Long Road to Mercy

by David Baldacci

  She moved her case files to the side and finished her coffee, which tasted strong and acidic going down. She glanced over at the far wall that still bore the indentation of a fist.

  It had not been thrown by Pine, but at Pine by a suspect who had decided to turn violent.

  The second indentation in the wall below the first was larger.

  It marked where the suspect had been thrown headfirst into the wall after his fist had missed its mark and Pine had brought the dispute to a swift resolution.

  She was cuffing the man with her knee firmly planted into the lower back of the nearly unconscious man when Blum, who had certainly heard the scuffle, had calmly opened the door and asked Pine whether she needed the police to take the “moron” away.

  It had been her suggestion that Pine leave the marks on the wall.

  “Some people are visually stimulated,” Blum had said. “And a picture is worth a thousand words.”

  It had been a brilliant suggestion, Pine had thought, and the marks had remained. The guy had filed a complaint against her. Said that Pine had attacked him without cause. Ever since then, Pine had kept a hidden video camera in her office with audio capability. The button to activate it was in the knee well of her desk. It wasn’t for her protection, at least not her physical protection. It was in case another “moron” tried to lie about who attacked whom.

  Her cell phone buzzed. She looked at the number and frowned. She took another sip of her coffee.

  Flagstaff was calling. Early. That was never a good thing.

  “Pine,” she said.

  “Hold for Roger Avery, please,” said a woman’s voice.

  Roger Avery?

  He was not Pine’s immediate supervisor, and thus she had not been expecting a call from him. He was two levels above her immediate boss. He’d been with the Bureau for only six years, less than half her time on the clock, but now agents were making supervisor in as little as three or four years. Pine had never filed the necessary paperwork to make supervisor and indeed had fought against every effort to take her from the field and plop her permanently in an office. She had a distinct opinion of an FBI supervisor: They sat at desks all day and told other agents how to run their cases, playing Monday morning quarterback at every opportunity, while others did the heavy lifting.

  Pine could stomach her direct contact, but she never liked to talk to Avery. She’d rather undergo a colonoscopy without the propofol.

  The voice came on a moment later. “Pine?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Pine.

  “Surprised to hear from me?”

  “Well, I was expecting the call to go over my cases. But not from you, sir.”

  “I like to keep my finger on the pulse, so I’m making the calls this week.”

  Finger on the pulse. The man would have failed every polygraph given to him.

  “The call’s on my calendar for this afternoon.”

  “I just thought I’d get it done earlier. I know you don’t like to sit behind your desk. But if you’re busy?”

  Like any other supervisor, he didn’t mean that. If she told him to take a flying leap, her ass was done. She said, “No, absolutely works for me.” She reached for her case files, but his next words made her stop.

  “I’m sure you’re doing just fine on your regular caseload. I’ve never had to ding you on anything in that regard.”

  His words were clear enough. He had had to ding her on sometimes too zealously pursuing her cases. Yet she had never felt that hurt feelings or a broken limb should ever be cause for not discovering the truth. The “moron” she’d launched into the drywall had not just filed a complaint against her, he’d also filed a lawsuit. Both had been dismissed after it was learned that the man had attacked cops and ordinary citizens with regularity.

  “Okay,” said Pine. “Is there something else you need then, because I was actually just about to head out?”

  “Let’s talk about the Canyon.”

  Now Pine eased forward in her cheap desk chair. It was a ratty piece of crap from a going-out-of-business office store and had no lumbar or any other sort of support. It was like sitting on Jell-O in the middle of an earthquake. She was pretty sure she’d end up just buying a new chair using Agency funds and take the heat for not filing the necessary forms. If the Bureau’s admin folks wanted to travel to Shattered Rock and smack her hand for buying something decent to sit on, so be it.

  “The Canyon?” she said.

  “The dead mule?”

  “Right.”

  “How’s it progressing?” asked Avery.

  “I’m working it. Early days.”

  “Right. I just wanted some more details.”

  “I did forward my prelim report to you.”

  “I read it. I was wondering how things are going since then.”

  Pine said, “I don’t know who did it, why they did it, how they did it, or where they are now. Other than that, things are going pretty good.”

  He ignored this sarcasm, which surprised her. “Benjamin Priest?”

  Pine had, as yet, told no one that the man calling himself Benjamin Priest was not in fact Benjamin Priest.

  “I talked to his brother late last night.”

  “And what were the results of that conversation?” said Avery patiently.

  I think he knows the answer and he wants me to confirm it. Or not.

  “His brother knew nothing about Capricorn Consultants. No address, no contact info. His brother had never really spoken about it to him. And I can find no evidence the place even exists.” Before he could respond to this Pine decided to turn the tables. “Have you been able to confirm otherwise, sir?”

  “I’m not working the case, Pine. You are.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What else?”

  Pine decided to drop an H-bomb. “It seems that the National Security Branch is interested in this case. Maybe you’ve heard something?”

