A Noble Calling Read online

  His reflections were interrupted by a soft knock at his door. Two tiny little girls in long cotton dresses and snow boots were standing in the doorway, smiling up at him and holding out yesterday’s art project. Sister Jenny gently nudged the six-year-olds into the large office. The man’s face lit up with pride and joy, and he quickly closed the distance to the shy youngsters.

  “What do you beautiful girls have there?” He leaned down close to them and wrapped his arms around their shoulders. “For me? You colored those for me?”

  He admired the artwork as the girls overcame their shyness and began pointing out animals, rivers, and, of course, angels. He sat them in the big chairs and let them pick a Bible story for him to recite. Their teacher beamed at her pigtailed charges and thanked him for his time as they moved out the door a few minutes later.

  A thick man in a heavy coat leaned against the doorframe and watched as the children walked down the hall. “David and Goliath. Always was one of my favorites! You tell a great story.” He laughed softly as he walked in to shake hands with his prophet.

  “Brother Ron! You’re back sooner than we thought.” The Prophet shook the man’s hand and then closed his other hand over it. “A successful trip?”

  “A very successful trip. Walk downstairs with me and I’ll show you. Came early to unload a few things—thought I could drive you down.” Ron moved along the hallway to the stairs. “I see we have more children in the school now. You’ll have to hire another teacher.”

  The older man caught up as they started down the oak stairs.

  “We’ve also had several join the men’s prayer group this month,” he said. “Three served in Afghanistan. They’re fine, patriotic men, seeking the Lord with all their hearts. God is bringing the right men to us.”

  Outside the front door, he stopped to hug one of the sisters who was standing on the wide front porch, watching the younger kids play kickball in the early-morning snow. Ron was standing beside the covered bed of his silver pickup, and the older man hurried to join him. He pulled his gray Stetson down tighter in the wind and light snow. He wished he’d taken the time to grab his coat.

  Ron pulled the waterproof tarp back on several boxes labeled as Bibles and schoolbooks. He called two of the older girls over and handed them several large plastic sacks of big white teddy bears, all with God Is Love stenciled across their chests in pink and blue.

  The Prophet was thrilled. “Give them out to all the little ones, girls! This will make their day!” His gleaming eyes turned back to the treasures his assistant brought: two more boxes to examine.

  His gaze met Ron’s, and the stout man grinned. “Twelve Bibles in each box, twelve bound copies of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, $50,000 cash, and twenty pounds of Semtex.”

  “Hallelujah!”

  Chapter Three

  Win had always finished projects; he wanted one job done before another was started. Of course that never worked in real life and certainly not in the Bureau. There were always starts and stops, new cases, new priorities, new leads to follow, but he tried to compensate for the uncertainty of the job by fostering a sense of completion in his private life. So when Jason’s workmen had arrived at 7:30 this morning, he’d already been up for two hours, hauling in his boxes and his new purchases from Bozeman. He wanted the house finished, then he’d move on to other things.

  It was still snowing off and on, although the coldest air had moved away; it was predicted to inch above freezing by late morning. The workers were putting new mirrors in the downstairs bathroom as Jason drove Win to the outskirts of Gardiner to the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center to peruse the art and other treasures the Park Service had collected over the last zillion years at Yellowstone. Those riches were sitting unused in the basement of the modern three-story building. It seemed so wasteful to Win; they’d spent seven million on a building that would preserve paintings, drawings, and records of the historic buildings in Yellowstone National Park, but they couldn’t get a few hundred thousand each year to keep those same structures from decay and decline.

  “Some of these paintings were given to the park by the artists. Most hung in one of the lodges or hotels—all the way back to the late 1800s,” Jason was saying as he keyed in the combination to a climate-controlled area. The required one course in freshman art appreciation at the University of Arkansas was the extent of Win’s art education, but he did appreciate beauty when he saw it, and there was plenty of beauty sadly stored away in these vast, nondescript rooms.

