Page 78 of Lord Have Mercy Part Four: Big Son

She claimed the seat beside him and cupped her hand under his. “Here, let me.”

He passed over the knife without hesitation, and Ava leaned in close to get a better look. It was a fresh one, long and jagged, edged with gray paint that proved it had come from the weathered porch rail just in front of them. It had embedded itself fully, and though no part of it stuck out helpfully, she could see the point of entry clear enough.

“Okay. Hold on.” She folded his knife and set it on his thigh so she could pull her own, smaller knife from her boot. It had a narrow, fierce tip which she fitted into the entry point on his palm, and then very, very carefully sliced through thetopmost layer of skin all down the length of the splinter. As ever, Mercy didn’t flinch, and she managed to lift the skin without drawing blood and then flick the splinter neatly away with the point of the knife.

Afterward, she brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed the groove in his palm. When she looked up at him, he was smiling at her, crooked and wrong. He didn’t ask how it went – she thought he was afraid to know the answer – so she volunteered the information freely, bringing her other hand up so she could trace the splinter’s path with her fingertips.

“The bad news,” she said, and realized once she’d started that she was speaking to him in the same voice she used on the kids, low, and slow, and soothing. It seemed appropriate in the moment. “Is that Regina doesn’t know where Remy is currently. But,” she added, quickly, when his eyes sparked with rage and defeat, “she did have some things to say about Boyle.

“Remy was at Sun House,” she said, and Mercy’s hand closed around hers, snapped shut like a bear trap. “With Boyle and Fallon. They got jumpy and moved him yesterday morning, before–” Now it was her turn to stumble, and it was her throat that closed, while his grip stayed tight on her hands, as she thought about ships in the night, and missed chances, and the stupidity of struggling to drag herself out of her hotel bed because she wastired. While she and Tenny had been making smart remarks about Isabella Duet at Café du Monde, Boyle had been shoving her boy into a car. “Before we arrived,” she finished.

“They only spent one night there, but she’d known they were coming from the moment he left Knoxville.”

His gaze sharpened, and his grip eased. Focusing on the logistics helped to drag you back from flailing panic, she knew well. “He’d been in contact with her before.”

“For several months. She couldn’t remember exactly, just said before Mardi Gras. Said he came to see her at Sun House, and refused to take no for an answer when the girl at the door told him she didn’t see clients personally anymore. When she finally agreed to at least meet with him, he introduced himself and said he needed her help bringing down a, quote, ‘highly dangerous fugitive from justice.’ The idiot really thought Boyle was deputizing her or some shit. Like no one could help him bring down the big bad wolf except the hooker with a heart of gold.”

“Before Mardi Gras,” he mused. “That was back when Alex got called in.”

“When the bodies were first discovered, yeah.” She shook her head. “I bet Dandridge wishes he could go back and unring that bell.” Didn’t they all? “But, anyway, she was fully onboard. When Boyle left town, he kept in touch, kept telling her he was going to need her soon.”

“Did she already know who I was?”

“Yeah.” Here, she sighed. “I don’t know what her intentions were, but Barbara told her about you originally. Over the years, she entertained more than a few Lean Dogs, and she asked some questions. Covertly, of course. Before yesterday, none of the NOLA Dogs knew she was your – that she was related to Dee,” she amended, hastily. “So she already felt a certain way about you, and then Boyle came into the picture–”

“She never stood a chance,” he said.

“No.” For her part, Ava felt no remorse, but she searched Mercy’s face for some sign that he did. He was tight-mouthed and grim, but he didn’t look sorry. Not about Regina.

“Boyle didn’t tell her where they were going,” she said, “but the night before, when he was” – she swallowed a sudden surge of nausea, imagination too vivid on certain details – “withher, after, he started talking. Mostly about you, and she didn’t tune in for all of it, but she was able to learn a few things.

“I was right about him stalking you,” she said, with no joy for having been proven correct. “She said he went from being proud of himself, smoking a cigarette, to sitting up and shaking. He dropped the cigarette and she said the bed would have caught fire if she didn’t snatch it up. He got this, in her words, ‘freaky’ look in his eyes, and said, best as she could recall, ‘All those years watching him. Him rejecting me, and now…now this. Now I’m in control.’”

“Watching me?” Mercy said, incredulous. “Watching me where? Andrejecting? I don’t…the only man who’s ever hit on me is Ian, and he wasn’t serious about it. I neverrejected…” Slowly, his eyes widened.

The roar of an engine drew both their attentions, and Ava turned her head to see the Jeep skidding back into the parking lot, fish-tailing in the gravel. Alex was behind the wheel, and threw it in park right in front of the porch, behind the row of bikes, and scrambled out with his phone held aloft.

“Guys! Guys, you’ve gotta see this! Boyle was–”

“The clearing,” Mercy said, and his face went white. “Shit.”

“What clearing?” Ava asked.

Colin joined Alex at the nose of the Jeep and they came up the stairs together, shoulders so wide they almost got stuck. Alex looked urgent, but Colin looked like Mercy: like he’d seen a ghost.

“The little fucker went to school with me and I didn’t evenremember. I never even knew hisname.” Colin snatched the phone from Alex and shoved it into Mercy’s hand.

The screen was filled with a photo that looked like it had come out of a yearbook: the cheap tux, the velvet blue backdrop, the sad attempt at airbrushing away acne spots.

“This is Boyle?” Ava asked, and then she saw the name beneath the photo that confirmed it. “Shit, he looksnothinglike that now.”

In the years between his senior portrait and his jackbooted arrival in Knoxville, he’d clearly had dental work, had his ears pinned back, grown into his face, and developed a rigorous fitness routine. Stunned herself, Ava couldn’t blame Mercy or Colin for forgetting they’d seen him before.

“It was nothing, it was so much nothing, it was one conversation – not even a conversation! Like, two sentences,” Colin said, hands thrown up in supplication, surrender, or both.

“What was nothing, Colin?” Ava asked.

“He talked to me – I didn’t know! I didn’t – but he talked to me. At school. We were in the same grade, and one day this kid came up to me in the hallway – and I’d never met him before! And–”

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