choice. He hadn’t been slacking in his investigative duties at all. The feds had tied his hands and his tongue.

Fuck.

My thoughts raced back to Dawson chewing out Turnbull for showing up at the crime scene at Clementine’s. It must’ve rankled Dawson, knowing he’d lose out on investigating the case before the victim’s body had cooled. Knowing his investigative techniques would be questioned again. Knowing I’d be his harshest critic. Except this time, I’d taken my concerns public, setting out to prove to the community that I was better qualified to be sheriff than Mason Dawson.

Now I really felt like tossing my cookies.

The almighty Mercy Gunderson, who prided herself on her cool-headed, rational approach, had gone off half cocked. The thought of losing the election wasn’t nearly as excruciating as the suspicion that I’d lost something even more important.

Agent Turnbull stared at me. “You all right?”

No. I wasn’t in the mood to play nice. Or to reveal my insecurities on any level to a fucking fed. “As I’m a candidate for sheriff, you should’ve told me about this task force earlier.”

“Why?”

“Because if I win the election, I’ll be in Dawson’s position, looking like an idiot when it appears I’m not doing my job, when I’ve sworn I’d handle things differently than he does specifically for that reason.”

“I warned you not to make blanket statements.” He rested his elbows on the table, the picture of earnestness. “Look, this caught you off guard. I’ll tell you what I know, but I’ll need your word it won’t go farther than you.”

“Fine.”

“Early this year, across North and South Dakota, four Intertribal Co-op Health Hospital storage facilities were hit, and their inventory of OxyContin was stolen. The problem is, no one knew when the thefts occurred, outside of a general time frame.”

“Why not?”

“The ICHH buys in bulk twice a year, based on the previous six months’ sales, then distributes to the individual hospitals’ storage facilities. The pay-in-advance business model has been standard practice for years.”

“Why?”

Bitterness flickered in his eyes. “From the advent of the formation of the ICHH, none of the pharmaceutical companies trusted the tribes to pay their bills. They refused to offer them credit and required advance payment and advance orders. No exceptions.”

“Even now?”

“Yes, except if an individual hospital needs additional prescriptions, it can reorder in small quantities. Cash up front.”

“Is the bulk-ordering mandate common knowledge within the ICHH?”

Agent Turnbull shook his head. “Just among the key adminis-trators, and they’re subject to nondisclosure.”

I held up my hand. “Interesting, but what does this have to do with Jason Hawley? He’s not Indian. Chances are slim he’d know about this arrangement.”

“Major Hawley received the information about the separate storage facilities at ICHH and delivery of pharmaceuticals from his Titan Oil coworker, Ellis LeFleur. Near as we can figure, LeFleur was fired by the ICHH about two months before he started working for Titan Oil.”

“Why was he fired?”

“Suspected sexual harassment. He claims a white female office worker falsely accused him, and the hospital administration didn’t back him up. No charges were ever filed, but they fired him outright.”

“What was his job at ICHH?”

Agent Turnbull looked chagrined. “District warehouse manager. Plus, LeFleur was a registered member of the Standing Rock Tribe. So Titan Oil hired him as their token Indian.”

“Token Indian?” I repeated.

“Titan Oil needed the Indian landowners around the various reservations to get on board with the pipeline, and LeFleur was their Native American man to offer a convincing argument.” Turnbull scowled. “Rumor had it LeFleur could charm the bees from the flowers. But he was young and inexperienced in sales, so the executives paired him with a more seasoned pitchman.”

“Jason Hawley.”

He nodded. “Information from here on out is speculation because we’ve got no official documentation. We assume LeFleur told Hawley about the warehouse setup. Whose idea it was to steal the product… again, pure supposition. Maybe LeFleur wanted revenge. Maybe it was strictly about the money. LeFleur and Hawley didn’t have much planning time, roughly two months.”

“But if LeFleur had that much insider knowledge, he didn’t need much prep time.”

“Precisely. LeFleur knew enough about the supply-and-demand cycle to leave five full boxes containing the real OxyContin on top of two different stacks-”

“So how-”

“I’m getting to that.” Turnbull held up a hand, waving the waitress over for a refill. “The original manufacturer’s boxes were still in the individual locked storage areas at the facilities, but the prescription bottles inside the boxes had been replaced.”