  Jason kept talking. “At least we have a proper place to store the art and artifacts—that’s something, I guess. Look here, sir, I pulled a few paintings out of their crates last night so you could see them better. The house deserves some authentic Yellowstone art, don’t you think?”

  Jason’s enthusiasm was contagious, and Win could have easily spent all morning sorting through the paintings, but he had other work to do. He chose a large oil painting of buffalo in the Lamar Valley to go over the fireplace mantel in the living room. It was painted by a French artist and had hung in the Old Faithful Lodge for seventy years. They picked several pieces for various rooms, mostly waterfalls and landscapes. Then Win found the bear picture. It was actually an oil painting as well, dating back to 1904, the tag said. A huge brown grizzly bear towering over a fallen elk, painted by some German guy. It was so powerful it seemed alive.

  “Hey, could I hang this in the office—the FBI office?”

  “That bear is totally awesome! Sure, it’s government property. It has to hang in a historic building. The older agent was never interested in any of our inventory, but sure!” Jason seemed thrilled to have a prospective new project.

  After they unloaded their haul back at the house, Win watched Jason pull out of the gravel parking area and was just beginning to appreciate the slightly warmer temperature, the rising cloud level, and the tapering snow flurries when the rain began. He ducked inside, where the workmen were still at their tasks, but he felt a bit in the way, so he decided to drop in on Johnson a day early. Win was annoyed that the older agent hadn’t checked on him. The man knew how sick he’d been that first afternoon, yet not a word from him. And the senior resident agent should be the one showing him the ropes in his new post, not some seventeen-year-old kid who might or might not actually work for the Park Service. Hospitality was definitely not Johnson’s strong suit.

  The agent’s office door was open. Win leaned in and knocked lightly. Johnson glanced up with a squint and a scowl. He answered the intrusion with one sentence: “It isn’t Saturday yet.”

  Win wondered if this was his office persona—a way to hold others at a distance. It was certainly working. Win had seen brief flashes of quickness, efficiency, and focus in the agent during the episode with the suspected poacher, but he saw none of that now. Instead, he saw a graying, overweight bureaucrat hunched over paperwork in an office that was beyond cluttered.

  “Hey, didn’t mean to bother you—workers at my house. Thought I’d drop by and see if you wanted to catch lunch.” Win hated being so deferential to this jackass, who clearly had no intention of being welcoming, but if they were going to work together for months if not years, they might as well be civil.

  There was a long pause. The only sound was rain hitting windows hidden somewhere in the room behind piles of files and boxes. “Well, hell, might as well get this done now. I got the final call yesterday and I’m out of here for in-service training at Quantico for two damn weeks. You can report anything that happens, not that there’ll be anything, to Jim West, our supervisor in Jackson, Wyoming.”

  “Does he get up here often? Any of the brass?”

  Johnson snorted. “Hell, they never darken the door. No one’s gonna look over your shoulder here or give a rat’s ass about what you do or don’t do. It’s a seven-hour drive to Jackson when the park’s roads are closed—about three to four in summer, with all the tourist
traffic and bear jams. Takes a day to drive to Bozeman and fly down. And Denver? Our home office? Well, that’s a seven-hundred-mile trip.” Win saw a hint of sadness cross the man’s face. Then, “We may not be on the far side of nowhere, but you can damn well see it from here.”

  So Johnson feels some remorse for his banishment as well. Win quickly changed gears to keep his own emotions in check. “What about the case with the poacher?”

  The older agent cleared his throat. “Won’t have the preliminary hearing on Bordeaux until after I get back, if they have one at all. The rangers can’t find any poaching evidence.” He glanced down at his desk. “The caseload’s light . . . two open cases of felony drug violations, an assault case, and a theft-of-government-property investigation. I’m letting Park Service folks handle most of the legwork on those.”

  Win interpreted that comment as “I’m not doing any more work than I have to.”

  Johnson was still talking. “Your keys, phone, and codes are in an envelope on your desk. Let’s go see your vehicle; it arrived yesterday. The only damn perk of this office is a good vehicle. Can’t do lunch. Busy.”

