WELCOME TO MERCY
An excerpt from UNFIXABLE: A Buck Lawson Mystery
Book #1 of the Blood River Series
The dashboard clock read 4:51 when Buck’s headlights flashed on the road sign announcing, Mercy 7 Miles. The first time he’d seen that sign it had struck him as ironic, like somebody making a promise he couldn’t possibly keep. It had made him smile. Now he couldn’t think of anybody who needed mercy more than he did, and he didn’t smile.
He had left Hanover County, North Carolina a little before 11:00 p.m. the previous night, counting on a seven- hour drive that would get him into Mercy, Georgia around 6:00 a.m., plenty of time to have breakfast and maybe even get checked into his motel before his 8:00 a.m. meeting with the mayor. He hadn’t counted on how much faster it would be driving at night, nor how much time would be cut off the trip by taking 1-75 all the way, rather than the more scenic highway. Not that it mattered. By the time he’d packed up everything he owned that was worth taking and secured it beneath a tarp in the back of his pickup truck, he’d just wanted to leave. No reason to wait until sunrise, nothing to say goodbye to. Now he was seven miles from town three hours earlier than he was expected and he thought he probably should have planned a little better. Because he was also almost out of gas.
The radio was playing the Charlie Daniel’s Band. Devil Went Down to Georgia, wouldn’t you know it? Buck clicked the radio off.
Buck liked driving at night. What he did not like was stopping for gas in the middle of nowhere in the pitch dark. The middle of nowhere was exactly where he’d been ever since leaving the freeway an hour ago, and the only gas pumps he’d passed since then had been standing in front of a dark mom-and-pop store that advertised Fresh Bait and Diesel on hand-written signs. He should make a note of that for next time. If there was a next time.
The only thing he hated worse than stopping for gas in the middle of nowhere was stopping for anything at a convenience store at night, which was why he hadn’t gassed up when he got off the freeway exit. Ever since what had happened last spring the mere sight of one of those places made his gut clench. It was stupid, he knew. Lightning didn’t strike twice. But here he was, the fuel light on his dashboard blinking madly, and the lights from the Mercy Stop & Go shining like a damn mirage in the desert two hundred feet ahead. He grit his teeth and swung into the parking lot.
At least this one wasn’t deserted. There was a red Acura at the first pump in a bank of three, doors closed, windows dark. Apparently the driver was inside the store. A mud-spattered gray jeep was parked at a sloppy angle at the side of the building, and further away, close to the dumpster, a battered Ford that probably belonged to the night clerk. It seemed like a good bit of activity this time of night for a little store in the middle of nowhere, but maybe the coffee was good.
The humid night air hit Buck in the face like a wet dishrag when he got out of the truck. Welcome to south Georgia in May. His leg throbbed when he first put weight on it, which wasn’t surprising after so many hours of sitting. So he stood there for a minute, leaning against the door and taking in his surroundings, while the circulation returned. The red car had a Mercer University parking sticker on it, and a miniature pink teddy bear swinging from a ribbon over the rearview mirror. The gray Jeep had mud smeared over its tag. Insects buzzed and snapped in the sickly yellow overhead lights. The air smelled like sulfur and diesel fumes; the landscape surrounding him was flat, featureless and alien. I don’t belong here, he thought. Nothing about this place had anything to do with him.
Nonetheless, he unscrewed the filler cap and swiped his credit card. A message flashed: See clerk inside. He tried again. Same thing.
“Damn it,” he muttered. This must be one of those places that didn’t allow self-pay after midnight. He twisted around, trying to see if he could get the clerk’s attention inside. He couldn’t see anybody at the counter. He pocketed the card and made his way across the parking lot to the door.
Every instinct in his body went electric the minute he pushed open the door: heart slamming, breath stopping, fingers tingling. A flash of white-hot wrongness, like that moment just before you step on a copperhead and you think, Shit! And every nerve in your body slams into overdrive. If you’re lucky, you take a big step back and watch the critter slither into the undergrowth. If you’re too late… well, you’re too late.
There was an instant, just half a second, when he thought it was just a flashback to the spring, but then he saw the girl’s eyes.
At the same time, he knew what was wrong. The door hadn’t chimed when he opened it. No bell had jangled. The lights to his right were out, and the security camera over the counter was just a blank screen. Inside the store was as quiet as death. And the girl, pressed up against the cooler at the back of the store, her hands raised to the level of her shoulders, streaks of blond hair caught in the perspiration on her face, blue eyes filled with abject terror. This all swept over him in the next half a second.
He glanced at the polished chrome dome over the counter, the one that gave a somewhat distorted 360 view of the entire store. He saw the gunman standing a few feet away from her, a red bandanna pulled over his face. Beside him was an open door that looked as though it might lead to a storeroom. The gunman kept cutting his eyes tensely between the storeroom and the girl in a way that let Buck know the three of them were not alone.
And all of that was in the next half a second. Or at least that was how it seemed to Buck. He hadn’t even stepped through the door, just opened it half a foot. Now he eased it closed again, thinking, Crap! Crap! Crap! With every slam of his heart.
He pressed himself against the brick wall outside the store and fumbled out his phone, punching in the numbers. He could hear the hiss of his breath like a freight train in his ears. When the operator answered he whispered hoarsely, “Robbery in progress at the Stop and Go on County Road 215, seven miles north of Mercy. At least one armed gunman, holding a female at gunpoint.”
