“I drove over there the same day the FBI left. I knocked and knocked. No answer.”
“I suppose you don’t have a key? You could have checked to see if he was all right. He might be injured or something.”
In answer Mary rummaged through her purse and took out a key. “I do. Ed had one from a while back. His brother probably forgot all about it. It was when he was out of town for an extended period and he needed Ed to go over and check on things.”
“So, did you go in?”
“I was afraid to. Besides, there’s an alarm system and I don’t know the code, only Ed did. And we never go there.”
“That is a remarkable story. I wish I had some advice to offer, but I truly wasn’t expecting something like that. I was just assuming it was some sort of domestic issue, or something with work or extended family.”
“I know, but it was just a relief to tell someone. I felt like I was going nuts. I really did. And then you showed up like an angel.”
Blum felt a pang of guilt at the woman’s words, but her loyalty was not to this woman. There were bigger issues at stake.
“I’m just glad our paths crossed,” said Blum with all sincerity.
They ordered their food and talked while they ate.
Blum said, “I think you should keep trying to call your husband, but don’t go back over to your brother-in-law’s house. If the FBI is involved, there might be something dangerous going on. You need to think about your own safety and that of your kids. At this point, I think you just do nothing. If your brother-in-law is into something criminal, you don’t want to get in the middle of that.”
“But should I report Ed missing? I mean, he is missing. My God, I can’t even believe I’m saying this. My poor husband.”
Blum looked at her thoughtfully. “Give it a day. Then you can think seriously of doing that. I’m very sorry this has happened to you. You strike me as a good and caring person. And obviously none of this is your doing.”
Priest’s face crinkled up and tears slid from her eyes.
“I know. I mean life is complicated enough without this crap. I’ve got two sons to raise. And Ed provides a great living, but he has to work crazy hours. For most of the time it’s just me and the kids. Until now that was fine. But now, I mean, I have no idea where Ed is.”
They started chatting about their respective families, and after their meal was done Blum said, “Why don’t you go to the bathroom and wash your face? Your makeup’s not running, so there’s no worries there, but your eyes are awfully puffy and red. Here.” She pulled a bottle of Visine from her purse and handed it to Priest. “I’ll watch your things. And I insist on paying for lunch.”
“Oh, no, you really don’t have to do that.”
“It’s the least I can do after all you’ve suffered.”
Later, the two women walked to the education center, where they parted company.
“Thank you so much, Carol.”
“I didn’t really do anything.”
“Yes, you did. You listened, and you believed me. That’s enough.”
The women shook hands and Blum walked back to her car.
Inside, she opened her purse and took out the key to Ben Priest’s home, which she’d slipped from Mary’s purse while she’d been in the restroom.
The price of lunch had been well worth it.
And maybe she and Pine could find Mary Priest’s husband. Preferably alive.
CHAPTER
29
Two a.m. was a good time to commit a breaking and entering.
Pine thought this as she squatted in Ben Priest’s backyard disabling the electronic pipe to Priest’s home security system and phone line. A few snips, a reroute of a circuit, and she could walk right in and the security system would have no clue about the breach.
This trick of the trade had not been in the official training at the FBI, but Pine had supplemented her skill set with an abundance of self-learning. This particular technique had been taught to Pine by the owner of a home security company. People and organizations with deep pockets could effectively protect against what Pine was doing by hardening the pipe and security measures that powered the alarm system. Most homeowners, even ones like Ben Priest, typically could not, or at least couldn’t do it well enough.
Pine rose, did a 360-degree check, and then hurried up to the back door. She kept to the shadows because she knew that Melanie Renfro suffered from insomnia, and a window in her home looked out over Priest’s rear yard.
She inserted the key Blum had given her in the lock and turned it, and a few moments later she was inside the house and closing the door behind her right as the wind picked up and the first few sprinkles of rain landed on the rear brick stoop.
Pine listened but heard no beeping, showing that her security workaround had been effective. She took out her Maglite and shone it around. The house had a bit of a musty smell to it, not unexpected in a place this old, no matter how well it had been maintained.
The back door opened onto a mudroom with built-in shelves and rain boots standing up in one corner. She moved past this and into the adjacent kitchen.
It was small and not particularly well laid out. As she viewed it under the beam of her light, she could see that the appliances were old, the cabinetry was several decades old, and the flooring looked and felt like linoleum. She opened the fridge. It was empty and not particularly clean.
She checked each of the drawers and cabinets. They were mostly empty. A few plates, a few utensils. Pine got the feeling they were either just for show or had come with the place when Priest purchased it.
The rain was really pouring down now. She could hear it smacking the roof and pelting the windows. Then a gash of lightning illuminated the interior of the house and was followed almost immediately by a loud crack of thunder.
