Black Sun Descending

by Stephen Legault

  “What is it?”

  “I have to go.”

  The doctor smiled. “That helpful, was I?”

  “I think the Trinity I’m looking for is just down the road.”

  SILAS PARKED ON THE HIGHWAY and watched the operation at the Atlas Mill. A chain-link fence with No Trespassing and Contaminated Area signs stood between him and the tailings from the now-vacant site. Four days a week a train with thirty-six cars of reprocessed uranium waste was shipped north from this location, just yards from the Colorado River, to a final disposal site near Crescent Junction. The mill site contained sixteen million tons of uranium tailings. When the wind blew hard enough radioactive dust from the site powered the desert and high cliffs that bordered the site. For more than forty years radioactive waste had been seeping into the Colorado River and washing downstream.

  The cleanup project started in 2009 and, contingent on funding, was expected to last beyond 2025. The mess that took forty years to create would take almost half as long to clean up.

  Silas shielded his eyes against the intense glare of the sun and watched the activity around the tailings dump for fifteen minutes before he got into the car and drove back along the Colorado River toward home.

  HE RETURNED AFTER dark and parked by the highway, on the east side, as if he were leaving his car before setting off on a walk up Courthouse Wash in Arches National Park. Instead he crossed the deserted road and walked across the scrub desert toward the mill. He had his worn pack on his back and a spade-shaped garden shovel in his left hand. A berm bordered the work site and beyond that was the chain-link fence with its impotent warnings. Looking around self-consciously, he climbed the berm, his boots kicking up a fine red dust that coated the bottom of his pants. When he reached the fence he threw his shovel over and, taking a small nylon tarp from his bag, draped it over his shoulder, climbed the fence, and laid it down over the loose strands of barbed wire at the top. Silas dropped to the far side and retrieved the tarp.

  Now where? He stood next to the massive work site. The Atlas Mill waste covered more than one hundred acres and he knew he couldn’t possibly search everywhere. Much of what was on site had been dumped into shallow pits and then covered with fill. He looked at his ridiculous shovel and realized the impossibility of his task.

  Silas closed his eyes. In his dream, Penelope had been drowning in the Colorado. He looked toward the river, to where the most active reclamation was underway. That’s where he would begin.

  HE RETURNED FOR the next two nights, climbing the fence and evading the nominal security. Each morning, just before sunup, he climbed back over the fence and retreated to his home in the Castle Valley. He decided that three nights would be the limit for his nocturnal prowling; if he hadn’t found anything by sunup, he would admit defeat.

  The moon rose around two o’clock and Silas scanned the country around him. He could see the lights from the gate and the ATCO trailers that housed the night security staff. Just a dozen yards away the Colorado River curled along its banks. Silas adjusted his headlamp and drove his shovel into another patch of earth. In places the water from the river seeped into the holes he dug. He turned the wet sand over. Nothing. In the months since he had found a series of bodies scattered across the Colorado Plateau Silas had all but given up finding Penelope alive; now he was digging through radioactive waste with no idea what he might uncover or even why he was doing it.

  Maybe he would have to make the drive to Trinity after all. All of his previous searching might have been a wild goose chase and what he really sought was in the sand dunes of New Mexico.

  He spent more than an hour digging along the banks of the Colorado. He was ready to accept defeat when his shovel struck something hard. He stepped on the blade and drove it deeper into the fine particulate. Silas upended the spadeful of dirt and drove the blade in again. Something solid. With his work gloves on his hands and a dust mask on his face he crouched down and shifted some of the soil aside with the spade.

  In the sharp light of his headlamp, two hollow eye sockets in a red-stained skull, water from the river pooling around it, appeared from under the radioactive earth.

  “YOU’RE UNDER ARREST,” SAID DEXTER Willis, the Grand County sheriff, when he arrived at the Atlas Mill site just after four in the morning. He stepped from his patrol car and approached where Silas was sitting in the cab of a truck marked SECURITY. Silas’s hands were shackled with PlastiCuffs. He held them up for Dexter Willis to see.

  “Someone beat you to it, Dex.”

