A Merciful Fate (Mercy Kilpatrick Book 5) Read online

  “Evening, Naomi,” said Art. “This is Special Agent Kilpatrick. She’s in charge of the Gamble-Helmet Heist case these days.” He didn’t mention the turtle.

  Mercy held out a hand, and the woman paused a rude two seconds before shaking it. “Keep it short. Gary’s not feeling great today, and talking about this only makes it worse.” Her expression indicated she’d hold Mercy personally responsible for giving her husband any grief.

  “Not a problem,” answered Mercy.

  Naomi stepped back and let them in. Embroidered cat faces decorated her slippers.

  Pet lover?

  It was dark inside. All the small windows were covered with heavy curtains, and the light from the lamp was too dim. Mercy wanted to fling open the curtains. Gary Chandler sat in a battered easy chair in one corner, a calico cat on his lap. The cat’s glare rivaled Naomi’s.

  “Hey, Gary.” Art immediately stepped forward to shake his hand.

  Gary was thin—skeletally thin—and he had a faded comb-over. The pictures in Mercy’s file showed a slender man with a full head of hair and a kind smile. He didn’t get out of his chair as he greeted the retired FBI agent. Art introduced Mercy, and the odor of marijuana reached her as she shook his bony hand. His pupils were larger than they needed to be, even for the darkened room.

  It’s legal. It probably helps his anxiety.

  Hopefully it wouldn’t influence their conversation.

  Gary’s knees nearly poked through the fraying fabric of his jeans, and he had several days’ worth of stubble. Sunken cheeks and eyes made her wonder if he struggled with a physical illness. One of his hands never left the cat’s back. Naomi stood with her arms crossed, a sentry between the tiny living room and the rest of the home. Mercy glanced around to see where she’d set the turtle down. No turtle.

  Art gestured for Mercy to take the chair closest to Gary as he pulled up a wooden chair from a corner.

  Mercy sat after checking the chair for the reptile. “Thank you for meeting with us, Mr. Chandler.”

  “Gary, please.”

  The powerful, low voice from the thin body startled her. He smiled, but it never reached his eyes.

  “I don’t want to take up too much of your time, Gary, so excuse me if I get right to my questions.” She felt as if Naomi’s eyes were stabbing daggers in the back of her skull.

  “Appreciate it.”

  “Would you mind giving me a rundown of what you remember the moment you first saw the robbers that day?”

  Annoyance filled his face. “I’ve already told that dozens of times. There must be a half dozen recordings of my story.” Panic rose in his voice as he shifted in his seat and his gaze shot to Art. “You said you had something new to talk about. New information.”

  Art leaned forward, resting his forearms on his thighs, and said reassuringly, “We do. The body of one of the robbers has turned up.”

  Gary’s hand tightened on the cat’s back, and he looked suspiciously at Mercy. “That true?”

  “Yes.”

  “Body . . . So he’s dead.” Gary eyed Art this time.

  “Yes,” Art said calmly.

  “Good.” Gary exhaled and relaxed his shoulders. “Three more to go. Which one was it?”

  “Mull.”

  Gary nodded, his gaze distant as he scratched the cat’s chin. “The big one.”

  “Best fucking news we’ve heard in years,” added Naomi.

  “I still dream of killing all of them,” Gary said in a slow voice. “Sometimes I meet them face-to-face. I’ve surprised them in a grocery store and in a church—places they never expected to run into me. Other times I dream I shoot them in defense as they break in my house, looking to murder me because I survived.”

  Thirty years of dreams?

  “Understandable,” stated Art.

  “I fucked up back then. Phil would be alive if I hadn’t choked.” Echoes of guilt filled the words. “Seeing them die by my hand is the only thing that keeps me sane—even if it only happens in my dreams.”

  Mercy had a lot of issues with that statement, but this wasn’t the time to address Gary’s mental health.

  “They pepper-sprayed you. I’ve been hit in the face with that shit,” Art told him. “I couldn’t see. I physically couldn’t open my eyes, and my skin burned like fire. Then the puking and slobbering . . . No one can function during that. They deliberately did it to incapacitate you, and it worked.”

