Mercy Kill_ A Mystery - Lori Armstrong [89]
Frustrated by his dismissal, I grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him.
Within two seconds he’d snagged my wrist and strong-armed me into the alley. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“I’m pissed off.”
Dawson snorted. “Like that’s news.”
“Why didn’t you tell me Turnbull was a fed? God, Dawson, if I’d known the feds had taken over the investigation, and you had no choice but to let the Hawley case drop, I never would’ve agreed—”
“To run against me for sheriff ?” he supplied. “It’s a little late for that now, doncha think?”
The full brunt of my mistake knocked the breath from my lungs.
“Answer me, Mercy.”
I could barely work up enough spit to swallow, let alone speak.
He crowded me against the brick building. “Do you know what’s the worst part of this situation?”
Too many awful reasons surfaced. It was hard to shake my head in response, when it was so damn hard to hold it up.
“Realizing how little you think of my professional abilities.”
Direct hit. “Dawson—”
“Let. Me. Finish. Last summer I chalked up your distrust of me to your replacement issues about your father. I chalked up your skepticism of my investigative skills to the personal stakes when your nephew was murdered. But when you automatically accused me of not doing my job again? That jab hurt worse than a knee to the balls. Or so I thought, until I started to wonder if you’d kept our personal involvement your dirty little secret because professionally you consider me no better than Barney Fife.”
The haunted look in his eyes made me want to hide my face in shame. But he was wrong about how I’d treated him . . . wasn’t he?
“I thought I could count on you to understand. You, of all people, Mercy, know what it’s like when the government forces you to keep your mouth shut, forces you to turn a blind eye, forces your compliance at any cost. You’ve lived that life. Hell, as far as I can tell, you still embody that unquestioning code of military ethics—personally and professionally. Yet here you are, judging me as lacking, for sticking to that exact same set of standards.”
A hot wash of shame burned as the words hypocrite, hypocrite, hypocrite sliced through me as sharp and painful as barbed wire.
My God. Talk about being sanctimonious. How many years had I been forced to follow protocol without question? Why had I questioned Dawson’s methodology? Because I was accustomed to being highest on the pecking order? Because my timetable, my way of doing things, and the answers I demanded should always be priority number one?
Delusions of importance much, Sergeant Major?
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Why hadn’t I considered that as sheriff, Dawson would be held to rigid rules and legal standards? Why hadn’t I realized my father hadn’t talked about his duties as sheriff, not because he didn’t want to but because he couldn’t?
I hoped for Dawson’s warm, rough fingers to nudge my chin up even as I steeled myself against his recriminations.
But his footsteps faded as he walked away from me and I was left with nothing but regret.
NINETEEN
I hated slapping on a happy face, and hitting the happy trail, after the shitty start to my day. What was the point? I should just withdraw from the race.
And become a quitter? No.
Cowgirl up, Mercy.
I preferred solitude to socializing, so it was ironic that the door-to-door aspect of my campaign duties had become my favorite part. Even when folks told me to my face they planned on voting for Dawson, I couldn’t hold it against them because it was rarely said with malice.
Older community residents, who’d known my family for generations, delighted in revealing my parents in a different light. The stories they shared were new to me, even if the tales were forty years old.
At the first stop, Maxine Crenshaw plied me with homemade doughnuts and recalled the night my father pulled over her husband for erratic driving. Milt Crenshaw, in the early stages of Alzheimer’s, had left the house without his eyeglasses or his pants. He’d also forgotten the state had revoked his driver’s license. Rather