Mercy Kill

THREE

John-John was already hauling ice when I strolled into Clementine’s. “Hey, Mercy. Vivi’s got a sick kid, so you’re on mop duty.”

“Great.” For the next hour I scrubbed the floor and sang along to the tunes on the jukebox. I poked my head into the men’s bathroom. Nasty-ass place could stay dirty another night.

Cleanup duties complete, I poured a glass of Coke and studied my boss. It hadn’t been an easy transition, going from lifelong friends to an employee/employer relationship.

But some things didn’t change regardless if our roles did. John-John had always been more comfortable with himself-body size, skin color, spirituality, sexuality-than any person I’d ever known. We’d always joked he’d never outgrown that horny teen state, nor the husky/chubby stage boys do around age sixteen. So his weight loss concerned me. I knew he hadn’t been dieting. “Are you working tonight?”

“Why else would I be here?” he snapped.

I waited, biting back my bitchy retort.

“Sorry, doll. Just a little stressed and touchy about it.”

“Have I done something to piss you off, boss?”

“God, no, and stop calling me that.” He smoothed his hand over the top of his head and impatiently flicked his braids over his shoulder. “There’s some other stuff going on, stuff you wouldn’t be interested in.”

I lifted a brow. “If it has something to do with you, I’m interested. I remember when you used to tell me everything.”

“That was a long time ago.”

“Some things might’ve changed, kola, but my ears still work the same as they did twenty years ago.” Would he recognize the words he’d thrown back at me when I’d retreated after Levi’s murder?

John-John hip-checked me. “Smart-ass.”

“So spill it.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

The dark circles under his eyes supported that statement. “You having disturbing visions?”

He sighed. “That’s the thing. I don’t know. I dream, but I can’t make sense of it. I’ve always remembered the relevant points, allowing me to decipher Wakan Tanka symbols when I wake. Not lately. It’s frustrating. I’ve been stuck in that cycle for a couple months. Ever since…”

The vision he’d had about me. As far as I knew, it was one of the few times John-John’s visions hadn’t followed a path to becoming some form of reality. “What about Muskrat? Isn’t he your anchor? Can’t he help you figure it out?” My knowledge of Sioux rituals was sorely lacking, but I didn’t want to lose the conversational momentum since this was the first time he’d opened up to me for months. We’d been working opposite shifts, and I saw him less now than when I’d been on the stool side of the bar.

“Yes. But he’s part of the problem.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

“No, after fifteen years together we’re both too stubborn to teach a younger pup our old tricks, so he’s stuck with me. But I ain’t happy with him neither. His back problems aren’t getting better, and he refuses to go to the doctor for treatment. I’ve suggested alternatives: a sweat, a chiropractor, a spiritual massage. He’s stalling; he’s in pain, and he won’t talk to me about it. It’s driving me crazy.”

“Why is he dragging his feet?”

“Because he’s scared it’s something serious.”

I couldn’t fathom Muskrat, a solid six-foot-eight-inch ape of a man, with the disposition of a surly bear, fearing anything. But people thought the same thing about me. “You want me to talk to him? Knock some sense into his thick skull?”

John-John sent me a stern look. “Absolutely not, and don’t you dare breathe a word of this to him.”

“I’ll point out I’m awful good at keeping secrets.”

“Too good.” He chucked me under the chin. “Speaking of secrets, what’s up with you and our delectable sheriff?”

I refilled my soda, considering my answer and his evasion. “Who knows?”

“He hasn’t been sniffing around lately?” he asked skeptically.

“I saw him last night.” I crunched a piece of ice. “Actually, I pulled a gun on him outside the bar after closing, and he still followed me home.”

His gaze narrowed. “Were you armed on shift?”

“Yep.”

“For Christsake, Mercy-”

“Relax. It was just a small handgun. It wouldn’t have made a very big hole in anyone.”

John-John mumbled something, probably a prayer. The office phone jangled, and he raced to catch the call.

His inquiry about my relationship with Dawson brought my own questions to the surface.

When the sheriff was off duty, hanging out in the bar, we ignored each other. People expected our animosity because he’d arrested me last summer. The unexpected bonus for us? Our secret sexual encounters after our public sniping were hotter than a blowtorch.

