Дэвид Балдаччи - Long Road to Mercy

Though a popular tourist destination, the Canyon was an extreme environment. People died here every year. The causes were many and included heart attacks, falls, animal encounters, dehydration, and hyponatremia, an electrolyte disorder where your brain swelled with an excess of fluids. In addition, some rafters drowned in the punishing rapids of the Colorado River.

As she was standing there, Pine saw a man dressed in athletic shorts, a tank top, and running shoes jogging down the pavement toward the parking lot. He stopped, stretched, and then headed toward a muddy Jeep with its canvas top down. It also had a power winch on the front bumper.

An ARMY STRONG sticker was on the rear fender.

“Hey, Sam.”

Sam Kettler turned around as Pine called out.

She walked over to him. “Don’t you work nights here?”

“Usually, but not last night.”

She looked him over. The tank top and shorts revealed what his uniform had not. The man was ripped. Each muscle melded perfectly into its neighbor. And unlike some guys who had inflated chests and swollen arms, matched with an underdeveloped lower body, his thighs, hammies, and calves were the most defined part of his musculature.

“So what are you doing here now?”

“Running the trails. Just finished.”

Pine looked over his shoulder. “Which one did you do? It’s already pretty hot.”

“South to North and then back.”

“You did rim-to-rim-to-rim?”

He nodded, reached inside his Jeep, and grabbed a towel to wipe down.

“How long did it take you?” she asked.

“Six hours and fifty-eight minutes. I started really early.”

Her jaw slackened. “To run forty-two miles with twenty-two thousand feet of vertical change including five thousand feet on the run back up to the South Rim?”

He finished wiping off and took a bottle of water out of the fanny pack around his waist. “I guess that sounds right, yeah. It’s still way off the record. I’ll never beat it.”

“But there isn’t one person in a million who could run it as fast as you did.”

He finished the bottle of water. “What are you doing up here?” he asked.

“Came to check in.”

“Find out what happened to the mule?”

“Not yet, working on it.”

“I’m sure you’ll get there.” He looked away and seemed to tense, his gaze averted.

She waited a few moments, but when he didn’t say anything, she said, “Well, see you around.”

She started to walk away.

“Hey, Atlee?”

She turned. “Yeah?”

“You got time for a beer and maybe some dinner tonight?”

“You’re not working tonight either?”

“Other reason I ran today.” He grinned impishly. “I’m not twenty anymore. I need some time to recover.”

She considered his offer. “Sounds good.”

“There’s a place in Shattered Rock.”

She smiled. “Let me guess — Tony’s Pizza.”

“How’d you know?”

“It’s pretty much the only place in Shattered Rock to get a beer.”

“Seven o’clock work?”

“See you then.”

Pine walked into the headquarters and asked for not Colson Lambert but the other park ranger, Harry Rice.

Rice, as it turned out, was over at the mule barn, she was told, so Pine headed there. She found Rice with the mules and also the mule wrangler, Mark Brennan.

“You’re not wrangling a group today?” said Pine to Brennan, while Rice watched her with a look that Pine thought was unnecessarily wary.

But maybe not, considering what he might have been told by his superiors.

Brennan was rubbing salve on a mule’s forelegs. “We got a shipment of supplies coming in today. I’m handling it. Two other wranglers are leading the group down.”

Pine nodded and looked at Rice. “I spoke to your buddy, Colson. Doesn’t look like the investigation is getting much traction.”

“We looked everywhere for the guy,” said Rice, keeping his attention on a point to the left of Pine’s shoulder. “Never found anything.”

They all fell silent for about a half minute.

“Colson didn’t seem very interested in doing any more work on the case. That your position too, Harry?”

Rice again wouldn’t meet her eye. “I’m a Park Ranger, not a cop.”

“But what about ISB? Are they taking up the case? I asked Colson, but he blew me off.”

Rice shrugged. “Above my pay grade.”

“Seems to be the standard response these days,” replied Pine, wondering if he and Lambert had been scripted.

Brennan looked from one to the other. “Something going on here I don’t know about?”

“Probably,” said Pine. “Mark, you saw this guy Priest. I want you to talk to a sketch artist I use and give that description to her.”

Rice said, “Why? You use a sketch artist if you’re trying to ID somebody. We already know who the missing guy is.”

“Do we?” asked Pine.

Rice looked taken aback. “His brother told us. He’s Benjamin Priest.”

“I asked Colson if he got a photo of Priest from his brother. He wouldn’t answer me.”

Brennan said, “Wait a minute, are you saying this guy wasn’t Ben Priest?”

“I like to confirm everything. Not just assume.” Pine glanced at Rice. “Did you guys just assume, or did you confirm?”

“I don’t like your tone, Atlee,” replied Rice.

“And I don’t like getting played, Harry .”

Brennan kept looking between the two feds, the confusion on his features growing.

“So, Mark, I need you to come with me for the sketch artist.”

“But I got stuff to do here.”

“Find somebody else to do it.”

As they walked out into the daylight, Brennan said quietly, “What’s going on here, Agent Pine. I mean, you guys are both with the federal government, right?”

“Right. But the federal government is a big, unwieldy beast at times. And I go my own way.” She pulled out her phone and brought up the photo that Edward Priest had sent of his brother. “See the tall guy in this photo? You recognize him? Could he have also been in the group of ten with Priest?”

“No, no way. Nobody that tall was in the group. And nobody who looked close to that guy.”

“Did you take a group photo? Did anyone take photos of each other?”

“People could have taken shots of each other. But there wasn’t any group photo that I know of.”

Pine put her phone away. “Okay, let’s go see that sketch artist.”

Jennifer Yazzie was married to Joe Yazzie Sr., who was an officer with the Navajo Nation Police. He was one of about two hundred sworn cops and pulled patrol duty working out of the Tuba City Police District on the western side of the Navajo reservation. Riding in his department-issued Chevy Blazer, Yazzie alone was responsible for about seventy square miles of territory. Pine knew he performed his duties with a Glock 22 sidearm, pepper spray, an AR-15, a shotgun, body armor, an expandable baton, and his most important tools: a calm demeanor and an understanding of the area and the people that inhabited it that came only from having grown up there.

Jennifer Yazzie worked as one of about three hundred support staff at the Nation Police. Although her main duties were in the IT department, she was an accomplished artist, having sold her pieces throughout the Southwest and having her works shown in numerous regional exhibitions. She was the police force’s unofficial sketch artist in residence.

Yazzie also worked in the Tuba City Police District, and that was where Pine drove to with Brennan.

Though she had a child who was twenty-four, Yazzie was only forty-five. She was a lean five five with long, dark hair and finely etched lines around her eyes and mouth. She possessed an easy smile, as though whatever she was doing brought her great joy.