Dark Mercy (Maddy Wimsey Book 3) Read online

  DARK MERCY

  by

  J.R. RAIN &

  MATTHEW S. COX

  A Maddy Wimsey Novel

  Book #3

  Other Books by J.R. Rain and Matthew S. Cox

  WINTER SOLSTICE SERIES

  Convergence

  Containment

  Catalyst

  ALEXIS SILVER SERIES

  Silver Light

  Deep Silver

  Silver Quarrel

  MADDY WIMSEY SERIES

  The Devil’s Eye

  The Drifting Gloom

  Dark Mercy

  SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  Haunted Moon

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE

  Moon Master

  Dead Moon

  Dragon World

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  Blood Moon

  IMMORTAL OPERATIVE

  Broken Ice

  FOUR ELEMENTS SERIES

  The Elementalist

  Dark Mercy

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2019 by J.R. Rain & Matthew S. Cox

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Reading Sample: The Elementalist

  About the Author: J.R. Rain

  About the Author: Matthew S. Cox

  Dark Mercy

  Chapter One

  Rough

  Lucky to have a relatively light week, I wind up catching a suicide jumper.

  Unfortunately, I didn’t actually catch the guy. Just his case. Catching the actual guy in this situation would’ve been bad for both of us. Well, mostly bad for me. He’d have been dead either way.

  Despite the somberness of the scene, my mood remains high. Caius finally proposed to me not too long ago and I’m still flying high from that. However, out of respect for the dead, I am totally capable of not smiling here. Mostly. At least my hair has my back so to speak. She keeps blowing into my face whenever I randomly think about Caius or the upcoming wedding—which we still haven’t set a date for—or the squeal my friend Isabelle made when she saw me accept. A good night, all around.

  Rick and I are presently standing on the sidewalk in the shadow of a high-rise office building in downtown Olympia, gazing up at the very roof where we were told he had jumped from. Sunlight shimmers on a strip of silver at the edge, making me squint. It’s a pity that the guy picked a nice day to do this. Clear skies and sun aren’t the norm here.

  The remains of one Mr. Archibald Montgomery, age thirty-four, rest beneath a fluttering blue tarp beside Rick and me. A starburst of red covers the sidewalk well in excess of what the plastic can hide. Thirty feet away on the opposite side of the street, the rear end of a green Volvo sticks out from the window of a cupcake bakery. Most people wouldn’t draw any connection between a suicide jumper and a woman putting her car through the wall of a shop. But I also don’t think like most people. She probably saw him falling, got distracted, and lost control.

  “What do you make of this?” asks a patrol officer to Rick’s left.

  My partner peels his gaze off the roof, glances at the tarp, and shrugs. “Pretty sure he’s dead. That’s about all I’m gonna get just from looking at the scene before speaking to anyone.”

  I glance at the cop. “You have statements or information from witnesses?”

  The officer nods. “Yeah. A handful, mostly from street level. No one noticed the guy until he hit the ground. Driver of the Volvo didn’t have much to add. Only that a piece of, uhh, ‘debris’ hit her windshield. She started vomiting, lost control, strayed over the line into the oncoming lane. A bus objected to her trespass and punted the Volvo into the cupcake place like Ronaldo tryin’ to score from midfield.”

  “Ouch.” I cringe. “So no one you talked to knew the deceased? No idea why he jumped?”

  Rick whistles. “If my name was Archibald, I’d throw myself off a building, too.”

  “Nah.” The cop ignores my partner’s comment, continuing to look at me. “He’s got an ID badge for an architectural drawing firm that has office space here, but aside from a couple people saying he’d been acting a little out of it this morning, no one had any idea what made him do it. Have fun with this one, detectives.”

  “Yeah…” I look around the scene again. “Who told you he went off the roof if no one saw him until he hit the sidewalk?”

  The cop gestures at the building’s entrance. “Security people. They got him on video going out to the roof, but the dude didn’t hesitate at all. Just went straight to the edge, climbed the little wall, and leapt. The security people hadn’t even made it halfway up the building before he was in free fall.”

  “Whatever went wrong for this guy, he wasn’t trying to make a cry for help. He took an express elevator to hell. Going down.” Rick glances sideways at me. “Not an Aliens fan? Never mind.”

  “Oh, brother,” I mutter. “Okay, thank you, Officer Coleman.”

  He nods.

  Leaving him there to guard the body with the other cops, we head inside to the desk in the lobby. Though it has four seats and four computers, only one guy in a black ‘security’ polo shirt is there. Soft murmuring comes from a hallway behind the counter that I assume to be for the security staff, as it’s small and plain compared to the elevator area to the left, which is full of modernist corporate prettiness, like long marble tables and vases with fresh cut flowers.

