“I want to see it,” Claire replied. She couldn’t get this close to the Jonathan Vail mystery and just walk away. And now the mystery of Tim Sansevera had been added to the mystery of Jonathan Vail, two young ghosts to haunt the canyons.
“All right, then. I’ll go first,” Curt said.
There were no footprints visible in the rock slide, which might be an indication that Tim hadn’t entered it, or that the slide was too fluid to hold a print. Curt kept his backpack on. Claire watched as he put each foot down, but she didn’t see much slippage. When he reached the ledge on the far side of the slide, he turned and tossed her the end of a piece of rope. Claire couldn’t quite reach it, so she took her first tentative steps without Curt’s support. She had taken off her backpack and put it on the ledge before starting out, thinking that would help her maintain her balance. The slide felt loose, but she had the sense of solid ground underneath. She extended her arms and spread her fingers for equilibrium, slowly taking one step, then another. On the third step—just as Curt’s rope was almost within reach—her foot dislodged a rock the size of a fist. She watched helplessly as it rolled to the edge of the ledge, balanced briefly, and tumbled off.
“Oh, no,” Claire cried, wondering if she should warn the rangers, if they could even hear her. The rock created its own warning system as it bounced off the canyon walls, crashing from ledge to ledge, seemingly getting larger and louder as it descended into the canyon, dislodging other rocks and gathering them into its fall. It seemed to take forever before the avalanche crashed onto the canyon floor, sending up a cloud of dust and raising a cacophony of echoes that resembled a flock of screaming ravens. Claire stared at the dust with the panicky feeling she got when she was too close to the heights or depths.
She turned her attention back to the ledge, wishing there was a rail between her and the dropoff, something to break the line of vision, something to hold on to. She took one more step, bent down and picked up the rope, although she would have preferred to negotiate without it. She didn’t want her balance to depend on Curt Devereux. If he let go of the rope, she would take the same path the rock had taken.
“Two more steps, and you’ll be all right,” Curt said.
Claire was relieved to put her foot down on the ledge, which was several feet wide and felt solid as a bridge. The entrance to the cave was ten feet away.
It was littered with rock debris about four feet high and shaped like a beehive or an horno. As Claire let go of the rope, her hands trembled in relief and excitement.
“This means a lot to you, doesn’t it?” Curt asked.
“A lot.”
“You go first.”
He backed against the canyon wall. She squeezed past him, bent down, climbed over the rocks that had once concealed the entrance, and entered the low opening into the cave. Her first sensation was of coolness and darkness. In the time it took for her eyes to adjust, she imagined what she might see. All she could reasonably expect was a duffel bag, but the image in her mind was of Jonathan Vail sitting by a fire writing in his journal. Once her eyes made the adjustment she explored the cave visually, not wanting to step inside any farther and cause any damage. It was about fifteen feet deep, the top was curved, the floor, which was slickrock, was so clean it might have been swept. No animal or human track was visible. There were no implements, there was no duffel bag, no sign that a human had ever been here. It was absolutely, totally empty and a crushing disappointment for Claire, who felt like all the rock in the cave weighed her down. Something blocked the light. She turned and saw Curt crawling through the entrance.
“Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked.
“Tim described it as the cave just beyond the rock slide to the west of the half-moon petroglyph. It has to be this one,” He dropped his pack, took out a flashlight and began circling the sides of the cave, shining the light into every nook and cranny. It was big enough to hide out in, but too close to the abyss for Claire to ever consider it. She would never be able to forget that just beyond the mouth of this cave was a five-hundred-foot dropoff. It made it safe from intruders but not from the siren song of acrophobia that whispered to anyone foolish enough to listen, you can jump, you can fly. She wondered how much time Jonathan had spent in this cave, whether Jennie had ever been here.
“There’s no duffel bag,” she said.
“No,” Curt replied, “but look at this.” He beamed his light beside a rock at the rear of the cave.
Claire still did not want to step any farther inside. She craned her neck and saw, carved into the rock wall, the initials JV. Jonathan Vail—but had they been carved by him or by an imitator?
