Dry Spell: A Mercy Watts Short by A.W. Hartoin Read Free Book Online Page A

was cold and dirty. I rubbed the dirt away and a glint of metal shown through. I stopped for a moment and said to myself, ‘Soda can.’  
    I used a rock to clear more dirt. It wasn’t a can. It was hard metal and a tube. I worked some more and a bit of plastic emerged. I spit on it and it became pink. Pink plastic with sparkly bits imbedded in it. I’d seen that kind of plastic before. It was a kid’s thing. I’d had a bike with handgrips like that, only mine were purple. My stomach twisted and I felt sweat beading on my upper lip.  
    “Mercy?” Aaron leaned over and waggled the thermos at me. “Need this?”  
    I shook my head and started digging in earnest. The music was so loud my eardrums were screaming. The light faded until I was digging in a dusky twilight. There was the sound of a shovel being shoved into hard dirt. Voices. Music. The rattle of a bike chain. I had to be sure. More of a pink handgrip emerged and surrounding it were bits of shredded plastic. I’d had streamers on the end of my handlebars, too. A bead of sweat rolled into my mouth as I brought my dirt encrusted hand to my lips and turned it to mud. I was standing on her. My father’s words during a visit to my great grandfather’s grave sounded softly in my ears. “Never step on a grave. It’s an insult.” I scuttled backwards out from under the bridge and it was bright daylight again and the music was just that, music in the distance, but I couldn’t move fast enough. I ran around the lake to my truck. My feet pounded on the grass and crushed stray leaves. The lake was still beautiful, more so in fact. It seemed a perfect world with its brilliant sky and playgrounds.  
    I jumped into my truck and gripped the steering wheel. My fingernails were ripped off and the nail beds were oozing blood. I hadn’t felt it. How did I not feel that? I was crying and didn’t know when I’d started. I’d never been so afraid. Under that bridge something had reached out and touched me. It was different than the night before. More horrible and lasting.  
    Aaron reached in and took my hands off the steering wheel. He pushed me across the bench seat and got in the driver’s seat. He put an icy soda can into my burning hands and then drove away from the lake. I sat in that seat, shaking and confused.  
    “Did the light change?” I asked.  
    “Huh?”  
    “Did it get dark like an eclipse or something?”  
    “Nope,” said Aaron.  
    “And the music didn’t get louder?”  
    “Nope.”  
    “Do you think I’m crazy?”  
    “Nope.”  
      It was good to drive, to move and be away from that place. I thought of going to the local police, but what would they make of me? A crackpot, a loon. They didn’t know me and would never believe.  
    “Let’s go home,” I said.  
    “Yep.”  
    But Aaron didn’t take me home. I don’t know why I thought he would. He never listened to me. My name wasn’t Morty or Tommy Watts. Before I realized how long it’d been, Aaron was parking at my Cousin Chuck’s precinct. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t go to Chuck for a Kleenex, but you know what they say about strange bedfellows. Chuck was by all accounts a great cop. He was the son my father never had. Chuck was known in cop circles as ‘Tommy’s boy.’ That helped out quite a bit in his rise in rank, but I imagined it had its drawbacks, too. Chuck had to prove he wasn’t riding Dad’s coat tails and he worked twenty-hour days as a result. It didn’t occur to me that Chuck wouldn’t be at work. He might not be at the house, but he’d be on the job. They’d find him for me, for better or worse, I had a reputation, too.  
    I walked into Chuck’s office with Aaron trotting along behind me. There were a couple of plainclothes at their desks and a couple of uniforms, too. Chuck wasn’t among them. It took a second for someone to acknowledge me.
    Chris Nazir stood up and recognized me before he got halfway across the room. “Mercy, what