Long Road to Mercy

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.