“Replaced with what?”

“Everything from bottles filled with Flintstones vitamins to bottles filled with Tic Tac breath mints to bottles filled with Hot Tamales candies.”

“So if the inventory manager looked in the storage area, he or she would see the stacks of boxes of OxyContin and assume everything was A-okay?”

“Exactly. That’s why the actual time frame is unclear. Nothing was discovered until one of the reservations in North Dakota cracked open a box at the bottom of the stack, at the end of January, and found the tampered products. But we’re guessing they struck right after the shipments were delivered.”

“No surveillance cameras?”

“We checked. They were disabled on two separate occasions, two weeks apart.”

Disabling cameras would’ve been child’s play for J-Hawk, whose military job required high-tech breaking and entering.

“LeFleur maintained ties with the other warehouses, in addition to relationships with the other warehouse managers.”

The brotherhood vibe in the Native American community was strong, so LeFleur had an easy in, especially if he’d been hung out to dry by his white bosses on the sexual-harassment issue. “How long did it take the other hospitals to check their inventory?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Why wasn’t it prioritized?”

“It was. It would’ve taken longer due to infighting between the hospitals and the tribes. We had to call in the DEA, and they ran the rest of the physical checks with permission from the individual tribal councils.”

“How many bottles of OxyContin are we talking about?”

“Total? Four thousand.”

My eyes nearly bugged out of my head. “That much OxyContin is prescribed on the reservations?”

“Apparently.”

“What’s the street value?”

His gaze slid away. Then back. “The average street-sale price is about a dollar a milligram. For easy math, let’s say a bottle of one hundred eight-milligram pills sells for eight hundred bucks on the street. Multiply that by the number of missing bottles…”

I did a quick calculation. “That’s over three million dollars.”

“Not exactly chump change.”

“Why haven’t I heard about this on the news?” Seemed every media outlet loved to release stories about Indians that held a negative slant.

Agent Turnbull lifted a brow. “What part of covert ops is confusing, Sergeant Major?”

“What part of arresting Jason Hawley for interstate drug trafficking is confusing, Agent Turnbull? Especially if you knew he was involved?”

“The agencies didn’t originally connect Major Hawley-who we’re aware is a decorated war veteran-to the thefts.”

“Why not?”

“Because like you said, Hawley wasn’t Indian. He was only partnered with Ellis LeFleur for a short time. According to people who knew LeFleur, he vanished at the end of January. Hawley was a family man who stuck around the area. Initially, we focused on tracking LeFleur because we suspected an inside job.”

“Did you find LeFleur?”

He nodded. “About two months ago in a mangled mass of metal after a high-speed chase in Kansas City that didn’t end well.”

“Did LeFleur point the finger at Hawley?”

“No, he died in the accident. But his girlfriend survived. We recovered seven hundred fifty bottles from their residence. There wasn’t enough cash on hand to convince us LeFleur had taken the whole lot of four thousand. When we offered the girlfriend immunity from prosecution, she admitted LeFleur had a partner but swore she didn’t know his name. So we backtracked. During the search, we learned Jason Hawley had been diagnosed with incurable cancer.”

I kept my face neutral.

“Why was a dying man spending all his time on the road, away from medical treatment, away from his family? It sent up a red flag.”

“And you’d been following him for the last month, waiting for him to… what? Make a mistake? Make a sale?” Die? I could not wrap my head around that devious, thieving side of my friend.

The maroon fake leather had no give when Turnbull sank back. “We’d been waiting for him to make a sale.”

“You know who the buyer was?”

“Again, suspected. And it was confirmed when Hawley contacted Cherelle Dupris. He had contact with Cherelle on three separate occasions, that we know of. Which indicated to us that Saro and Victor were playing hardball with him.”

“Why?”

“Who knows what goes through drug dealers’ minds? Probably Victor and Saro demanded a reduced price and it pissed Hawley off because he knew exactly what his product was worth. We’re ninety percent sure Hawley decided not to sell to them the last time he met with Cherelle.”

