by Mark Lukens
Leaving the laptop open, Palmer walked over to the two tables where collections of labeled pottery and stone fragments were laid out. It looked like it had been a neat display at one time, but now it was a cluttered mess, some of the artifacts on the floor around the table.
Had there been a fight in here? Palmer wondered. Maybe one of these scientists had flipped out and attacked the others, then fled the scene.
Palmer stood next to one of the tables for a long moment, just staring down at the pottery fragments, letting his mind wander. He liked to be the only one at the crime scene, especially when he was the first agent there, but he was here with Klein and the Tribal Police officer. When he was alone, he liked to try to piece together what had happened, let the clues speak to him. He would never go so far as to call it a psychic ability, but if he was quiet and if he just let his mind reach out, it was almost like the murder scene and the dead spoke to him, like they told him a story.
And it felt like this story was beginning to come together in his mind. Maybe it was a disgruntled scientist. Or one of them had had a mental breakdown … like some kind of cabin fever. This person had attacked one of the scientists, maybe killed him in a fit of rage. That’s why there was all the blood on the walls and soaked into the carpet. Knowing he was in trouble, the attacker tried to cover his tracks by killing the others.
Palmer slid his gloved hand into his suitcoat pocket and pulled out his cell phone. He took some photos of the pottery fragments and the destroyed laptop on the desk. The forensics team would take many more photos, but Palmer liked to have his own to study. He took photos of the smears of blood on the corners of the plastic tables; a spray of blood across the artifacts with their neat little white tags tied to them, labeled with some kind of code or filing system that Palmer didn’t understand.
He walked through the rest of the living room area, his footsteps thudding on the floor and making him sound heavier than he was. The cold wood flooring underneath the thin carpet cracked and popped with each step he took.
Begay waited by the front door and Klein had a digital camera that he was using to take photos. But Palmer ignored them, delving deeper into the clues before him.
The cheap venetian blinds that covered the windows were torn and bent in many places. One of the blinds hung askew over the window behind one of the couches. A splatter of blood dotted these blinds.
Hit with a blunt object, Palmer thought. Blood spray from the wound … most likely from the victim’s head.
The living room opened up to a small kitchen and dining area. The appliances were trailer-small: a mini-fridge, a two-burner stovetop, a tiny oven, a row of small cabinets built over the one-basin sink.
There were more signs of disturbance in the kitchen/dining area, more blood stains, more evidence of violence. Palmer checked the refrigerator. It was dark and warm. The generator that provided electricity for this trailer had been off for a few days at least.
The kitchen and built-in seating area that looked like it could barely squeeze three people around it led to a small hallway and doorways to two small bedrooms and a bathroom. He would’ve expected to find some bodies back here, but Begay had already told him that they were all in the cave.
Klein followed Palmer back to the two bedrooms. There was more blood back here, splashes of it in both rooms. Signs of struggle, signs of panic.
“You getting any ideas about this?” Klein asked him.
Palmer just nodded and snapped more photos with his phone, each one making that cute little click-click sound that he loved but couldn’t explain why.
Klein huffed a little at his question being ignored, but Palmer walked away from him, walking back to the living room. Begay opened the door and stepped outside like he knew Palmer was done.
It felt good to be back outside even though it was freezing. The inside of the trailer had been stuffy with the stifling heat of violence … a sensation he’d experienced many times before.
Palmer looked over at the line of vehicles in the distance, over a hundred yards away. “Looks like one of those vehicles is missing. Like it sped out of here. Drove right up the embankment onto the dirt road.”
Begay nodded like he’d already figured out those details for himself.
“Might be our killer,” Klein said. “Either he took his own vehicle or stole someone else’s.”
Begay didn’t say anything—Palmer thought the man seemed to be holding some clues of his own close to his chest.
“You check out those other vehicles already?” Klein asked Begay. Klein’s voice seemed accusatory every time he spoke to the captain.
“Yes. They’re all inoperable.”
“Inoperable?” Klein asked.
“That means they don’t work.”
Palmer couldn’t help the bark of laughter that erupted from him. He couldn’t remember the last time he had laughed.
“Yeah, thanks,” Klein said, his voice seeping with venom. “I know what inoperable means.”
“What exactly makes them inoperable?” Palmer asked as he stared at the two vehicles with their hoods up.
“The batteries have been ripped out of two of them. The other two still have batteries, but they’re dead. The keys are in all of the vehicles. We tried them … they won’t start.”
“You’re not supposed to be touching anything!” Klein yelled at Begay.
Begay pulled out a pair of crumpled up latex gloves. “We know what we’re doing.”
Palmer didn’t like the fact that the captain and his deputies’ hands had been all over the vehicles, but he didn’t say anything. He had the feeling that Begay knew something about all of this and he wanted to find out what that was. Yelling at him like Klein was doing wasn’t going to get them anywhere. He could sense the frustration these men had built up with each other over the years.
“Was there any blood in the vehicles?” Palmer asked. “Any signs of struggle?”