But a good chunk of our hostility wasn’t faked. We had differing philosophies, especially recently on the proposed Titan Oil pipeline that would literally cut our county in two. Dawson pointed out that building the pipeline would mean new jobs in Eagle River County for several months at least.

The short-term gain for a select group of specialized construction workers didn’t outweigh the cons: lowered property values for every landowner. Environmental concerns, including the landowner’s liability if a catastrophic event occurred, hadn’t been addressed. None of us liked that the powers that be in state government were willing to bend over for a Canadian oil company and turn a blind eye to the taxpayers’ concerns.

The facts were distorted on both sides. From what I’d heard, county residents were divided on the issue. As sheriff, Dawson’s opinion held weight. His opponent in the upcoming election, Bill O’Neil, was adamantly against the pipeline.

I wondered where my dad would’ve stood on the issue. He’d be opposed to the pipeline because of the deep gouge it’d cut across Gunderson land. But I also suspected Wyatt Gunderson, the politician, not the rancher, would’ve won out. He’d gauge which way the political wind blew on the issue before making a decision.

I stood firmly on the side of the landowners, no matter who tried to sweet-talk me or guilt me into changing my stance.

The door blew open, cutting off my brooding thoughts. Time to get to work.

Once again I was left to lock up Clementine’s all by my little self. I took a second to breathe in a lungful of clean air. My least favorite part about working at the bar was reeking of cigarette smoke at the end of my shift.

So quit.

And do what?

Four vehicles remained in the parking area. Not an unusual occurrence since most folks were smart enough not to drink and drive. I’d nearly reached my truck when the back of my neck prickled. Déjà vu rolled through me until I realized I had been in this exact same position just last night. And like last night, immediately my gun was in my hand.

“Show yourself.”

“It’s me, Gunny.”

“J-Hawk?”

“Yeah.” He materialized beside me, seemingly out of nowhere, which sent a shiver down my spine. I had no idea he’d been so close.

So much for my lightning-fast reflexes. “What’re you doing here?”

“I just wanna talk to you.”

I kept the gun leveled on him. “If you’re here to try and win me over about the pipeline, save your goddamn breath.”

“Fuck that and fuck you. Jesus. That’s not why I’m here. You know I’d never…” He swore. “Can you put the gun down? Please?” He waved a six-pack like a white flag. “Near as I can tell, none of your regular bar rats are around to give you dirty looks for sharing a brew with me.”

I ignored the bitterness in his tone, knowing he’d understood the downside of taking on such an unpopular job when he’d signed on for it. “A beer sounds good.” I jammed my gun in my pocket and dropped the tailgate. My ass absorbed the metal’s coldness, causing another shiver.

The truck bounced as he plopped down. He handed me a Pabst Blue Ribbon. I laughed. “Where’d you find this?”

“At Stillwell’s. I figured it’d be appropriate.”

After we each cracked one open, I chinked my can to his. “To cheap beer.”

“And priceless memories.”

“Man, I forgot what a sappy dork you are.”

Jason fake-coughed “bitch” in his fist.

I laughed again and sipped my beer. “You know, this stuff ain’t half bad.”

“Ssh. I’m trying to discern the origins of the different flavors of hops.”

This was the J-Hawk I remembered. Not the bloated blowhard who’d been blathering bullshit across my home turf.

We’d met in Afghanistan. As the only two Dakotans in our little slice of hell, we ribbed each other endlessly about the rivalry between our sister states, tossing jokes and insults, but look out if anyone else made a derogatory comment about “The Dakotas.”

Major Hawley was an Army Ranger with the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Group, and one of the few clued in to our all-female Black Ops section of the 82nd Airborne Division. Being stationed together across Europe and the Middle East made us uncommonly close-some of us closer than others.

The military discourages fraternizing, a rule I’ve adhered to for the most part. We all got lonely. We all missed the intimacy that only comes from sharing a bed with a lover. We all dealt with it in our own unique ways. But some chose to disregard the rules completely-like J-Hawk and my teammate Anna “A-Rod” Rodriguez.

