Long Road to Mercy

Chapter 17

Pine stirred, moving to the right in her bed and then back to the left. She was coming out of some vague dream and something was flitting in her ear, like a bothersome gnat.

She finally opened her eyes and looked at her buzzing phone on her nightstand.

The electronic gnat to which the entire world was now enslaved.

She picked it up and said groggily, “Pine.”

“Agent Pine. It’s Ed Priest.”

Pine sat bolt upright, fully awake now like she’d downed a pot of coffee and poured a second one over her head. “I tried calling you, but your voice mailbox was full. I couldn’t leave a message.”

“Something weird is going on,” said Priest.

“Give me every detail.”

“I don’t know if I want to do this over the phone.”

“I can come to see you. I can get a flight out in the morning.”

“You won’t have to do that. I’m in Arizona.”

Pine checked the clock on her phone. It was nearly eleven.

“Are you at Sky Harbor?”

“No. I flew into Phoenix from the East Coast but took a puddle jumper to Flagstaff. I just landed.”

“Stay there. I’ll come to get you. Give me a couple of hours.”

“The place is closing down. I think mine was the last flight in.”

“There’s an IHOP in Flagstaff.” She gave him the address. “It’s open 24/7. Do you have a rental?”

“No, but there’s a cabstand.”

“It’s only about four miles into town. I’ll meet you there.”

Pine swiftly dressed, grabbed both her guns, and headed out.

It was a lonely drive at this time of night under a sky thick with stars and the occasional whizzing-by satellite. That was one of the main differences for Pine between the ambient-light-filled eastern U.S. and here.

The sky.

You could see every millimeter of it, the vastness, the impenetrability. It was a part of your daily life, that upward glance into the cosmos. Every night it seemed to try to show how truly insignificant you were. And eventually, you started to believe it. And a daily dose of humility wasn’t so bad.

As she roared south, Pine’s mind was going in several different directions at once. Before she had been awoken by Priest’s phone call she’d been ruminating over how to get to Ed Priest, since he was the only way she could see to get to his brother. Well, she’d gotten her wish hand-delivered to her.

She pulled into the parking lot of the IHOP and jumped out of her SUV, reaching the front entrance in two long strides. She opened the door and looked around. There were about fifteen customers seated at a variety of tables and booths, but it didn’t take her long to spot Ed Priest. He looked just like he did in the picture he’d sent her. He was all the way in the back at a booth, trying to be inconspicuous behind a large menu while at the same time looking nervously around. A rolling suitcase with straps and stickers sat next to him on the floor.

She hurried over to him, glanced at his suitcase, and slid into the seat across from him.

“Agent Pine?”

She took out her creds and shield and showed them to him.

He sat back, looking relieved.

“Call me paranoid, but can I see some ID from you?”

He took out his Maryland driver’s license and showed it to her.

“Now why did you decide to come out here?” she asked.

“Because I don’t know where Ben is. I haven’t heard from him. No one has. It’s like he’s disappeared.”

“I want to show you something,” said Pine.

She took out her phone and brought up an attachment to an email she had received earlier from Jennifer Yazzie.

She held the picture in front of Priest.

“You recognize this guy?”

“No. Should I?”

“This is a digital sketch of the man calling himself Benjamin Priest, who rode a mule to the bottom of the Canyon and then disappeared. As you can see, he doesn’t look anything like your brother. He looks a lot more like you, which is why I thought Ben was you in the picture you sent.”

Ed Priest laid down his menu and continued to stare with greater intensity at the image on the phone screen.

“I... I don’t understand. Why would this man be calling himself Benjamin Priest? And then where the hell is my brother?”

“When was the last time you actually saw your brother?”

The waitress came by and Pine ordered a coffee, while Priest ordered a full breakfast.

“I haven’t eaten all day,” he explained to Pine as the waitress walked away. “Nervous flyer. I can’t eat on planes.”

“Probably better for you. Plane food sucks. So, your brother?”

“It was maybe two weeks ago or so. He came by our house.”

“Did he have a reason?”

“Not really. He called and asked if he could come over for dinner. He said he had some free time and just wanted to see the family.”

“How did he seem?”

Priest sat back and played with the edges of his paper napkin. “You have to understand that my younger brother was the star in the family. High school valedictorian, quarterback on the football team, and he was the star shooting forward of the basketball team, even though he hated basketball. But he knew he was good at it. He graduated top of his class at Georgetown while I went to the University of Maryland.”

“Both good schools.”

“Yeah, well, Ben was on another level. I’m just glad I was older. He would’ve been a damn tough act to follow. He was successful at everything he touched. And he was tall and good-looking. You saw his picture. I missed out on all that.”

“But never married? No kids?”

“No. He dated in high school and college, but once he got out, he was fully focused on his career.”

“Which was what?”

They paused as their coffees were delivered.

Pine took a sip of hers. “Your brother’s career?”

“Right now, your guess is as good as mine. All I know is he traveled the world. Hell, I took the kids to Disney World two years ago and he called up to wish me a happy birthday. I asked where he was, and he said, ‘Oh, somewhere in the Middle East.’ Another time he was in freaking Kazakhstan. My kids would get holiday gifts from him, and the boxes would have all these foreign stickers and labels and stuff on them. I’d have to pay customs on some of it just to get them released.”

