Long Road to Mercy

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.