I figured out they were sneaking around long before anyone else. Not because A-Rod spilled her guts to me, but because they’d gone out of their way to avoid eye or body contact when in mixed company. Making goo-goo eyes at each other in the chow line would’ve been less obvious.

Jealousy that A-Rod was getting laid on a regular basis while the rest of us weren’t wasn’t my issue. They were adults. They understood the repercussions if the brass caught wind of their hookups. But it bugged the crap out of me that J-Hawk had a wife and kids at home in North Dakota.

Anna, who was the biggest skeptic I’ve ever met, actually believed the line of bullshit cheating men used: J-Hawk’s wife didn’t understand him. So Anna felt no guilt whatsoever about being with a married man. She fell helmet over combat boots in love with him.

I dreaded the day it’d turn ugly between them, because it was inevitable. When that day came, I was the one who watched helplessly as two lives crumbled. Right then I swore no man would ever wield that much power over me.

“Mercy?”

My focus snapped back to him. “Yeah?”

“I see you’re still throwing off those leave-me-the-fuck-alone vibes.”

“When something works, I go with it.”

He laughed. “I take it Sheriff Dawson isn’t cowed by that attitude?”

“What makes you say that?”

“I waited out here to talk to you last night. Shouldn’t be sexy as hell when a woman pulls a gun on you, but for some reason it is. Then he was in your face, but arresting you was the last thing on his mind.” J-Hawk waggled his eyebrows. “So how long have you two been dancing the horizontal mambo?”

I sidestepped his question. “You didn’t think it was so sexy when Anna held a gun on you that last time.”

J-Hawk’s good humor vanished. He crumpled the beer can and tossed it into my truck bed before reaching for another. “No. It wasn’t sexy. Half the time I wish she would’ve pulled the trigger.”

I nearly gave myself whiplash my head whipped around so fast. “Why?”

“Look at me. My life sucks, and it ain’t looking to get better any time soon. My wife ain’t ever gonna leave Minot. ‘Army Ranger’ on a résumé doesn’t mean squat. Titan Oil was the only company that’d hire me.” He paused and drank. “What about you? How’d you end up tending bar?”

As I debated telling the truth or sticking with my standard noncommittal answer, I drained my beer and reached for another.

“I won’t say everything was hunky-dory after I returned from outprocessing. I tagged along with Jake, learning what it took to run a ranch this size. When Hope lost one of the babies, I ended up on nursing duty. Long story short, I resented feeling like the odd woman out and moved into the foreman’s cabin. By then the bad dreams started, and the only way to stop them was drinking until I passed out.”

“Every night?”

“Pretty much.”

He whistled again.

“We’re all warned about the adjustment time after retirement, especially just coming back from combat, I just didn’t think it’d be so hard to swallow that I’d gone from being a trained-”

Why don’t you just blurt it out for the whole damn world to hear, Sergeant Major?

J-Hawk placed his hand on my knee. “I know what you are.”

Took a second to gather my thoughts. Seemed pathetic to admit to a superior officer that I needed a crutch to handle my demons. “It got to the point I ended up drunk-dialing an old family friend. He knows what it’s like.”

“He’s been in the war machine?”

“Not ours. Vietnam. Rollie put the screws to me, and I listened. John-John had an opening at the bar, which sounds like putting a fat kid in a candy store. But most nights I’m so sick of dealing with booze I don’t bother with it when I get home.” I swallowed another drink. “But I’m also too tired to figure out what the hell I want to do now. Bartending ain’t it, that’s for damn sure.”

The silence between us stretched into night sounds of crickets. Rustling grass reeds. The occasional yip of a coyote.

Finally J-Hawk spoke. “Could you ever see yourself doing what Anna does?”

“Hiring myself out as a merc?” I shook my head. “To be honest, I’d rather bartend.”

“Do you talk to Anna often?”

“Jason-”

“I know, I ended it like a total asshole.”

“No argument from me.”

“What Anna never understood was it wasn’t my choice.”

“It was your choice to get involved with her when you were already married.”

