Silas looked at the file. He pointed to it and said, “Is that an FBI file?”
Nielsen was still smiling. “The National Security Agency keeps an eye on people who publicly threaten to blow up government property, Dr. Pearson.”
“Half the environmental activists in the Southwest have mused about blowing that thing up. It doesn’t make them a national security threat.”
Ortiz shrugged his shoulders. “You teach English, Dr. Pearson. Words have meaning. You know this. Ms. Vaughn threatened terrorism, and the government had to keep an eye on her.”
“Were you keeping an eye on her when she went missing?”
“No. Obviously we weren’t following her every move.”
“What about when she was murdered? Were you keeping an eye on her then?”
“Dr. Pearson—” started Agent Nielsen.
Something occurred to Silas and he cut the agent off. “Were you watching Penelope?” The two agents were quiet. “I have a right to know. Do you have a file on her?”
A long moment passed. “Yes,” said Nielsen.
Silas felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. “You sons of bitches. Four and a half years I’ve been looking for my wife. Four and a half years of crawling around in the desert. How many times have I been interviewed by you, Agent Nielsen? And your boss Taylor? And here in Flag, before the congenial Mr. Ortiz was on the file? And now you’re telling me that the FBI was watching Penny before she went missing?”
“We keep tabs on a lot of people, Dr. Pearson.”
“What does Penny’s file say?”
“We’re not going to discuss this right now.” Ortiz was still smiling amiably.
“Well,” Silas stood up, “then you’re not going to discuss anything else right now. Ken Hollyoak will be in touch with the Bureau about getting a copy of my wife’s file.”
“Sit down, Dr. Pearson, please. We still have questions for you about Ms. Vaughn’s death.”
“Forget it. You’re on your own.” Silas turned for the door.
“Your wife and Ms. Vaughn were working on the same things, Dr. Pearson. You tell us what you know about Vaughn and it may lead to information about the whereabouts of your wife.” It was Nielsen speaking.
Silas had his hand on the door handle. He looked back over his shoulder. “If that’s the case, then I’ll find her on my own.”
SILAS LEFT THE FBI’S OFFICE, got into his Subaru, and drove back into Flagstaff. He gripped the wheel so tightly that he thought his fingers would go numb. He nearly ran a red light as he crossed the railway tracks and had to take a deep, calming breath before he could proceed.
He got back to his hotel and packed. He called Ken Hollyoak.
“What did I tell you, Silas?”
“This isn’t the time for I-told-you-sos, Ken.”
“No, you’re right. What do you want me to do?”
“Get me that file.”
“I can put in a request. It’s going to take some time. The FBI doesn’t just hand these things over, you know. The file is likely at the National Security Agency and the NSA isn’t exactly a—”
“Penny is legally dead, Ken. That should make it easier. That’s all I’m saying.”
“It hasn’t been long enough. You’d need seven years before you can go to the courts and ask for a death certificate. I can argue that this is a civil liberties issue, but since 9/11 that’s become much more difficult. I’ll try. In the meantime, stay away from the FBI, okay?”
“All but one of them.”
SILAS CALLED KATIE. “How did Jane Vaughn die?”
“Oh, Silas, I don’t think I can tell you that.”
Silas recapped what had happened. “When I found those bodies in Arches and Canyonlands, you told me that cause of death was significant. Sometimes cause of death will indicate if a crime is personal or professional.”
There was a long silence. “The trouble this time is the damage to the bones, Silas. The radioactive material Jane Vaughn was buried in did a lot of damage to the calcium in the bones. I can’t find any indication of a stabbing or a gunshot wound. The hyoid bone was recovered intact. What I have found is a number of hairline fractures to the skull. These suggest that Jane may have been beaten. I’m trying to date the fractures right now, to determine when they occurred. We may conclude that she was beaten to death.”
“Good God.”
“Not an easy way to go.”
“If what I’ve read in the papers over the years is true, it’s consistent with cases of domestic abuse.”
SILAS NEXT CALLED Dallas Vaughn and got his answering machine. He left a message saying he wanted to return his wife’s office key and gave the man his cell phone number. He had no sooner hung up than there was a knock on the door. Silas peered through the peephole. It was Hayduke. Silas opened the door and the young man quickly stepped into the room.
