Pines (7 page)

“Special Agent with the—”

She held up a finger. “I don’t know, Arnie. He isn’t wearing a shirt, and he...” She turned away from Ethan in her swivel chair, whispered, “...smells bad. Really bad...OK. OK, I’ll tell him.”

She spun back around and hung up the phone.

“Sheriff Pope will be with you shortly.”

“I need to see him right now.”

“I understand that. You can wait over there.” She pointed to a grouping of chairs in a nearby corner.

Ethan hesitated for a moment, and then finally turned and headed toward the waiting area. Wise to keep this first encounter civil. In his experience, local law enforcement became defensive and even hostile when feds threw their weight around right out of the gate. In light of what he’d found in that abandoned house, he was going to be working with this guy for the foreseeable future. Better to start off with the glad hand than a middle finger.

Ethan eased down into one of the four upholstered chairs in the sitting area.

He’d worked up a sweat on the jog over, but now that his heart rate had returned to baseline, the layer of sweat on his bare skin had begun to chill him as the central air blew down out of a vent overhead.

There wasn’t much in the way of current reading material on the small table in front of his chair—just a few old issues of
National Geographic
and
Popular Science
.

He leaned back in the chair and shut his eyes.

The pain in his head was coming back—the cut of each throb escalating on some molecular level perceptible only over a span of minutes. He could actually hear the pounding of his headache in the total silence of the sheriff’s office, where there was no sound other than the flipping of cards.

He heard Belinda say, “Yes!”

Opened his eyes in time to see her place the last card, having won her game. She gathered the cards up and shuffled them and began again.

Another five minutes passed.

Another ten.

Belinda finished the game and she was mixing the deck again when Ethan noted the first impulse of irritation—a twitch in his left eye.

The pain was still growing and he’d now been waiting, at his estimation, for fifteen minutes. In that increment of time, the phone had not rung once, and not another soul had entered the building.

He shut his eyes and counted down from sixty as he massaged his temples. When he opened them again, he was still sitting there shirtless and cold, and Belinda was still turning cards over, and the sheriff had yet to come.

Ethan stood, fought a bout of wooziness for ten seconds before finally establishing his balance. He walked back over to the reception desk and waited for Belinda to look up.

She laid down five cards before acknowledging him.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry to be a bother, but I’ve been waiting about twenty minutes now.”

“The sheriff’s real busy today.”

“I’m sure he is, but I need to speak with him right away. Now you can either get him on the phone again and tell him I’m done waiting, or I’m gonna walk back there myself and—”

Her desk phone rang.

She answered, “Yes?...OK, I sure will.” She shelved the phone and smiled up at Ethan. “You’re welcome to go on back now. Right down that hallway. His office is through the door at the very end.”

* * *

Ethan knocked beneath the nameplate.

A deep voice hollered from the other side, “Yep!”

He turned the knob, pushed the door open, stepped inside.

The floor of the office was a dark and deeply scuffed hardwood. To his left, the enormous head of an elk had been mounted to the wall opposite a large, rustic desk. Behind the desk stood three antique gun cabinets brimming with rifles, shotguns, handguns, and what he calculated were enough boxes of ammo to execute every resident of this little town three times over.

A man ten years his senior reclined in a leather chair, his cowboy-booted feet propped on the desk. He had wavy blond hair that would probably be white within a decade, and his jaw was frosted with a few days’ worth of grizzle.

Dark brown canvas pants.

Long-sleeved button-down—hunter green.

The sheriff’s star gleamed under the lights. It looked like solid brass, intricately etched, with the letters WP inset in black in the center.

As he approached the desk, Ethan thought he saw the sheriff let slip a private smirk.

“Ethan Burke, Secret Service.”

He extended his hand across the desk, and the sheriff hesitated, as if holding some internal debate over whether he felt like moving. Finally, he slid his boots off the desktop and leaned forward in his chair.

“Arnold Pope.” They shook hands. “Have a seat, Ethan.”

Ethan eased down into one of the straight-backed wooden chairs.

“How you feeling?” Pope asked.

“I’ve been better.”