J-Hawk flicked the metal tab on the top of the can. “True. Look, you don’t know the whole story, no one does, but if it wasn’t for…”

I waited for him to finish his train of thought. When he didn’t, I prompted, “If it wasn’t for… what?”

“Never mind.”

“You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t want to talk about it.”

He struggled.

I let him.

“I do want to talk about it, but swear this won’t go any further than us. Ever. No one can know.”

“Not Anna?”

“Especially not Anna.”

A feeling of trepidation crept in, but I ignored it and said, “Fine.”

“About the same time our unit got new orders, my wife found out I’d been involved with another woman.”

“How she’d find out?”

“At first I suspected Anna told her to force my hand into choosing between them.” He met my gaze. “But it didn’t matter after that, because once the wheels were set in motion, everything careened out of control.”

I stared at him, totally confused. “You wanna drop the clichés and get beyond the truth-is-out-there bullshit?”

“I see you still prefer taking the easiest shot,” he said wryly. “So yeah, it’s totally clichéd, the whole ‘my wife doesn’t understand me’ bit, but it’s the God’s honest truth. Melinda and I had one drunken weekend at a friend’s wedding when I was home on leave, and she ended up pregnant. We got married, because that’s what people in our neck of the woods do, right? I was headed overseas, so I understood why she wanted to stay in Minot by her family until after the baby was born. But when I returned from deployment twelve months later, she refused to move to where I was stationed. By then, she’d gotten knocked up again.”

“She’d gotten knocked up again?” I asked tightly. “All by her little herself?”

He scowled. “No. I’d gone twelve months without sex. And she was on me the instant we were alone. Took me three pregnancies before I realized she wasn’t a nympho and didn’t like sex as much as she liked having babies. So yeah, we have ‘deployment’ kids. Between kids two and three, I grew a set and demanded she get her ass to Fort Benning because I was sick of living like a single guy in the goddamn barracks.”

“So she moved to Georgia and made your life hell?”

“No. She threatened to kill herself if I forced her away from family. When I basically laughed and called her a drama queen, she attempted it.”

I shuddered. “Shit. Jason, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, welcome to my life. From there on out, any time I brought up our problems, she whipped out the suicide card, and I knew she’d play it.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I focused on being a soldier. I kept my name on the top of the volunteer list for overseas instruction ops and deployment. I made a point of being on missions or training eleven months out of twelve. Combat? I understood. My passive-aggressive psychopathic wife? She freaked me the fuck out.”

“So you started screwing around?”

“Not at first, but when I realized even my own family believed Melinda’s lies? I said fuck it. What did I have to lose?”

“Anna knew you’d cheated on your wife before her?”

“Anna knew she wasn’t the first one, but she’s always been the only one who mattered.”

Pretty words. Didn’t excuse ugly behavior.

“Here’s the kicker. That night after you… the night in Bali changed me, Mercy. It finally hit me that life is too short not to be with who you want. For the first time I decided to be proactive in my personal life, rather than reactive.

“I was ready to give up everything, any chance of a relationship with my kids, just to get the hell out of the marriage. When Melinda confronted me, I admitted to the affair and told her I wanted a divorce.”

“I take it that didn’t go over very well?”

“Might say that. She took it a step further than threatening to kill herself.” He chugged his remaining beer. “She threatened to kill our children.”

My stomach churned the beer into foam, and it threatened to come back up. “Jesus.”

“And if I needed convincing she wasn’t bluffing? Melinda called me the next day when our three-year-old daughter fell down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. She said it was too bad Lindsey was so clumsy. She hoped next time our little girl wouldn’t fall on a kitchen knife or something horrible. I knew then she’d pushed Lindsey. Melinda has always had an… unnatural need for attention. She loved that I was constantly gone, because everyone in her circle of friends worried about how she was holding up. And if one of her children died… she could milk the sympathy and attention for years.” His voice dropped. “Christ. Even now, years later, I know it sounds far-fetched. It’s why I’ve never told anyone. Who would believe me?”

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t make my damn mouth work. Because I did believe him. I’d met people like Melinda. Too many people. Any glimmer of sympathy I’d ever felt for Melinda Hawley over the years had vanished.

