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

“No matter. You understand what I mean.”

“Price Motors was making money, but no one was getting super rich from it.”

“Exactly. But it was more than enough for a decent life, especially in a lower-cost area such as eastern Colorado. Son Charles, on the other hand, has not been quite as lucky.”

According to JP, the first few years of Chuckie’s reign were much like his father’s, then profits began to decline. Still, the company remained in the black until three years ago. To offset the early losses, Chuckie sold the farm that had passed from his grandparents to his father to him when his father passed away seven years ago of a heart attack. (For the record, Chuckie’s mother died from breast cancer when he was a teen.)

“He’s been using the money from the sale of the farm to keep the business afloat since then, but that’s almost all gone,” JP says.

“Things have been that bad?”

“Actually, at the dealership’s current revenue level, the money should have been able to last for another two years.”

“Why hasn’t it?”

“Because not all his money has gone to Price Motors.”

I wait for him to go on, but JP can be a bit of a showman at times and he’s clearly enjoying the reveal. Finally, I bite. “Okay, where’s the rest gone?”

“That is the question, isn’t it?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, no. I do know.”

I take a breath so that I won’t lose my patience. “Then how about telling us?”

He smiles triumphantly, and does as I asked.

The missing pieces are starting to fill in.

Now we understand why Chuckie was looking for work. The company he’d been given by his father was crashing and burning. A well-paid job, like the Hayden Valley Agriculture rep position, would have gone a long way toward keeping that from happening.

It was soon after Davis told Chuckie he was no longer being considered for the job that the draining of Chuckie’s accounts began in earnest.

The money he didn’t put into Price Motors was routed to the account of a shell company in Dallas, Texas, called RS Shepherd, Inc. JP was able to peel back the layers, and found that RS Shepherd is really owned by Husnic Investments. If you pronounce the Hus like the word hews, maybe you’ll see where this is going.

Hus as in Huston. Nic as in Nicholas. You know, like Nicholas Huston, Chuckie’s barbecue buddy and managing partner at RCHB Consulting.

The total amount Chuckie has funneled to him is $465,000. Why he’s been sending the money is not something JP was able to discover.

I can think of two possibilities right off the top of my head. One, Chuckie owes Huston the money for…well, something. Two, Huston could have something damaging on Chuckie and is extorting the cash from him.

I don’t like the second theory as much, because when they met in Chuckie’s Winnebago, there didn’t seem to be the kind of tension and animosity you’d expect between an extortionist and his victim.

I also don’t know why either of these possibilities would result in Chuckie and Huston having Bergen burn down farms.

There is the Gage-Trent Farming angle to think about, too. The company owns the vast majority of the farmhouses that have been hit. So why would the managing partner of RCHB order the destruction of his client’s properties?

Dammit. You solve one piece of the mystery and you realize there’s a whole other piece you didn’t know about that needs solving.

The easiest way for us to figure it all out would be to corner Chuckie and make him spill it. Don’t for a second think we couldn’t make him do that. I’ve persuaded some pretty rough types to cooperate against their better interests, guys a lot scarier than Chuckie will ever be.

But I’d like to avoid damaging him too much, if we can, before turning him over to the cops. I would hate for anyone to feel sorry for him.

Besides, there’s someone else we can talk to who might be able to shed a little light on things for us. And today is the perfect day to pay him a visit.

Which is why Jar and I drive back to Mercy.

In Southern California, our storms hit us in waves, and it’s rare that a single downpour lasts more than an hour or two. Here in southeastern Colorado, it’s been raining since we went to sleep seven hours ago, and according to the forecast, it won’t let up until after midnight. If that happened back home, the governor would declare a state of emergency and people would be talking about it for years.

In Mercy, it’s just Tuesday.

We head to the duplex first to pick up a few things. As I approach the door, I see the faint muddy outlines of two shoeprints on the mat that weren’t there when we left yesterday. They’re not dry, but they’re also not as saturated as they would be if they were made in the last hour or two. I estimate they were created sometime between the wee hours of the morning and sunup. Our tell on the door has not been disturbed, so if our visitor entered our house, he or she did so somewhere else.

I pull out my collapsible baton, unlock the door, and push it open. I wait just outside, listening for movement. When I hear nothing unusual, I step inside, my eyes moving all around, searching the place. The living room is empty, as is the kitchen.

I head down the hall to the back of the house, checking windows and rooms. There is no sign anywhere of an intruder having tried to get inside.

“Looks like we’re clear,” I tell Jar when I return to the living room.

She fires up her computer. Though we haven’t bugged our own house, we did place two cameras outside—one taking in most of the front, and the other the back. This was done more out of habit than for any other reason. I actually never thought we’d have to review their feeds.

Jar scrolls quickly backward