“Holy shit, man, I thought you were a goner this morning! I thought the fucking feds were going to arrest you.”
“You saw that?”
“I was across the street, eating breakfast. I saw them come and go. I followed you over to their office after you had your breakfast. I thought if you needed help …”
“What were you going to do, spring me from the hoosegow?”
“I don’t know … so, what did they want?”
Silas considered this. “They wanted to know what I had found out about Jane’s work, and how it might relate to her murder.”
“They knew you’d been in the office?”
“Yeah. Dallas Vaughn told them he had given me a key.”
“Did they know about me?”
“They didn’t say. I don’t think so.”
“Good! I don’t want anything to do with the feds.”
“Hayduke, when you knew Penny, did she ever tell you anything about the FBI having a file on her?”
“Fuck, you got to be kidding me! They had a file on Pen?”
“It seems like it. They had one on Jane because she had once publicly stated that blowing up the Glen Canyon Dam would be the best thing for the Colorado River or something. I think it was an off the cuff statement, but the Bureau took it seriously enough that they started monitoring her.”
“I remember that speech. It was great. Just over at UNA, your old stomping grounds. That was before Penny disappeared.”
“I think that speech is what got Jane an FBI file, and maybe Penny too.”
“I don’t think that’s what got Penny a file, man. She wasn’t into all that. She wanted to find another way to save the Colorado River.”
“Wilderness designation?”
“Yeah, that was a part of it.”
“Which brings us back to Chas Hinkley. Listen, we need to get out of Dodge. I’m going to go and find Vaughn and brace him about his wife, then find this Chas Hinkley guy and see what he knows.”
“Yeah, let’s do that!”
“Not we, just me.”
Hayduke looked like a crestfallen child. “Really, come on, I’m good at scaring people.” He smiled a wolfish smile.
“I’m sure you are. But I don’t want to scare them. I just want to learn a little more about what they knew about both Jane and Penny. In the meantime, why don’t you see what you can learn about Jane’s work?”
“What, you want me to go to the library while you’re out having fun?”
“The library can be fun.”
“Says the former English professor.”
“Well, I’ll come with you. I want to look something up while we’re there.”
THE FLAGSTAFF PUBLIC LIBRARY WAS located downtown on Aspen Avenue. The two men entered and while Hayduke disappeared to conduct his research, Silas went to the information counter and asked to see stories related to the disappearance of Jane Vaughn. It took half an hour, but the librarian returned with a stack of backdated Arizona Daily Suns. Silas took them to a table near a large window overlooking the treed yard of the library.
He spread the papers out and sta
rted to read and jot notes in a small spiralbound notebook. An hour passed. When he had finished with the papers he picked them up, arranged them in a neat stack, and took them back to the information desk. From there he could see Hayduke busy at one of the computer terminals.
“I’m going to go. I’ve got what I need. How are you coming along?”
“Fucking great, man. Look, I’ve got a pretty good list of topics to cover here. I’m going to dig in now. What have you got?”
“I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version before I hit the road.”
Hayduke followed Silas back to the table by the window and sat down roughly. Silas began, “Dallas Vaughn reported his wife missing on November 17 of last year. She was due back November 16 from what she had told him was a business trip to Page, Arizona. He called the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department the following morning, and they started the investigation, working with the FBI once they had exhausted their initial efforts. It seems that Jane had been in Page, but nobody seemed to know why. We know they never found a body.”
“Not until you came along. Did they question the husband?”
“There are a number of stories where Dallas Vaughn openly speculated on his wife’s disappearance, making angry accusations that the sheriff and the FBI weren’t doing enough to investigate the possible motives for her vanishing. At one point, he even held a news conference to lambaste law enforcement officers and beg the public for leads.”
“So where does this all leave you and me?” asked Hayduke.
“It leaves me wondering why Dallas Vaughn felt the need to be so vocal during the investigation, and it makes me question what Jane Vaughn was working on that brought her to Page. What happened while she was there? That’s where you come in, so keep digging. I’m going to return some keys to a grieving widower and then drive to Page.”
“If you’re going to Page, I want to come! We’re partners!”
“No, we’re not. I appreciate your help, but we’re not partners. I’m trying to find my wife, Hayduke. I have a few things I have to figure out before I can go into Page, guns blazing.”