“That’s when I knew I could never be with Anna. That’s why I had to be so damn cruel when I broke it off with her.”

I’d walked into our tent to see Anna’s military issue 9 mm Beretta at the base of J-Hawk’s skull. Tears flowed down both their faces; hers were from pure rage. At the time I’d attributed his tears to fear. Now I suspected they’d been born of resignation. He’d expected Anna to kill him. Wanted it. I’d managed to get the gun before she pulled the trigger. Jason had run out without looking back; Anna dropped to a fetal position on the ground and stayed that way for twelve hours.

Now, I almost wished I still thought of him as an unfeeling asshole, rather than knowing what he’d gone through and what he’d given up. “Why’re you telling me this, J-Hawk?”

“Because it’s been weighing on me for years, and I wanted someone to know the truth before…”

“Before what?”

No response, then he chuckled. “It don’t matter. I’m getting sappy. I appreciate that you are good at keeping secrets, Gunny.”

I’d walked into this secret-keeping mission with my eyes wide open. Still, I didn’t understand why J-Hawk unburdened himself on me. Unless… He’d always been an excellent tactician. Would this “big reveal” lead to another strategic maneuver? Involving changing my mind about Titan Oil’s plans?

J-Hawk passed out the last two beers. We drank, stared at the stars, swinging our legs off the tailgate. “Thanks for not judging me too harshly.”

“I’m the last person to pass judgment on anyone.”

He snorted. “Always do the right thing, never deviate from the truth, Sergeant Major Gunderson? Right.”

If he only knew how far I’d fallen from the ideals beat into my head by Dad and Uncle Sam. “Yeah, I’m a regular poster girl for guts and glory.”

From the moment J-Hawk appeared in the area, I’d been suspicious of his motives. Here was my chance, in the spirit of “sharing,” to find out if he considered me an easy mark as well as a supreme secret keeper. “Did you ask for this Titan Oil assignment? Or is it just coincidence you’re here?”

“Not a coincidence. I switched out sections with another guy when I saw the list of landowners and your last name.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to set the record straight with you about Anna. About my fucked-up life.” He nudged me with his shoulder. “And, South Dakota, I wanted to rib you personally about how significantly you’d downplayed the size of your ranch.”

I shrugged.

“Seventy-five thousand acres ain’t nothin’ to sneeze at.”

“We’re at eighty-five thousand now. I bought the adjoining ranch a few months ago.” Without an heir, Iris Newsome’s death left the Newsome estate in limbo. The state’s attorney had to dredge through legal documents dating back to Merle Newsome’s will. The will contained a stipulation that the entire property had to be offered to Gunderson descendants first, for fair market value, before it went on sale to the general market. Jake and I debated on whether we could afford it. But ultimately we knew we couldn’t afford not to snap it up. We struggled to make the down payment, and I didn’t feel a damn bit guilty about buying it.

“So when you switched sections with your coworker, did you hint around to your employers that I might be an easier mark because I owed you for saving my life?”

He faced me, his eyes shining with anger. “You believed I was here… Jesus Christ, Gunny, you’re the one who said you owed me. I saved you because it was the right thing to do. It’s the one decent thing I’ve done in my life, so don’t you dare taint it. Don’t. You. Dare.”

“I’m sorry. I thought-”

“Well, you thought wrong.”

Silence.

“Besides, this job is just a damn job. A shitty-paying one at that.”

I gazed at the filmy white clouds drifting across the stars. “So you’re not gung-ho about this pipeline project?”

“You ain’t gonna want to hear this, but it’s pointless to resist. The pipeline will go through, whether the landowners cry foul or not.” He pinned me with a look. “And no, I don’t have insider knowledge beyond what I’ve seen happen everywhere else.”

“I think you’re wrong. With the new administration in power and the focus on alternative energy sources, oil is the evil empire. And since one of the stipulations for getting the pipeline passed is that all-important presidential seal of approval… we might actually win this one for a change.”

“For a change? This is the first time a pipeline has been proposed.”

“But it’s not the first time the state has run over us, just like they do when it comes to the railroads.”