  “What the hell are you doing out here, Silas?”

  “Oh, just out for a moonlight stroll.”

  “Have you lost your mind? I really mean it, Silas—have you lost your mind?”

  Silas just shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe I have.”

  Willis stood next to the open door of the truck. He looked at the security guard in the driver’s seat. “What happened?”

  “He was digging around in one of the active reclamation pits. With a shovel.”

  Willis looked back at Silas. “What did you find, Silas?”

  Silas looked up at him, a vacant look in his eyes. “You’d better see for yourself.”

  “I WOULDN’T WORRY too much about it,” Silas said as the sheriff, one of his deputies, and the security guard stood next to the active reclamation pit where Silas had made his discovery. “You’ve been breathing this dust for the last forty years.”

  Willis looked at him sideways and then continued to put on heavy gloves and a respirator. “Okay, Silas, sun’s almost up.”

  Silas trained his flashlight on a disturbed area of the pit. The men were silent for a long moment and then Willis walked closer, bending at the waist to get a better look. “Here we go again.” Willis straightened up. Caught in the light of the three flashlights were a skull, a neck, and shoulders. The remains were not entirely decomposed, the red earth around them slowly pooling with water seeping underground from the adjacent Colorado River.

  THE BLACK GMC Yukon slowed as it passed through Moab and then resumed speeding as it crossed the Colorado River. The two occupants of the vehicle wore dark glasses against the glare of the midday sun.

  “Remember,” said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Dwight Taylor, “we’re here to observe and assist where requested only.” He was a large, dark-skinned man, his close-cropped black hair nearly touching the ceiling of the SUV.

  The driver, shorter, older, white, nodded. Agent Eugene Nielsen, a native of Utah, was a thirty-year veteran of the FBI’s Monticello Field Office. “You don’t need to remind me. Last thing I want is more work, but they requested Rain. I guess we’ll have to wait to see what we’ve got before we stick our noses into it.”

  Taylor checked his phone. There was a text message on the screen. “Looks like she just landed. Unger and Huston are at the airfield to pick her up and deliver her to the site.”

  The SUV took the turn-off from the highway to the Atlas Mill, where a man in uniform flagged them down. Nielsen and Taylor showed their credentials and were waved in.

  “I can’t help but think that this is déjà vu all over again,” said Nielsen as they parked among a cluster of law enforcement vehicles.

  “I don’t even want to think about it.”

  “I thought maybe we’d finally washed our hands of Pearson. Thought maybe he’d gone back to Canada.” Nielsen opened the door and stepped into the April sun.

  “There hasn’t been a day in the last six months that I haven’t had my eye on him,” said Taylor. He went to the back of the vehicle, opened a large duffle bag, and removed a hazmat suit. He handed a second suit to his partner. “Time to see what Dr. Pearson has found this time.”

  HALF A DOZEN members of the Grand County Sheriff’s Office were on site, as well as Derek Penshaw of the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, acting on behalf of the medical examiner for the state of Utah. Everybody wore hazardous material suits. Agents Nielsen and Taylor approached the white canvas tent that had been set u
p over where the body had been discovered.

  “Hello, Sheriff Willis,” Taylor said, extending a white-gloved hand.

  “Taylor, isn’t this the most ridiculous crime scene you’ve ever been on? Look at this.” He gestured to his deputies. “Look like a bunch of cosmonauts.”

  “I’ve seen worse, Sheriff. What have we got?”

  “You understand that we’re holding onto jurisdiction here, right, Taylor?” Taylor nodded, not looking at the sheriff. “Good. What we’ve got are the partially skeletonized remains of an unidentified body buried in this toxic mess.” The two men walked under the shade of the open-walled tent. Two sheriff’s deputies were photographing the scene.

  “Any idea who this might be?”

  “None.”

  “Not much question of whether foul play is involved, is there?”

  “This is why you feds get the big bucks, isn’t it? No, Agent Taylor, I doubt very much that whoever this is died on site.”

  Agent Taylor squatted down to examine the head and shoulders. “Do you know if it’s all in one piece?”

