The Kraken Project

15

When he was younger, Ford once had embarked on the goal of climbing all fifty-three of Colorado’s fourteeners — those mountains in the state above fourteen thousand feet high. He managed five before he got involved in other pursuits. It was the story of his life, going from one fresh enthusiasm to the next, unable to finish anything. But the experience gave him the idea for a cover: he would pose as a lone climber looking to bag the mighty trio of fourteeners in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains above the Lazy J ranch. Three of them were visible — Blanca Peak, Ellingwood Point, and Little Bear — and they were considered to be among the most difficult in the suite.

But before assuming his cover and going into the mountains, Ford planned to talk to the owner of the Lazy J, a man named Mike Clanton. Clanton had employed Melissa nine years before, when she was a troubled teenager.

The FBI, after its agents’ disastrous effort, had largely pulled out of the ranch, leaving a special agent behind to monitor the place and guard the evidence. The man’s name was Spinelli. Ford had been ordered to “liaise” with him.

The gate into the ranch consisted of two tree trunks with a crosspiece, on which hung the skull of an elk with an impressive rack. As Ford drove through, a grassy prairie stretched out before him, dotted with cattle, against a spectacular backdrop of mountains, their upper ramparts dusted with fresh snow. Ford followed the picturesque ranch road to a log ranch house in a grove of cottonwood trees, next to a burbling creek. The brilliant yellow leaves rustled in a breeze as Ford pulled into the dirt parking area in front of the house. A brown Crown Vic was parked to one side. Beyond stood a horse barn, corrals, pens, and irrigated pastures.

Even before Ford could climb up the stairs to the porch, an old man came out, white hair sticking out from under a battered cowboy hat. He squinted at Ford, a none-too-friendly look on his face. He wore dusty jeans, and his boots were flecked with horse manure.

“Wyman Ford.”

The man left Ford’s hand dangling in the air. “You another investigator?”

“I hoped it wouldn’t be so obvious.” He dropped his hand.

“Who you working for?”

“The Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House.”

He squinted at Ford. “You mean you’re working for the president?”

“In a way.”

“Don’t like him. Didn’t vote for him four years ago, and don’t plan to now. They say he has a bad ticker. How’s a man like that going to deal with stress? What if he drops dead of a heart attack because North Korea launches a nuke?”

Ford swallowed his irritation at this voluble man. “Mr. Clanton, I personally don’t like the man either, but that has nothing to do with it. Politics don’t enter into my assignment.”

Clanton grunted. “What can I do for you?”

“I’d like to ask you a few questions and look over the burned car.”

He nodded curtly. “I’ll take you out in the truck. You’d never make it in that tin can rental.”

Ford followed Clanton out of the house and climbed into the passenger seat of a battered pickup that reeked of motor oil and cigarette smoke. They set off, driving on a ranch road that went from bad to worse, heading toward the mountains. Clanton lit up a cigarette without asking, the cabin filling with nasty smoke, even with the windows down.

“So you knew Melissa when she was a teenager?” Ford asked.

“Sure did.”

“How’d she come to the ranch?”

“She got in trouble with the law, came up here to work for a summer. That was … let’s see … nine years ago. She was eighteen.”

“Why did she come here?”

“I knew her uncle. Went to school with him.”

“School? Where was that?”

“Yale Law.”

Ford had to laugh. “You don’t look like Yale Law.”

“I enjoy springing that little factoid on unsuspecting people and confounding their assumptions,” said Clanton.

“So how’d you end up here?”

“I made a bit of money in corporate law. Discovered there are more assholes in that business than in a herd of Texas longhorns. So I retired, came out here, bought this ranch, and went into the horse and cattle business.”

A “bit of money”—enough to buy forty-one thousand acres. “Do you know what kind of trouble she was in?”

“Drugs. Theft.”

“What kind of drugs, marijuana?”

“That, peyote, and mushrooms. She and her pals also stole a car, as I recall, or maybe it was a car radio.”

“Tell me about her.”

“She was a beautiful girl, irresponsible, undependable. If there was a wrong thing to be said, she’d say it. A rebel, always pointing out what was wrong, running down the country, the state of Colorado, the way we did things at the ranch, the weather, the good Lord Himself — nothing was right in her book. Here at the ranch, she got off to a rocky start. She wouldn’t cook, wouldn’t wash dishes, wouldn’t stretch wire. After three or four days, I was so fed up with her I was about to pack her home. But then she got around the horses and found her calling. You’ve heard about these ‘horse whisperers.’ She was the real thing. Over the summer she broke a string of colts. I never once heard her raise her voice. She was one of those gentlers who knew what a horse was thinking before the horse did himself.”