“A BLM archaeologist should be able to date and authenticate that,” Curt said.
Sunlight shimmered through the entry. When Claire looked out, all she could see was the dust they had stirred up. Had there ever been a duffel bag? Had Tim told the truth? Had Jennie? Would everything connected to Jonathan Vail end in illusion and dust?
Curt completed his search and came up with nothing else. Claire imagined that Ellen Frank and Ray Vigil would search, too, but it was unlikely they would find anything either. She and Curt hiked up to the mesa, where the helicopter waited. The plan was for the pilot to fly them out, then come back for Tim’s body. It was a fairly easy climb from the cave, and Claire thought it would have been better to have brought the duffel bag out across the mesa than through the canyon—if one knew the way, if there really was a duffel bag.
Claire looked back into the canyon from the window of the helicopter. There was no sign of the rangers or the blue tent among the boulders on the floor of Sin Nombre. The motion of the helicopter made the canyon walls shimmer, reminding Claire of Jonathan’s comparison to La Sagrada Família. She looked for the white van as they flew over the parking area, but didn’t see it.
The helicopter dropped her and Curt on the flat rim of Slickrock Canyon, and they walked back to their vehicles. Tim’s tiny red car was a sad reminder of all that had happened.
“The rangers should take the keys from Tim so they can drive his car out,” Claire said.
“I’m sure they’ll think of that,” Curt replied in a soothing voice. “You’re staying till tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’ll find a motel in Blanding and talk to Ellen Frank in the morning. And you?”
“I’m going to spend the night in Bluff and take a look around tomorrow. It’s been a tough day.”
“It has,” Claire said.
Curt poked the ground with the toe of his hiking boot. “I’m very sorry it turned out this way.”
“I feel terrible for Tim and his family.”
Curt shook her hand. “Keep in touch,” he said.
“You, too,” she replied.
Claire was exhausted by the time she got to Blanding. She found a room at the Prospector Motel with knotty pine paneling and a pink chenille spread, which she found comforting. She ran a hot bath, climbed in, and lay there for an hour trying to soak away the sweat, the dirt, the stench, the flies, the blood, the horror of the day. She got into bed and pulled up the chenille spread, prepared for a sleepless night. To her surprise she fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake until dawn. She packed up, had a cup of coffee in the motel office, and drove to the ranger station for her appointment with Ellen Frank.
Chapter Six
IT WAS EARLY ENOUGH THAT CLAIRE COULD FEEL THE COOLNESS and the moisture left over from the night as she drove to the ranger station. In this remote corner of Utah, every morning bore a resemblance to the first morning, but that morning would have filled any observer with awe and this one filled her with despair. The shock of Tim’s death had passed, the emotional Novocain had worn off, and her heart ached. She drove through Butler Wash and across Comb Ridge, where the sandstone was arrested in the angle of repose, the angle that a dune reaches just before falling over. The ridge was a bulge in the earth’s crust that extended for eighty miles. To Claire it resembled a series of dunes stretching into infini
ty. It was a landscape that always seemed to be in motion, soothing to look at but unforgiving of human error.
Claire knew that rangers often saw the results of human error—people wandering off without a map, wearing the wrong shoes, carrying insufficient water, unaware of approaching thunderstorms. Mistakes very quickly turned into disasters. She wondered if Tim’s death would be treated as one more example of human carelessness. It had all the ingredients: an impulsive young man climbing a canyon wall apparently alone.
She parked her car in the visitors lot and went into the trailer that served as the ranger station, giving her name to a volunteer who manned the desk. While she waited for Ellen Frank, she took a look at a selection of books for sale. Along with books about the flora and fauna of the area, she saw the original journal and A Blue-Eyed Boy.
Ellen Frank appeared and led her down the hall to her office. She was a few inches shorter than Claire, but her confident attitude made her seem taller. Her office was small and tidy, with a window that looked out on a juniper bush.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“No thanks.”
