He sifted through name after name until, taken aback by the outlandishness of his thought process, he stopped at one name in particular. What about Janelle? How well, he forced himself to consider, did he really know his newlywed wife?
The very idea was preposterous. But Chuck owed it to Carmelita to ask himself the question: could the beautiful young woman who’d just told Chuck she loved him possibly be taking him for a ride? Could she, in any remotely fathomable way, be responsible for Carmelita’s disappearance and Donald’s murder?
Janelle knew about Chuck’s discovery, his “retirement fund” as he jokingly referred to it—though he’d never told anyone, not even Janelle, about the necklaces and disks. He’d wanted to keep them, the last pieces of the puzzle, to himself until he unveiled his discovery to the world. Other than that one omission, however, he had shared more details about his find with Janelle than with anyone else.
“It’s worth a fortune,” Chuck had told her. He’d explained how explosive the discovery would be when he disclosed it publicly, and how working for Marvin Begay these last two years had convinced him the time had come to do so.
He’d told Clarence about his discovery, too, before Janelle had even entered the picture. Chuck shook his head in disbelief. Could Janelle and Clarence be in on this together? That could explain an awful lot. Chuck had told Clarence and Janelle plenty about the Grand Canyon, more than enough for the two of them to direct his movements, puppet-like, in the hours since Carmelita had gone missing. And as for the discovery on Cope Butte, though he hadn’t told the two of them about the necklaces, he’d told them about the pots with their amazing exteriors, and hinted that there was much more to the find as well. Was it possible the two of them saw Chuck as nothing more than a meal ticket, a pathway to ill-gotten wealth?
Chuck thought of how easily Clarence had masked his knowledge of the discovery while describing Arturo Dinaveri’s purported shrine to Janelle in front of Robert Begay at the campsite, and of how smoothly, in response, Janelle pretended Clarence’s tale was the first she’d ever heard of any such rumored treasure.
It was Janelle who came up with the idea of visiting the Grand Canyon with Chuck and the girls. She and Clarence could have planned for Clarence’s subsequent arrival at the canyon, after which Carmelita had gone missing. Clarence could have spiked Chuck’s shot of tequila upon arriving at the campground. Janelle and Clarence could have taken Carmelita, planted the “NO COPS” note, and directed Chuck into the canyon and nearly to his death, with Janelle using her computer skills to disguise the caller’s voice and set up Chuck’s phone to supply its location.
Could Janelle and Clarence have been working with the man and woman from Albuquerque? The couple could have been charged with keeping an eye on Chuck when they had caught his attention with their juvenile antics on Maricopa Point. It would have been the woman, then, who called on Janelle’s phone when Chuck arrived back at camp after surviving the retrieval of the necklaces from the alcove.
Janelle’s involvement could explain why she’d suggested the quick City Hall wedding ceremony after Chuck proposed to her, and why she’d been so willing to leave Albuquerque, to take the girls away from their grandparents and the life they’d always known to move to Colorado.
If the gold-digger scenario had any grounding in reality, then Chuck had made for an easy mark, blinded by his love for Janelle, and blinded, too, by the trust he’d come to place in Clarence.
He remembered the night, more than a year ago, when he’d told Clarence about his find. They’d been overnighting along an isolated stretch of the transmission-line right-of-way. It was after nightfall, a cold, late-spring evening, and they sat in front of a small campfire. Relaxed by the warmth of the flames, Chuck found himself regaling Clarence with the tale of his discovery and his plan to tell the world of its existence upon completing the transmission-line contract.
“I owe it to Marvin, to the Diné,” Chuck explained to Clarence. “All these allegations of the Anasazi as cannibals who ate each other for lunch and destroyed their culture in the process? One look at my find will put an end to every bit of that.”
Chuck remembered his response when Clarence asked about the value of the discovery.
“Beyond priceless,” Chuck said. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it, because I have.” He stared into the fire. “Never have to work another day in my life. But . . .”
“But what?” Clarence urged.
“But nothing, that’s all,” Chuck replied, prompting Clarence to shake his head and whistle.
Chuck had taken Clarence’s whistle to be a gesture of admiration. But could Clarence simply have been stunned that Chuck wasn’t planning to sell his find on the black market?
In a few minutes, Chuck was to meet Janelle and Clarence in the forest behind the BIC. The six necklaces in his pack would make the two of them rich, and they would enrich themselves immeasurably more when, upon circling outward from his phone in the canyon, they found the alcove and the remaining scores of necklaces.
Chuck walked blindly through the forest. Was Janelle keeping him off balance by declaring Miguel the prime suspect in Carmelita’s disappearance, then saying the voice on the phone didn’t sound like Miguel’s? Her involvement in Carmelita’s disappearance could explain why she’d announced the disappearance online, planning to use Carmelita’s kidnapping to force Chuck to reveal the location of his discovery, then blame him for the kidnapping once he was dead. When Janelle turned up with Carmelita after alerting the entire online world to her daughter’s disappearance, no one ever would suspect her of having engineered Carmelita’s kidnapping in the first place.
But Donald had been shot and killed instead.
