Long Road to Mercy

by David Baldacci

  “Andersonville, Georgia,” he mused. “Lots of deaths there. Confederate prison during the Civil War. The commandant, Henry Wirz, was executed for war crimes. Did you know that? Executed for doing his job.” He smiled. “He was Swiss. Totally neutral. And they hanged him. Some weird justice.”

  The smile disappeared as quickly as it had emerged, like a spent match.

  She said, “Mercy Pine. Six years old. She disappeared on June 7, 1989. Andersonville, southwestern Macon County, Georgia. Do you need me to describe the house? I heard your memory for your victims is photographic, but maybe you need some help. It’s been a while.”

  “What color was her hair?” asked Tor, his lips parted, revealing wide, straight teeth.

  In answer, Pine pointed to her own. “Same as mine. We were twins.”

  This statement seemed to spark an interest in Tor that had not been present before. She had expected this. She knew everything about this man except for one thing.

  That one thing was why she was here tonight.

  He sat forward, his shackles clinking in his excitement.

  He glanced at her badge once more.

  He said eagerly, “Twins. FBI. It’s starting to make sense. Go on.”

  “You were known to be operating in the area in 1989. Atlanta, Columbus, Albany, downtown Macon.” Using a tube of ruby red lipstick taken from her pocket, she drew a dot on the glass representing each of the aforementioned localities. Then, she connected these dots, and formed a familiar figure.

  “You were a math prodigy. You like geometric shapes.” She pointed to what she had drawn. “Here, a diamond shape. That’s how they eventually caught you.”

  This was the something Tor had missed. A pattern of his own creation.

  His lips pressed together. She knew that no serial murderer would ever admit to being outwitted. The man was clearly a sociopath and a narcissist. People often discounted narcissism as relatively harmless because the term sometimes conjured the clichéd image of a vain man staring longingly at his reflection in a pool of water or a mirror.

  However, Pine knew that narcissism was probably one of the most dangerous traits someone could possess for one critical reason: The narcissist could not feel empathy toward others. Which meant that the lives of others held no value to a narcissist. Killing could even be like a hit of fentanyl: instant euphoria from the domination and destruction of another.

  That was why virtually every serial murderer was also a narcissist.

  She said, “But Andersonville was not part of that pattern. Was it a one-off? Were you freelancing? What made you come to my house?”

  “It was a rhombus, not a diamond,” replied Tor.

  Pine didn’t respond to this.

  He continued, as though lecturing to a class. “My pattern was a rhombus, a lozenge, if you prefer, a quadrilateral, a four-sided figure with four equal-length sides, and unequal-length diagonals. For example, a kite is a parallelogram only when it’s a rhombus.” He gave a patronizing glance at what she had drawn. “A diamond is not a true or precise mathematical term. So don’t make that mistake again. It’s embarrassing. And unprofessional. Did you even prepare for this meeting?” With his manacled hands, he gave a dismissive wave and disgusted look to the figure she’d drawn on the glass, as though she had imprinted something foul there.

  “Thank you, that makes it perfectly clear,” said Pine, who couldn’t give a shit about parallelograms specifically, or math in general. “So why the one-off? You’d never broken a pattern before.”

  “You presume my pattern was broken. You presume I was in Andersonville on the night of June 7, 1989.”

  “I never said it was at night.”

  The smile flickered back. “Doesn’t the boogeyman only come out at night?”

  Pine reflected for a moment on her earlier thought about monsters only striking at midnight. To catch these killers, she had to think like them. It was and always had been a profoundly disturbing thought to her.

  Before she could respond, he said, “Six years old? A twin? Where exactly did it take place?”

  “In our bedroom. You came in through the window. You taped our mouths shut so we couldn’t call out. You held us down with your hands.”

  She took out a piece of paper from her pocket and held it up to the glass, so he could see the writing on that side.

  His gaze drifted down the page, his features unreadable, even to an experienced agent like Pine.