“I’ll bet. You’ve probably smelled better too.” Pope flashed a quick grin. “Rough accident you had a couple days ago. Tragic.”

“Yeah, I was hoping to learn a few more details about that. Who hit us?”

“Eyewitnesses say it was a tow truck.”

“Driver in custody? Being charged?”

“Would be if I could find him.”

“You saying this was a hit-and-run?”

Pope nodded. “Hauled ass out of town after he T-boned you. Long gone by the time I reached the scene.”

“And no one got a license plate or anything?”

Pope shook his head and lifted something off the desk—a snow globe with a gold base. The miniature buildings under the glass dome became caught in a whirlwind of snow as he passed the globe back and forth between his hands.

“What efforts are being made to locate this truck?” Ethan asked.

“We got stuff in the works.”

“You do?”

“You bet.”

“I’d like to see Agent Stallings.”

“His body is being held in the morgue.”

“And where’s that?”

“In the basement of the hospital.”

It suddenly came to Ethan. Out of the blue. Like someone had whispered it into his ear.

“Could I borrow a piece of paper?” Ethan asked.

Pope opened a drawer and peeled a Post-it Note off the top of a packet and handed it to Ethan along with a pen. Ethan scooted his chair forward and set the Post-it on the desktop, scribbled down the number.

“I understand you have my things?” Ethan said as he slipped the Post-it into his pocket.

“What things?”

“My cell, gun, wallet, badge, briefcase...”

“Who told you I had those?”

“A nurse at the hospital.”

“No clue where she got that idea.”

“Wait. So you
don’t
have my things?”

“No.”

Ethan stared at Pope across the desk. “Is it possible they’re still in the car?”

“Which car?”

He struggled to keep the tone of his voice in check. “The one the tow truck hit while I was in it.”

“I suppose it’s possible, but I’m fairly certain the EMTs took your things.”

“Jesus.”

“What?”

“Nothing. Would you mind if I made a few phone calls before I leave? I haven’t talked to my wife in days.”

“I spoke to her.”

“When?”

“Day of the accident.”

“Is she on her way?”

“I have no idea. I just let her know what had happened.”

“I also need to call my SAC—”

“Who’s that?”

“Adam Hassler.”

“He sent you here?”

“That’s right.”

“Did he also instruct you not to bother calling me ahead of time to let me know the feds would be rolling up in my world? Or was that all you?”

“You think I had some obligation to—”

“Courtesy, Ethan. Courtesy. Then again, being a fed, maybe you aren’t familiar with that concept—”

“I would’ve contacted you eventually, Mr. Pope. There was no intent to cut you out of the loop.”

“Oh. Well, in that case.”

Ethan hesitated, wanting to be clear, to communicate the information he wished to impart and not a shred more. But his head was killing him and the double vision threatened to split the sheriff into two assholes.

“I was sent here to find two Secret Service agents.”

Pope’s eyebrows came up. “They’re missing?”

“For eleven days now.”

“What were they doing in Wayward Pines?”

“I wasn’t provided a detailed briefing on their investigation, although I know it involved David Pilcher.”

“Name sounds vaguely familiar. Who is he?”

“He always shows up on lists of the world’s richest men. One of these reclusive billionaires. Never talks to the press. Owns a bunch of biopharmaceutical companies.”

“And he has a connection to Wayward Pines?”

“Again, I don’t know that. But if the Secret Service was here, there was probably some investigation involving a financial crime. That’s all I know.”

Pope stood suddenly. Ethan could tell he was a large man sitting behind the desk, but standing in his boots, Ethan saw that he was an inch or two shy of six and a half feet.

“You’re welcome to use the phone in the conference room, Agent Burke.”

Ethan didn’t move from his chair.

“I wasn’t quite finished, Sheriff.”

“Conference room’s right this way.” Pope came around his desk and started toward the door. “And maybe a shirt next time? Just a suggestion.”

The pounding in Ethan’s head was becoming laced with anger.

“Would you like to know why I’m not wearing a shirt, Sheriff?”

“Not particularly.”

“One of the agents I came looking for is decomposing in a house six blocks from here.”

Pope stopped at the door, his back to Ethan.

