Mercy

Chapter 62

Britt Spector had to admit the scheme was brilliant. And risky. That didn’t lessen the brilliance; it just made the plan more complicated. And special. Her admiration for Buckley had been displaced by a growing concern for the man. He was taking all of this far too personally. She understood that it was his brother. But it seemed to have evolved into a personal grudge that was now devolving into a terrible, looming confrontation. And she was uncertain of the exact shape it would take.

She had walked the grounds of the compound. Knowing the geography of a place was critical, if you wanted to make it out the other end. She had great faith in Peter Buckley, but when things went sideways with something like this, they often went terribly wrong. And then faith was just a word. A useless one. Then you were on your own.

This was her first time here. The place was rugged, imposing. If you didn’t know what you were doing, survival out here would not be easy.

He had never spoken of the place. She knew some of Buckley’s background, and she had researched the history of this place once she learned where they were heading. His childhood had been as unusual and potentially as damaging as her own. So how could she judge the man harshly?

She stared out at the distant mountain range, and the less distant foothills. Canyons had been carved in the earth here by once mighty rivers that had vanished over time. She had driven all over this land after they’d arrived, getting a feel for it, trying to understand its secrets. Because one just never knew, did one?

She headed to the new two-story building where, Buckley had told her, the old hay barn had once stood.

A team was already there setting up the structure inside it.

The steel posts had been sunk into the dirt and reinforced with concrete footers. The chain-link perimeter fence was being strung along these posts. It rose ten feet.

She patted one of the posts; it didn’t give an inch. Cement shoes on a dead man. Buckley had thought of it all.

Spector went over the plans with the crew chief. He had been well paid, had no idea what this ultimately would be used for, and didn’t want to know. As soon as they were finished, he and his men would be on a chartered plane out of here and back to the country from where Buckley had recruited them. This tale, for them, would end with the wheels-up and the beer flowing.

She left the barn and kept walking, turning left and heading down the main street of the place. It really was a wonder that so many people had lived here at one point. And died here. The graveyard held well over a hundred plots simply inscribed with just first names on now-rotted wooden markers. Buckley had told her that these folks had all died of natural causes.

She didn’t believe that and wasn’t sure he did, either. She wasn’t certain how he reconciled that in his own mind. Maybe he never had.

Spector looked up. This was a part of the country where the sky seemed to go on forever. There wasn’t another living soul within at least a hundred miles. When they had been coming in on the jet she had looked out the window. She saw flat, rugged land frequently interrupted by buttes, rocky outcrops, a line of foothills, and finally their bigger, blunt-faced mountain cousins in the distance with snowy caps. She saw birds and animals and patches of water and some vegetation among the mostly stripped red earth.

But not a single human being.

She had come to realize that Buckley much preferred that arrangement. He had told her that he would come here for days at a time and just wander. He said that the power of the isolation astonished him.

“We’re all hamsters on the wheel, Britt. We never stop long enough to try to understand what we really want, what we’re really doing. It’s all a mirage based on speed and lack of personal focus and thought.”

“If you say so, Peter,” she had replied at the time, clearly not pleasing him. Which had been her intent. She was not simply going to agree to agree. That made her trivial and, worst of all, fungible. To matter to the man, you had to be unique. And one way to do that was not to blithely follow his lead.

Spector wondered if Buckley had thought of that during some of his wanderings here.

It was the simplicity of his plan that appealed to her. Yet, for her, a bullet, a garotte, a blow to the base of the skull, a knife, or even a delicious little poison surreptitiously delivered would have served just as well. In the face of that, Buckley might say that she had no style, no burst of imagination. She would have agreed. Spector wasn’t seeking masterpieces. She was no da Vinci. She was more workmanlike. She believed herself more akin to Michelangelo, indisputably a genius, but there was a lunch-pail-and-overalls practicality to his mastery that, in her mind, eclipsed even the dreamy, luminary vision of the Mona Lisa’s creator.

She had made additional discreet inquiries with the Bureau that had yielded a substantial treasure of potentially helpful intelligence. Some of those she had disclosed to Buckley and some she had not.

She walked into the little jail, passed the guard, entered the cell area, and stared through the bars at Carol Blum. She had been the one to abduct the woman back in Asheville, pointing a gun at her through the Porsche’s window. Blum had been astute enough to know that the look on Spector’s face brooked no opposition, and no hesitancy to shoot her in the head. So she had surrendered.

Spector had heard the woman mutter something like “Not again.” This struck her as odd, but she had to admire Blum’s nerves. She was not one to be intimidated. She had to know her fate was sealed, but she didn’t act like it. That in itself was impressive.

Blum looked at her through the bars. “You look familiar somehow. And I don’t mean from Asheville.”

“I doubt it.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Not prudent on my part.”

“Mr. Buckley had no problem telling me his, or the history of this place and his family’s connection.”

