Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [2]
She was about six feet from nose to tail. Her enormous paws could’ve ripped my face off with one powerful swipe.
But all was not well with the lioness. She panted with exertion. The bones of her rib cage were prominent due to near starvation. Her fur was patchy, worn away in spots on her hind legs and upper haunches. Most of her left ear was missing; the fresh wound had barely scabbed over. No heavy teats swayed from her matted white underbelly. Was she too old to have cubs? Too sick? A freak of nature that couldn’t reproduce? Had she been forced out of her natural habitat and was on the run?
My pulse quickened but not from fear. From something far scarier: empathy.
Crouched low, she nosed at the closest prairie dog carcass, the one somewhat intact after my shooting spree. Those mighty jaws opened lightning fast, and the fresh meat disappeared in two violent chomps.
Holy shit.
Leaves rattled above me in the breeze. Her head swiveled in my direction, her muzzle slick with blood. But proof of her extreme hunger wasn’t what caught my attention. I noticed the white film clouding her left eye.
She was half blind.
Bone-deep pity replaced my panic. This majestic creature, once a predator of the highest order, was reduced to scrounging for scraps just to survive.
Coyotes howled a warning beyond the ridge.
She opened her mouth and hissed. The sharp teeth I expected were nothing but broken nubs. No wonder she’d swallowed her food whole. No wonder she was famished. She limped to the next pile of meat, gorging herself before the coyotes chased her away or attacked her en masse.
How much longer could she survive? A week? A month?
End her misery. You have a clear shot. Take it.
I followed her erratic movements through the scope, a lioness beyond her prime, a former predator out of synch with the natural order, a wanderer lost in a place she didn’t belong.
Kill her. A quick death will be painless compared to the way she’s been living.
I knew I should. I struggled to find that calm center where nothing existed but the target. Where muscle memory and training took over and I didn’t have to think. I just had to act.
Do it. She’s in your crosshairs.
But I couldn’t fire. I slowly removed my finger from the trigger and closed my eyes. Sweat trickled from my hairline down my face. My hand shook. Hollowness expanded in my belly.
Angry at myself for my weakness, for my pity, I pointed the scope at her last position.
She was gone.
Dammit. Only a handful of times in my life had I failed to take a shot. Why now, when there was no moral dilemma?
Guilt gnawed at me as I loaded up. I didn’t want to rehash why I’d frozen, but as usual, my brain had other plans for me during the long walk home.
I just hoped this misstep wouldn’t come back to haunt me.
TWO
My day went downhill from there.
I broke up two bar fights.
I chased off two punks for trying to buy booze without an ID.
I ran out of Jack Daniel’s.
And I used to bitch about my duties as a soldier? I preferred dodging bullets to dumping ashtrays and slinging drinks. But job opportunities are limited for a former army sniper, especially in the backwoods of South Dakota.
After my military discharge, I’d anchored a bar stool at Clementine’s damn near every night. Then John-John Pretty Horses—Clementine’s owner and my longtime friend—offered me a temporary job. But John-John’s stipulation: no drinking on duty. His way of staging an intervention, without formally intervening.
Months later I was still pulling taps five nights a week, waiting for my life to start.
“Hey, Mercy.”
I didn’t look up at the customer as I was trying to catch the foam spewing out of the Keystone Light tap. Damn keg needed to be changed out again.
“The toilet in the men’s can is plugged.”
“Fan-fucking-tastic.” I locked