“And you never asked him what he did for a living?”

“Like I said, I did, and he made that joke. I didn’t want to push it. I just thought he had to keep it secret. He wouldn’t be the only one like that in the DC area.”

“Capricorn Consultants?”

“He brought it up one time when I asked him how things were going. He said he’d started his own company. I asked him what it was that he did, and he said he helped people who needed it.”

“I could find no record of any Beltway company called Capricorn Consultants.”

“I know. I looked, too. I’m an accountant. I work at a CPA firm in Maryland. I checked the government records. There was nothing.”

“You didn’t tell me how he seemed when he came over for dinner two weeks ago.”

“Understand, my brother can be really intense, and he’s super smart. He knows everything about everything. I used to joke with him that he’d kill it on Jeopardy. But that night he seemed relaxed and more open to talking than I’d ever seen him.”

“What did he talk about?”

“Politics. World events. Baseball. He’s a Nats fan.”

“Did he ask you for anything? Did he give you anything? Did he request that you do anything for him?”

“No, nothing like that.”

Priest’s food came, and he took a few moments to pepper and salt his eggs and douse his pancakes in syrup.

He looked up at Pine watching him. “You don’t look like you eat stuff like this,” he said.

“You might be surprised.” She took another sip of her coffee. “So, you came out here with what expectation?”

“I’m not sure I have one. But I’m really worried about my brother. Whenever I contacted him before he’d always get back to me. It might take a few hours or even a day, but he always got back to me. Not this time. I really think something’s happened to him. And now you tell me it wasn’t even him in the Grand Canyon. But this other guy was using my brother’s name. Do you think he did something to my brother? And stole his identity?”

“I don’t know,” said Pine. “But did anything specifically cause you to come out here?”

Now Priest looked uncomfortable.

“Your voice mail was full,” she said. “You’re an accountant. You strike me as a by-the-book kind of person. You don’t return phone calls, clients get pissed.” She paused. “So who was calling you so much that you didn’t want to answer?”

Priest laid down his fork and fingered his coffee cup. “I’m just a normal guy. I’ve got a wife and kids. Like I said, I go to Disney World on vacation. I coach my son’s Little League baseball team. I’m not equipped to be involved in some crazy international conspiracy thing.”

“International conspiracy thing? Care to explain?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“You think your brother is, what, a spy?”

“Middle East, Kazakhstan? A company that doesn’t exist? And now this? It’s hard for me to admit, but I don’t really know my brother at all. At least not his professional side.”

“But you said you knew your brother was going to go to the Grand Canyon.”

“Yeah. He phoned and told me about the trip. He’d never done the mule ride. Said it was on his bucket list. He was excited. He’d scheduled it a long time ago. I guess you have to.”

“You do. And you have no idea how the guy I showed you on my phone ended up going in his place?”

“No. Are you sure that my brother wasn’t part of the group that went into the Canyon?”

“I showed the picture you sent me of your brother to the mule wrangler who traveled down to the floor of the Canyon that day. He said your brother was definitely not part of the group. He said there was no one even close to looking like him, even if maybe he was in disguise. Your brother looks to be, what, six three and about one eighty?”

“That’s right. He got all the height in the family, too,” he added nervously, glancing at Pine’s FBI shield. “But my brother is a good guy. He wouldn’t be involved in anything bad, that I know.”

“You just told me you didn’t really know your brother at all, at least his professional side.”

Priest slumped back. “Yeah, I guess I did say that.”

“So, what were all the voice mails on your phone?”

“Hang-ups. I finally checked them. They were all from the same number. When I called the number back no one answered.”

“Can you give me the number? I can check it out.”

Priest took out his phone and read out the number, and Pine added it to her phone contacts.

“What are your plans while you’re out here?” she asked.

“I don’t have any. I flew out here really in a panic. Then I decided to call you. To see what you might suggest.”

“I’m not sure I have a good answer for you. But you have to understand, Mr. Priest, that if your brother is involved in something serious, you could be in some danger.”

“Me! Why?”

“Certain people may assume your brother told you something important. Or by your coming out here they may think your brother communicated with you, and that you flew out here to meet with him.”

“But no one knows I’m here except you.”

“Did you book your flight with a credit card?”

“Well, yes. Of course, I did.”

“Then you’re in the system. And people who can access the system could know your movements. They could be watching us right now.”

Priest looked around the restaurant before staring back at her. “Shit, are you serious?”

“Very serious.”

“I feel like I’m in a freaking movie. So what do I do now? Should I get a hotel somewhere? Or maybe I can stay with you?”

Pine pondered this for a few moments. “You can stay at my place at least for tonight, or what’s left of it, until we think of other arrangements.”

“Are you sure? I don’t want to be an imposition. And if you’re right and people are watching me, then you could be in danger, too.”

“I signed on for that when I took the job, Mr. Priest.”

“Please, just call me Ed. Can I hit the restroom before we leave? With everything going on my stomach’s giving me fits.”

“Sure thing. I’ll get the check.”

Pine kept Priest in her periphery as he headed to the restroom, while she went to the woman at the cash register and paid the bill. Later, she led him to her truck and loaded his bag into the back.

They got on the road and headed back north.

She checked her watch. It was going on two in the morning. One thing Pine was certain of: She wasn’t going to get a lot of sleep this night.