“Was that the only time she was here?”

“Yes. I hoped she’d come back the next summer, but she went on to college and I lost touch. She wasn’t one for writing letters.”

“Why do you think she came back here now?”

“If you want to hide, those mountains are the place. She knows that backcountry.”

“And you didn’t see her when she came through?”

“No. But I’m sorry to say she broke into the ranch house and took some guns.”

“Guns? What kind?”

“A Winchester.30–30 Model 94 lever-action and an old.22 revolver I had lying around.”

“She know how to use them?”

“That was another interest she discovered that summer: firearms. She became a crack shot.”

“How did you find the burned car?”

“I saw the smoke. That was a week ago Tuesday. Followed it out and found that car on fire. I didn’t know it was hers at the time. We called the police, and I tracked her footprints about a mile before they went up the Como Lake road. That’s the main route into the mountains — most challenging jeep trail in Colorado.”

“Any idea where she might have gone up there?”

“None.”

“So when you reported the burning car, what happened?”

“Local police came out, got the VIN, and by the end of the day the place was swarming with blue suits and badges. They took their choppers up into the mountains, ATVs, horses, all that stuff. They spooked her. Bunch of idiots. They were called off yesterday. And now you.” He looked Ford up and down with a narrow eye. “You know much about the mountains?”

“A little.”

“It’s going to be cold up there. Might snow. You ain’t dressed for it.”

“I have plenty of hiking clothes in my luggage,” said Ford.

“I’m sure you’ll do L.L. Bean proud.”

“REI.”

“Those mountains are no joke.”

“I know,” said Ford. “I’ve climbed half a dozen fourteeners.”

Clanton nodded slowly. “Okay. So you aren’t as big an idiot as the others.” He chuckled. “It was a ninety-degree day down here. Those FBI fellows went up there on horseback hanging on to their saddle horns with both hands and wearing short-sleeved shirts — thought they were going to have themselves a fine old cowboy time. They got snowed on pretty good. They came out looking like Shackleton’s rejects. One fellow had to have a toe cut off, I heard.”

The truck lurched over a dry streambed and a dark smudge came into view. The car, a scorched-out hulk of a Jeep Cherokee, was surrounded by yellow crime scene tape. An event-style tent with open sides had been erected over it, and in the shade lounged an FBI agent, smoking. Far to one side was his G-ride — another brown Crown Vic. How he’d gotten it out there without ripping the muffler off, Ford had no idea. The man hastily put out the cigarette as they arrived, stood up, and came over, walking in that slow FBI way that Ford knew well from his days at the CIA. Ford had tried hard to shake off his natural CIA antipathy to the FBI but found it rising again as the agent swaggered over.

“Area’s off-limits,” he said in a loud voice.

Ford put on his most cooperative voice. “Name’s Wyman Ford.” For the second time that day he found himself shaking hands with the air while the FBI agent stared. He dropped his hand. “I’m a special investigator with the Office of Science and Technology Policy.”

The agent was a young fellow with a big neck who looked to Ford like the kind of guy who would be in charge of hazing at his fraternity.

“I need to see your authorization, Mr. Office of the Science whatever,” he said.

Ford took out the ID badge Lockwood had whipped up for him on short notice. The agent scrutinized it, back and front, took it to one side, pulled out a cell phone, and spent a good five minutes talking into the phone before he came back. “I’m sorry, but the Denver FO needs to preapprove you. Your office needs to contact them and work out the details before you can have access to the evidence.”

This was just the sort of mentality Ford couldn’t stand. He took a long, deep breath and glanced over at Clanton, who had a cynical smile of anticipation on his face. He looked back to the FBI agent.

“Your name, sir?”

“Special Agent Spinelli.”

“May I see your credentials, Agent Spinelli?”

Ford knew that an FBI agent would always show you his badge. Spinelli took his out, flipped it open, stuck it aggressively in Ford’s direction, but before Ford had a decent chance to look at it, he flipped it back shut. Ford could see that Spinelli was pissed — pissed at having been part of a team that had screwed up, pissed at having to sit out in the middle of nowhere guarding a burned-out car, pissed at having someone else take over.

“Oops, didn’t have a chance to see it,” Ford said, holding out his hand.