  Mercy nodded. At the FBI academy everyone had dreaded OC day, named for the irritating agent in pepper spray. It wasn’t an experience she cared to repeat.

  “Since you couldn’t see what was happening, Gary, what did you hear?” Mercy asked.

  Gary shut his eyes, and his hand stilled on the cat. “Gunshots. Two of them. Yelling. Cursing. Screams.” His voice was monotonic, and Mercy wondered if he’d smoked the pot to get through the interview.

  “One gunshot from Phil Palmer and one from Shane Gamble,” Art stated.

  “That’s what I was told,” Gary agreed, opening his eyes. “I only saw the results, not the actual shots.” He turned stoned eyes to Mercy. “I blindly crawled out of the vehicle, scraped off half my chin when I fell down the stairs, and felt my way to Phil. Half of his face was gone, but I tried to lift him up anyway . . . I guess to comfort him, let him know he wasn’t alone. Even with my eyes straining to stay shut, I could see inside his skull. I touched his brain.” He shuddered.

  She nodded, the photos and the autopsy report fresh in her memory.

  “Gamble was bleeding from the thigh. Couldn’t walk. Asshole.” Gary muttered the last word. “He screamed while Phil was dying. It was all about him. He didn’t care that I was ten feet away holding my partner as his blood drained onto my uniform. I wish I hadn’t been blinded. I would have finished off Gamble. I still had my weapon.” Bitter regret filled his face. “I frequently have that dream too.”

  “Then you would have been in prison,” Mercy said gently. “Instead of home with your wife.” She glanced back at Naomi, hoping for some support from the woman. She simply stared past Mercy at her husband, her face like stone.

  She’s probably heard this a million times.

  “You didn’t see the getaway driver?” Mercy continued with Gary. “Did you see the vehicle before you were sprayed?”

  “I didn’t see shit,” stated Gary. “My fucking eyes were barely working, and before that I was focused on the job.”

  “You said Gamble was making it all about him,” Mercy continued. “Why did you describe it that way?”

  Gary rubbed the back of his hand across his lips. “I’ll kill them all,” he said in a monotone. “Gamble was screaming that he’d kill them all. I thought he meant kill all the guards. But then he started screaming about being left behind and calling the others cowards.”

  “Oh.” Mercy sat a little straighter, her mind racing. Gamble had defended his accomplices when she interviewed him. He’d given the impression that his loyalty to his friends had never wavered. Maybe he felt differently with a fresh bullet hole in his leg.

  Art scowled. “Outside of their names, he never gave us shit on his friends. He’s protected them until this day, right?” he asked Mercy.

  She agreed. Gamble had nothing to lose by cooperating with the prosecutor. In fact, he could have received a lighter sentence.

  Before he killed another inmate.

  “Does the media know about Mull’s body?” Gary asked.

  “It hasn’t reached the mainstream media yet,” Mercy told him. “But it probably will.”

  “Vultures. All of them. Every few years they come poking around my house, camping out front, wanting to relive the story.” He held Mercy’s gaze, implying that she was a vulture too.

  “Dammit,” swore Naomi. “We can’t deal with that again.”

  A click from Naomi’s direction made Mercy turn. Naomi had lit a cigarette and then exhaled a cloud into the small dark room.

  Not a cigarette.

  “I’d
get out of town for a while,” suggested Art.

  Naomi gave a choking laugh. “Easy for you to say. We don’t have money to waste on a hotel. Not even for one night. Vacations are for rich people.”

  “What about some relatives or friends?” asked Mercy. “Could you stay with someone for a while?”

  “No,” she snapped. Another cloud billowed from her mouth.

  “Here.” Art removed a key from his key ring. “This is a key to my place in Lincoln City. It’s pretty small for a condo, but it’s right on the beach. No one will think to bother you there.” He wrote an address on the back of a receipt and handed it and the key to Gary, who accepted them with a stunned look.

  “We c-can’t do that,” Gary stuttered as his eyes stated how badly he wanted to escape.

  “Of course you can,” said Art. “You got somewhere you need to be this week?”

