CHAPTER TEN

The three agents made their way back to their vehicle. Faith was torn. On one hand, her experiences with Garrett hadn't been encouraging. On the other hand, Quint's statement made a lot of sense too.

When they were on the road back to the highway, Michael asked, "What do you think about what Quint said?"

She sighed. "I don't know. I don't buy that Garrett's a saint now."

"I don't either, but I kind of get the disdain for outside interference. We've been dealing with that since the beginning."

"We haven't though. Not really. Wyatt might not agree with us, but if we need him to do something, he does it. And he wasn't an asshole to us."

"Well, we didn't accuse him of murder."

"We didn't accuse Garrett of murder. We said we wanted to question him."

"And he reacted the way a lot of innocent people we've questioned have reacted," Michael pointed out. "Aggressive at first and increasingly defensive and nervous when it became clear that he couldn't intimidate us."

"So you think he's innocent."

"I don't know yet. I think he's a strong suspect, but I'm not ready to close the investigation. I'm just trying to look at this thing from all angles."

She sighed. "Yeah, I know. It's just frustrating."

"It always is."

She rolled her eyes. "Thank you, oh great sage, for your wisdom. I'm only saying that I don't believe that Garrett's the person Quint says he is. Maybe he does all of that charity work Quint talked about, but plenty of murderers did charity work. Hell, John Wayne Gacy was a clown at a children's hospital."

"Plenty of murderers do charity work and plenty of good people are assholes." She raised an eyebrow, and he clarified. "More or less good people. Once again, I'm not saying we stop investigating him, "I'm just defending my earlier assertion that we shouldn't put all of our investigative eggs in this one basket."

Faith sighed. "Yeah. You're right."

"So what do you want to do?"

Faith sighed. "We should have PD watch them. You were right before. We need to be the brains and let them do the legwork."

"In your defense, I agreed with your decision to do the legwork ourselves. So we both fucked up."

She glared at him. "You are shit at comforting people, you know that?"

"And yet, you still come to me with your problems."

That thought hit her powerfully. "Yeah. I do."

They pulled onto the highway and regained cell signal. Faith called Wyatt. "I need you to put a tail on two people in Glennallen."

"Who's that?"

"Garrett Pines and his friend, Quint… damn it. I didn't get a last name for Quint. He's a heavyset man in his mid-fifties. Wears a cowboy hat. Both of them are armed and should be considered dangerous."

"Everyone's armed and dangerous out here," Wyatt replied. He didn't put any emotion behind that statement. It was just a statement. "All right. I'll put tails on them. Won't be too hard to figure out who Quint is in a town as small as Glennallen. Do you think they're responsible for the murders?"

Faith looked at Michael. She hadn't even considered the possibility of the two of them working together. "It's possible. Garrett was involved in a legal dispute with the two victims that worked out not in his favor a few months ago. Quint was very vocal and earnest in his defense of Garrett, so it's clear the two of them are close."

"I see. Very well, I'll get some officers up there. Good work, you two."

It didn't really mean anything in a practical sense to here an Anchorage cop tell them that, but Faith still glowed at the praise. Maybe the locals didn't hate them after all.

"We don't have enough to make an arrest at the moment," Faith told him, "but Michael and I are going to brainstorm tonight and see if we can come up with anything else that'll help us know where to go from here."

"I'm sure you'll have what you need soon enough. Stay safe, okay?"

"You too."

She hung up, and Michael said, "Wow. He went from annoyed local cop to protective older gentleman in three seconds flat."

She batted her eyelashes at him. "What can I say? Men want to protect me."

"Men want to protect themselves from you," he corrected. "If they know what's good for them."

She looked out the windshield at the cone of light the truck projected onto the highway. "Was it that bad being with me?"

"What? Where did that come from?"

"Nothing. Nevermind. I think I just need some more coffee."

"I second that motion."

***

Twenty minutes later, they sat, coffees in hand, across from each other at their room's small table. Turk slept in the same spot as the night before, out cold despite the light from the table lamp and his partners' conversation.

"While we're treading water on the Garrett Pines lead," Faith said, "I want to explore the connection between our victims. They knew each other well enough that they were on a mountain climbing trip together, and Valerie was willing to testify against Garrett for Ethan. So they were friends. If they were friends, then they might have other friends, and one of those other friends might be our killer."