  Avery didn’t say anything for a few seconds, which felt infinitely longer to Pine. All she could hear was her supervisor’s breathing. It seemed to have quickened a bit.

  Did I just piss my whole career away?

  “Keep working the case, Pine,” he finally said. “And if you need help, ask for it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And . . . Atlee?”

  “Atlee” now? Curiouser and curiouser.

  “Yes?”

  “Make sure you have eyes in the back of your head.”

  The line went dead.

  Pine had been given that advice exactly one other time in her career.

  And it had come during a case when it turned out the Bureau had been watching her.

  A moment later Blum opened the door. She must have heard the phone ring and at least the distant murmurings of her conversation.

  “Is everything all right, Agent Pine?”

  Pine looked up at her.

  “Everything’s just fine, Ms. Blum.”

  CHAPTER

  9

  The choo-choo train. Or the Hooterville Express. Pick your poison.

  Pine was staring at the front of the train depot in Williams, Arizona. It was from here that the Grand Canyon train made the trek up and back each day. The trip to the Canyon’s South Rim covered sixty-five miles each way and took a leisurely two hours and fifteen minutes. She could have flown from Phoenix to Seattle in less time.

  Pine had just spoken to various train personnel, showing them a picture of the real Benjamin Priest. No one remembered seeing him on the train. She then gave a description of the fake Priest but was told that quite a few gentlemen fit that description.

  A round-trip train ticket had been issued to a Benjamin Priest, and that ticket had been used on the way up to the South Rim. So one of the men had to have been on the train. The return ticket to Williams had not been used, though. The ticket had been bought with cash, so there was no credit card record. That was interesting, thought Pine, because the ticket hadn’t been cheap. Had it been done to hide
someone’s identity? Probably.

  Next, Pine trudged over to the Railway Hotel and went inside. There was a fireplace with a stone surround, carpet your feet sank into, polished wood balconies and columns, and a general air of upscale hospitality. Its livelihood depended on the folks who took the train, Pine imagined. And they had apparently done all they could to present an appealing look to encourage folks to stay here before heading out.

  She checked in at the front desk and showed the young woman there the picture of the real Priest and told her when the man had likely stayed there. Then she gave the description of the imposter as well. The woman shook her head.

  “I don’t recognize either of them.”

  “Were you on duty at that time?”

  “I was, actually. I do the day shift.”

  “Anyone else working the front desk then?”

  “No, just me.”

  “Okay, did you have a guest named Benjamin Priest check in on the day I gave you?”

  She clicked some computer keys and shook her head. “No, no one by that name. So, I guess he didn’t stay here.”

  That was not necessarily true, Pine knew. He could have used an alias, had a fake ID, and worn a disguise. She thanked the woman, walked outside, and concluded that her trip here had been largely worthless.

  She got back into her truck and started it up.

  Then her phone buzzed. It was Carol Blum.

  “I’m sending you a news article I found from the Arizona Gazette,” said Blum.

  “What about?”

  “An exploration that allegedly took place in the Grand Canyon.”

  “When did it allegedly take place?”

  “In 1909.”

  “And why does that have relevance to my case over a century later?”

  “Just read the article. And I’m also sending you a more recent article that sort of dissects the 1909 one. Together they will show you the relevance.”

  “Okay. But can you give me a hint?”

  “The letters j and k have apparently been carved in the Grand Canyon before.”

  “What?”

  “Just read the articles and then we can talk.”

  Pine sat there for a few moments with the AC blowing directly on her because it was nearly ninety outside. And though the heat was mostly a dry one, ninety degrees was still hot, dry or not.

  Her phone dinged and she opened the email. Blum had apparently enlarged the article so that it could be easily read. It took Pine a few minutes to go through it.

  Back in 1909, two Smithsonian Institution–backed explorers named Jordan and Kinkaid had supposedly stumbled upon a remote cave high up on a sheer cliff in the Canyon.

  Jordan and Kinkaid? J and K.

  She read on.

  On entering the cave, they had found evidence of an ancient civilization that might be, as the article said, using a long-discarded derogatory term, “Oriental” in origin, or even Egyptian. Supposedly, the pair found everything from urns to mummies and a Buddha-like statue in what was described as an underground multiroom citadel.

  The second article was from only a few years ago, and it had gone into great detail. It took Pine about ten minutes to read through it. The author of this article was clearly as skeptical as Pine was about the supposed expedition. The Smithsonian had no record of any explorers named Jordan and Kinkaid. And Kinkaid, who the old article had said possessed a camera of the first order, hadn’t managed to take a single picture of any of his supposed discovery of the century. The author did go on to try to pinpoint the location of the cave. He thought a likely possibility was around Ninety-Four Mile Creek and Trinity Creek.