The night he was killed at Clementine’s. No need for either of us to point that out, but the picture for motive was becoming clearer. “Had Hawley sold much out on the open market?”

“Near as we can figure he was down to eight hundred bottles. So assuming he and LeFleur made an even split, he’d managed to dump twelve hundred bottles over the last five months.”

“Where?”

Agent Turnbull’s face shuttered. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“So it’s pointless to ask if you’ve tracked down the other six hundred sixty bottles that weren’t in Jason’s hotel room or in his vehicle?”

“Where did you get the information about Hawley’s personal effects?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.” My neener-neener response made him mad, although he tried to hide it. “Where’s the money? If J-Hawk was hocking drugs, he’d have a lot of cash. The omnipotent feds haven’t been able to track it down?”

“No.” His eyes turned hostile. “Thanks to you, we’re right back where we started.”

“How can you blame any of this on me?”

“We know you discovered that Cherelle was Saro and Victor’s screen and approached Cherelle at Clementine’s. Instead of walking away when Victor and Saro showed up, you followed them and kept up the pretense of campaigning for sheriff. Any law enforcement sniffing around spooks them.”

“Ah ah ah. Wrong, bucko. No pretense. I am campaigning for sheriff. Anything I said to Victor and Saro dealt with my campaign. Since I assume you or one of your G-men were in the vicinity, you also know I never wavered from keeping the conversation about getting their votes. So try again.”

“Then explain last night at Stillwell’s? What the fuck were you doing going after Benji Bad Wound? Showing him up in front of an entire bar full of witnesses?”

“I had no freakin’ clue who he was. But it doesn’t matter, because I’m not the type to sit around and let a bully have free rein to beat the shit out of someone. No one else stepped in, so I did.”

“Why do you think no one else got involved?”

It occurred to me, for the first time, that everyone in the bar probably knew Benji was Saro and Victor’s nephew. The reason no one-including Steve Stillwell-had stepped in? Nobody wanted to incur the wrath or attention of the reservation bad boys. But I’d heard that blasted “Underdog” theme song inside my head and jumped in, fists flying.

Great plan, Mercy. Maybe the logic center of your brain has been rattled by too many IEDs.

But Agent Turnbull wasn’t done railing on me. “And to make matters worse, you threatened Saro and Victor when they showed up at Stillwell’s to talk to you about humiliating Benji.”

“They threatened me, Agent. I told them the truth-I’d derive great pleasure in taking them down if I was elected sheriff. Oh, and that was after they’d dropped hints about what a tool my father was.”

“Now, thanks to your macho behavior and the chip on your shoulder about your dearly departed dad, Saro and Victor have closed ranks and holed up on the reservation where we can’t get to them.”

“Get to them for what?”

No response.

My jaw popped I clenched my teeth so hard. “You have proof one of them killed Jason Hawley?”

Agent Turnbull stared at me blankly.

“Goddammit. Tell me.”

He offered me a snakebite smile. “I don’t have to tell you a thing, Sergeant Major.”

“Is he bothering you?”

Startled, I glanced up to see Sheriff Dawson. His face was pure business, his posture pure agitation as he braced a hand on the back of the booth above my head and loomed over Agent Turnbull.

Yikes.

“Or am I interrupting something?”

“No. Agent Turnbull and I were finished.”

At my use of his title, Turnbull scowled.

“Would you like to join us?” I asked Dawson politely.

“I’ll pass.”

But Dawson didn’t move. Agent Turnbull didn’t move. I didn’t move. A machete couldn’t have hacked the thick air.

Agent Turnbull’s curious gaze winged between Dawson’s impass-ive face and mine. A knowing smile upturned the corners of his lips. “I’m not interested in muscling in on your territory, Dawson.”

“You’ve been on my territory since the second you stepped foot in this county. I’ll cooperate with the feds because I’ve got no choice, Agent Turnbull, but I don’t gotta like it.”

Dawson was purposely being obtuse. Again, I was reminded of his fierceness. Of his sweetness. He’d rather take an insult than allow one to be directed at me.