"I'm in favor of that," Michael said, "but how do we figure out who their friends are? They have zero social media presence."

"We'll start by looking at local adventure groups: mountain climbers, campers, survivalists, and stuff like that. They're bound to have pictures up on the website, and when we find one that has Valerie and Ethan, we follow up with them."

"Sounds good to me. You want to start with campers, and I'll start with mountain climbers?"

"That works."

The two of them got to work. Not surprisingly, there were dozens of tour companies that offered packages and memberships catered to wilderness adventures and hundreds of informal groups of people with similar interests in the area. Most of them were clustered in Anchorage, but a few of them were located in the smaller communities that lined Highways One and Four. Faith started with those. Business hours were over, so she couldn't call and ask specifically about Ethan and Valerie. For this reason, she saved the results in case pictures didn't reveal anything. This was another task they could have the police department do, but they weren't doing anything themselves at the moment, and Faith wasn't tired enough to sleep.

Might be the four cups of coffee you've had today, she thought.

"Five," she said as she got up to pour herself a refill.

"What's that?"

"Nothing. You want more coffee?"

"Have I ever said no to coffee?"

"Once or twice, I think."

"Really? Were we at a suspect's house?"

"I think so."

"Oh, that makes sense. I was afraid to get murdered."

"Probably."

She refilled their cups, then got back to work. The camping groups didn't yield anything, so she moved onto survivalist groups while Michael moved onto adventure groups that offered more generalized wilderness exploration packages.

Faith noticed a difference right away between the survivalist groups and the other groups. While the businesses and more activity-based groups had bright websites with lots of color and announced their activities enthusiastically, the survivalist groups were far more muted in tone and focused on education and experience. They were catered to people who took wilderness survival very seriously, and a lot of what the websites offered and discussed wasn't accessible to casual adventurers.

They also tended to be much smaller. While the camping groups had memberships that numbered in the dozens or sometimes even hundreds, the survivalist groups were usually small, close-knit friends who seemed to have known each other for years. The largest group Faith found had ten members. Most were between four and six.

She finished her coffee and was preparing to go for another refill when she found it. "I've got it!"

"What?" Michael asked. "You found them?"

She grinned. "Yep. This group here. Nature's Guardians. ‘Responsible citizens and stewards of planet Earth.'"

"Sounds like a political action group."

"I'm sure they're active enough politically, but all of the pictures I'm seeing are of them on extreme survival expeditions. See? Here's the group camping on a glacier in the Talkeetna Mountains. Notice the two in the foreground next to the petite woman in the center?"

Michael looked and said, "Well, I'll be damned. If that isn't Ethan Holloway and Valerie North."

"Yes, it is. And they're also in this video that teaches you how to waterproof your shelter with pine tar and moss. There's another one of them spearfishing, and one of them climbing Denali."

"Is that the infamous bad icepick incident?"

"They don't mention anything about it here, but that could just be because they don't want the information on their website."

"Good point. So we know it's this group. Do we have a membership list?"

"Let me see."

She clicked on the link that said memberships. It led to a page with the following simple message: memberships by referral only. For questions, call Lisa Blackwood.

The message was followed by a phone number, presumably Lisa Blackwood's, and business hours. The business hours looked more like suggestions. Nine-thirty to five-thirty "most days."

"Quite the exclusive little club," Michael said.

"So it seems," Faith replied. "But I say we give it a shot."

"Works for me." He yawned. "I'm going to turn in now. I'm beat. Get her address and whatever else you think we need to know. We'll visit her in the morning and see what we can learn about these Guardians."

"Sounds good. Get some sleep, Papa Bear."

"Eww."

"What?"

"Don't call me that. Papa Bear? Where the…" he sighed. "Just… eww."

She chuckled and said, "All right. Get some sleep, dumbass."

"I'll take that over Papa Bear any day."

Faith wasn't tired yet, but she stopped drinking her coffee. She looked through the Nature's Guardians website and tried to get a sense of the people in the photos. They all looked… intense. They smiled, but there was an edge to their smiles. Their eyes looked both haunted and passionate. It was an odd mix of personality traits, but it somehow made sense. They made a hobby out of putting themselves in situations that would kill other people.

But maybe for one person in that group, that was no longer enough. Perhaps that rush had become dull, and they had to up the ante by taking the lives of their fellow survivalists.

Faith looked at those intense smiles and wondered if one of them had crossed the line from survivor to killer.