Page 85 of Dead Mountain

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THE MEETING WAS over. Corrie exited the office, unsure where Sharp had gone or what she was supposed to do now. She returned to her cubicle on unsteady feet and sat down, her mind in turmoil. She felt a burning sense of betrayal that struck at the very heart of why she had joined the FBI. Her childhood had been full of injustice and the unfair use of power—from her alcoholic mother and absentee father, to being bullied at school and harassed by the local sheriff. Confronting injustice was what drove her sense of self and animated her choice of careers. But this—this was anything but justice. How could the director have agreed to it?

Now a welling up of anger washed away the feelings of betrayal. It was more than a betrayal. From Garcia on down, they’d been defrauded, undermined, demoralized . . . And what about Sharp? She’d never seen him so angry. What was he going to do? What was she going to do?

First, she told herself, she had to calm down. She needed a moment to think through this whole fucked-up situation. They had solved the case: that much was obvious. The impact—the sound, the bright light, the tremors, whatever—had scared the shit out of the nine hikers. It explained why they had fled into the storm, why they’d run northward—not toward anything, but just away from the disaster . . . and into another, final one. And now they were supposed to keep pretending? How, exactly?

That much was obvious. She suddenly sat up. She could feel her head clearing. Was it really that obvious? Or had the excitement of this huge discovery blinded her to the whole picture?

You saw the photographs. She could almost hear Gold’s words, whispering to her again.

She gathered up a sheaf of eight-by-ten photos of the original tent site and went through them slowly. Then she stared off into space, thinking, as minutes went by. Forty minutes had passed since the awful meeting in Garcia’s office. It was now eight o’clock and she could hear the workplace filling up, agents arriving for the day. What to do now? She went through the photos again and selected a small number of them, along with an inventory of the objects found with Tolland and Wright. She tucked them all under her arm and rose. Stepping out of her cubicle, she nodded perfunctory greetings to her colleagues as she headed for Sharp’s office.

The door was shut and she knocked.

No answer. Was he in there? She leaned close to the door. “Agent Sharp?”

A moment later, she heard the door unlock. When it opened, Sharp stood there, saying nothing. He nodded her toward a chair, shut and locked the door behind her. His demeanor was rigidly composed.

He sat down, clasped his hands on the desk. “When you joined the FBI,” he said, “I don’t imagine you ever thought something like this might happen.”

“No, sir, I didn’t,” Corrie said.

“Neither did I,” said Sharp.

“What are you going to do about it?”

He shook his head. “Agent Swanson, before I joined the FBI, I did some things for my country that . . .” He paused. “Let’s just say I wasn’t happy to do them, but there was no question: they had to be done. But this is different. I think of those families never knowing what really happened. And us, making a pretense of investigating . . . making promises . . . It goes against everything I believe in as an FBI agent.” He shook his head. Corrie could hear the disgust in his voice. “I . . .”

He paused and she waited, but he didn’t complete the sentence. After a long silence, he said, “I’m very sorry, Corrie, this happened to you. Soon, I’ll have finished my twenty. But you . . . you’re just starting out.”

Did that mean he might resign? “You can’t abandon me,” she blurted out.

He looked at her, then shook his head. It was an ambiguous gesture, and she wasn’t sure if it was meant to be reassuring—or otherwise.

She took a deep breath. It was now or never. “Sir, there’s something about the case I’d like to talk to you about.”

He looked at her steadily. “Yes?”

“I’m not sure we’ve actually solved it.”

His stare deepened.

Corrie brought out one of the photos. “Here’s an image of the tent as it was initially found by the searchers.” She slid it toward him, then chose another. “And here’s one from another angle.”

But Sharp did not look at the photos. He continued looking at Corrie, hands folded on the table.

“Um, you’ll see, sir, that there’s a vestibule at the front of the tent. They were using that area to cook on their backpacking stove—you can see the stove in there, and some packets of freeze-dried food and instant cocoa.”

Finally, he took his eyes from her and looked at the photos, saying nothing.

“You can see, the front door of the tent leading into the vestibule is unzipped, and the vestibule is also staked partway open. Probably to allow the cooking fumes to ventilate.”

He finally spoke, and his voice was cold. “So?”

“The point I’m making is that there was a clear way out of the tent. But instead of running out that open door, they nevertheless slashed their way out the side.”

“On the side away from the blast.”

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