  Win moved back into the hall and flipped on the light in the adjoining office. He stepped around boxes and retrieved a large manila envelope from atop the stacks of files on the shoddy metal desk. Johnson was already walking down the hall toward the stairs. Win pulled up his parka hood as Johnson swiped his badge on the rear exit door.

  “Security system is back on for this door. It doesn’t work half the time, and the front-entrance keypad was never installed.”

  Win saw an opening. “The assistant facilities manager offered to help with the office. Any problem with that while you’re gone?”

  “Knock yourself out. Just get all the old working files shredded to confidential trash, to be shipped to the Jackson Hole RA. Scan anything that needs to go into the Sentinel system. I never did upload everything to our new digital system.”

  New digital system? The Sentinel computerized case management system was in place long before Win joined the Bureau.

  Johnson kept talking as he walked toward the vehicles. “I got written up on that at the last inspection. Damn stuff has accumulated for years. Got written up on all the technology crap and the security system too. You younger agents love that stuff. Have at it!”

  Two weeks without Johnson was beginning to look real good.

  Win’s new ride was a dark-gray Ford Expedition. It had all the bells and whistles: FBI-encrypted digital radios, analog radios to communicate with everyone including the state police and local law enforcement agencies, and a satellite phone system. Three antennas, but two were concealed. The blue police lights were well hidden within the grill, mirrors, and back window. Good, not too obvious.

  The SUV had Wyoming tags with the little emblem of a cowboy on a bucking horse—very inconspicuous. As Win memorized his fabricated license plate number, he smiled to himself. Can’t sneak up on the bad guys with government plates. Johnson had already placed a Remington 870 short-barrel shotgun, an MP5 submachine gun, and extra ammo inside the SUV’s metal gun safe. They spent the next fifteen minutes standing in the drizzle, checking off the truck’s required equipment: raid jackets, body armor, flashlights, first aid kit, ax, rope, survival gear. All the mandatory stuff for more isolated FBI postings had to be in their proper places. Any FBI agent would know exactly where to find each piece of equipment in his vehicle. Win liked that structure. His Bureau car in Charlotte had contained a whole lot less gear, but backup in Charlotte was minutes away; backup here might be in another state.

  Johnson tromped back into the stone building with hardly a parting word. Win wanted to check out other areas of Mammoth, but the rain had picked up again and the temperature was dropping instead of rising, so he camped out in the lobby of the Mammoth Hot Springs Hotel and began setting up his new Bureau phone. He called or texted anyone who could be annoyed with him for having been out of touch for days. One scolding from little brother about not calling home was enough. His melancholy mood reemerged as he keyed in contacts and skipped over S. No Shelby on this new phone, none of her family; even some of their mutual friends were gone. Five years in a relationship and not seeing her name in his Favorites brought the hollow feeling in his chest back with startling suddenness.

  He leaned back in the chair and stared past the comfortable furniture in the vintage lobby, through the large windows, into the gray rain. It occurred to him that the low clouds were identical to the dark ones hanging over him these last several months. He’d been right in there, working with the lead agent on the biggest political corruption case on the East Coast: the Brunson case. Less than three years out of the FBI Academy at Quantico, he was making his mark—then it all fell apart and he’d been told he was lucky to still be in the Bureau. Some agents lost their jobs, others were forced to retire. There’d even been death threats. He knew he’d handled his part of the case strictly by the book, but here he was at a dead-end duty station, where the powers that be were hoping he’d flame out and quit—or worse. He just wasn’t sure what worse looked like.

  And Shelby. Shelby picked her timing perfectly. He’d desperately needed her support, but she’d come unraveled like a cheap sweater. “Your career with the Bureau is over! Quit now!” His mind’s eye saw her rage, saw her shake her long blond hair back over her shoulders. “How could you put your Bureau friends ahead of our future? We can still be together in New Orleans! My residency starts in April. Quit now!” He could see her storm out of the apartment and slam the door as if it were yesterday.