  “A four-line nursery rhyme?” he said, tacking on a yawn. “What next? Will you break into song?”

  “You thumped our foreheads as you recited it,” noted Pine, who leaned forward a notch. “Each word, a different forehead. You started with me and ended on Mercy. Then you took her, and you did this to me.”

  She swept back her hair to reveal a scar behind her left temple. “Not sure what you used. It was a blur. Maybe just your fist. You cracked my skull.” She added, “But you’re a big man and I was just a little kid.” She paused. “I’m not a little kid anymore.”

  “No, you’re not. What, about five eleven?”

  “My sister was tall, too, at age six, but skinny. Big guy like you, you could have carried her easily. Where did you take her?”

  “Presumption again. As you said, I’d never broken a pattern before. Why would you think that I had then?”

  Pine leaned even closer to the glass. “Thing is, I remember seeing you.” She looked him over. “You’re pretty unforgettable.”

  The lip curled again, like the string on a bow being pulled back. About to let loose a fatal arrow. “You remember seeing me? And you only show up now? Twenty-nine years later?”

  “I knew you weren’t going anywhere.”

  “A weak quip, and hardly an answer.” He glanced at her badge again. “FBI. Where are you assigned? Somewhere near here?” he added a bit eagerly.

  “Where did you take her? How did my sister die? Where are her remains?”

  These queries were rapidly fired off, because Pine had practiced them on the long drive here.

  Tor simply continued his line of thought. “I assume not a field office. You don’t strike me as a main-office type. Your dress is casual and you’re here outside visiting hours, hardly by the Bureau book. And there’s only one of you. Your kind likes to travel in pairs if it’s official business. Add to that the personal equation.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, meeting his gaze.

  “You lose a twin, you become a loner, like you lost half of yourself. You can’t rely on or trust anyone else once that emotional cord is broken. You’re not married,” he added, glancing at her bare ring finger. “So you have no one to interrupt your lifelong sense of loss until one day you kick off, alone, frustrated, unhappy.” He paused, looking mildly interested. “Yet something happened to lead you here after nearly three decades. Did it take you that long to work up the courage to face me? An FBI agent? It does give one pause.”

  “You have no reason not to tell me. They can take off another life sentence, it won’t matter. Florence is it for you.”

  His next response was surprising, but perhaps it shouldn’t have been.

  “You’ve tracked down and arrested at least a half-dozen people like me. The least talented among them had killed four, the most talented had disposed of ten.”

  “Talented? Not the way I would describe it.”

  “But surely talent does come into play. It’s not an easy business, regardless of what society thinks about it. The ones you arrested weren’t in my league, of course, but you have to start somewhere. Now, you seem to have made a specialty of it. Of going toe-to-toe with the likes of me. It’s nice to aim high, but one can grow too ambitious, or become overconfident. Flying too close to the sun with the wax betwixt the wings, that sort of thing. Death so often results. Now, it can be a divine look, but not, I think, on you. However, I’d love to try.”

  Pine shrugged off this deranged soliloquy ending with the threat against her. If he was thinking of killing he
r, that meant she had his attention.

  She said, “They were all operating in the West. Here, you have wide-open spaces without a policeman on every block. People coming and going, lots of runaways, folks looking for something new, long strips of isolated highways. A billion places to toss the remains. It encourages . . . talent like yours.”

  He spread his hands as wide as he could with the restraints. “Now see, that’s better.”

  “It would be far better if you answered my question.”

  “I also understand that you came within one pound of making the U.S. Olympic team as a weightlifter when you were in college.” When she didn’t respond he said, “Google has even reached Florence, Special Agent Atlee Pine from Andersonville, Georgia. I requested some background information on you as a condition for this meeting. You’ve also earned your own Wikipedia page. It’s not nearly as long as mine, but then again, it’s early days for you. But long careers are not guaranteed.”

  “It was one kilo, not one pound. The snatch did me in, never my best pull. I’m more of a clean-and-jerk girl.”