Chuck leaned his hand against the trunk of a ponderosa, his head hanging. No matter who had done the actual killing, it was he, Chuck, who was responsible for Donald’s death. All his life Chuck had been a loner, and loners, by definition, were lonely. If Janelle and Clarence were playing him, then it was Clarence who, as a proven master at ingratiating himself with others, had alerted Janelle to Chuck’s loneliness and attendant gullibility, after which the siblings had steered Chuck exactly where they wanted him to go.
Chuck raised his head. Even if Janelle and Clarence were innocent—as Chuck remained convinced no matter how far he spun things in his mind—he should not risk meeting up with them. Donald’s killing had changed the game. It was best if Chuck stayed away from Janelle and Clarence, at least for now, and let things play out without him.
Everyone at the Grand Canyon was on the hunt. Sometime in the next few hours, rangers would discover the woman from Albuquerque holding Carmelita in one of the lodges on the South Rim. The woman, in turn, would finger the true culprit or culprits, and Chuck would be exonerated.
But what if someone else wound up being hurt or killed because Chuck stayed hidden?
Chuck owed it to Donald to do everything he could to shut things down before anyone else was harmed. It was time for him to do what he should have been doing all along: act rather than react.
He punched the 505 number into Janelle’s phone. The computerized voice—it had to be the woman from Albuquerque—answered right away.
“I have what you want,” Chuck said, “if you still want it.”
“We do,” came the disembodied reply.
“I’m willing to meet you again. But this time you have to show yourself first. And the girl.”
There was a pause, then, “That will take some work, work, work. Sunup, sunup, sunup.”
“What’s that?”
“Sunup!” The strange repetitions resumed as the voice somehow went awry: “You’re setting the terms, terms, terms; we’ll let you know the place, place, place, place, place.”
With that, the voice was gone.
The face of Janelle’s phone glowed in the darkness. The caller had known to play for time—Chuck had until sunup, barely four hours from now, to make things right. He set his mouth in a straight line and p
unched a number he knew by heart into Janelle’s phone.
TWENTY-THREE
2 a.m.
This was about Carmelita. At daybreak, she would be taken to a location that, as before, would not be disclosed to Chuck until the last minute. The plan would be to display Carmelita in order to lure him into the open and somehow take him out in the light of day.
But what if he could win Carmelita’s release in the hours before daybreak?
“It’s me,” Chuck explained when Rachel picked up his call, “on Jan’s phone.”
Rachel’s reply was tight-lipped. “If you’ve got something to say, Chuck, say it.”
“Donald?” he asked.
“He’s dead. You know that.”
“They were still trying to bring him back when I . . .”
“When you ran away, like you have your entire life.”
“I stopped running a few months ago.”
“‘She’s really something.’ Isn’t that what you said?”
A vision of Janelle floated before Chuck. “There’s a lot going on I don’t understand,” he said.
Rachel’s voice was filled with equal parts anger and disgust. “Nothing new there.”
“You know I didn’t kill Donald.”
“I know you were involved. I know you’re off hiding somewhere while the rest of us are out here risking our lives looking for his killer. These are my people—your people, too—and you’re putting them in harm’s way.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“There’s a murderer out there,” Rachel pressed on. “You could be helping. All you had to do was stick around, talk to Robert. We could have this all wrapped up by now.”
“No,” Chuck said quickly. Then, hard and determined, “No, Rachel. Robert would’ve fingered me as the killer. He’d have taken me in, shut down any search, and left the park exits open. They’d have gotten away. It’s better like this, with the pressure still on.”
“But you’re the one we’re looking for.”
Chuck didn’t dare let Rachel in on his over-the-top suppositions about who the real culprits might be. There was someone else he could turn her loose on, however.
“You remember the woman from Albuquerque, the one whose boyfriend fell from the cliff?”
Rachel’s reply was guarded. “Yeah?”
“She’s—” He stopped. How should he put it? “I don’t think she ever left,” he finished.
“You’re saying Donald and that woman’s boyfriend, their deaths are somehow related?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
This was when he needed to let Rachel in on all the coincidences surrounding Janelle and Clarence. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it, not when he didn’t even believe them himself. “Just . . . she’s still here.”
“You have to come clean with me, Chuck.”
“She’s got Carm. She’s holed up in the village somewhere. I’m sure of it.”
“But she didn’t kill Donald.”
“No.”
“And her boyfriend, who maybe could have done the killing, is dead.”
“Yes.”
Rachel exhaled vehemently. “Somehow this woman, who I have met and spoken with and personally know to be as dumb as a pile of bricks, you’re saying you think she’s the mastermind behind Donald’s murder, her boyfriend’s murder, and the girl’s kidnapping? You’re nuts, Chuck.”
“She’s not the mastermind.”
“Then who is?”
“You just said I’m nuts.”
“Try me.”
He took a deep breath, then heard himself say, “My wife.”
“What?”
“Janelle Ortega,” he replied, forcing out the words. “My wife. I’m wondering if she might be part of it somehow.”
Rachel guffawed. “You are nuts. You’re stark raving mad.”
Chuck let out the breath he’d been holding. He’d been right to confide in Rachel. Her response was reassuring beyond measure.