Begay shook his head. “No. Nothing we could see.”
Klein just snorted out a sarcastic chuckle.
Palmer kept looking at the line of vehicles in the distance. “Blood all over the place inside the trailer. But none in the vehicles. If they were being attacked, then why wouldn’t they have run for their vehicles?”
“Because the batteries were dead?” Klein offered.
“All of the batteries died at the same time?” Palmer asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.” He looked at Begay. “If these people were attacked or even killed in the trailer, but their bodies are in the cave, then why isn’t there blood all over the place out here? Drag marks in the dirt.”
“There’s that one area of blood over near the second trailer I told you about,” Begay said, pointing at a spot a few yards away from the middle of the second trailer.
The three of them walked over to the area. Palmer stared down at the large dark spot in the sand. “This is the only place you’ve found blood out here?”
Begay nodded.
“There should be more blood than this,” Palmer said and looked around like he might spot it.
“Maybe the killers cleaned up the blood out here,” Klein said. He obviously was onboard with the multiple-killers-theory. “They could’ve kicked sand over the blood, brushed branches over any drag marks in the sand to cover their tracks.”
Palmer nodded like that could be a possibility. “Why would they go to all of that trouble to clean up the evidence out here but leave blood all over the place inside the trailer?”
Klein didn’t have an answer for him.
“And why would they be so meticulous about the drag marks but overlook this large pile of blood right here?”
Klein just shrugged.
Things were beginning to get strange.
Begay watched Palmer carefully like this was previously covered ground in his mind—but he was no closer to answers than Palmer was.
“Alright,” Palmer told Begay. “Let’s go into the cave and see the bodies.”
Palmer had a feeling that thi
ngs were about to get much worse.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The cave
Begay instructed the police officer with the ponytail to grab the large battery-powered searchlight with the pistol grip handle and hand it to Klein. The officer looked relieved that he wouldn’t have to go back into the cave.
Palmer, Begay, and Klein walked towards the mouth of the cave. They stopped at the generator underneath the small tent near the entrance, the whole area shielded by a scrub of junipers.
“It doesn’t work,” Begay said.
“Does it have gas in it?” Klein asked him.
“Full tank.” Begay looked right at Palmer. “It just won’t start.”
Palmer thought about the batteries in the vehicles, the laptop inside the trailer, and now the generator. It was like nothing electrical was working around here. He made a mental note to call the Albuquerque office and let them know that the forensics team would need to bring a generator and some gas with them.
As they stepped inside the crack in the canyon wall that was the mouth of the cave, Palmer felt a little nervous. His breakfast sandwich and the coffee from earlier (along with the few sips of vodka) had settled like a small stone inside his stomach. He didn’t have too many phobias—you couldn’t really have a lot of them in his line of work—but he’d never been fond of enclosed spaces. Basements he could handle, man-made structures he trusted … there was always a way out. But nature didn’t always work like that, nature was random and sometimes you could just walk and walk and you couldn’t find a way back out.
A flash of last night’s dream ran through his mind … the rooms in the building that seemed to go on forever, the maze of appliances and furniture in the impossibly large room where he’d been standing in front of the metal sink and washing a piece of flesh off in the water …
He pushed the memory of the dream away and pulled his phone out, taking some photos of the generator and the junipers near it. Taking the photos helped him feel detached from the situation a little, like he was more in control of it somehow.
As soon as they stepped inside the cave, Agent Klein turned on the spotlight. He took the lead with the light and seemed to revel in the importance of his job although his hand trembled slightly which caused the light guiding their way to waver a little. But at least the light was strong and bright.
The three men followed the electrical cords laid out end-to-end along the dirt floor of the cave that led deeper and deeper into the darkness. The mouth of the cave closed in quickly to a narrow passageway after the first fifty feet. Walls of sheer, smooth rock closed in suddenly as they walked single-file into the deeper darkness, Klein in front, shining their way with the spotlight. Palmer was right behind Klein and Begay was a few steps behind him.
No one spoke as they made their way slowly through the crevice of rock. The walls seemed to be closing in and Palmer felt like something heavy was pushing on his chest, making it difficult for him to inhale enough air. He felt a wave of panic wanting to take over.
Fight it, he told himself.
The sounds of their boots and shoes were loud in the numbing silence inside this rock tomb. Their breaths sounded labored and louder inside the mountain, each exhale echoing back at them.
To distract himself Palmer shined his cell phone flashlight at the rock walls as he walked past them.
The walls were definitely closing in, the path getting narrower with each step they took—he was sure of that.
Palmer looked for traces of blood on the walls as they walked past them, but he didn’t see any at all. He shined the light beam from his phone down at the hard-packed dirt floor expecting to see smears of blood and drag marks from the bodies. But there was nothing—only a fine powdery dust and small rocks kicked to the base of the rock walls after countless trips back and forth through this passageway by the archaeologists. He saw that the construction lamps had been set on the floor every hundred feet or so, connected together by the electrical cords. He wished those lights were on right now.