“I just found him before coming here,” Ethan said.

Pope turned and glared down at Ethan.

“Elaborate on ‘I just found him.’”

“Last night, a bartender at the Biergarten gave me her address in case I needed anything. I woke up this morning with a terrible headache. No money. Got kicked out of my hotel room. I went to her house to get some medicine for my headache, only the address she gave was wrong or something.”

“What’s the address?”

“Six-oh-four, First Avenue. It turned out to be an old, abandoned house. In ruins. Agent Evans had been chained to a bed in one of the rooms.”

“You’re sure it’s this man you came here to find?”

“Eighty percent sure. There was a great deal of decay and his face had suffered extensive blunt-force trauma.”

The scowl the sheriff had maintained since Ethan had walked into his office disappeared, and his features seemed to soften. He walked toward Ethan and eased down into the empty chair beside him.

“I apologize, Agent Burke. I kept you waiting out in reception. I got angry that you didn’t call before coming to town, and well, you’re right. There was no obligation. I’ve got a nasty tempter—one of my many failings—and my behavior was unacceptable.”

“Apology accepted.”

“You’ve had a rough couple of days.”

“I have.”

“Go make your phone calls and we’ll talk when you’re finished.”

* * *

A long table crowded the conference room, with barely enough space between the chairs and the wall for Ethan to make his way toward the rotary phone down at the end.

He dug the Post-it Note out of his pocket and lifted the phone.

Dial tone.

He spun out the number.

It rang.

Afternoon sun slicing between the blinds and striking the table’s polished wood veneer in blades of blinding light.

Three rings in, he said, “Come on, baby, pick up.”

After the fifth ring, he got the machine.

Theresa’s voice: “Hi, you’ve reached the Burkes. Sorry we aren’t here to take your call...unless of course you’re a telemarketer...then we’re thrilled to have missed your call, and, in fact, we’re probably dodging it and encourage you to forget this number. Otherwise, leave it at the beep.”

“Theresa, it’s me. God, I feel like I haven’t heard your voice in years. I guess you know that I was in a car accident out here. No one can seem to find my phone, so if you’ve been trying to call, I’m sorry. I’m staying at the Wayward Pines Hotel, Room Two Twenty-Six. You might try calling the sheriff’s office also. I hope you and Ben are OK. I’m all right. Still a little sore, but doing better. Please call me at the hotel tonight. I’ll try you again soon. I love you, Theresa. So much.”

He hung up the phone, sat there for a moment trying to conjure the number to his wife’s cell. Got as far as the first seven digits but the final three remained shrouded in mystery.

The number to the Seattle field office came to him instantly. He dialed, and after three rings, a woman whose voice Ethan didn’t recognize answered.

“Secret Service.”

“Hi, it’s Ethan Burke. I need to speak with Adam Hassler, please.”

“He’s not available at the moment. Was there something I could help you with?”

“No, I really need to speak with him. Is he out of the office today?”

“He’s not available at the moment. Was there something I could help you with?”

“How about I try him on his cell? Could I have that number, please?”

“Oh, I’m afraid I’m not allowed to give out that information.”

“Do you understand who I am?
Agent
Ethan Burke?”

“Was there something
I
could help you with?”

“What’s your name?”

“Marcy.”

“You’re new, right?”

“This is my third day.”

“Look, I’m up here in Wayward Pines, Idaho, in the middle of a shitstorm. Get Hassler on the phone immediately. I don’t care what he’s doing. If he’s in a meeting...if he’s taking a shit...put him on the goddamned phone.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“What?”

“I’m not going to be able to continue this conversation with you speaking to me like that.”

“Marcy?”

“Yes?”

“I apologize. I’m sorry I raised my voice with you, but I have to speak with Hassler. It is urgent.”

“I’d be happy to slip him a message if you’d like.”

Ethan closed his eyes.

He was grinding his molars together to keep from screaming through the phone.

“Tell him to call Agent Ethan Burke at the Wayward Pines Sheriff’s Office, or at the Wayward Pines Hotel, Room Two Twenty-Six. He has to do this the moment he gets the message. Agent Evans is dead. Do you understand me?”