Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 14

“Coffee, Agent Pine?”

Pine had just entered her office when Blum greeted her.

The older woman was dressed, as always, in a highly professional manner. Skirt, jacket, pumps, hose, minimal jewelry, and a bit less makeup than normal.

Pine absentmindedly nodded and walked on to her office.

She closed the door, sat at her desk, and stared at her computer.

Hacked?

By who and why?

Her friend had told her something else. That whoever had done this could have easily done it remotely. In essence, taking control of her computer and making it do things the hacker wanted without ever entering the premises.

“If he’s infiltrated your computer, he can see every keystroke you perform,” her friend had told her.

Pine yanked the power cord off the computer at the same moment Blum opened the door with her cup of coffee.

“Problem?” asked Blum.

“I’ve been hacked.”

Blum raised an eyebrow and then set the coffee down in front of Pine.

“Should I pull my cord, too?”

“Probably.”

“I’ll call the support services folks in Flagstaff straightaway. They’ll send somebody up.”

“Thanks.”

“Does this have to do with the website I showed you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Blum closed the door behind her as she left.

Pine took out her phone and studied it. Was this compromised, too?

She looked at the landline on her desk. To bug that they would have had to break into her office, or at least the telecommunications box. But that was in the underground garage in a locked room with video surveillance, courtesy of ICE’s presence here. She doubted they had accomplished that.

When the IT people came from Flagstaff she would have them check everything. Until then, Pine decided to just not call or email or text anybody from her office or her personal phone.

She left her coffee sitting on her desk and exited her office, rushing past Blum so fast the woman could only say, “Agent Pi—” before she was out the door.

She took the steps two at a time to the garage, got into her truck, and sped out into the sunshine.

There was a convenience store about three blocks away. It had something she really needed, something that was almost impossible to find anymore.

Pine pulled into a free space in front, hopped out, and made a beeline for the pay phone hanging on the outside wall next to the machine containing bags of ice. Shattered Rock actually had several public pay phones for two reasons: As hard as it was to believe, not everyone here had a mobile phone. And cell reception here could be really crappy.

She dropped in some coins and made the call.

Park Ranger Lambert picked up on the second ring.

“Hello?”

“Colson, it’s Atlee.”

“What number are you calling from?”

“Never mind. Look, has anything weird been happening on your end with respect to the Priest disappearance?”

Pine had still not told Lambert, or anyone else, that the man calling himself Benjamin Priest was not, in fact, Benjamin Priest.

“What do you mean ‘weird’?”

“Out of the ordinary. Like have you gotten any inquiries from further up the food chain?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“So, any progress on the case?”

“Cadavers turned up nothing, like I already reported. We’ve searched everywhere we can think to.”

“Will agents from your Investigative Services Branch become involved now?”

“Above my pay grade.”

Pine frowned into the phone receiver. This did not sound like the Colson Lambert she knew.

“Did Edward Priest ever send you a picture of his brother?”

“Look, Atlee, I don’t mean to be rude, but I gotta go. Stuff at the office. Talk soon.”

And he clicked off.

Pine slowly hung up the receiver. Well, he had indirectly answered her question. There was weird stuff going on, on his end.

She stuffed more change into the machine and punched in the numbers.

The phone rang and rang and then Edward Priest’s voice mail came on. The mailbox was full, so she was unable to leave a message.

Frustrated, she hung up the phone, got back into her truck, and drove off. She checked her rear and side mirrors to see if any stealth vehicle was taking an overt interest in her SUV.

On the way back to the office, she pondered what to do.

Lambert was obviously stonewalling her. Edward Priest’s mailbox was full. Her computer and possibly her phone had been compromised. The Bureau’s National Security Branch was in the loop. Her supervisor’s boss had called her, made inquiries about only this case, and then gave her a not-so-subtle warning to watch her back.

And on top of that she had a missing man who was supposed to be someone else, only wasn’t. And where was he? And where was Benjamin Priest?

And who had killed and mutilated the damn mule and why? And what did an over-a-century-old, probably bogus story of Egyptians in the Grand Canyon have to do with any of it?

She ran a hand through her still-damp hair and decided now would be a good time to return to the scene of the crime.

She turned in the opposite direction, heading west.

Thirty-five minutes later she was at the South Rim of the Canyon. Her federal badge gained her free admission to the park. She slid into an empty space near Park Headquarters in a section reserved for the Park Police. Her ride had federal plates, so she didn’t expect that to be a problem.

She got out and looked around. The place was filled with tourists. Most would simply walk along the South Rim path admiring the views and taking pictures. Some would stay overnight at the various lodgings. Others would head back to wherever they had come from. Still others had taken mules down or would hike down into the Canyon.

Though a popular tourist destination, the Canyon was an extreme environment. People died here every year. The causes were many and included heart attacks, falls, animal encounters, dehydration, and hyponatremia, an electrolyte disorder where your brain swelled with an excess of fluids. In addition, some rafters drowned in the punishing rapids of the Colorado River.