  “No,” cut in Naomi. “Take it, Gary,” she ordered.

  “Just clean up after yourselves . . . and please smoke outside,” Art requested. “I don’t have plans to use it for a while, so it’s yours as long as you need it.”

  Mercy wondered if they’d bring the turtle.

  She asked a few more questions, but with each one Gary’s answers grew shorter. His lids were half-closed, and Mercy decided to end the interview.

  Outside a few moments later, Mercy inhaled the clean air and then sniffed at her sleeve, wondering if the marijuana smell would stick to her for the rest of the day.

  “That was very generous of you to loan your place,” she told Art. The kind move had touched her.

  A thoughtful look filled his face. “I bought it after my wife died. Should have done it long before that. We’d talked about finding a place at the coast for years but never did anything about it.” He met her gaze, his eyes distant. “Don’t wait to do what you want to do. You never know how long you’ll have.”

  He sounded haunted.

  “I understand.” She did. After she’d almost lost Truman two months ago she’d tried to live in the present a little more, instead of focusing on how to live in the future. A future that might never happen.

  What else have I put off?

  TWELVE

  “You smell like pot.”

  Mercy snorted at Truman’s observation as he took the take-and-bake pizza out of his oven. “I haven’t had time to shower and change since the Chandler interview.” Out of the corner of her eye she watched Ollie take a step closer to her and discreetly sniff. He grimaced.

  “If you can tolerate how I smell, I’d like to eat first. I’m starved.”

  Truman leaned over the steaming pizza and drew in a deep breath through his nose. “Oregano and garlic will block it.” He ran a pizza cutter over the pie and slid a melting, cheesy slice to a plate. He handed it to her and dished up more for himself and Ollie.

  “Bless you,” she mumbled, aching to devour the piece in three bites, but knowing she’d burn every surface in her mouth. The three of them took seats on stools at the high counter in Truman’s kitchen, all tentatively checking the temperature of the slices. Ollie gave in first and took a huge bite.

  Before Ollie joined their lives, a medium pizza would have fed both her and Truman. It was even enough for the nights Kaylie ate with them. Now they ordered the giant size, and Mercy worried it wouldn’t be enough. Pizza mysteriously evaporated around Ollie.

  Shep gave a low whine at Ollie’s feet, his eyes pleading. “Later,” Ollie told his dog, intent on his food.

  “How late is Kaylie studying at her friend’s?” Truman asked.

  “She promised me she’d be home by nine.” Mercy checked the time. “I promised the same.” She had a half hour to eat before she needed to leave.

  “What’s your opinion on Art Juergen after spending the day with him?” Truman asked between bites. “Is he going to be any help?”

  “Definitely,” stated Mercy. “He knows the case inside and out.”

  Truman eyed her. “What happened? I hear a but in there.”

  Mercy looked straight at him. “I guess I should mention that I had a date with him one time.” Her lips twisted with amusement.

  He flinched. “Wait. He’s retired. Isn’t he . . . old?”

  “Yes, he’s older than me by about twenty-five years.”

  “Why only one date?”

  She saw only curiosity in his eyes, no jealousy. “I was rather antisocial.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I only liked him as a friend—and the age difference was a big thing to me. Does that make me a horrible person?” The guilt felt as fresh as it had when she’d turned down a second date.

  “No. You can’t make yourself feel something for another person.” He paused. “Am I giving my fiancée dating advice?”

  She snorted. “I learned today that the armored car driver’s life hasn’t been the same since the robbery. It really screwed him up, and he still can’t cope with it.”

  “That sucks,” Truman told her. “Does his lack of coping skills explain why you smell like pot?”

  “Maybe. Could be for medical reasons too.”

  “Did the driver offer any new information?”

  Mercy was silent for a moment, remembering Chandler’s words. “The Shane Gamble he described didn’t sound like the same man I met or the one who is portrayed in all the other interviews.”

  “How accurate could Gary Chandler be? He only saw the guy during the most stressful minutes in his life.”

  “Most stressful in Gamble’s life too,” Mercy added. “Anyway, it struck me as weird. It was the first time I’d heard that Gamble had lashed out at his friends.”

