Page 6 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

Toly’s lip peeled off his teeth in a silent, doubtful snarl, but he took the flask.

Gray unslung his rifle, and led the way up the dock and then the hill.

The path was strewn with debris: fluffy bits of insultation, splinters, peeled corners of linoleum – Mercy recognized, with a jolt, the pattern from the peel-and-stick tiles that had been behind the sink – and fresher garbage. Candy wrappers, a forlorn square of cling wrap, tangled around a few stalks of grass that had escaped the weed whacker.

By the time they reached the top of the rise, Toly turned loose of Mercy’s arm with a muttered, “I’m alright.”

Mercy spared him a glance, and saw that the brandy, which he swigged more of while Mercy watched, had put two warm, pink spots of color on his cheeks, and his eyes were brighter.

Satisfied for the moment that he wouldn’t fall over or hurl, Mercy turned back to the clearing.

Devin and Gray circled it, moving toward one another in concentric loops, toeing at debris, traveling in complementary paths as though they’d trained together at some point.

Mercy walked straight forward, right up to where the edge of the porch had once started. The posts hadn’t merely been sawed off at ground level, but dug up, concrete and all, leaving leg-breaker craters behind. A shallow well had provided water to the cabin, and the pipes remained, lying along the tilled-up earth once covered by joists and floorboards. They’d left the foundation stones. Otherwise, it was as though the structure had never existed.

He stepped to the very center, where the weeds hadn’t started to grow yet, where he’d once laid a rug down on old warped floorboards, and thought it felt homey. As the day lightened around them, the peepers and crickets gave way to the racket of birds, and the first trilling whines of cicadas.

Devin joined him. “You weren’t expecting him to be here, were you?”

“No.” And he hadn’t been. “Had to start somewhere, though.”

“Right,” Devin agreed. “Now what? Go back into town? Keep searching out here?”

He said it casually, but Mercy wasn’t fooled. He turned to regard the man and found Devin watching him with sharp blue eyes full of withheld suggestions. For someone whose children professed to hate him, he had the sort of intelligent, paternal airMercy would have expected from someone who’d brought his kids up properly, in a hands-on, daily way.

Wise. That was the word for Devin Green. All ten of his children would have scoffed aloud at the notion…but Mercy thought they would agree with him, deep down.

Mercy couldn’t manage a real smile – the kind that split his face, that allowed some jubilant, inner child part of him to break out into the waking world and set people at ease – but he could lift his lips a little, and that eased a modicum of the tension lodged in his gut. Devin mirrored the expression, and that helped a little, too. “Well, we could do that. Go into town, visit the old haunts. Turn over stones and kick anthills. All that shit. But this is definitely a needle in a haystack situation. Boyle wants me to hunt him – he’s desperate for it. So desperate, in fact, that if I make him come to me instead, he’ll have no choice but to come.”

Devin’s smile broadened. “A trap?”

“A trap. A nasty one.”

“I’d be disappointed in you if it wasn’t.”

Three

The office door opened, and Boomer was jittery with poorly-masked nerves. “They’re here. Pulling in the gate.”

“Yeah, I gotta go,” Walsh said into the phone. “I’ll come by your office at three.” He hung up while the mayor was agreeing. To Boomer, he nodded, and said, “Okay, show them in. The lead investigator can come back here and see me.”

Despite the flop sweat on his forehead, Boomer grinned. “Power move. Sweet.” He retreated, pulling the door shut behind him.

When he was gone, Walsh pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk, withdrew the bottle he’d stashed there earlier, and took three long swallows straight from the neck, wincing. He didn’t like vodka warm, or without ice, but needs must. After, he stowed the bottle, raked his hair back off his face with both hands, lit a cigarette, and leaned back in his chair, one boot propped up on his knee.

Muffled noise issued from down the hall. He shifted his chair, quarter-swivels side-to-side, raised knee hitting the edge of the desk on each swing. He lifted a hand in the air, rings winking in the lamplight, and lowered a finger as he counted down. “Five…four…three…two…”

The door opened again. For all his doofus qualities, Boomer did a decent job of playing it cool now when he said, “Hey, boss? This guy says he’s FBI.” He lingered in the threshold and tipped his head toward the unimpressed man standing just behind him.

Walsh caught the man’s gaze across the office and something in his belly unclenched. “Yeah. I’ll talk to him.” He gave a lazy wave toward the chair across from his desk and puthis foot back down on the floor. He rotated the chair so his knees were under the desk, but didn’t bother to sit upright. Rested his hands on the chair arms and pressed his head back against its smooth leather. His namewasKing after all.

The agent shot Boomer a disgruntled look on his way into the office, and moved to stand behind the available chair, hands on his hips. In contrast to Boyle’s tac pants and FBI t-shirt getup, this guy wore a suit, off-the-rack, too tight in the legs. From his receding hairline, to his going-soft middle-aged physique, to the flat, dispassionate look in his eyes, Walsh clocked him straight away as someone who was doing as he was told, without any personal stake in the matter whatsoever. He could still prove to be a serious obstacle, but he wasn’t out for blood. A small reassurance, but a reassurance all the same.

Boomer shut the door with a click.

“Are you Kingston Walsh?”

“I am.” A beat. “Do I get your name? Or is this a one-way street?”

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