Mercy
The Night Man Chronicles
Brett Battles
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Enjoyed What You Read?
About the Author
Also by Brett Battles
MERCY Copyright © 2021 by Brett Battles
Cover art copyright © 2021 by Robert Browne
All rights reserved.
MERCY is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For more information about the author, please visit www.brettbattles.com.
Created with Vellum
This one is for Corri.
A friend and a fan and a fellow BHS graduate,
whose life, like so many others’ during the pandemic,
ended much too soon.
Chapter One
You know what I hate?
Unpopped kernels in my popcorn.
I’m chomping away and all of a sudden I bite down on one, and my tooth feels like it’s going to split in half. I swear I can still feel the sensation hours after this happens.
Why am I thinking about popcorn right now? Because I’m sitting in a storage room next to one of those big, glassed-in, theater-type popcorn machines, and even though it’s clean, it still reeks of butter and stale popped kernels. It’s mounted on a cart so it can be wheeled into whichever banquet requests it. The room holds a bunch of stuff like that, separated into themes. The popcorn machine is part of the Hollywood theme. I’ve also seen a Western-theme grouping and a Vegas theme complete with roulette and craps tables.
Where am I that would house all these kinds of things in a single storage room?
Why, El Palacio Banquet Experience, of course.
From its brochure:
Choose from our nine distinct banquet halls for your next wedding, party, or company event. We offer full catering and a themed experience you will remember for a lifetime.
Why am I in a big building full of banquet halls, especially since no one’s throwing weddings or parties these days? That would have to do with something else I hate—people who take advantage of other people, especially ones who are going through hard times.
I can’t do anything about the popcorn smell, but I can address the asshole problem. In fact, it’s kinda become a specialty of mine.
El Palacio Banquet Experience is in Santa Ana, California, which is south of L.A. in Orange County. The city is the marginally smaller and less famous neighbor of Anaheim, home of Disneyland. The banquet building is a locally owned place that, according to research my friend Jar and I have done, is booked solid months in advance when a pandemic isn’t raging across the planet.
I’m here to make sure the damage the business suffers does not extend beyond the effects of the mandatory shutdowns needed to keep the virus in check.
Which brings us to Marco Tepper and Blaine Lawson.
These two pieces of work have been causing trouble down here, south of what we sometimes affectionately call the Orange Curtain. They’ve been smart about it, and for the most part have been good at mixing up their tactics to keep the police from connecting the string of crimes they’ve committed.
They seem to be operating with two distinct goals. The first is enrichment by theft. To that end, they’ve hit over a dozen businesses but never two alike, and never ones that are within five miles of another they’ve robbed.
As for their second goal…let’s call it stress relief. These crimes occur at places where they can bust up a lot of things and spray-paint the walls. They probably steal a few things while they’re at it, but it’s not the primary goal.
What the businesses all have in common is that they have closed for the pandemic. This means it’s often days—and in one case, almost two weeks—before the crimes are discovered. Even worse is the fact they’re small businesses, whose owners are already hurting from the lost income of being forced to close and can’t fall back on corporate help.
I try not to look at the news too much when I don’t have to, so Jar’s the one who brought to my attention the articles about the crimes. Most were small mentions in local papers or community websites. Only a couple showed up in the Orange County Register, but even then, neither article was very long.
“I think it is the same people behind each of these,” she said.
On first blush, I was skeptical. Like I said, no two crimes have been committed in the same way. But I trust Jar’s instincts so I couldn’t just dismiss it out of hand.
It took us a week to tie everything together and another four days to uncover Marco’s and Blaine’s names.
Turns out they’ve been playing a variation of the bully game since they attended middle school together. They’re twenty-seven now.
Marco is the only one who’s gone to college. He’s smart but has a temper that can get the better of him. Which is why he was kicked out of school for behavioral issues and didn’t graduate—apparently, he hadn’t reacted well to the grade a professor had given him. To be honest, after reading his school file, Marco’s lucky the cops weren’t called in.
Since high school, Blaine has burned his way through a series of entry-level service jobs, none of which he could hold on to for more than a year, and most not even six months.
Marco has been able to get better jobs, but his ability to stay in them is on par with his friend’s.
When the virus hit and everything shut down, both were let go from their positions. Instead of finding other jobs, they apparently decided to take advantage of others’ misfortune. I’m sure this string of burglaries and vandalism isn’t their first foray into this kind of behavior. They’re too good