As she was standing there, Pine saw a man dressed in athletic shorts, a tank top, and running shoes jogging down the pavement toward the parking lot. He stopped, stretched, and then headed toward a muddy Jeep with its canvas top down. It also had a power winch on the front bumper.

An ARMY STRONG sticker was on the rear fender.

“Hey, Sam.”

Sam Kettler turned around as Pine called out.

She walked over to him. “Don’t you work nights here?”

“Usually, but not last night.”

She looked him over. The tank top and shorts revealed what his uniform had not. The man was ripped. Each muscle melded perfectly into its neighbor. And unlike some guys who had inflated chests and swollen arms, matched with an underdeveloped lower body, his thighs, hammies, and calves were the most defined part of his musculature.

“So what are you doing here now?”

“Running the trails. Just finished.”

Pine looked over his shoulder. “Which one did you do? It’s already pretty hot.”

“South to North and then back.”

“You did rim-to-rim-to-rim?”

He nodded, reached inside his Jeep, and grabbed a towel to wipe down.

“How long did it take you?” she asked.

“Six hours and fifty-eight minutes. I started really early.”

Her jaw slackened. “To run forty-two miles with twenty-two thousand feet of vertical change including five thousand feet on the run back up to the South Rim?”

He finished wiping off and took a bottle of water out of the fanny pack around his waist. “I guess that sounds right, yeah. It’s still way off the record. I’ll never beat it.”

“But there isn’t one person in a million who could run it as fast as you did.”

He finished the bottle of water. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

“Came to check in.”

“Find out what happened to the mule?”

“Not yet, working on it.”

“I’m sure you’ll get there.” He looked away and seemed to tense, his gaze averted.

She waited a few moments, but when he didn’t say anything, she said, “Well, see you around.”

She started to walk away.

“Hey, Atlee?”

She turned. “Yeah?”

“You got time for a beer and maybe some dinner tonight?”

“You’re not working tonight either?”

“Other reason I ran today.” He grinned impishly. “I’m not twenty anymore. I need some time to recover.”

She considered his offer. “Sounds good.”

“There’s a place in Shattered Rock.”

She smiled. “Let me guess — Tony’s Pizza.”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s pretty much the only place in Shattered Rock to get a beer.”

“Seven o’clock work?”

“See you then.”

Pine walked into the headquarters and asked for not Colson Lambert but the other park ranger, Harry Rice.

Rice, as it turned out, was over at the mule barn, she was told, so Pine headed there. She found Rice with the mules and also the mule wrangler, Mark Brennan.

“You’re not wrangling a group today?” said Pine to Brennan, while Rice watched her with a look that Pine thought was unnecessarily wary.

But maybe not, considering what he might have been told by his superiors.

Brennan was rubbing salve on a mule’s forelegs. “We got a shipment of supplies coming in today. I’m handling it. Two other wranglers are leading the group down.”

Pine nodded and looked at Rice. “I spoke to your buddy, Colson. Doesn’t look like the investigation is getting much traction.”

“We looked everywhere for the guy,” said Rice, keeping his attention on a point to the left of Pine’s shoulder. “Never found anything.”

They all fell silent for about a half minute.

“Colson didn’t seem very interested in doing any more work on the case. That your position too, Harry?”

Rice again wouldn’t meet her eye. “I’m a Park Ranger, not a cop.”

“But what about ISB? Are they taking up the case? I asked Colson, but he blew me off.”

Rice shrugged. “Above my pay grade.”

“Seems to be the standard response these days,” replied Pine, wondering if he and Lambert had been scripted.

Brennan looked from one to the other. “Something going on here I don’t know about?”

“Probably,” said Pine. “Mark, you saw this guy Priest. I want you to talk to a sketch artist I use and give that description to her.”

Rice said, “Why? You use a sketch artist if you’re trying to ID somebody. We already know who the missing guy is.”

“Do we?” asked Pine.

Rice looked taken aback. “His brother told us. He’s Benjamin Priest.”

“I asked Colson if he got a photo of Priest from his brother. He wouldn’t answer me.”

Brennan said, “Wait a minute, are you saying this guy wasn’t Ben Priest?”

“I like to confirm everything. Not just assume.” Pine glanced at Rice. “Did you guys just assume, or did you confirm?”

“I don’t like your tone, Atlee,” replied Rice.

“And I don’t like getting played, Harry.”

Brennan kept looking between the two feds, the confusion on his features growing.

“So, Mark, I need you to come with me for the sketch artist.”

“But I got stuff to do here.”

“Find somebody else to do it.”

As they walked out into the daylight, Brennan said quietly, “What’s going on here, Agent Pine. I mean, you guys are both with the federal government, right?”

“Right. But the federal government is a big, unwieldy beast at times. And I go my own way.” She pulled out her phone and brought up the photo that Edward Priest had sent of his brother. “See the tall guy in this photo? You recognize him? Could he have also been in the group of ten with Priest?”

“No, no way. Nobody that tall was in the group. And nobody who looked close to that guy.”

“Did you take a group photo? Did anyone take photos of each other?”

“People could have taken shots of each other. But there wasn’t any group photo that I know of.”

Pine put her phone away. “Okay, let’s go see that sketch artist.”