  We show our badges and introduce ourselves to the one guy there, Mark Kohl. He’s clearly rattled from having a front-row seat to a man committing suicide. I don’t expect we’ll have to make them hold off on cleaning the blood spatter from the building’s front windows too much longer if that video checks out.

  “We’d like to see the video from the roof if possible,” I say.

  “Oh, sure, this way.” Mark stands.

  He leads us over to the plain hallway and to a room lined with small monitors and recording equipment, also two other people: a visibly upset fiftyish black woman and a late-twenties Latina who’s trying to console her. Evidently, the older woman also witnessed Archibald’s landing. Both are wearing security polos. Mark introduces us.

  Rick nods, flashing his badge. “Did any of you know Mr. Montgomery?” The older black lady shakes her head first. “No. Only that the man worked here, upstairs. Just not the kinda thing I ever expected to see happen right in front of m
e.”

  Rick makes sympathetic sounds and glances at the others. “How about you two?”

  They reply no.

  “Did any of you observe anything unusual today or recently regarding him?” I ask.

  All three of the security staff shake their heads.

  “Guy didn’t really stand out,” says the Hispanic woman.

  “Gonna show them the video.” Mark sits in one of the black-cushioned office chairs and clicks his way past login prompts and menu options.

  The older woman turns her back. “I can’t watch that again.”

  Mark points at the screen, broken into eight sub-panels each with a different security feed. Two show the roof from different angles, the rest, hallways, cubicles, and a break area.

  “Impressive. You watch every square foot of this place, huh?” asks Rick.

  “Not in real time.” Mark clicks a box and enters a time code. “It’s recorded though. Usually, the video is used for exactly this… looking at stuff after the fact. We’ve got a few hot feeds up front, critical locations that we monitor real time. But ninety-five percent of it is just recorded in case we need it later. External doors, the back alley and the roof access are monitored in real time. That’s why we tried hoofing it to the roof to stop the guy, but the elevator would’ve needed a rocket engine to get us up there fast enough.”

  A figure I recognize (mostly from the driver’s license photo and coat as the body was in bad shape) walks down the hallway in one of the camera views. He doesn’t appear to be in an elevated emotional state, calmly strolling to a doorway marked ‘no entrance.’ A faint flicker of light glints behind him seconds before he pushes the door open and enters a stairwell.

  Whoa. What was that?

  Frowning, I watch as he emerges from a door captured by an external camera, walks straight off the bend in the path to a helipad, and climbs a four-foot high wall at the edge. He’s over and gone in seconds.

  “Wow. That guy really wanted to jump. No hesitation whatsoever,” mutters Rick.

  “Can you back up to 9:42:18?” I ask.

  Mark clicks on an arrow, rewinding to a second before I noticed the odd flash.

  “Frame by frame it?”

  Nodding, Mark advances the video one frame at a time. A fist-sized spot of light floats into the image from the left and slips behind Archibald, not coming out the other side of his head. Either it disappeared behind him or went into him.

  “Oh, hey,” says Mark. “That looks like one of those ‘light anomalies’ from some ghost hunting show.”

  “Or a lens flare.” Maria, the younger of the two women, points at it. “Just the camera catching the overhead lights.”

  Mark shakes his head. “This isn’t a Michael Bay or J.J. Abrams movie. That’s not a lens flare. Sorry, I take film classes at school.”

  Rick chuckles, but gives me side eye.

  “Can we go up and look at the spot?” I ask. “And if you can send us a copy of this video, it would be a big help.”

  “Sure. You want me to email a file or do you have a flash drive?”

  “Email works.” I give him my departmental email for public contact.

  Once he’s sent the file, he leads us back to the elevators and we go upstairs. Despite the hallway to the roof stairs being well lit an hour before noon, it’s radiating a vibe like a haunted house. Nothing visible sets off my warning bells—and my hair doesn’t decide to grab onto anything—so I don’t quite go on high alert. This feels more like something was here, the kind of something that I can’t put in any police report and expect to keep my job. When we reach the outside door leading to the roof, a weird chill slithers down my back like a lump of slime.

  I spin, but there’s no one behind me poking me with a piece of raw fish. It’s an odd sensation that’s quite new to me. I’m not sure if I sensed something in the air like a residual imprint or if an entity actively touched me.

  A squeak announces the door opening; strong sunlight floods the stairwell. Rick leads the way forward onto the roof. The security guy gives us a brief tour of the area, including a few seconds’ peek over the side. It’s difficult to see the remains from this high up, but it’s pretty obvious we’re directly above the front entrance where he landed.

  “This looks like a pretty clear-cut case of suicide,” says Rick.

  While I have my doubts, I like being employed. “Let’s go talk to the co-workers.”

  Rick nods.