Eminent domain issues were the bane of landowners’ existence. Some folks mistakenly believe the greed and power of the railroad companies were history in the Wild West. Not so. Railroad companies still had a huge lobbyist presence in Congress. If a railroad conglomerate had permission to bisect your land with tracks, there wasn’t a lot ranchers could do. Except pray that the steel wheels screaming across the steel railroad track didn’t send sparks flying across the dry grass and start a raging prairie fire.

J-Hawk nudged me. “And you call North Dakotans pigheaded? You people are adverse to change of any kind, aren’t you?”

“Not if it’s good change.” I steered the conversation another direction. “How long have you been working for the evil empire?”

“A year.”

I frowned. “Wait. You’ve been out of the service… how long?”

“Three years.” Jason laughed. “I see you doing the math. Yep. I was blissfully unemployed for two solid years after I retired from active duty. Man, did that piss Melinda off. I did nothing but lay around the house. And when I started to put on weight? I thought she’d have a stroke, but I’d never be that lucky.”

“Looks to me like you’ve dropped a few pounds since the last time I saw you.”

“After I went back to work I began to lose weight. But before that? I’d porked out and hit the three-hundred-pound mark.”

“Holy shit. That was your way to retaliate? For her threatening to kill your kids? By becoming a fat bum?”

“That is the worst sort of punishment for her. People in her hometown knew I was unemployed. I sometimes filled out job applications, just so people were aware I needed work. Just so I could embarrass her into explaining why her husband, a college graduate, an Army Ranger and a twenty-year military veteran, applied for a job as a stock boy at the feed store.” He swigged his beer. “She was upset I retired from the military. She wondered if I’d be denying future Rangers my expertise by quitting while I still had lots of good years left to teach in the field.”

My mouth dropped open. “Are you kidding me?”

“Nope. My retirement pay isn’t near what my tax-free deployment pay was. The poor woman had less money to burn and me to deal with every damn day.” J-Hawk tipped his head back and studied the night sky. “But know the best part? From the moment I got home she was a cat in heat. She was desperate to have another baby to lord over me. So desperate that she’d even screw her fatty husband all the freakin’ time. Of course, she thought I was a pussy-whipped idiot. When two years passed and my seed hadn’t taken in her always-fertile womb, she confronted me about taking fertility tests. That’s when I told her the truth.”

This wouldn’t be pleasant.

“On my last mission, during a stopover at Ramstein, I paid a doctor five grand cash to give me a vasectomy off the books. You should’ve seen the look on her face, Mercy. I told her since she threatened to kill my existing kids, I went ahead and eliminated any future offspring to save her the trouble of taking them out, too.”

The swig of beer stuck in my throat and spewed out my nose. J-Hawk slapped me on the back during the coughing fit. When I’d settled down, I looked at him. “I didn’t mean to laugh, because none of this is funny, but you really did even the score with her, didn’t you?”

His eyes took on a wicked gleam I recognized when dealing with the enemy. “You have no idea. I’m still not done screwing with her. A few months back I had a buddy in the insurance biz bring her papers to sign. Little did she know she’d just taken out half-million-dollar life insurance policies for each one of our kids, naming her as the sole beneficiary. So if an ‘accident’ befell one of them…”

“She’d immediately be under suspicion.” I smiled at him. Grinned, actually. “Clever. There’s the military strategy I admired.”

“It was the only way I could protect my kids by doing what I do best.”

“Good for you.” I yawned. “Sorry. This conversation has been anything but boring.”

“You’ve had a long day, and I’ve bent your ear long enough.” He hopped off the tailgate. “Thanks for talking to me, Mercy.”

“I’m really sorry for all the shit you’ve gone through.”

“You’ve gone through plenty yourself.”

“Somehow I thought being back here would be… easier.”

“War isn’t hell for some of us, Mercy. For some of us, the real hell is going home.”

I let that sink in. I heard J-Hawk’s vehicle start up. Saw the red flash of his taillights as he drove off toward town. I remained in the frosty air, looking at the twinkling stars, trying to process what I thought I’d known, with the truth I’d just learned. When my teeth started to chatter, I crawled in the truck cab and headed home.