“Did you spend the night in Blanding?”
“Yes.”
“I hope you got a good night’s sleep.” Ellen sat down and motioned for Claire to do the same.
“Better than I expected.”
Ellen looked wide awake and fully prepared. Her uniform was crisp. Every hair was in place. Her teeth were so even they appeared to have been filed. She wasn’t someone Claire would want to confront if she hadn’t had any sleep.
“Tell me what you know about Tim Sansevera,” Ellen said, leaning forward and putting her elbows on her desk.
“He was a grad student who was writing his dissertation on Jonathan Vail. I’m in charge of the Vail archives. I gave him access to the papers, so when he found the journal in the cave, he brought it to me. He was very excited to have found it.”
“And you believe the journal is authentic?”
“I do. It has also been read by Jonathan’s mother and by Jennie Dell, and they believe it to be authentic, too. The library intends to have it verified by an expert.”
“Jennie Dell is the woman who was with Vail in Slickrock Canyon, right?”
“Right.”
“How did she get the journal?”
“Curt Devereux gave her a copy.”
“Ah,” said Ellen. She picked up a pencil and rolled it between her fingers. “Tell me about the duffel bag.”
“Tim told me he saw a duffel bag in the cave where he found the journal, but he was carrying too much to bring it out.”
“Did he say what was in it?”
“Clothes.”
“So the plan was that you, Curt, and Tim were to meet at the trailhead to Slickrock Canyon at ten yesterday and look for the duffel bag?” The brightness of Ellen’s amber eyes made Claire feel she was under a spotlight. She had to remind herself that she hadn’t done anything stupid or wrong.
“Trailhead” struck her as a misnomer, since there hadn’t actually been any trail in Slickrock Canyon. She chose her words carefully. “That was the arrangement Curt and I had. You’ll have to ask him what arrangement he made with Tim. When I got to the parking lot, I saw Tim’s and Curt’s vehicles. In the left fork I also saw a white Dodge van with New Mexico plates. No one was there. I walked around the ledge for a while looking for Tim and Curt, then I saw Curt climbing out of the canyon. He said he’d gone there to relieve himself.”
“Did you get the license plate number of the van by any chance?”
“No. It was the New Mexico balloon plate. That’s all I noticed. It seemed like an older model, so it was unlikely to be a rental.”
“I didn’t see any van when we flew over in the helicopter. We’ll check to see if we gave a permit to a New Mexico van recently. We might be able to track the owner down. We try to register people who enter the canyons. One reason is that it makes it easier for us to find them when they get into trouble. But it’s a huge area, and we can’t police all of it. People enter the canyons and camp without registering. It’s an honor system. We did issue Tim a permit to camp in Sin Nombre Friday night.”
“If you had a suspect in Tim’s death, could you check motor vehicle records to see if that person owned a Dodge van?”
“We could.” Ellen paused and fingered her pencil. “If there was a suspect. First we have to determine the cause of death. We’ll continue our investigation while we’re waiting for the autopsy to come back.”
“If you should find evidence that Tim’s death wasn’t accidental, what would you do?”
“Turn it over to local law enforcement and the FBI. We’re not equipped to handle a murder investigation here.”
“Will Curt remain in charge of the Vail investigation?”
“Most likely. He has seniority, and he worked on it before.”
“Did you notify Tim’s family of his death?”
“Yes. I tracked down his mother in Albuquerque.” Ellen stared out her window into the branches of the juniper. “She was very upset, of course.”
Claire could well imagine. “Would you mind giving me her name and number? I’d like to call her when I get back to town.”
Ellen wrote down the information and handed it to Claire. “When exactly did Tim say that he found the duffel bag?” she asked.
“Last Sunday, a week ago. He brought the journal to me on Monday. That’s when I reported the find to you and to Curt.”
“By now someone else could have come across it and taken it. It should have been reported to us, but there’s no guarantee it would be. We might have gone looking for it ourselves, except that Curt asked to do it and he did it on his own time. People still come to me with theories about what happened to Jonathan Vail. There’s an amazing amount of interest in someone who disappeared in 1966. I’ve always wondered why.”