Spinelli gave Ford the G-man stare, the “Don’t even think of messing with me” pinpoint-eye look.

“Can’t we just cooperate without the rigamarole?” Ford asked. “Please?” God, he was going to try as hard as he could not to lose his temper.

“I’m sorry. You need to go through the Denver FO. And that’s final.”

“In that case, I’m going to need your badge number,” Ford said as pleasantly as possible, “so I can report your obstructionism to my superior, who is the president of the United States, so his people can stomp and shit on your FBI career prospects so thoroughly that you’ll be lucky to get a job as rent-a-pork for your local mortuary, and that isn’t a threat, it’s a simple statement of fact, and I sincerely hope you’ll reevaluate your position, Mr. Special Agent Spinelli.”

As Spinelli stood there, thunderstruck, Clanton had a fit of coughing in the background.

“Now,” said Ford, taking out his cell phone and holding it up like a weapon, finger poised to speed-dial. “May I have access to the car or do I call the White House and ruin your life?”

The Cherokee had been left exactly as it was found, aside from being festooned with a hundred little flags and pins marking evidence. On the burned backseat, marked with flags, were the scorched remains of an iPhone and an iPad.

“Agent Spinelli?”

He came over. He’d been pale and silent since his whipping, and Ford tried to make up for it by being friendly. “Looks like you fellows did a pretty thorough job of crime scene investigation.”

Spinelli’s face was stone.

“Were you able to locate the origin of the fire?”

“Right there on the backseat.”

“Any accelerant involved?”

“Gasoline siphoned from the tank, judging from spillage on the ground.”

“So she doused her phone and iPad and set them and the car on fire?”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“There’s also a hole in the dashboard, like some piece of equipment was pulled out. What was it?”

“A GPS.”

“Where is it?”

“We never found it. The fleet tracker was also removed.”

“Does the FBI have any theories about why she trashed her electronics?”

“Obviously,” Spinelli said, “she was ridding herself of anything that could be used to track her.”

It wasn’t obvious at all. The phone, for example, could be neutralized by taking out the battery. “Why burn the phone?”

“No mystery there.” Spinelli was finally warming up. “She wanted to destroy evidence of criminal wrongdoing contained therein.”

“What sort of criminal wrongdoing might you be referring to?”

The agent snorted. “Let’s start with the Class C and B felonies: car theft, malicious destruction of property, obstructing a federal investigation, destruction of evidence, failure to report, perjury, breaking and entering — the list goes on. Not to mention skipping out on a federal investigation in which she is a person of interest.”

Ford glanced at Clanton, who’d recovered from his coughing fit and was watching with a serious expression.

“You knew her,” said Ford, turning to him. “You got any theories?”

Clanton uncrossed his arms. “You ask me, this was a ‘good-bye to all that’ gesture.”

Ford nodded. That had occurred to him, too. But he wasn’t sure it explained everything. “Isn’t it an extreme step, destroying your cell phone, especially if you’re about to go off into a dangerous wilderness? And also, why burn the car, too? She might need it later.”

“These days,” said Spinelli, “even a car is a tracking device. In addition to the fleet tracker, rental cars have built-in black boxes that record driver behavior and can’t be removed without disabling the car. This has all the hallmarks of evidence destruction.”

Ford removed his iPhone phone from his pocket. Two bars and an active 4G network. “Is there cell reception in the mountains?” he asked Clanton.

“On the high ridges and peaks. Not in the cirques and valleys.”

Ford looked at the burned car. Something else was going on. It was just a gut feeling he had. Shepherd had done this because … she was afraid.

They got back in the car, leaving the FBI agent back in his place in the shade, lighting up a fresh smoke. As they drove away, Clanton started wheezing with laughter again. “You would have made one hell of a litigator. I can’t believe how proficiently you put your boot up that poor fellow’s ass.”

Ford waved his hand. He was already starting to feel uncomfortable about his outburst. “The guy was just doing his job. I hate having to beat people up like that.”

“I loved it. And I see now I misjudged you.”

They drove in silence.

“So how are you going to find her in a thousand square miles of mountains?” Clanton asked.

Ford didn’t answer for a moment; then he said, “Do you still have any of the horses she broke?”

“Sure do.”

“Did she have any particular favorites?”

“Oh sure. Redbone, my personal mount. She broke him as a colt. Best horse I’ve ever owned.”

Ford fell silent. He heartily disliked horses, but an idea was taking shape in his mind. He asked, “May I borrow this Redbone for my trip into the mountains?”