Long Road to Mercy (Atlee Pine, #1)(9)
“Not sure. After eleven, certainly.”
“My rounds carried me pretty far from the corral. If the mule was taken out then, I wouldn’t have heard it necessarily.”
“Okay, you think of anything else, let me know.”
“Will do. Good luck.”
He walked off at a good pace, covering the ground easily and quickly. She noted the bulge of his shoulders as his shirt pulled tight against them.
“What now?” asked Colson, drawing her attention away from the departing Kettler.
“Considering we’re going to be searching the Canyon starting early tomorrow morning, I’m going to have some dinner and go to bed.”
Hours later Pine was staring up at the ceiling of a ten-by-ten spare room at Phantom Ranch. The staff had found a mattress for her and a sheet and a lumpy pillow. This was her home for the night. There was no hardship in this: She had spent much of her life staring up at ceilings in places that did not belong to her.
Phantom Ranch was located in an area that had originally been called Roosevelt Camp, after President Theodore Roosevelt. He’d stayed there in 1913, after declaring the Grand Canyon a national monument. Pine had also learned that it had been Roosevelt who’d ordered the Havasupai Indian tribe to leave the area so that the park could be constructed, essentially evicting them from their home. The defiant Havasupai had taken twenty-five years to do so, long after Roosevelt’s death.
Pine didn’t blame them.
The current Phantom Ranch had been designed and named by Mary Elizabeth Jane Colter, the famed Canyon architect. It had been built in 1922 and was shaded by yellow cottonwood trees and sycamore trees, and had dirt paths crisscrossing throughout. It was a little oasis down at the inner gorge of the Canyon. In the little canteen was a mail pouch for visitors to put their postcards in. The mule train would take it up the following day. The postcards were all stamped with: “Mailed by Mule from the bottom of the Grand Canyon.” What could be cooler than that in a world of smartphones and devices named Alexa that ruled your life?
She had some changes of clothes and other necessities that she always kept in her truck, along with her investigative duffel. These she had transferred onto the chopper that had carried her down to the Canyon floor. Out here, there weren’t FBI forensics teams just waiting to go in and “CSI” any crime scene that needed parsing. FBI special agents stationed at small RAs pretty much did it all.
And she was the FBI’s point person for the Grand Canyon. So, right now, Pine was a cavalry of one. And that was just fine with her.
The current hikers and mule riders were all in their beds in either the dorms or the slant-roofed rustic cabins. Pine had eaten with them in the large dining hall at a long table with wooden-back chairs on the floor and old, dark ceiling beams above. No one knew who she was, and she volunteered no information about herself or why she was there.
Pine wasn’t into small talk; she much preferred to listen to other people. You learned something that way.
At dinner, she’d opted for the stew and cornbread and three glasses of water. Hydration was important down here. She’d spoken again with Lambert and Brennan before hitting the sack. Now it was nearly one a.m., and outside the thermometer still hovered near eighty, making the room close and warm. She’d opened the window to let some air in and had stripped down to her underwear, her two pistols within easy reach.
She had no idea where Benjamin Priest might be. He could have hiked out of the canyon by now, but surely someone would have seen him. His description had been given out to everyone by the rangers. It had been posted on NPS’s website. And if he had killed and carved those letters on Sallie Belle for some inexplicable reason, he would be held accountable.
She had written up her case notes and emailed her superiors the details, sending along the list and contact information of the hikers, rafters, and mule riders that she had gotten from the Park Police. These would be fanned out to agency offices across the country, so that follow-up could be done. The Flagstaff office had also been notified and had advised her to keep them abreast of developments.
There was nothing more to do, really, until morning.
She listened to the sharp wind outside, and the sounds of flowing water from nearby Bright Angel Creek.
They had posted two sentries by the carcass. Otherwise, poor Sallie Belle would probably be picked clean by nocturnal predators. Pine opened her eyes as the Grand Canyon and the dead mule were pushed aside for the time being in her thoughts.
In their place emerged Daniel James Tor.
In some ways Pine had waited nearly her entire life to confront the man she believed was responsible for her sister’s disappearance.
Why twenty-nine years?
Six months ago, Pine had only a vague memory of the man who had entered their bedroom nearly thirty years before. Doctors had called it many things, but it boiled down to amnesia brought on by her youth and the traumatic circumstances of the event. For Pine’s own well-being, her mind wouldn’t let her remember. Not as a child, and apparently not as an adult, either.
Her mother had found her unconscious and bleeding in her bed early the next morning, the tape still over her mouth. An ambulance had been called. She had been taken to the hospital. They feared for her life numerous times during a series of major operations. Eventually, her skull had healed; there had been no permanent damage done to her brain. Thus, she had eventually gone home from the hospital, the only child now left in the Pine household.