Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

“Yeah, I’m a federal agent.”

“They’ll screw you over, too.”

“Not so far.”

He took a puff on his joint.

She watched him and said, “And maybe you need to knock that off and clear your head. Especially if you’re driving. You don’t want any more trouble with the authorities, right?”

“This is a free country, right? I fought for that shit.”

“You got your medical marijuana card? Otherwise, it’s illegal to possess or use it in Arizona. And under federal law you shouldn’t be carrying a gun if you’re using weed, though the state of Arizona sees it differently.”

“Got PTSD. Left my card at home. You can arrest me if you want.”

“If you don’t have a card, I could arrest you. It’s a felony.”

“Like I said, I got a card. Just forgot it. I was in Iraq, lady. You go to Iraq, you’ll want to smoke weed too.”

Pine eyed his buddy, who seemed disinterested in the whole interaction.

“How about you?”

“I left my card home too.”

Pine shook her head. She was not arresting these guys for that. But still.

She eyed the AR-15 and said to Sunburn. “I’m assuming you passed a background check for the AR.”

“Not my gun,” replied Sunburn.

Pine, who was done with this exchange, said tersely, “Right. Okay, you guys have a good evening. Just don’t drug, drink, and drive, okay? And be careful with your weapons.”

She started to walk past him when Sunburn moved in front of her.

“I ain’t done talking to you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m done talking to you.”

As she moved past him, he roughly grabbed her arm.

Pine gripped his wrist, bent it backward, drove it behind his back, and launched him headfirst into the side of the truck. His forehead punched into the sheet metal and he slowly slid to the ground.

With her free hand Pine whipped out her Glock and pointed it in the direction of the other guy, whose hand had drifted to his knife.

“Don’t do it unless you want to die right here,” barked Pine. “Put it on the ground and kick it away. Now.”

The man quickly did as she ordered, laying the weapon in the dirt and then propelling it about two feet away with his boot.

Sunburn slowly groaned and turned over on his back. She reached down and jerked his Sig from the holster.

“Hey, you can’t take my gun!” he protested.

She pointed her gun at his head. “You ever lay a hand on me again, you won’t be waking up. You got that?”

When he didn’t answer she nudged him with her boot. “I said, you got that?”

“Yeah, I get it, okay. Shit!”

“And be thankful I don’t want to waste another minute of my life dealing with you idiots. Now clear out of here.”

He struggled up and, with his buddy’s help, climbed into the passenger seat of the Ford.

When his friend went to get his knife, Pine placed her boot over it.

“Don’t think so.” She paused and studied him. “I know you. Your old man is Joe Yazzie, isn’t he? You’re his oldest, Joe Jr. Does he know you’re hanging out with dicks like that?”

“I’m twenty-four, I can hang out with anybody I want,” retorted Yazzie.

In her periphery, Pine kept a visual on Sunburn, just in case he went for the Browning or AR.

She said to Yazzie, “Then exercise better judgment. What are you doing here anyway?”

“Our buddy lives here. Kyle Chavez.”

Pine nodded. She knew the Chavez family. The parents were illegals, hardworking, never in any trouble, and went to Mass every Sunday at the only Catholic church in town. But their son, Kyle, was a piece of work, and giving them endless trouble. He had nearly come Pine’s way a couple of times.

“Like I said, exercise better judgment.”

“You think you’re a badass?” screamed Sunburn from the truck.

“Get him out of here before I change my mind about arresting you both,” Pine said.

Yazzie quickly climbed into the truck, started it up, put it in gear, and drove off.

Pine watched them go until they were out of sight.

Then she picked up the knife, shoved Sunburn’s Sig into her pocket, and walked up the stairs to her apartment.

Now she really, really wanted that beer.

Blum’s email had contained more information about the website where she had originally found the two articles.

If the letters carved on the mule were referring to Jordan and Kinkaid, then the person who had carved them might have accessed this website. And whenever you accessed a digital space, you left behind your electronic prints in the form of an IP address. The Bureau had busted many a crook who didn’t understand this. It was a long shot, Pine knew, but Blum had also told her that there weren’t very many websites dealing with this subject, so they might just get lucky. Ordinarily, Pine would have forwarded this information to IT specialists at the Bureau who could check out web traffic to a site.

Yet she hesitated to do that now.

Eyes in the back of my head.

Avery had told her that, and yet he was no particular ally of hers. But she was under his chain of command and maybe he was giving her some subtle assistance for some reason as yet unknown. Or maybe he was setting her up to swing in the wind. She supposed only time would tell which possibility was correct.

She finished her beer and took two pork sausages out of the fridge. She had already fired up her little hibachi that was out on the balcony. It had come with the apartment, having been left behind by the last renter. She only had to add a fresh bag of charcoal. Pine wasn’t much of a cook, but eating out every night was not in her budget, or good for her physical well-being.

She plopped the fat sausages on the hot grill, and her nostrils were instantly assailed with the smell of cooking spiced meat.

She grabbed a bottle of water from her fridge, uncapped it, and took a long drink. Dehydration was a real problem here. People trying to hike the Canyon failed all the time to take this into account, despite all the warning signs posted everywhere about how much water and salty foods to carry with you, and how much to consume during your trek. Becoming dehydrated was potentially deadly. Blood pressure dropped to dangerously low levels, the heart slowed, the organs could begin shutting down. And then you were gone. All from not imbibing enough H 2O.

She mixed a small salad, cutting up tomatoes, cucumbers, snap peas, and beets. She sprinkled a homemade lemon vinaigrette over it and set it on the kitchen table. A few minutes later she checked on the sausages. They were plump and bursting and marked with the tines of the grill.

Just how she liked them.

She sat at her table and ate, while she used her laptop to look through the website Blum had found. It was quite conspiratorial in tone. The whole country, maybe the whole world, was wallowing in paranoia. She thought it was still anyone’s bet as to whether the internet would turn out to be more good or evil.

She texted a friend of hers who worked for a satellite office of Google in Salt Lake City and gave him the information on the site, with a request that he track the IP addresses that had accessed the site within the last several weeks. Pine had no idea what sort of traffic this site experienced, so she felt it was practical to put in a time parameter, if just to see what sort of volume she’d be looking at.

She finished her dinner and put her plate and utensils in the dishwasher.

It was nearly nine o’clock now, but she wasn’t really tired.

She received an answering text from her friend in Salt Lake. He had gotten the information and would try to have something for her tomorrow.

Pine sat back and thought things through. It was quite a mishmash in her head. How did a carved-up mule that might be tied to an old legend square with a defense contractor gone missing, along with the man impersonating him?