The voice replied briskly, “Help is on the way. Please stay on the line. Are you safe? Sir?”
Buck disconnected and dropped the phone back into his pocket. He slipped his Glock out of the holster on his hip and eased back into the store. Crap, crap, crap. But what was he supposed to do? Leave the girl alone in there? Who knew how long it would take the police to respond in a place like this?
The girl saw him, her eyes panicked. He lay a finger aside his lips for silence. Her eyes shot back to the gunman.
Buck ducked silently into an aisle lined with Cheetos on one side and baby formula on the other. There was a shout. “Now! Hurry up!” An odd accent. A very nervous-sounding voice. He could no longer see the reflecting dome, which was good. If he could see them, chances were they could see him.
He crouched down at the end of the aisle, with motor oil on one side and breakfast cereal on the other. He tried to breathe through his nose, quietly, evenly. He wasn’t having much luck. His heart was like a jackhammer. He could see feet, nothing else. The gunman in battered sneakers and rumpled jeans. The girl in sandals and shorts. A can of Red Bull had rolled under the freezer, apparently when she’d dropped it. She was shaking so hard he could see her ankles trembling. Jesus, how scared did you have to be that your ankles trembled? But that didn’t worry him nearly as much as how scared the gunman was.
“Now!” the masked man shouted. The edge in his voice was close to panic. “Hurry!”
Buck saw another pair of feet emerge from the open door of the storeroom and he took a chance on straightening from his crouch to peer around the corner of the aisle. A smaller man, Middle Eastern or Indian, came through the door with two bulging bank bags and thrust them urgently into the gunman’s hand. “Here it is! This is everything. Go now!” The gunman clutched the bags to his chest with one arm, still holding the gun, somewhat less steadily now, on the girl. “The register—”
“No!” cried the other man. “It is enough!” He said something in a language Buck didn’t understand, making a pushing motion with his hands. The other man shouted something back in the same language and took a step backward.
Buck stepped out from the aisle and pressed the barrel of his gun into the back of the thief’s neck. “Get on your knees,” he said. “Put your gun on the floor.”
The man hesitated, stiffening, and for a minute Buck thought he might bolt. For the first time Buck noticed a metal door not ten feet from where they were standing with a lighted exit sign over it. Reading the other man’s thoughts, Buck pushed the barrel harder into his neck. “Bad idea,” he said.
The two bank bags tumbled to the floor as the gunman raised both hands and sank to his knees. He carefully placed the gun on the floor beside him and Buck scooped it up. The girl sobbed. The other man, the one Buck assumed to be the night clerk, raised his hands too, looking as though he didn’t know whether to be terrified or relieved.
In the distance Buck heard sirens. Thank you, Jesus, he thought.
“Okay,” he breathed. “Everybody just stay calm. Miss, sir…” He didn’t dare takes his eyes off the thief long enough to look at them. “Are you okay?”
The girl wrapped her arms around herself and pressed herself against the door of the cooler, still crying. “Y-y-yes. I…I…” Nothing else was intelligible. The clerk just stood there with his hands up, staring at the bank bags on the floor.
Blue lights flashed on the front windows, strobed through the store. Buck kept his eyes on the gunman. “Now would be a really bad time to move,” he told him. He risked a quick glance toward the front, saw two officers cautiously approaching the store, one from the east and one from the west.
The girl saw them, too, and cried out, lurching away from the cooler. The clerk shouted, “Help us! Help us please!”
When Buck saw the door open, he called out, “In the back! By the coolers!”
In return there was a shout of, “Police! Stay where you are!”
There was the sound of thundering feet, something crashed, more shouts: “Police! Freeze! Drop your weapons!”
The girl screamed and covered her head, dropping to her knees. The store clerk lunged forward, crying, “Help! Help, we’re here!”
Buck shouted to the clerk, “No, stay there!”
From behind him somebody shouted, “I said drop the goddamn gun!”
Buck half turned his head and as he did the thief in front of him scrambled to his feet, sweeping up the two bank bags and sprinting for the exit door like a linebacker with two seconds left to play. Out of the corner of his eye Buck saw a blue-uniformed officer in shooter’s stance with his weapon leveled straight at Buck. Another officer came from the aisle to Buck’s right, gun drawn. An alarm started to shriek as the thief plowed through the emergency exit. Buck thought, Shit!
Buck put up his hands, a gun in each one. “Law enforcement!” he shouted.
The next thing he knew he landed hard on the floor, his cheek pressed into the sticky tiles, the weight of somebody’s booted foot squarely between his shoulder blades. He made himself go limp. The girl was screaming. The alarm was shrieking. Everybody was shouting.
Somebody jerked his arms behind his back, roughly enough to make him wince, and snapped on a pair of metal cuffs. “Your suspect is getting away!” Buck raised his voice over the sound of the alarm. “Red bandanna, white running shoes, blue jeans! Through the back door!”
“Shut up, asshole!” was the reply. The boot ground harder between his shoulder blades.
The alarm abruptly stopped. Buck made an effort to lift his head, but someone grabbed his hair and pushed his face back down, hard, against the floor. Buck said tightly, “Back right pocket. You’ll find my wallet and i.d. My name is Buck Lawson.”
“Oh yeah?” The voice had a jeer to it, along with the slightly breathless remnants of an adrenaline rush. “That make you something special?”
“No,” replied Buck levelly, his face still pressed against the floor. “It makes me the new chief of police.”