She left the kitchen and entered the small dining room. It was a dining room in name only, since it was unfurnished. The elaborate chair rail and moldings on the walls were dusty, and in desperate need of fresh paint. An old-fashioned chandelier hung from a ceiling medallion shaped like a pineapple.
She’d hoped that Priest would have an office in his home, and that wish was granted when she opened the door to the room opposite the dining room and on the other side of the front foyer.
Inside, she shone her light around to reveal a large, square partner’s desk with a leather chair, a wall of books, a desktop computer, and a small wooden file cabinet. This place definitely looked to have been used.
She searched everything. The file cabinet was empty.
The desk drawers the same.
She opened each book and shook it to see if anything fluttered out.
Nothing.
She sat down at the computer, certain that it would be password-protected.
A black screen confronted her. There was no prompt even to enter a password. The computer had been wiped clean. Its hard drive had been probably taken or destroyed.
Shit.
The question was: Had Priest done it, or had someone else?
She left the office and ventured up the narrow staircase to the second floor.
There were three bedrooms and adjoining baths up here.
Pine checked each one, ending with Priest’s bedroom. She could tell it was his because it was the only one that was furnished. The man apparently, like Margaret Mitchell, did not want to encourage visitors.
There was a bed with an ornately carved headboard, an old armoire that held a few clothes, and that was it.
Ben Priest was definitely into minimalism. The bathroom was small, and the medicine cabinet was as empty as the fridge downstairs.
Pine was starting to wonder if the man even lived here.
Or else he had emptied the place before he’d headed west.
Or someone else had.
Melanie Renfro hadn’t mentioned any moving vans, and the furniture was still here, what little there was.
She stared at the bed and then performed the obvious: She looked under it.
Her Maglite hit on something. The bed was high off the floor so there was room. She stretched out a long arm and snagged it, pulling it toward her.
She sat on her haunches and examined the contents of the old cardboard box.
A ratty basketball jersey, a tarnished trophy. She checked the date. It was from more than twenty years ago. She read the inscription.
“Most Valuable Player—Football, Ben Priest.”
It was from the high school Priest had attended.
There was a pair of tube socks with blue stripes at the top.
And an old basketball, partially deflated.
Why keep this? Did he forget it was even under there?
She sat on the bed and examined the items again.
Jersey, socks, trophy, basketball.
Basketball?
What had Ed Priest said?
His brother hadn’t even liked basketball, but he knew he was good at it.
So why keep a basketball here? And a partially deflated one at that.
She scanned the ball with her light, inch by inch.
Then she probed with her fingers.
Because of her height Pine had been recruited to play basketball in high school and had also competed in the AAU program. She had held thousands of basketballs. Her fingers instinctively knew what the surface felt like, though each ball was slightly different.
Then she found it.
There was a faint short seam, one that did not really line up with the others.
She hit this spot with her Maglite. It ran along one of the black stripes on the ball, barely perceptible. She wouldn’t have even seen it, if she hadn’t felt the anomaly. It was only about two inches long. She felt with her fingers along this line and sensed a bit of a bump.
Hardened glue. The manufacturer hadn’t done that; it was an add-on.
Pine pulled out the Swiss knife she always carried with her and made the cut right along the seam. The leather opened up easily under her blade, and the remaining air quickly escaped as she cut the ball open and separated the two halves.
There was no interior bladder, just a black lining under the leather exterior.
She wasn’t focused on that. She was riveted on the flash drive that was glued to the interior liner. Glued, not just pushed through the hole. Because otherwise it would rattle around if someone picked it up, giving the secret away.
She used her knife to gently free the device from the liner.
She put it in her pocket, put the cut-up basketball back in the box, and slid it under the bed.
She had risen to her feet when she heard a door downstairs open.
CHAPTER
30
Pine slipped out her pistol.
She knew if she moved, the old plank floor was going to creak, alerting whoever was down there to her presence.
She looked at the window, a foot away. Could she make it without treading on the floor?
She didn’t think so; consequently, she didn’t move at all.
But that status was going to quickly become unsustainable.
Normally, in this situation she would announce herself and tell whoever it was to identify themselves. But she had broken into the house, and she was acting outside her duties as a federal agent. If it were the police down there, she was potentially in a world of trouble.
If it weren’t the police, she was potentially still in a world of trouble.
So she stood there, not moving and waiting.
If they were cops, they should call out a warning to anyone in here to show themselves.
She pivoted her head to the side of the house facing the street. Through the window she didn’t see any lights shining through it, so there was no cop car out there with its rack lights ablaze.
She heard footsteps move across the planks downstairs and then stop.
She could imagine the thought process.
Move, stop, process. Move again. Stop. Process.
The footsteps reached the stairs and she heard them coming up.
Okay, this was going to get very dicey, because the spot where she was standing would leave her totally exposed as soon as they opened the door to the bedroom.
