Mercy Falls Read Free

shed. Behind the shed stood an old outhouse.
    Dross parked off the road in the dirt of what passed for a drive. “Looks deserted,” she said.
    The curtains were open and behind each window was deep black.
    “Eli’s pickup’s gone,” she noted. “Maybe they patched things up and went off to celebrate.”
    The call had come from Lucy Tibodeau who lived with her husband Eli in the little cabin. These two had a long history of domestic disputes that, more often than not, arose from the fact that Eli liked to drink and Lucy liked to bully. When Eli drank, he tended to forget that he weighed 140 pounds compared to Lucy’s 200-plus. In their altercations, it was generally Eli who took it on the chin. They always made up and never actually brought a formal complaint against one another. Patsy, the dispatcher, had taken the call and reported that Lucy was threatening to beat the crap out of Eli if someone didn’t get out there to stop her. Which was a little odd. Generally, it was Eli who called asking for protection.
    Cork looked at the cabin a moment, and listened to the stillness in the hollow.
    “Where are the dogs?” he said.
    “Dogs?” Dross replied. Then she understood. “Yeah.”
    Everybody on the rez had dogs. Eli and Lucy had two. They were an early-warning system of sorts, barking up a storm when visitors came. At the moment, however, everything around the Tibodeau cabin was deathly still.
    “Maybe they took the dogs with them.”
    “Maybe,” Cork said. “I’m going to see if Patsy’s heard anything more.”
    Dross put on her cap and opened her door. She stepped out, slid her baton into her belt.
    Cork reached for the radio mike. “Unit Three to Dispatch. Over.”
    “This is Dispatch. Go ahead, Cork.”
    “Patsy, we’re at the Tibodeau place. Looks like nobody’s home. Have you had any additional word from Lucy?”
    “That’s a negative, Cork. Nothing since her initial call.”
    “And you’re sure it came from her?”
    “She ID’d herself as Lucy Tibodeau. Things have been quiet out there lately, so I figured we were due for a call.”
    Marsha Dross circled around the front of the vehicle and took a few steps toward the cabin. In the shadow cast by the ridge, everything had taken on a somber look. She stopped, glanced at the ground near her feet, bent down, and put a finger in the dirt.
    “There’s blood here,” she called out to Cork. “A lot of it.”
    She stood up, turned to the cabin again, her hand moving toward her holster. Then she stumbled, as if she’d been shoved from behind, and collapsed facedown. In the same instant, Cork heard the report from a rifle.
    “Shots fired!” he screamed into the microphone. “Officer down!”
    The windshield popped and a small hole surrounded by a spiderweb of cracks appeared like magic in front of Cork. The bullet chunked into the padding on the door an inch from his arm. Cork scrambled from the Land Cruiser and crouched low against the vehicle.
    Dross wasn’t moving. He could see a dark red patch that looked like a maple leaf spread over the khaki blouse of her uniform.
    The reports had come from the other side of the road, from the hill to the east. Where Cork hunkered, the Land Cruiser acted as a shield and protected him, but Dross was still vulnerable. He sprinted to her, hooked his hands under her arms, and dug his heels into the dirt, preparing to drag her to safety. As he rocked his weight back, something stung his left ear. A fraction of a second later another report came from the hill. Cork kept moving, his hands never losing their grip as he hauled his fallen deputy to the cover of the Land Cruiser.
    A shot slammed through the hood, clanged off the engine block, and thudded into the dirt next to the left front tire.
    Cork drew his revolver and tried to think. The shots had hit an instant before he’d heard the sound of them being fired, so the shooter was at some distance. But was there only one? Or were others moving in,