  Pine knew that there were sites along there with Egyptian names: Tower of Set, Isis Temple, and Osiris Temple. According to the more recent article, around the time these areas were named, there were major expeditions going on in Egypt, and such names were often in the news back then. In the so-called Haunted Canyon area were Asian-inspired names such as the Cheops Pyramid and Buddha Cloister and the Shiva Temple. The Canyon was also filled with spots named after ancient mythological gods and goddesses from Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Chinese, and Nordic legends.

  The writer concluded that the Canyon indeed had many caves and that many of them had been discovered over the years by hikers and explorers. It seemed that he thought the cave claimed to have been found by Jordan and Kinkaid might have actually been inhabited by the Anasazis, the first people to occupy the valley. They were the originators of the pueblo style of dwelling and built caves in the cliffs, as did many ancient cultures.

  The Navajos were descendants of the Anasazis, whose name meant “ancient one” in the Navajo language. There was even a so-called Mummy’s Cave in the Canyon de Chelly where the Anasazis had lived. It was about three hundred feet above the Canyon floor and comprised of two adjacent caves housing a dwelling space consisting of more than fifty rooms and circular ceremonial structures dating back more than a thousand years.

  And then she read the last paragraph of the later article. Apparently, the author speculated, Jordan and Kinkaid had carved the letters j and k into the rock above the entrance to the cave. What he was basing this on Pine didn’t know, because the writer never gave a reason.

  She called Blum. “How did you come up with all this stuff so fast?”

  “I grew up in Arizona, so I knew about the 1909 Gazette article. It’s part of the local folklore. When I was a teenager my father and I hiked to the bottom of the Canyon. He was an amateur local historian. He’d told me about the legend when he was pointing out all the Egyptian-named sites down there. I thought it was all hogwash, really, though I could tell my dad thought there was something to it. But I mean, Egyptians in Arizona? Please. But the letters j and k? Jordan and Kinkaid. That’s what I remembered when you asked me to research it this morning. It may have nothing to do with your case, but it was the only thing I could find even remotely on point.”

  “Well, it was good work, thanks. So you’ve hiked down there?”

  “Oh, many times when I was younger. And I’ve done the mule ride, too. But that was years ago.”

  “Good to know.”

  “Are you coming back to the office?”

  “I might.” Pine checked her watch. “I know you get off in an hour.”

  “I’ll stay and work on this. I have nothing else to do today.”

  “I’ll request some overtime for you then.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Agent Pine. It’s nice to feel useful.”

  “Thanks. Maybe I’ll see you later then.”

  Pine drove off wondering what an expedition that might have never happened more than a century ago had to do with a dead mule and national security.

  Maybe I don’t want to know.

  CHAPTER

  10

  Pine passed the site of the eponymous Shattered Rock on her way home.

  It was only a mile outside of town; in fact it was really the only reason there was a town.

  Local legend, later backed up by some actual facts provided by NASA and other federal scientists over the years, claimed that a meteor about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle had struck this spot about a zillion years ago. There once had been a small, rocky outcrop here, but the plummeting meteor had pulverized it, leaving a crater and large chunks of rock lying everywhere over the otherwise pretty flat landscape.

  And voilà, the name Shattered Rock had come into the local lexicon. The town had only been incorporated about a hundred years ago under that name, when an enterprising young man by the name of Elmer Lancaster had left his small town in Pennsylvania to make his fortune out west. He had apparently stumbled upon the rocky debris, coughed up a local fable, and decided to put down roots. He had begun selling meteorites from a stand on the side of the only road running through the place and had even hired some Native Americans to help him. Dressed in full tribal wear they had danced across the road holding the “rocks from the heavens” as they termed them, and the tidy sum of five dollars would
allow you to own one.

  It had actually been a profitable business, since there were literally millions of chunks of rock, and even if they ran out, they could always make more.

  Lancaster used some of his money to start laying out streets and subdivisions and constructing buildings and necessary infrastructure. He also put out the call that his now-named town of Shattered Rock was the most important geological location on planet Earth and open to families and businesses to move to. People from other places, who perhaps had more gullibility than good sense, bought into this, and Shattered Rock was properly born. It had not, however, experienced enormous growth over the century, but still had a population of roughly a thousand souls, who did a variety of things to make a living, as folks did in every other small town. That included exactly one person with a gun who carried an FBI shield.

  Meteorites were still sold from a large plywood building to tourists passing through, though inflation had kicked in and the price was now fifty dollars per chunk. But the Native Americans had wised up and were no longer working for others. An enterprising Hopi and his Navajo partner had bought the meteorite franchise and were, by all accounts, doing fine. They also served coffee, cold beer, and wickedly delicious scones. And Pine had bought one of the rocks, but only to support the local economy.

  She pulled into the parking lot of her apartment building. It was stucco sided with a red tile roof, very southwestern in style. The railings were wrought iron, and the stucco was painted a muted yellow. The flora and fauna planted around it were indigenous to the area, which meant they could survive without much water. The Southwest had many good things, but reliable rainfall was not one of them.