Suddenly, outside a slash of lightning lit the sky.
Wait for it, wait for it.
The resulting pop of thunder was so loud, it shook the house.
Pine took advantage of this to slide across the floor and behind the door.
The footsteps started up again. Then she thought she caught words spoken back and forth. She couldn’t hear what, but that meant there was definitely more than one person down there.
She still liked the odds so long as she could take them by surprise. If not, then the odds would quickly turn against her.
The sounds of the footsteps mingled with hushed voices reached the top landing. They moved, as she had, from one bedroom to another, until there was only this one left.
She followed their progress by listening to the creaks and squeaks of the planks.
Pine didn’t move as the sound of the steps came toward the door.
She saw the door move an inch. And then it was pushed open until the bottom of the door caught on the uneven floor and halted before it hit her.
Two figures came in.
Pine cautiously peered around the door. They weren’t cops, unless the police had started wearing black ski masks.
Both men were armed. Both men were in a crouch and looking around the space.
Pine was hoping that they would not turn her way.
Her hope turned out to be a false one.
As soon as the man saw her, Pine kicked the door, and the edge caught the guy smack in the face. He grunted, fell backward, and slammed into the other man as he went down. As he fell, his gun arced upward. A single shot blasted into the ceiling as his finger reflexively pulled the trigger. The impact of the round into the ceiling sent plaster chips and dust down on them.
The first guy landed on his butt, and before he could fully right himself, Pine put him down for good with a roundhouse kick to his head, putting all her weight and substantial leg strength behind it. He slumped back down without making a sound.
The second man scrambled to his feet, but before he could line up a shot, Pine’s fist crushed his jaw with an overhand left that she delivered from a semisquat position, maxing her kinetic leverage. She heard the bone crack on impact. As he dropped his gun and slumped over in pain, she followed that blow with a sweep kick, cutting out his legs and sending him back to the floor. Hovering over him, she performed an eye strike with her index finger. When he howled in pain and grabbed his face with both hands, she bounced his head off the floor with the heel of her boot.
He groaned once and then joined his buddy in unconsciousness.
Pine quickly searched them, but they were carrying no IDs. She stripped off their masks and took pictures of them both with her phone. She took a moment to examine their weapons and took photos of them, too.
The next moment she was hurtling down the stairs.
She left the way she had come.
Pine cleared the brick wall at the back of the rear garden area and dropped onto the street on the next block over. She walked swiftly to the next intersection, then turned left and made her way over to Priest’s street. She peered cautiously down it to see if there was anyone else lurking around the man’s house.
There was no one she could see. They might be in one of the cars parked on both sides of the street, but it was far too dark to make out anyone inside any of the vehicles.
She rubbed her knuckles where she had clocked the guy.
She would have to ice that later.
They weren’t cops. They weren’t federal agents. They were two guys in ski masks with guns. Who were they? More to the point, who were they working for? And why was Priest a subject of interest for them?
She had to assume that they weren’t there because of her. If they’d seen her break into the house they would have been far more cautious abou
t entering the only room where she could have been hiding. One guy would have gone in and flushed her, and the second guy would have taken her out.
At least that was how she would have played it.
Her mind was working so rapidly that she had barely registered the fact that it was raining hard. That is until another streak of lightning made her realize she was standing under one of the many very large trees that dotted the streets of Old Town, their aged roots laying havoc to the laid brick sidewalks.
She turned in the direction opposite from Priest’s and made her way back to the Kia.
It was after three, and in another few hours the dawn would be breaking.
She wanted to get back to her place and see what was on the flash drive.
As she was approaching her car, Pine noticed a movement to her left.
It wasn’t stealth. The person wasn’t intending to sneak up on her.
“Can we speak?”
She turned to face the person. He was a small, trim man of Asian descent, maybe in his early forties. He was wearing a raincoat, spectacles, and a slouch hat. He had an umbrella in one hand, but curiously was holding it by the wrong end.
Pine answered his request by pointing her gun at him.
He didn’t flinch at the sight of the weapon.
He said, “I sincerely believe you are an intelligent person. I think a meeting might be in both of our best interests.”
His speech was slightly accented, but his English was perfect, if a bit awkwardly formal.
“Who are you?”
“Perhaps a person who can at least partially explain the, um, delicate situation you presently find yourself in.”
“I’m listening.”
“Not here. We shall be more comfortable somewhere else.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“I really must insist upon this.”
Pine indicated her weapon. “I think I have the upper hand.”
He moved so fast, she never really saw his umbrella hook her gun and rip it out of her hand. Pine simply realized she was suddenly weaponless, something she never liked to be.
Pine squatted down and feigned assuming a fighting stance. Then she lifted her pants leg and grabbed her Beretta. Before she could bring it up, he leapt forward and neatly kicked it out of her hand.
Long Road to Mercy Page 17