  Ollie set his pizza slice down and broke off a corner of crust for Shep. Mercy watched, waiting for the rest of the slice to vanish into Ollie’s perpetually hollow stomach and for the boy to take another. Instead he picked morosely at his slice. He gave another chunk to his dog and then popped a tiny piece of pepperoni in his mouth. She glanced at Truman. He was focused on his own food and didn’t seem to notice Ollie.

  “On the way home from the Chandler interview, Art suggested I contact the police in Prince George,” she said.

  Truman stopped chewing and wrinkled his forehead. “Canada?”

  “Yes. There were several leads of sightings from there during the first year after the robbery. More in that single city than from anywhere else outside Oregon. They all fizzled out to nothing, but Art told me he’s always had a feeling about the location. He’s hoping a new look might get us somewhere.”

  “Sounds like a good place to start,” agreed Truman.

  “Sounds like a faraway place to start,” groused Mercy. “I know this is essentially a cold case, but I’d rather focus my time around here. There’re plenty of people nearby to interview again—like the Mull family. Eddie drove to Salem today to inform Ellis Mull’s parents.” She checked Ollie, who didn’t flinch at the name of the skeleton he’d discovered. But he still was picking at his first piece of pizza. “Eddie said the parents were relieved to finally know what’d happened to their son. One of Mull’s sisters was there and claimed she’d always known he was dead since he never contacted any of them. According to her, they were a close family, and the lack of contact was completely out of character.”

  “Are you going to interview each one of them?”

  “Eventually. I’ll give them a little more time to absorb the news.”

  “What else is on your list?” Truman asked.

  Mercy wasn’t listening. “Ollie, is the pizza okay?” Ollie was usually quiet, but tonight he was utterly silent.

  He jerked on his stool, his concentration clearly elsewhere. “It’s good.”

  “Typically you’ve finished three pieces by now.” A picked-over half slice still sat on his plate.

  Truman leaned forward to look past Mercy at Ollie. “You sick?”

  “Nah. Just a weird day. I’m fine.” He crammed the rest of his slice in his mouth with a nervous glance at Mercy.

  If
her brothers didn’t eat at Ollie’s age, it meant they were sick or . . . nothing else; only illness kept them from food. But Ollie wasn’t like her brothers. “What’s bugging you? Was it because I mentioned Ellis Mull?”

  “You talked about him?”

  Not Mull.

  Truman elbowed her and gave her a leave-him-alone look. Mercy acquiesced. She was used to Kaylie needing a little prodding to spill her troubles. Ollie would talk when he was ready. A soft chime made her reach for her purse and check her phone. “A text from Kaylie,” she told the others. “She says she found something I need to read.” Mercy waited for the next text, and her heart fell as she read it. “Ugh. Kaylie sent me a link to the Midnight Voice.”

  Ollie leaned toward her, trying to see her screen. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know yet.” Mercy’s lungs tightened as she waited for the page to load. “It can’t be anything good. I refused to talk to one of their reporters this morning.” Mercy scanned the story. “Shit.”

  “What?” Ollie practically stuck his head between her and the phone. She turned away.

  “What’s going on in the sleepy tiny town of Eagle’s Nest, Oregon?” Mercy read out loud. “Ancient secrets are crawling out of the woods in the forms of skeletons and money bags.” She choked on a cough. “Give me a break. The reporter is the one I met this morning.”

  Truman chuckled. “Think anyone will believe when a tabloid is actually printing the truth?”

  “She states that the skeleton found was related to the robbery and could possibly be the first step in solving a thirty-year-old mystery.”

  “True,” stated Truman.

  “She also writes that the money bags were confirmed as being from the robbery.”

  “Also true. You sure that’s a tabloid?”

  Positive. Mercy took a deep breath. “She points out that the FBI brought an agent out of retirement to help the current lead agent. That this ‘backwoods FBI agent’—me—‘could be bumbling the biggest mystery in thirty years. Is she capable of handling it?’” Fury rocked through her. The reporter hadn’t been able to find more on the investigation, so she’d dug into Mercy instead. “She’s striking back at me for refusing to talk to her today.”