A thought occurred to Palmer and once it popped into his mind he couldn’t get rid of it: What if the spotlight Klein was using went out? What if Begay’s flashlight went out, too? What if the batteries died? All of the other electrical equipment around here seemed to have malfunctioned before … what if their flashlights went out?
What was wrong with him? He’d never been this nervous before. It was a straight shot out of the cave; there was no way they could lose their way. Besides, there was the string of lanterns and electrical cords to follow like a trail of breadcrumbs.
He knew once the forensics team got here they would get another generator running and get these lights working again.
“How far inside the cave are these bodies?” Palmer asked, his words bouncing off the smooth rock walls right back to him. He hoped he didn’t sound nervous.
“This passageway opens up to a big cavern,” Begay said from the darkness behind him. His voice was so low and deep the echoes made his words a little difficult to understand.
“Why would the killer have brought these bodies all the way back here?” Klein asked more to himself than to Begay or Palmer. “To hide them?”
Neither Begay nor Palmer responded to Klein’s question, but to Palmer it seemed like hiding the bodies way back here in the cave was a lot of trouble to go through. He had to agree with Klein that there had to be more than one killer working here. It was hard to believe one man could’ve pulled all of this off. Now he was beginning to rethink his earlier theory, coming up with a new scenario now. What if it wasn’t one of the scientists who’d done this?
Then who? Robbers?
Maybe some of the artifacts the archaeologists had dug out of this cave were worth a lot of money. Palmer didn’t know for sure. He felt certain they had to be worth something. Maybe a band of robbers had staked out the dig site and waited for the right time to attack and steal the artifacts.
But if that scenario were true, then why were there so many artifacts left behind inside the trailer? Maybe the robbers had been looking for gold. Would some of the artifacts have been made out of precious metals? Palmer couldn’t be sure. He wasn’t an expert on archaeology, but it was something to consider.
Another thought came to him: What if some kind of activists killed these archaeologists, some kind of eco-terrorists who felt that these archaeologists were destroying the environment or harming Mother Earth?
It wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe they weren’t everyday big news, but eco-terrorists were real. Maybe they weren’t such a big deal back east, but they could be a force to contend with in the west. Eco-terrorists had amassed more property damage than all other terrorists combined in the United States. But they didn’t usually kill people—especially not purposely.
Then another thought occurred to him. What if some of the local Native Americans, the Navajo, were displeased with this archaeological expedition? What if, even though Navajo officials had given this group permission to excavate here, there was a small fringe group that hated seeing these scientists dig up their ancestors or disturb spirits or whatever they believed in. What if Begay and his officers already suspected that? What if they even had an idea who was behind this? It started to make sense to Palmer now. Maybe these murders were a message to the scientists, to the white man: Stop digging on their land. But maybe they had gone too far this time and killed one of the archaeologists, and then they had to cover everything up. They tried to hide the bodies, and then they staged a half-baked scene. And maybe halfway through this mess, they just panicked and ran.
“I don’t think they were trying to hide the bodies,” Begay finally answered Klein’s question from right behind Palmer, making him jump a little. He seemed much closer than Palmer thought he was.
Palmer turned a little towards the large man in the darkness behind him, his shoulder brushing against the rock wall as he walked. “What makes you say that?”
“You’ll see.”
Finally, the narrow passageway
through the rock walls opened up into a cavern. Klein’s spotlight knifed into the darkness, but it only seemed to shine so far, like a spotlight trying to work deep underwater.
“Holy shit,” Klein whispered. “That stinks.”
Palmer smelled it now as the narrow rock passageway opened up. The smell hit him like an invisible wall.
It was still claustrophobic inside the cave to Palmer, but he felt a little better now that the rock walls weren’t squeezing in on him like they had in the passageway. He shined the meager light from his cell phone around at the cavernous room, but the light only illuminated a few feet in front of him, leaving him in a weak sphere of light that tried to push back the crushing darkness.
It was much warmer deep inside the cave and the air tasted moist on his tongue. He also tasted something else in the air, a taste his tongue knew well after all these years—the coppery taste of blood that went along with the overpowering stench of rot and decay.
“It’s not too much further,” Begay said, shining his flashlight into the darkness like a lightsaber down next to his leg.
“Yeah, I think we can smell that,” Klein said, but he kept moving forward into the darkness.
Klein followed the electrical cord of lamps with the light from his spotlight, and then they came to another wall at the far end of the cavern. They followed the wall, walking next to more electrical cords and lights. The walls looked like they were pitted with tool marks, like the room had been carved out of the rock a long time ago.
The electric cords ended in a big junction box where more electric cords ran off into the darkness connected to spotlights rigged on top of metal stands that stood about five feet high. Klein raised his spotlight’s beam up from the floor and shined it on the objects piled together forty feet away from them.
“Holy … holy hell,” Klein whispered. His voice was pinched off because he had his hand cupped over his nostrils, closing them off.
Palmer stared at the grotesque display in front of them and for a moment all of his thoughts stopped.
