by Mark Lukens
Palmer just nodded as the man shrugged into his black suitcoat.
“No bags?” Klein asked as they walked towards the exit doors.
“Just my carry-on.” Palmer lifted up the duffel bag he carried in his hand. He had an extra change of clothes inside along with his laptop computer. He also had a small travel bag with his toothbrush, toothpaste, mouthwash, and other bathroom supplies inside. And of course he’d brought along two pints of vodka.
They left the airport and stepped out into the frigid air. Klein was a fast walker; he was a man of pent-up energy, Palmer could tell.
They got in Klein’s car and he started it.
“You want to stop for some coffee? There’s a McDonald’s along the way. It’s open twenty-four hours.”
“Yeah, sounds good,” Palmer said. A few sips from his bottle of vodka sounded better, but he would take the coffee for now.
Ten minutes later Klein pulled up to the drive-through window and paid for their coffees. Palmer dumped two creams and five sugars into his. He had a feeling this was going to be one very long day.
• • •
As he rode in Klein’s car down the ribbon of blacktop that split the sleepy town of Farmington, Palmer had time to reflect on what he’d read on the plane, the preliminary report downloaded to his phone from Debbie.
These were the details that they had for him so far about the murder case on the Navajo reservation: a group of archaeologists had received permission to excavate some kind of cave in a remote corner of Navajo land where these scientists believed a small Anasazi settlement may have stood seven hundred years ago. And now they were all dead.
Along with the sparse specifics of the case, Debbie had sent him some background information on the Anasazi. They were a large group of Native Americans who had lived in the southwestern United States from about 1100 to 1400. Supposedly they had migrated north from what is now Central American and Mexico. The Anasazi seemed to have been a very advanced culture compared to other tribes in that area at the time. They were masters of pottery, farming, and they built large cities and wide roads while most other Native American tribes at the time were more nomadic, hunting and gathering, following food sources from place to place. Some of the cities the Anasazi built were incredible (and Debbie had supplied a few photos in the report) and the remnants of some of these cities had stood the test of time, many of them still standing today.
But eventually the Anasazi seemed to have abandoned the cities and the roads they had built in New Mexico and Arizona, moving north into southern Colorado and southern Utah where they built more cities, some of them carved right into the sides of sheer rock cliffs or in the mouths of giant caves. These cities were marvels of architecture for their time.
Not long after the Anasazi built these highly defensible cities, they seemed to have just walked away from them, much like they had done before when they’d been farther south. They left behind their pottery, many of their weapons, their buried dead. Archaeologists have found evidence of battles at these northern cities, and even signs of cannibalism. Some scientists and historians believe that the Anasazi were driven away from these cities by other tribes, and others believe that weather conditions such as drought caused them to flee, while other scientists believe that there was internal strife among the Anasazi that led to infighting. But most scholars agree that the Anasazi migrated south again, and either intermingled with or became the Hopi and/or the Pueblo Indians. But no one really knew for sure.
Apparently this group of archaeologists, led by a man named Jake Phillips, had discovered a new Anasazi settlement inside the mouth of a cave that had been hidden for hundreds of years.
And now all of these archaeologists at this dig site were dead. All of them slaughtered.
There were four scientists, four grad students, and a Navajo guide in the list of victims Debbie had sent to him. The report included their names and a brief background of their careers. This group had been working with grant money supplied by the University of New Mexico. Jake Phillips had also reached out to another archaeologist, a woman named Stella Weaver who worked out of Arizona State University at the moment; she was an expert on the Anasazi culture with some wild theories about their possible extinction that didn’t seem to be sitting too well with most of academia. In the report Palmer had read about her, it was claimed that she was fueling conspiracy theories just to get published.
So, Palmer thought as he rode in the passenger seat and stared at the city buildings as they passed them, we have the archaeologists and grad students, and then we have Stella Weaver. There was also the Navajo guide with them—a man named Jim Whitefeather. He was fifty-four years old, an expert tracker and survivalist. That was ten people all together. Ten people. All dead, according to the report. Torn apart.
Klein glanced at Palmer as he drove. “We’ll get your car at the office. Then you can follow me out to the dig site.”
Palmer didn’t say anything.
“There’ll be a few officers from the Tribal Police waiting for us,” Klein continued even though Palmer hadn’t answered him. “One of them, a man named Captain Begay, he’s a real piece of work.”
Palmer just sipped his coffee. He didn’t know what “a real piece of work” meant and Klein didn’t bother expounding on it. Palmer couldn’t wait to be alone again.
“We can refill our coffees at the office,” Klein said.
Palmer could tell that Klein wanted to ask questions about what had happened at the dig site; he was itching to ask why a specialist like Palmer had been sent down from Denver to Farmington in the middle of the night.
“What kind of details did they give you about this case?” Klein finally asked.
“Ten dead. Five archaeologists, four student assistants, and one Navajo guide.”
“All of them dead?” Klein asked and chuckled like he couldn’t believe it. “How?”
“They weren’t perfectly clear on the cause of death,” Palmer said. “We’ll know more when we get there.”
Klein just nodded as he pulled into the parking lot of a non-descript one story building. “Here we are.”
