Page 55 of Dead Mountain

“Can you be more specific about the withdrawal of that report?”

“A day after the results came in, two spooks showed up. Very polite. They spent some time in our lab, some more time in the evidence vault, and then they came up to me and my team and asked that we give them all the files pertaining to the tests and their results. Next thing I know, the thing was classified at the highest level.”

“So who were the spooks? You must have asked for identification.”

“No badges of any official governmental branch, just generic IDs, which we confirmed with Justice. They were the real deal—no question.”

“But word about the radiation leaked out anyway,” Corrie prompted. “How did that happen?”

“We investigated that leak and got nowhere. I’m pretty sure it didn’t come from the FBI. Maybe Justice, maybe the military. Too many people had already seen the results to put the genie all the way back in the bottle.” He paused. “Have you learned any more about the radiation in your own investigation?” There was a curious tone in his voice as he asked the question, edgy, almost sarcastic.

“The results were a precise match to the tests done on the original samples fifteen years ago.” This information had, in fact, just come in, along with the additional toxicology tests on Tolland and Wright—which had been depressingly devoid of anything interesting. “Let’s move ahead to the following May, when two more bodies were found.”

Gold nodded. “Lynn and Luke.”

“Your reports describe the condition of the bodies in detail but offer no solid conclusions as to what happened.”

“No viable scenario presented itself to us. It was clear that the two, who were better clothed than the first four, had tried to dig a cave for warmth in an area of deep, drifted snow near the top of a ravine. What wasn’t clear—what, to be blunt, we had no answer for—was why they were crushed in such a traumatic fashion.”

“Avalanche?” Corrie asked.

“We looked into that, of course. We called in a local expert on winter mountaineering; it’s in the reports. Avalanches require a slope of at least twenty-two degrees to form, and the slope above the ravine was fifteen. In addition, they were at the very top of the ravine, where avalanches don’t usually form. We had the expert review the topography—he ruled it out. In the absence of an avalanche, we were unable to determine how they’d been crushed like that, with no broken skin. Any more than we knew how some of them suffered third-degree burns.”

“So your final report read,” said Corrie.

“Let me just correct you there, Agent Swanson. There was a last report, as I said—but it wasn’t final. It was interim. The pressure to solve this case was incredible. God knows there were plenty of half-assed ideas floating around. I could have chosen the least crazy hypothesis and written it up as our presumptive official theory. But that’s not the way the FBI works. At least, not how it’s supposed to.”

“So when you found no theory that fit, no answer that could explain the circumstances, you—as the lead investigator—gave no answer at all,” Sharp said.

“Exactly.”

And so the case was left open, Corrie thought. And that only further fueled the controversy. And led to Gold’s fall from grace. At least he was honest.

Aloud, she asked, “Did you survey the ravine area, where the two bodies were found?”

“We collected evidence, of course.”

“I mean a survey of the archaeological kind, subsurface.”

“Pointless,” said Gold. “Even in May the ravine was still full of snow. You saw the photographs. Our ERT did a meticulous job collecting evidence.”

He stopped speaking and shifted in his chair, the chanting outside filling the silence. In his eyes, Corrie saw lonely despair; defiance; anger; and frustration.

“I have no more questions,” she said, closing her notebook.

Ten minutes later they were back in their SUV, the small band of protesters taking up positions on both sides of them now, chanting energized by their departure. The strophe and antistrophe of their chorus faded as they accelerated away, the front door of the house closed and the blinds shut tight.

29

AS THEY BEGAN the long drive back to the FO, Corrie found herself sharing Sharp’s disinclination for talk. She had too much to think about. She’d been hoping to uncover some nugget, some discrepancy, some clue everyone had overlooked, that would blow the case wide open. But all she’d gotten out of the interview was despair and failure. Gold was—no pun intended—played out. Everything he’d witnessed, everything he’d done, was in the files she’d already looked at. Instead of the revelation she’d been anticipating, she’d had a revelation of a far different kind: what it looked like to be given a monster of a case . . . and remain unable to bring it to a satisfactory conclusion.

She had a creeping suspicion that Gold—a hardworking, accomplished, and honorable agent—hadn’t quite been up to it. He’d gone into the case with high hopes, a stepping-stone to greater things. But instead, he had retired under a cloud, and the unfinished business had gnawed at him ever since. And it seemed to her that he had not followed up, or had given up too soon, on some obvious lines of inquiry. Instead of a mother lode, she’d found a sad and disturbing scene—made worse by shrill protesters invading his very place of retreat. Tell the truth, no more lies! It was awful. They were awful. She quickly reminded herself they were the families of the victims—but did that excuse it?

Tell the truth, no more lies! The voices echoed in Corrie’s head as she merged onto I-25 just south of Caballo. But Gold had told the truth—that was the problem.

Could what happened to Gold happen to her now? Or Sharp?

What kind of agent had he been? Competent, honest, but unimaginative. The regimented mindset he’d revealed was unsuited to such an exotic problem. If ever there was a case that demanded out-of-the-box thinking, this was it. The more she thought about it, the more it seemed Gold had searched for answers by asking only the most obvious questions. When normal investigative paths led nowhere, he’d just gone down them again . . . and again. For example, he couldn’t understand why the bodies around the fire were so badly burned on their feet, legs, and heads. To him, it was a mystery. To the public, it was proof of aliens or secret weapons. But to Corrie, the answer seemed so obvious she was almost afraid to voice it.

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