  How had she loved him for five years and not known he wasn’t a quitter, or that he wouldn’t turn his back on friends who needed his testimony to keep their jobs or at least keep their pensions? How did they drift so far apart that they no longer knew each other’s hearts—each other’s souls? He slumped farther down in the chair and stared vacantly toward the room’s tall ceiling. He knew those were just the painful symptoms, the superficial torment masking the real crisis in his soul. Have I brought this on myself by straying from God? He closed his eyes to silence questions he couldn’t yet answer. I have to get beyond this.

  Lunch wasn’t an interest any longer, so he bought peanut butter crackers and a Coke at the gift shop and drove his old SUV back to the house. He tried to dig himself out of his funk by dodging workmen and unpacking boxes in his bedroom. Two mice scurried from under the bed and into the closet, where they promptly disappeared into some secret mouse place he couldn’t locate. He made a mental note to buy lots of mousetraps.

  Oak dining furniture, rugs, more lamps, and a wooden antique desk and chair had appeared. Various painters, electricians, carpenters, and housekeepers were swooping through to finish numerous details. He wondered if everyone on the post got this type of service. He wondered if little Jason had an agenda. He was stacking his legal books in a tall walnut bookcase when Jason appeared in the late afternoon. When he saw the boy’s eager face, he regretted his cynicism. The kid was just passionate about his job. He knew it had been far too long since he’d felt that way.

  Jason carefully wiped his wet boots and walked through the house, checking the items on his clipboard. Win could tell the boy was proud of himself, and even though he hadn’t fully seen the “before,” he had to admit the “after” looked amazing for a 120-something-year-old house. He gave Jason the go-ahead on the FBI office makeover and smiled as the boy’s face lit up. They waded through a mountain of government paperwork on employee housing, with Win marveling that he would only be paying a tiny fraction of the rent he’d paid in Charlotte.

  Jason placed his paperwork into its folder as he leaned back against the kitchen counter. “Hmmm, one more thing today, sir, uh . . . I guess you noticed the mice.”

  “Yeah, if you could call the exterminator, I’d really appreciate it. Two mice were in the bedroom this afternoon.”

  “That’s the issue, uh, the exterm
inator. Since we’re on national parkland we aren’t allowed to use any chemicals to get rid of bugs or rodents—environmental rules, you know. Snap traps just get rid of the stupid ones, and sticky traps are inhumane.”

  This conversation was not moving in the direction Win had hoped. “Is it against the park’s rules to shoot them?” he asked, smiling.

  Jason didn’t miss a beat. “Well, maybe not technically, but—”

  “I was kidding, Jason. So how am I gonna deal with the mice?”

  “There’s a cat that goes with this unit.”

  “Seriously? A cat?”

  “Yeah, a great cat! Born in this house. The last tenant didn’t care for cats. He wouldn’t let him stay. That’s why the mice have taken over. The cat moves in and the mice split. This cat’s been in our heated garage for three months, waiting for the new occupant—that’s you!” Jason said it as if Win had won the lottery. He was talking quickly now and walking toward the back door. “He’s in my truck; brought him over for you to check out. Not allergic to cats, are you? Great cat! His name’s Gruff.”

  “Nothing against cats, but I’m more of a dog person.” Why am I letting this teenage kid talk me into taking an animal I don’t want or need? His eye caught some movement from the corner of the kitchen floor. Well, maybe he did need it, but he sure didn’t want it. “Look, I don’t have any cat stuff. Food, cat box—”

  “No problem. My mom sent over a whole sack of food, plus a litter box and litter. You’re set for a week. You’ll hardly ever see him. Big house to roam.” He saw Win’s hard face and dropped the charm offensive. “If you don’t take him, sir, he’ll have to go to the pound in Gardiner. We have two inside cats. It’s here or the pound—and you know what that means.” Jason looked so pitiful Win thought he might burst into tears.