CHAPTER SIX
FBI Branch Office—Farmington, New Mexico
After a quick trip to the bathroom and a refill of his coffee, Palmer got into his rental car and started it. He waited for Agent Klein to pull out of the FBI office parking lot first, and then he followed him. They drove through the town of Farmington which was waking up a little more as the sun peeked up above the horizon to the east. And fifteen minutes later they were traveling through the desert.
They traveled west on U.S. Highway 64 for a while, and then they eventually turned south on U.S. 491. The scenery was amazing. Palmer had pictured a desert in his mind before coming down here—and this place could be called a desert, but it was teeming with vegetation and so many colors. The rising sun drove back the darkness and the layers of rock brightened up with the morning light, seeming to subtly change colors as the sun rose higher.
As he drove, Palmer took a few sips from his pint of vodka he had slipped out of his duffel bag. He stayed pretty far behind Klein’s car to make sure the agent couldn’t see him stealing nips from the bottle. The alcohol helped him relax.
After well over an hour they pulled onto something called Indian Road 96 and drove down the two lane road for a ways until Klein’s car slowed down and pulled onto what looked to Palmer like a dirt trail down into the canyons. The road was bumpy and he had to navigate around pot holes and washouts. Rock walls rose up on both sides of him for much of the drive, but eventually those walls opened up to a gigantic canyon. Small rocks and sand pelted the undercarriage of his rental car as he drove. This was definitely truck country, but so far his sedan was doing okay. They drove around a bend and then Palmer saw the dig site in the distance. Closer to the dirt road was a line of vehicles parked down a sharp decline near a large stand of trees and gigantic bushes. They drove past the vehicles lined up below them and continued on around
to the canyon floor down a less steep decline, and then the trail meandered back towards the group of vehicles.
Beyond a sea of brush and rocks, Palmer saw three vehicles parked in a tight group right in front of the two temporary trailers. Two of the three trucks were obviously Navajo Tribal Police vehicles and the other one was an old Ford Bronco. The three men all stood in front of the Ford Bronco, all of them watching Palmer and Klein as they drove towards them.
Palmer glanced over at the line of trucks near the stand of trees as he drove past the trail that led to the parking area. There was a Ford 350 with a camper on back, a heavy-duty Dodge Ram, a Ford Expedition with oversized tires, and a rusty Chevy van. The line of vehicles seemed undisturbed except that two of the trucks had their hoods up in the universal sign of a broken down vehicle. He also noticed that there was a large space in between two of the trucks where another vehicle must have been parked before. There was what looked like gouges in the dirt where a pair of back tires had peeled out in the sand until they caught traction. It looked like the vehicle might have driven right up the steep incline and onto the dirt road that led out of here … but he would have to take a closer look later.
He filed these bits of information away in his mind as he drove the sedan over the bumpy trail through the scrub brush that led to the two trailers which sat end to end. Both trailers resembled motor homes, both about thirty-five to forty feet long. A tent with one canvas wall rolled up had been erected not too far away from the trailers—closer to a rock canyon wall in the distance that rose up to the sky, its jagged top a dark contrast against the peaceful blue morning sky.
Palmer parked his car farther back from the three police vehicles, right beside Klein’s black sedan, and then he cut the engine. He got out and pocketed his keys and then grabbed his coat from the back seat. After slipping his coat on, he stuffed his hands into a pair of black leather gloves. He checked his coat pockets to make sure he had his cell phone, some plastic baggies, and a few pairs of blue nitrite gloves with him.
“Captain Begay,” Agent Klein said as he walked towards the big man. He wasn’t exactly trying to hide his distaste for the captain.
“Agent Klein,” the big man answered and nodded slightly. Neither man offered a hand in greeting. The large man’s narrow eyes shifted to Palmer.
“Special Agent Palmer,” Palmer said and pulled out his ID and badge. He flipped the leather wallet open in a practiced motion, showing the badge and ID to Captain Begay.
“Begay,” the large man said and extended a gloveless brown hand to Palmer.
Palmer shook the man’s hand and it felt like his hand had been squeezed in a piece of machinery for a second.
Begay was a big man, easily three or four inches taller than Palmer’s five foot eleven inches, and he outweighed Palmer by over a hundred pounds. He had a wide face that had been tanned and wrinkled by the relentless desert sun. His mane of dark hair was tied back in a ponytail. He wore plain clothes but he had a police belt with a sidearm, walkie-talkie, and a leather pouch for a pair of handcuffs. Over his plain clothes he wore the same kind of green coat that the other two officers wore. They all had Navajo Tribal Police patches on their shoulders and a small nameplate on the right front pockets of their coats.
The other two officers were both tall and much younger and leaner than Begay. They stared at Palmer, both of them closer to the Bronco which Palmer guessed was Begay’s vehicle. The two officers didn’t stare at him with the animosity that Palmer had expected. Instead, he saw shock and fear in their dark eyes.
They had seen something bad here.
Palmer looked around for a few seconds, taking in the landscape. He noticed that what he’d thought had been a sheer rock wall in the distance actually had a vertical slit in it that was the mouth to some kind of cave. Another canvas tent, this one without walls, had been set up near the mouth with a generator underneath it. Piles of shrubbery and brush that had been cut away from the mouth of the cave were piled up on each side of the entrance to the cave, well out of the way.