  “This is as far as my team has gone,” said Willis. “To be honest, nobody around here has any expertise in this sort of thing. It’s not every day that you get a body in a nuclear waste reclamation site.”

  “Given the … circumstances surrounding the discovery, the Agency is willing to offer some assistance in this matter,” said Taylor, looking toward where Silas Pearson stood, a hundred yards away, a sheriff’s deputy at his side. “Dr. Rain will be here in thirty minutes.”

  “That’s appreciated.” Sheriff Willis tried to scratch his head through the hazmat suit.

  “All part of the interagency cooperation we pride ourselves on at the FBI, Sheriff. Now, I don’t suppose, as an extension of that cooperation, you’d mind if I had a talk with Dr. Pearson, would you?”

  “I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING TO tell you,” Silas said. He was seated inside an ATCO trailer. Special Agent Taylor had taken off the hood of his hazmat suit and was sitting across from Silas, while Agent Nielsen stood by the door.

  “Once more we find ourselves in a very peculiar situation, Dr. Pearson. You, for inexplicable reasons, have somehow found a body.” Taylor counted on his fingers, “Once would be odd, twice would be extremely unusual, but this … this goes beyond all reason. So, why don’t we cut to the chase and you tell us who this is, and how the body got here.”

  “I don’t have anything to tell you,” Silas repeated. He played with a crumpled paper cup in his hands.

  “Another dream?” asked Nielsen, his tone sarcastic.

  Silas looked up at him. Then back down at the cup.

  “Is this Penelope?” asked Taylor.

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “Did Penelope tell you to come and dig here?” Taylor prodded.

  “You know, I haven’t heard a word from you in six months, Agent Taylor. Nothing. I help you solve one of the biggest murder cases in Southern Utah in twenty years, and not even a Christmas card. Now, here we are again. You accusing me of murdering my wife, and then, when the guilt gets the better of me, leading Sheriff Willis to her remains. It’s like you have a one-track mind, Agent Taylor. You can’t seem to grasp that I am trying to find my wife, and it seems I am the only one in the Four Corners region who is.”

  “You don’t have any explanation as to why you were digging where you were—”

  “That’s all I’ve got to say, Agent Taylor. If you’re going to arrest me, then do it. Otherwise, we’re done here.” Silas stood up and threw his cup toward a trash can. He missed.

  “We’ll have more questions, Dr. Pearson, but the FBI isn’t going to arrest you today. This is Grand County, and the sheriff gets to have that privilege. I think he’s got trespassing charges being written up right now.”

  SILAS STEPPED OUT of the trailer in time to see the second black GMC Yukon arrive at the crime scene. Two familiar members of the Monticello Evidence Response Team, Agents Janet Unger and John Huston, opened doors and joined the cabal of agents and sheriff’s deputies around the white tent. Dr. Katie Rain was also with them. Silas watched as all three of them went to the back of the SUV and pulled on protective suits over their clothing. In a moment the trio approached.

  “Dr. Pearson,” Rain extended her hand toward Silas. He shook the white glove.

  “Dr. Rain.”

  “Getting yourself into more trouble?”

  “Seems so.”

  “Can you tell me what you found?”

  Silas looked from Rain to Unger and Huston.

  “Janet, John, would you give the professor and me a moment, please?”

  The two agents moved off toward the congregation of sheriff’s deputies under the tent.

  “You look ridiculous,” said Silas.

  “No, actually, you look ridiculous. What were you doing out here? You know you’ve likely shortened your life by five years. You’re going to have to go to the hospital and get tested for radiation poisoning.”

  “I can do that right after I get out of the clink for trespassing, apparently.”

  “Silas … what were you doing out here?”

  “I had another dream.”

  “It’s been six months. I had hoped—”

  “Yeah, me too. I had hoped they had stopped too. But obviously they haven’t. She was drowning. And she said, ‘I have seen the place called Trinity.’ It’s a line from Desert Solitaire. It’s about uranium mining on the Colorado Plateau. I thought that I had to drive to Trinity, New Mexico, but I realized that what Penny really wanted me to do was come here.”

  “So you thought you’d just wander around one of the largest radioactive waste sites in the world until you found a body?”