You’re such a sucker, Mercy. Maybe you oughta pucker up, bat your eyelashes, and squeeze his big biceps, too.

Turnbull, being a nosy asshole fed, didn’t let it slide. “Tell me, Sheriff. Does knowing what she’s capable of make it hard to fall asleep next to her some nights?”

I ground my teeth at hearing Turnbull voice the question I’d asked myself.

Dawson flashed his teeth. “Have a nice day, Agent.” He looked at me, no differently than usual, and said, “You, too, Miz Gunderson.”

After Dawson swaggered off, Turnbull asked, “How many people know about you and Dawson?”

I pretended to give the question serious thought. “Probably everyone, with the exception of the folks in the Restful Acres Nursing Home. Most of them have limited recall, and I doubt they even know who’s in the sheriff’s race. But everyone else knows I’m running against him.”

He rolled his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

I know. “Excuse me.” I ducked out of the booth. I didn’t run, but with his long-legged stride I didn’t catch Dawson until we were in front of Pete’s Pawnshop. “Dawson. Wait.”

He seemed surprised to see me. Surprised and wary. He glanced over his shoulder. “If you’re gonna chew me out, I’d prefer you did it in private.”

“I didn’t chase you down to rip into you.”

“Then why did you chase me down?”

Because I’m just as much a tool and a fool as I feared. “To ask why you didn’t tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

“About Shay Turnbull. Who he is, who he works for.”

The angry muscle ticked in Dawson’s jaw. “Why does it matter now?”

“It just does.”

“That’s a bullshit answer, and I don’t have time for this.” Dawson spun and started to walk away from me.

Frustrated by his dismissal, I grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him.

Within two seconds he’d snagged my wrist and strong-armed me into the alley. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I’m pissed off.”

Dawson snorted. “Like that’s news.”

“Why didn’t you tell me Turnbull was a fed? God, Dawson, if I’d known the feds had taken over the investigation, and you had no choice but to let the Hawley case drop, I never would’ve agreed-”

“To run against me for sheriff?” he supplied. “It’s a little late for that now, doncha think?”

The full brunt of my mistake knocked the breath from my lungs.

“Answer me, Mercy.”

I could barely work up enough spit to swallow, let alone speak.

He crowded me against the brick building. “Do you know what’s the worst part of this situation?”

Too many awful reasons surfaced. It was hard to shake my head in response, when it was so damn hard to hold it up.

“Realizing how little you think of my professional abilities.”

Direct hit. “Dawson-”

“Let. Me. Finish. Last summer I chalked up your distrust of me to your replacement issues about your father. I chalked up your skepticism of my investigative skills to the personal stakes when your nephew was murdered. But when you automatically accused me of not doing my job again? That jab hurt worse than a knee to the balls. Or so I thought, until I started to wonder if you’d kept our personal involvement your dirty little secret because professionally you consider me no better than Barney Fife.”

The haunted look in his eyes made me want to hide my face in shame. But he was wrong about how I’d treated him… wasn’t he?

“I thought I could count on you to understand. You, of all people, Mercy, know what it’s like when the government forces you to keep your mouth shut, forces you to turn a blind eye, forces your compliance at any cost. You’ve lived that life. Hell, as far as I can tell, you still embody that unquestioning code of military ethics-personally and professionally. Yet here you are, judging me as lacking, for sticking to that exact same set of standards.”

A hot wash of shame burned as the words hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite sliced through me as sharp and painful as barbed wire.

My God. Talk about being sanctimonious. How many years had I been forced to follow protocol without question? Why had I questioned Dawson’s methodology? Because I was accustomed to being highest on the pecking order? Because my timetable, my way of doing things, and the answers I demanded should always be priority number one?

Delusions of importance much, Sergeant Major?

I squeezed my eyes shut.

Why hadn’t I considered that as sheriff, Dawson would be held to rigid rules and legal standards? Why hadn’t I realized my father hadn’t talked about his duties as sheriff, not because he didn’t want to but because he couldn’t?

I hoped for Dawson’s warm, rough fingers to nudge my chin up even as I steeled myself against his recriminations.

But his footsteps faded as he walked away from me and I was left with nothing but regret.