It was Claire’s job to keep the memory of Jonathan Vail alive, and his enduring legend was a subject to which she had given considerable thought. “He wrote a book that influenced a lot of people, he disappeared at a young age, and the mystery of his disappearance has never been solved. It’s a puzzle that keeps people interested.”
“I hear the same theories over and over again. Vail is still alive, there’s a child somewhere, he’s hiding out and dodging the draft on the Navajo reservation. I know that one isn’t true. If Jonathan were on the reservation, someone would have reported it by now. Besides, draft dodgers got amnesty years ago. Sam Ogelthorpe, who owns the Comb Ranch, talks to me about it occasionally. He claims he saw Jonathan killing a cow on his ranch two days before he was reported missing. But it was raining, Sam hated hippies. Who knows what he saw? Maybe it was an apparition, maybe it was a mountain lion, maybe it was another hungry hippie. Whatever it was left a dead cow, but any footprints washed away in the rain.”
“Is Sam still alive?”
“Oh, yeah. Still ranching, still grazing on BLM land. Even though Sam has nothing but contempt for Jonathan Vail, I guess the connection makes him feel important, like he’s a part of history somehow. Is that what it’s all about?”
“That’s part of it.” Claire was reluctant to bring up the next subject, but Ellen had given her an opening. “There is also the theory that Curt didn’t conduct a thorough investigation, that he was blinded by his attraction to Jennie Dell.”
Ellen smiled with precision. “I’ve heard that one, too,” she said. Her smile disappeared, and her face went bureaucratically blank, almost as blank as Curt’s, although she’d had less experience in cultivating the expression. “To be fair to Curt, this area was very primitive in the sixties, and he had limited resources. It’s quite possible that Jonathan Vail and Tim Sansevera both died by falling off a ledge. Maybe even, by a strange coincidence, the same ledge. We were lucky enough to find Tim. Jonathan’s bones could have washed into the San Juan, or they could remain in Sin Nombre Canyon. They might still be found. Every time we get a hard rain the boulders shift and the config
uration of the canyon changes. One day one of those changes may expose Vail’s bones. Bones are a good witness. They don’t lie, and they never forget.”
“It’s possible for the cave to have closed and opened up again?”
“Absolutely.”
“Could Curt and I have gone into the wrong cave?”
“That’s also possible. We’ll look into the others while we’re conducting our investigation. If we find any artifacts of Jonathan Vail, they’ll get passed on to Curt. Are you going home today?”
“Yes,” Claire said.
Ellen stood up and gave Claire a firm handshake. “Have a good trip. I appreciate your help.”
******
Claire drove south on Highway 261, planning to drive down the Moki Dugway and stop in Bluff for lunch. Route 261 paralleled Comb Ridge, which looked more like cresting waves to her now than dunes. She thought of grief as an ocean that came at the grieving person in waves—submerging, receding, submerging again. She could imagine that Tim’s mother would feel she was drowning in grief.
She came to a dirt road with a rusty sign that read COMB RANCH. On a whim, Claire turned in. It was a long drive across the mesa, on a road so rough it made her truck sound like a bucket of bolts and buck like an ornery horse. It was a test of the effectiveness of her shock absorbers, and they seemed to be failing. The road was so bad there were points at which she considered turning around, but Sam Ogelthorpe was another character in the Jonathan Vail mystery, someone she had wondered about for years, and she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to meet him.
Eventually the road ended at a ramshackle ranch house and outbuildings. This was a hardscrabble, working ranch, not the hobby of a wealthy absentee owner. A pack of dogs snoozed in the yard and on the porch. They raised their heads as Claire parked her pickup, but didn’t bother to bark. When a man came out the front door and walked over to her, the dogs stood up and followed. He wore jeans, boots, and a black cowboy hat with a dip in the brim that hid the upper portion of his face. The lower part wore a shaggy white mustache.
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