  “The drowning part was the giveaway. I started close to the river. It only took three nights.”

  “Only? Don’t you have a favorite TV show or something?” Silas looked at her and smiled. “What did you find?” Katie asked.

  “A skull. I think it’s an intact skeleton though, because there were the vertebrae from the neck, and the scapula too. I don’t think decomposition was complete. There was some … tissue.”

  “Listen to you.” Rain was smiling behind her visor. “Find a few bodies in the desert and you’re a forensic anthropologist.”

  “I just think—”

  “I’m kidding, Silas. Tell me how the body was positioned. Did you move anything?”

  “I don’t think so. It might have shifted when I moved some of the overburden away. The skull was at a slight angle, as were the shoulders. It appeared as though the body might have been positioned on its side a little.”

  “You said positioned. You think the body was moved here from somewhere.”

  “Yeah, don’t you? It’s not like someone who worked on site just went out for a nap, lay down in the radioactive dust, and never got back up again.”

  Rain smiled. “No, but we don’t know how old these bones are. This could date from when the mill was operating. Bodies in radioactive material could decompose unpredictably. We don’t have decomposition rate charts for this sort of thing. Once I get this body out of the ground and do some work on it I’ll know what time period we need to search for missing persons.”

  They were silent a moment, lost in their own thoughts. “You’ve been busy?” asked Silas. He felt suddenly awkward.

  “I have. We’ve been working on a case on the West Coast. More than fifteen decomposed bodies. I’ve been doing the forensics on them. I’ve been in Seattle and Portland most of the last two months.”

  “I just—”

  “Silas, let’s talk later. It’s hard for a girl to breathe in this getup. Let me get a look at what you found.”

  “You know, when I dream now, I don’t think that I’m dreaming about Penny anymore. I don’t wake up and think my wife wants me to find her. My first thought after this dream wasn’t Penny wants me to find her, but Penny wants me to find someone.”

  “Let’s go find out wh
o.”

  SILAS PARKED HIS SUBARU IN front of the two-story adobe home of Ken and Trish Hollyoak and sat motionless behind the wheel. The afternoon sun had sunk below the Moab Rim. Clouds marched in tight formation across the western sky. We might get more snow before April is over, thought Silas. Startled by a tap on his window, he jumped and hit his head on the ceiling of the car.

  Ken Hollyoak laughed so hard that he nearly doubled over. Silas rolled the window down. “You know, you shouldn’t go sneaking up on people. You, of all people, should know what that does to a man’s heart.”

  “Dr. Pearson,” Ken said, growing serious. “It’s not the shock of surprise that has made my heart grow weary. It’s the lack of surprise I find in the woes of the world that has given my heart trouble all these years.”

  “I thought it was booze, fried food, and sitting on your butt in a courtroom that did it.”

  “That too,” the lawyer conceded. “Are you coming in or you going to lower property values in my neighborhood by sitting in your car all night long?” Silas nodded, rolled up the window, and got out. “My God, Silas, what the hell are you wearing?”

  Silas looked down at himself as if seeing his clothing for the first time. “These are hospital-issue pyjamas.”

  “I assume there is a good story behind all this?”

  “Just the usual.”

  “To the guest house with you. Leave your clothing in a pile on the doorstep. I’ll burn them for you. I’ll get Trish to find something in the closet that fits and you’ll tell us the tale.”

  “WHAT DID THE hospital say?” Ken asked, handing Silas a plate heaped with roast beef, potatoes, carrots, and salad. Silas, Ken, and Ken’s wife, Trish, were sitting at a table under the pergola, festooned with the early leaves of grapes that grew along its trusses. Silas sipped appreciatively from a glass of beer while Ken drank club soda and lime.

  “They think I’ll be fine. I got the hottest shower and the best scrubbing from a male orderly I’ve ever imagined. Used a brush like a giant toilet bowl cleaner on me. The nurses took some blood and say they’ll look for radioactive isotopes. They may put me on a dose of potassium iodine. I have to go back tomorrow. Doc says they’re going to run some tests on my thyroid. Just the usual.”