“Thanks for coming,” Begay told Palmer in a low grumbling voice, but it sounded like a hollow platitude.
Palmer looked back at Begay and saw the same fear and shock in the man’s coal-black eyes. He nodded at him.
“Agent Palmer is a … a specialist in these matters,” Klein said.
Palmer wished Klein would stop talking.
“What we’ve got here,” Begay said, ignoring Klein completely, “it’s not like anything we’ve ever dealt with before.”
Palmer nodded. “Ten dead bodies.”
Begay shrugged. “Maybe. Can’t really tell.”
“What do you mean by that?” Klein asked him.
Begay looked at Klein with a hard stare. “You’ll see.”
Palmer looked over at the two trailers. “They in there?”
Begay shook his head no. “It might have started in there … there’s blood everywhere inside the first trailer and a big bloodstain in the dirt over there.” He looked back at the mouth of the cave in the distance. “But all of the bodies are in there.”
“What about the other trailer?” Klein said. “Blood in the second trailer?”
“It looks clean,” Begay answered.
Palmer didn’t say anything.
“Looks to me like a lot of these scientists were holed up in the first trailer,” Begay offered his opinion. “Maybe they were trying to hide from whatever was out here.”
“Yeah, thanks for your take on things,” Klein said. “But we’ll take it from here.”
“You mean the scientists were trying to hide in the trailer from the killers?” Palmer asked, ignoring Klein.
“I don’t know what it was,” Begay answered.
“You think this could’ve been some kind of animal attack?” Palmer asked him.
“Forensics will decide that,” Klein snapped at both of them.
Begay shook his head no at Palmer’s question and began to walk towards the first trailer. He shot a glance back at his men as if telepathically telling them to stay put.
The two officers didn’t seem to mind staying right where they were.
Palmer and Klein fell in step beside the big man as they marched towards the trailer, their breaths clouding up in front their faces in the freezing air. Begay spoke again when they were out of earshot of his men. “My guys are a little spooked.”
Palmer nodded like he understood. He wondered how many murder scenes they had investigated over the years. Couldn’t be that many, he guessed. And probably nothing like this.
Begay stopped at the foot of the portable steps that led up to the door of the first trailer. “It wasn’t an animal that did this.”
“The report I got says the bodies were torn apart,” Palmer said. “Maybe a bear—”
“Bears are hibernating this time of the year. And we don’t see many around these parts anyway. They stay more to the north.”
Palmer nodded. “So you’re saying it was a man?”
“A man didn’t do all of this.”
“More than one killer,” Klein said.
Again, Begay shook his head no. A deep scowl lined his face. He looked down at the frozen dirt for a moment, and then he locked eyes with the FBI agents. “I don’t know what did all of this.”
“Okay,” Palmer breathed out, creating his own cloud of breath in front of his face. “Let’s go inside. See what’s going on.”
“You’re the experts,” Begay said. “That’s why I call you guys.”
Palmer thought he heard sarcasm in Begay’s voice. The big man had the expression of a man who knew a terrible secret—a secret that he was going to let Palmer and Klein discover for themselves very soon.
“A forensics team is on the way from Albuquerque,” Klein told Begay, still not making a move towards the trailer door. “I don’t want anything around here disturbed any more than it probably already has been.”
Begay stared at Klein. “We haven’t touched anything.�
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Palmer slipped off his leather gloves and pocketed them in one of his coat pockets. The cold bit at his exposed skin right away. From another pocket he fished out a pair of wadded-up blue nitrite gloves and slid his hands into them. These gloves offered little protection from the freezing air. He looked at the trailer door as he adjusted his gloves, waiting a moment before entering. He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. He’d been to a thousand crime scenes before, he’d seen hundreds and hundreds of dead bodies, some mutilated beyond recognition. There wasn’t anything here that was going to shock or surprise him.
Yet he wasn’t sure why he was feeling a little nervous right now.
Maybe it was the look in the eyes of these Navajo policemen that was spooking him. These were tough and strong men, and they had seen something here that had scared them badly.
Klein slipped on a pair of latex gloves and he wasted no time butting in front of Palmer. He climbed the portable wooden steps to the trailer door and entered.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Navajo Reservation—dig site
The first thing Palmer noticed when he entered the trailer was the blood. The room he stood in seemed to take up almost half of the front of the trailer. There were two couches on opposite walls and a small recliner in a corner. Most likely some of the archaeologists slept on these pieces of furniture for the night while on this dig-site, perhaps taking turns between the couches and the bedroom. To his right, towards the very front of the trailer, there were fold-up tables and a small desk in the corner that looked like something a student might have in his or her dorm room.
Palmer stepped towards the front of the trailer. The desk had a laptop computer on it next to a collection of scientific equipment that he couldn’t name … he thought one of the pieces might’ve been some kind of a microscope. He stared at the laptop and noticed that the edges of the plastic seemed to have been melted, the laptop destroyed. He gently lifted the screen up and saw that it was cracked, the screen dark.