  “Kilos, yes. My mistake. So actually, you’re a bit weaker than I thought. And, of course, a failure.”

  “You have no reason not to tell me,” she repeated. “None.”

  “You want closure, like the rest of them?” he said in a bored tone.

  Pine nodded, but only because she was afraid of the words that might come out of her mouth at that moment. Contrary to Tor’s assertions, she had prepared for this meeting. Only, one could never fully prepare for a confrontation with this man.

  “You know what I really, really like?” said Tor.

  Pine kept staring at him but didn’t react.

  “I really, really like that I have defined your entire, pathetic life.”

  Tor suddenly leaned forward. His wide shoulders and massive bald head seemed to fill the glass, like a man coming in through a little girl’s bedroom window. For one terrifying moment, Pine was six again and this demon was thumping her forehead with each word of the rhyme, with death to the one last touched.

  Mercy. Not her.

  MERCY.

  Not her.

  Then she let out a barely audible breath and involuntarily touched the badge on her jacket.

  Her touchstone. Her lodestone. No, her rosary.

  The movement did not go unnoticed by Tor. He didn’t smile in triumph; his look was not one of anger but of disappointment. And then, a moment later, disinterest. His eyes hollowed out and his features relaxed as he sat back. He slumped down, his energy, and with it his animation, gone.

  Pine felt every cell in her body start to shut down. She’d totally just screwed this up. He’d tested her, and Pine had not risen to the challenge. The boogeyman had come at midnight and found her lacking.

  “Guards,” he bellowed. “I’m ready. We’re done here.” As soon as he finished speaking, his lips spread into a malicious grin and Pine knew precisely why.

  This was the only time he could order them around.

  As they came in, unhooked him from the ring, and began to lead him away, Pine rose.

  “You have no reason not to tell me.”

  He didn’t deign to look at her.

  “The meek shall never inherit the earth, Atlee Pine of Andersonville, twin of Mercy. Get used to it. But if you want to vent again, you know where to find me. And now that I’ve met you—” he suddenly looked back at her, a surge of ferocious desire flashing across his features, probably the last thing his victims ever saw “—I will never forget you.”

  The metal portal shut and locked behind him. She listened to the march of feet taking Tor back to his seven-by-twelve poured-concrete cage.

  Pine stared at the door a moment longer, then wiped the lipstick off the glass, the color of blood transferred to her palm, retraced her footsteps, retrieved her gun, and left ADX Florence, breathing in crisp air at exactly one mile above sea level.

  She would not cry. She hadn’t shed a tear since Mercy had vanished. Yet she wanted to feel something. But it just wasn’t there. She was weightless, like being on the moon, nothing, empty. He had drained whatever she had left right out of her. No, not drained.

  Sucked.

  And, worst of all, what had happened to her sister was still unknown.

  She drove a hundred miles west to Salida and found the cheapest motel she could, since this trip was all on her dime.

  Right before she fell asleep, she thought back to the question Tor had asked.

  And you only show up now? Twenty-nine years later?

  There was a good reason for this, at least in Pine’s mind. But maybe it was also a flawed one.

  She didn’t dream about Tor that night. She didn’t dream of her sister, gone nearly three decades now. The only visual her subconscious held up was herself at six years old trudging to school for the first time without Mercy’s hand inside hers. A bereaved little girl in pigtails who had lost her other half, as Tor himself had intimated.

  The better half of her, thought Pine, because she had been the one constantly in trouble, while her ten-minute-older “big” sister had habitually stood up for her, or covered for her, in equal measure. Unfailing loyalty and love.

  Pine had never felt that again, not in her entire life.

  Maybe Tor was right about her future.

  Maybe.

  And then his other jab, the one that had gotten through her defenses, and nailed her right in the gut.

  You define me?

  When she felt her lips begin to tremble, she rose, stumbled to the bathroom, and stuck her head under the shower. She left it there until the cold was so unbearable she nearly screamed out in pain. Yet not a single tear mingled with the freezing tap water.