  We head to the thirty-fourth floor and the office of Hartman & Dunn, the design firm where Archibald used to work. It takes up roughly a quarter of the floor. Mark stays in the elevator and continues on to the lobby below while we make our way down the hall to the firm.

  Rick pulls open the metallic door for me. “You know, Wims, you’re starting to see ghosts everywhere.”

  “Paranormal stuff is everywhere, Rick. Most people simply ignore it as a reflex.”

  “Or it was just a light glitch.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I’m sensing a but here...”

  I grin. “But if that was a spirit, it might have simply sensed the man was about to die and came to check it out.”

  “I love how you talk about this stuff like it’s so normal.”

  I sigh out my nose. As superstitious as cops are, you’d think a girl could air her suspicion that a spirit might have been involved in causing a death without ending up in a mandatory psych evaluation. The sense that something more than simple severe depression killed this guy gnaws at me, but there’s not much to go on. Most of the time when a person is killed by powers beyond our understanding, the person has brought it on themselves. I can’t help but think of Elise, the youngest member of my coven, and her run-in with a dangerous negative entity. Part of me thinks the only reason she survived is that she hadn’t intended to summon that thing. It forced its way past the gate she opened while trying to contact her dead mother.

  Rick reaches the desk first, holding up his badge. “Detective Rick Santiago, and this is Detective Madeline Wimsey. We’re here regarding Archibald Montgomery.”

  “Oh, right,” says the fellow redhead behind the desk. She’s late thirties with a pinkish complexion. Her hair’s nowhere near as epic as mine though, straight and thin. She’s visibly upset over the news. Indeed, the entire office looks shaken.

  “We’d like to speak with his manager and anyone you feel may have known him.” I put my badge away and offer a comforting smile. “We can start with you, if you knew him.”

  “Not really. He kept to himself. Never saw him at the Christmas parties.” The woman exhales. “Hold on, I think he worked under Martin. Let me check the org chart.”

  We wait a moment.

  “Yep. One sec. I’ll be right back.” The woman gets up and hurries off down a hall.

  “Gonna be rough,” mutters Rick.

  “Why’s that? She barely knew him.”

  “No, I mean it’s the first of August. Any month that starts off with a suicide is going to be rough.”

  Maybe I am jumping at shadows, as Rick suggested. No matter what, this is going down as a suicide. The video is compelling and clear. The question, for me, is what led him to make such a dramatic decision. Had something influenced him to jump? And had that something been supernatural in nature? Yes, I’m looking at you weird light anomaly. Hell, even if I can find enough evidence to convince myself that someone may have sent a spiritual assassin after him, the death is still going down as an official suicide.

  Did I mention I like my job?

  Yeah. I’d rather keep it.

  Chapter Two

  Concerned Citizen

  Well, that’s one way to blow an afternoon.

  Rick and I spent four hours at the design firm talking to anyone and everyone who had ever known Archibald existed. People who sat near him described him as quiet but friendly. He didn’t go out of his way to meet people or initiate conversation, but would be pleasant with anyone who needed to talk to him. His manager described h
im as a ‘slightly above average’ employee. Competent and reasonably motivated, but no all-star. However, his utter lack of causing drama, complaining, or drawing attention to himself—plus never taking sick days—endeared him to management.

  We dug deeper throughout the day. He had no surviving family, being an only child whose parents and grandparents had all died years ago. Based on the ages of death for the parents, he came along late. Nothing looks screwy in his finances, no pets, and no last will. No one stood to gain anything from his death as far as I can tell, and his apartment didn’t contain anything outlandish—just a personal art studio with lots of drawings of flowers, landscapes, and still-lifes.

  Worst of all, no note.

  So, yeah. Although suicide is the official cause of death of poor Mr. Archibald Montgomery, I still don’t know why he offed himself. Which, admittedly, is frustrating as hell.

  I’m almost done filling out the reports for that when my desk phone chimes. It’s an internal ringtone, so that means it’s either Captain Janet Greer or the desk sergeant. Suppose it could be anyone in the building, really, but I can’t think of anyone other than those two people who would be calling me direct.

  I pick up the receiver. “Homicide, Wimsey.”

  “Detective,” says Sergeant Dale Cridlin, the poor bastard at the front desk. “Got someone here asking to speak to a homicide detective about a possible murder. You’re the only one picking up.”

  “One sec.” I lean back in my chair to check out my colleagues’ desks. Sure enough, Rick and I are the only ones here. Granted, I don’t have anything else to do than finishing up a report. At least, anything else pressing. The past two weeks have been scarily quiet from a murder standpoint. I really hope the city isn’t building up for a shitstorm. “Give me like five minutes?”

  “No problem, detective.”

  I hang up and go back to typing up the report, only faster.

  “What’s that about?” asks Rick.