“Do you realize what you just told me?” Rachel continued. “That you think your wife might be a kidnapper and a murderer, this woman who is leading—leading—everyone in the village, and everyone online, too, I might add, in the search for her missing daughter.”
“I know,” Chuck said. “I didn’t really—”
Rachel cut him off. “You were right when you told me you weren’t the marrying kind. You never should have gotten hitched. It’s driven you straight off the deep end.”
It occurred to Chuck that he’d told Rachel about his find, too. That had been years ago and, true to her nature, she hadn’t set much store by it. “You remember my discovery here at the canyon?” he reminded her.
“You’re kidding me. That’s what you think this is about? Let me get this straight. You told your wife about your hush-hush find, and you think she’s trying to get her hands on it—” Rachel’s tone went from dubious to incredulous “—by kidnapping her own daughter?”
“I’m sure I’m wrong. But Donald’s dead. I’m just trying to do something, anything, before the same thing happens to Carmelita.”
“You are wrong, Chuck. I spent a lot of time with Jan today. She’s innocent. I’d bet everything I have on it.” There was a long pause, then Rachel asked warily, “What is it you want, anyway?”
“I need your help finding the woman from Albuquerque. You know her name. I don’t.”
“I’m supposed to be finding you—‘no matter what it takes,’ is how Robert put it.”
“The woman is the key to everything. She’s got Carm.”
“You know that because . . .?”
“Trust me, Rachel.”
“Trust you? The nutcase who suspects his wife of kidnapping her own daughter?”
“I don’t think that, okay? I didn’t think that. I was just working things through in my head, considering every angle. But the woman from Albuquerque, it’s a process of elimination. She’s a piece of this. She’s gotta be.”
Chuck could hear Rachel breathing over the phone. “Okay,” she said. “For Donald.” Then, her mind clearly made up, she said briskly, “Conrad’s working tonight, lucky for you.”
“Conrad?”
“Night auditor at El Tovar. You’re not the only one who’s moved on.”
Chuck felt a slight tug deep inside himself. “You’re thinking he could run her name for us? See if it shows up at one of the lodges?”
“I am. But I’m also thinking she can’t be that stupid, can she?”
“I’m betting she grabbed a room with cash after she left the campground with Carmelita. He’d be able to check that, wouldn’t he? How many people can there be paying cash to stay at the South Rim?”
“Okay. I’ll head over, see what he can find out. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.” She broke the connection.
Chuck paced beneath the trees, fighting exhaustion. His ripped palm and raw chin throbbed, and his head pounded, an agonizing pain deep in his skull.
He pictured Janelle and Clarence moving through the woods south of the Backcountry Information Center, whispering his name and growing ever more anxious when he did not appear.
Rachel was right. They were innocent. And though he wanted with every ounce of his being to meet up with them, he knew he couldn’t. Not yet. Still, it wasn’t in him to simply wait in the forest for Rachel’s call. He broke from the back-and-forth path he was tracing beneath the ponderosas and headed for the village. He angled west, keeping well clear of the information center, aiming to emerge from the trees at the rear of the Maswik Lodge complex.
Janelle’s phone single-buzzed three times as he made his way through the forest. Each time, the phone displayed an incoming call from Clarence’s number. Chuck let the calls go to voicemail. When he reached the edge of the trees behind Maswik, he punched in Janelle’s voicemail ID, the numbers corresponding to the first four letters of Carmelita’s name, and listened to all three messages. Each was from Janelle, and each was more frantic
than the last. She asked where Chuck was, insisted he call her back, then, her voice breaking, begged him to call her the instant he was able.
The messages sounded legitimate—so legit, in fact, that it was all Chuck could do to keep from calling her that minute. But he wanted, needed, something to report to her first.
He put away the phone and stowed Rachel’s night-vision goggles in his pack before making his way across the well-lit grounds of the Maswik complex. Two hundred yards east of here, Janelle and Clarence were working their way through the trees, looking to meet up with him. To the west, emergency lights flickered blue and red from the grove of trees surrounding the railroad wye.
Chuck left the front of the complex and approached Center Road, the village’s main thoroughfare. The two-lane road, running in front of Maswik Lodge and behind the string of hotels facing the canyon rim, was lined with parked vehicles. Though its driving lanes were bumper to bumper with passenger cars and RVs during daylight hours, Center Road was little traveled this time of night. He waited until the road was clear of traffic, then hurried across it and up a sloping rear driveway that led to the lower, service-level entrance of El Tovar Hotel. In his pocket, Janelle’s phone continued its double-buzz announcements of incoming texts from the group of tourists. He wondered if any were reports of his having been sighted passing through the Maswik complex and crossing Center Road, but didn’t take time to find out. His best response to any such sightings was to keep moving.
An empty ranger patrol car was parked at the rear of the hotel in the shadows of the service-entrance loading dock. Chuck slipped past the car, climbed the stairs to the dock, and crossed the concrete landing to the service door with its small window of wired security glass. The gray metal door into the hotel’s lower level was unlocked. He ducked inside and eased the door closed behind him.
Canyon Sacrifice Page 16