  She rose at the crack of dawn, showered, dressed, and headed home. Halfway there she stopped to get something to eat. As she got back into her SUV the text landed in her phone.

  She sent off a reply, closed the truck door, fired up the engine, and floored it.

  CHAPTER

  3

  The Grand Canyon was one of the seven natural wonders of the world, and the only one located in America. It was the second largest canyon on earth, behind Tsangpo Canyon in Tibet, which was a bit longer but much deeper. The Grand Canyon was visited by five million people from around the globe every year. However, no more than 1 percent of those folks would ever reach the spot where Atlee Pine was currently: the banks of the Colorado River right on the floor of the canyon.

  Phantom Ranch, located at the bottom of the Canyon, was not only the most popular under-roof accommodation down here, it was the only one. Those who trekked down here could do so in one of three ways: by water, on a mule, or courtesy of their own two feet.

  Pine had driven to the Grand Canyon National Park Airport. There, she had climbed inside a waiting National Park Service chopper and made the vertical descent to the canyon bottom. After landing, Pine and her companion, Park Service Ranger Colson Lambert, had immediately set off on foot.

  She strode along, eating up ground with her long legs, her gaze looking and her ears listening for rattlers. That was one reason nature had given them a rattle—to make people leave them alone.

  Where’s my rattle? thought Pine.

  “When was it found?” she asked.

  “This morning,” replied Lambert.

  They passed a slight curve in the rock, and Pine eyed a blue tarp that had been erected around the remains of their victim. Pine counted two men there. One was dressed as a wrangler. The other, like Lambert, was in the uniform of the National Park Service: gray shirt, light-colored, flat-brimmed hat with a black band on which were printed the letters USNPS. Pine knew him. His name was Harry Rice. In physique, he was a carbon copy of Lambert.

  The other man was long and lean, and his face had been viciously carved by the outdoor life he led in an unforgiving environment. He had thick, graying hair that had been shaped by the wide-brimmed hat he held in one hand.

  Pine flashed her badge an
d said, “What’s your name?”

  “Mark Brennan. I’m one of the mule wranglers.”

  “Did you discover it?”

  Brennan nodded. “Before breakfast. Saw the buzzards circling.”

  “Be more precise about the time.”

  “Um, seven thirty.”

  Pine passed by the privacy tarp, squatted down, and looked over the carcass as the others gathered around her.

  The mule weighed more than a half ton, she figured, and would stand about sixteen hands high. A mare bred with a donkey produced a mule. They pulled more slowly than horses, but were surer footed, lived longer, and pound for pound were about as strong as anything on four legs and possessed enormous endurance.

  Pine slapped on a pair of latex gloves she had pulled from her fanny pack. She picked up a whip lying next to the unfortunate animal. Called a motivator by the mule wranglers, it was used by the riders to convince the mules to ignore the pleasures of grass sticking out of the rock on the trail, or the advantages of simply taking a nap standing up.

  She touched the severely stiffened foreleg of the beast.

  “It’s in rigor. Definitely been here a while.” Pine said to the wrangler, “You found it at seven thirty. Was it stiff like now?”

  Brennan shook his head. “No. Had to chase some critters away, though. They were already starting to get into it. You can see that there and there,” he added, pointing to various places where flesh had been ripped away.

  Pine checked her watch. It was six thirty p.m. Eleven hours had passed since the mule had been found. Now she needed to establish a parameter at the other end.

  She shifted her position and looked at the belly of the beast.

  “Gutted,” she noted. “Upward stroke and then a slit along the belly.” Pine looked up at Brennan. “I take it this is one of yours?”

  Brennan nodded and squatted on his haunches. He looked sadly at the dead animal. “Sallie Belle. Steady as a rock. Damn shame.”

  Pine looked at the dried blood. “Her death wouldn’t have been painless. No one heard anything? Mules can make a lot of noise, and this canyon is one big subwoofer.”