Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3), Brett Battles [best books to read in your 20s TXT] 📗

who gave me tips at the driving range, is a lawyer who handles everything from divorces to setting up trusts to criminal law. Being a generalist like this is probably the kind of thing you need to do in a smaller town. His practice has three other lawyers and he’s the managing partner. He’s also a Mercy native and was a year ahead of Chuckie at school, though he attended St. Catherine’s High School while Chuckie went to MHS. Still, I’m sure they knew each other, or at least knew of each other growing up. We haven’t found any business connections between them yet. Chuckie and Price Motors use the other “big” lawyer firm in town. Jar is still hunting around.

The golf ball guy’s full name is Paul Bergen. He’s another Mercy native, who, it turns out, was a classmate of Chuckie’s. They were both on the football team, though Bergen—now and in his high school pictures—seems kind of scrawny to have received much playing time. So far, we’ve unearthed no other connections between them.

Travis Murphy is the guy who was working in the golf shop. He moved here for the job, from Pueblo, Colorado, three years ago. The driving range is owned by his uncle, who made his nephew the manager. Murphy is ten years younger than Chuckie, and we’ve found nothing that indicates they socialize outside of seeing each other at the range.

Jar has also identified the two men Chuckie met with inside his RV at the barbecue at Grayson Lake. Old Guy is Nicholas Huston, and In Shape is Kyle Decker. They both work for a company called RCHB Consulting. Huston is the managing partner. The kind of consulting they do and who they consult are things we’re still working on. But it’s not a stretch to think one of their clients is Gage-Trent Farming, since that’s who sponsored the barbecue.

This thought led us back to the email exchange Chuckie had with Hayden Valley Agriculture. You remember—the one about him being turned down for…something?

Maybe his communications with them are unrelated to what’s going on now. Or maybe that tickle at the back of my mind is correct and there is a connection.

There’s only one way to find out, which is the reason that by eleven a.m. I’m on the road northwest to Denver.

Jar has remained in Mercy, where it’ll be easier for her to work than from the passenger seat of the truck. We’ve agreed she won’t try anything risky until I’m back, though I’m aware our definitions of what that might preclude are probably different. Hopefully, I won’t find myself in the position of having to break her out of jail.

Most of my three-hour trip is made through endlessly repetitive farm country. It’s still early in the growing season, so even the different types of crops look the same to my eye. I realize this is a flaw in my education. I’ve trained in so many different subjects, but the ins and outs of everyday farming is not one of them.

I see no signs of the Rocky Mountains until I’m almost to Denver. But even then the towering range is a mere hazy silhouette, low on the western horizon, its sight a welcome change to the flat world I’ve been surrounded by for the last week or so.

The regional office for Hayden Valley Agriculture is located in the Cherry Creek section of Denver, the area a mix of homes and businesses southeast of downtown. A quaint area of clothing stores and stationery shops and bookstores and bars and townhouses and apartments. The hotels seem to all be boutiques, like the Jacquard, where I have a room reserved. I’m not planning on staying the night, but it’s always good to have a base.

I know that Vince Neuman, the VP Chuckie met with, is in town. I called before I left Mercy, pretending to be from a mortgage broker who had some documents Neuman personally needed to sign before the end of the day. The friendly receptionist told me he had meetings on and off throughout the afternoon and should be around.

Though I have not made an appointment, I have brought along something that makes me confident he’ll see me.

I park at the Jacquard and check in, then head down Second Avenue to Men’s Wearhouse, a place that specializes in men’s suits. The one thing I didn’t bring with me on vacation was any kind of business clothes. I know exactly what I’m looking for, but even then it takes me several minutes to find the style I want in my size.

Black, well fitting, nothing too fancy, but not cheap, either. And a white shirt with a dark blue tie.

A helpful clerk shows me to a fitting room, where I confirm I have indeed chosen well.

“I’ll take it,” I tell the man when I come back out.

“Excellent,” he says. “I can take it to the counter for you if you’d like to continue looking around. Or will this be all?”

The weather outside is pleasant, but the forecast calls for a temperature drop of a good fifteen degrees over the next few hours. It’s the harbinger of that storm Nicholas Huston mentioned to Chuckie at the barbecue. Tomorrow is supposed to be even cooler, with the rain hitting the plains sometime in the early hours of Wednesday and dropping a late May snow in the mountains.

“Do you have any overcoats?”

The clerk smiles. “Right this way.”

Back at the Jacquard, I dress in my new clothes, and transfer my phone and false ID into the inside pocket of the suit jacket.

It’s a nine-minute walk from my room to the offices of Hayden Valley Agriculture. The business is located on the top floor of a five-story building, across the street from a Wells Fargo Bank and a Whole Foods Market.

The elevator lets me off directly in Hayden Valley’s lobby, which is decorated in soothing tones of off-white and brown. Eight leather chairs are scattered around in pairs, separated by white