“That’s his choice; I work differently.”

“Meaning you’re not overconfident. I find men so often are, even the smart ones. Particularly when it comes to women.”

“I can’t disagree with that. In fact, I agree with it.”

“I assume he pays you well.”

Spector put one hand on the bars. “Sometimes it doesn’t seem enough. Like right now.”

“Pangs of conscience?”

“What can you tell me about Mercy Pine?”

“Mr. Buckley already asked. I only just met her. I can’t say I know her.”

“But you spent some time with her. I see you as a quick study. If you’re admin at the Bureau, you would have to be.”

“Do you know the Bureau?” Blum said quickly.

Spector smiled. “Anyone who does what I do has to pay attention to the FBI. Read into that what you will.”

“What do you want to know?”

“I understand she had a rough upbringing under Desiree Atkins.”

“That’s one word for it. And probably not the right one.”

“But she got away and... built a life?”

“She did. And she allegedly killed Buckley’s brother, so in his warped mind, her life has to end as recompense of some kind.”

“Did Agent Pine meet her sister?”

“She hasn’t as far as I know. I’m not sure what Mercy did when she found out I was gone.”

“Yes, we thought you two were together. She was watching the house?”

“I’m not quite sure why you didn’t try to take her then.”

“You weren’t the only one wondering that. But I follow orders, I don’t give them.”

“Why do you want to know about her?”

Spector rubbed the single scar on her arm, the remaining souvenir of her own personal hell of a childhood.

“It’s interesting to me how people facing similar challenges in life turn out very differently, by making very different choices.”

“That speaks surely to the individuality of the person in question,” replied Blum, looking intently at Spector. “Did you suffer something similar to Mercy Pine? Which led to different choices for you?”

Spector looked uncomfortable with the bluntness of the query. “I believe I thought I had made the right choices. I guess you would call it being on the side of right, as silly as that sounds.”

“It doesn’t sound silly at all to me. What happened?”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning you clearly are not on the side of right any longer.”

“To use your own words, surely that speaks to the individuality of the person in question.”

Blum cocked her head and looked disappointed. “You know as well as I do that there are limits to how far that argument can be expanded and employed.”

“Perhaps I do.”

“And just so there’s no misassumption on your part: I understand that you’re having this somewhat frank discussion with me because I will shortly not be alive to recount it to anyone else.”

“But I didn’t reveal my name. Does that give you some hope?”

“Not enough,” Blum replied bluntly. She was silent for a bit and then said wistfully, “When I joined the Bureau decades ago, I had a family to raise. There was no question of my becoming a special agent. I don’t even remember who or when the first female agent was.”

Spector said promptly, “Alaska Packard Davidson back in 1922. Her brothers started the Packard car company. She was fifty-four when she became a special investigator for the Bureau of Investigation, the FBI’s predecessor.”

Blum took up the story. “That’s right, I remember that now. But then Hoover became director and got rid of the female agents.”

“But in 1972 Hoover died, and the Bureau graduated the first two female special agents since 1929.”

“Susan Roley,” said Blum. “I don’t know the other.”

“Joanne Pierce,” replied Spector.

Blum gave her an appraising look that simulated the point of a sharp knife, prompting a smiling Spector to say, “That was neatly done, as it now appears clear that you knew all of the Bureau history answers.”

“But that’s beside the point. And with what I now know about you, I am truly saddened.”

Spector’s smile faded. “I don’t recall saying that your opinion of me was important.”

“But it saddens me still. And that’s my prerogative.”

“Everyone makes choices, men and women.”

“And you’ve clearly already made yours. I’m just collateral damage. Some would say I’ve lived long enough. My children are grown. I’m not married. In the end who would miss me for very long? I’ll soon be a faded picture on the wall.”

The blunt response hardened Spector’s look, but a glimmer of a softer underbelly lingered in her eyes. “You don’t strike me as a person who wallows in self-pity.”

“If I wallow in anything, it’s in reality,” replied Blum sharply.

“I hope Pine appreciates you as her admin,” said Spector.

“She will remember me fondly, I hope. If she has the chance to.”

Spector put her face an inch from the bars. She was clearly done scratching around the edges of this back-and-forth conversation. “Look, you seem like a nice lady. I have no doubt you’re a dedicated public servant. The same with your boss. I have no grudge against Mercy Pine, either. She’s obviously had a shitty life. I have no personal beef with any of you.”

“But it’s the old story, right? You have a job to do?”

“There is a lot at stake.”

“There always is when you’re going to take someone’s life. Or at least there should be. It’s supposed to be what separates us from all other animals.” Blum seemed to stare right through the woman. “But you already know that. And it’s not just about choices, is it? Even for former FBI special agents.”

On that Spector pursed her lips, turned, and walked out.

Blum could have felt triumphant with this parting shot.

Yet all she felt was sadness for a life wasted. And more loss yet to come.