“Guns blazing sounds right up my alley!”
“That’s why we’re not partners.”
THERE WERE SEVERAL HOURS TO kill before Dallas Vaughn would get home from work. Silas drove around town in a sort of daze, remembering places from his past as if he were watching a movie of his life through the car window. That was how he ended up winding his way along the road that traced the outer rim of Humphrey’s Peak through the pine forest. He had the window rolled down, and the vanilla scent of the woods, warming in the April sun, transported him. He made several turns and arrived, dreamlike, before the house. It had hardly changed in the four years since he had sold it. Through the dense stand of trees he could see that the new owners had painted it, but they had kept the colors muted so that the house would continue to blend in with the landscape. There was a fancy BMW SUV in the driveway, and Silas thought he could hear children playing.
He closed his eyes. The sound of the children made him think of his own boys. Some things, once they were gone, weren’t coming back. He wondered how much more of his life he would let slip through his fingers trying to hold on to ghosts.
He sat another minute, remembering the layout of the house and how it felt to come home from a late lecture and find Penelope waiting for him there, and then he turned over the ignition and drove back into town.
THE TRAILER PARK where Dallas and Jane Vaughn lived was on the opposite side of the city, and it stood in stark contrast to Silas’s former home. The trailer park was clean and tidy but cramped. The homes stood check-by-jowl next to one another. Some people had erected miniature picket fences to create the illusion of privacy.
Silas looked at the receipt with Dallas Vaughn’s address on it, and after driving around the park twice he found the trailer and parked across the dirt road from it. There was a swingset pushed up against the side of the double-wide unit. The swings occupied most of the unit’s driveway, so Vaughn had parked his Dodge Ram on the road. Silas walked past it, noticing the gun racks in the truck, and walked up three steps to knock on the door.
Vaughn appeared there, dressed in work pants and a clean white T-shirt.
“Mr. Vaughn, I’ve come to return your key.” Vaughn opened the door, but Silas didn’t hand him anything. “I wonder if I could ask you a few more questions.”
Vaughn looked behind himself. “I’m just fixing supper for the kids.”
“This will only take a minute.”
Vaughn turned around, went to the kitchen and took something off the stove, and returned to the doorway. He didn’t say anything.
“I wonder if you ever heard your wife mention the name Chas Hinkley or Jim Zahn?”
“Never heard of them. They environmentalists too?”
“Not really.”
“Never heard those names. You know, Jane and me never talked much about our work.”
“Why do you think that is?”
Vaughn was silent a moment, studying Silas. “Just didn’t see eye to eye on things.”
“Did you disapprove of your wife’s work, Mr. Vaughn?”
“That’s a private matter. I think I had better get back to fixing supper.” He started to turn away from Silas.
“What did you mean when you said things could be settled up now?”
“Pardon me?”
“When you gave me the key to Jane’s office, you said that things would be settled up. What does that mean?”
“Just that we can move on now.”
“It doesn’t mean something else? It’s a strange choice of words.”
“Pearson, I’m a laborer, not an English professor. I don’t choose my words as careful as you do.”
“Did you have a life insurance policy on your wife?”
“That’s none of your business.” Vaughn had turned back toward Silas and poked him in the chest with a thick finger. “Who do you think you are? Suggesting that I’m relieved?”
Silas’s heart was racing. “I just wonder if maybe you and Jane weren’t getting on all that well, and that she was making it tough on you with all her activism. Maybe you just decided that life would be better if she wasn’t in the—?”
Vaughn swung a neat roundhouse punch that Silas didn’t even see coming. It connected with his cheek and mouth and took him off his feet. He tumbled off the steps and landed in the dirt of the driveway, nearly on top of the swingset. A trail of blood leaked from the side of his mouth and he had to blink to focus his eyes. Vaughn was walking down the stairs as Silas scrambled to his feet.
“You bastard, you had better get off my property or I’m going to kill you.”
Silas tried to leave but Vaughn caught him before he could reach the road, took him by the shirt collar, and was pulling back to hit him again when they both heard the screen door open.
“Daddy?”
Vaughn, arm still cocked to deliver a blow, turned to look over his shoulder. His five-year-old son was at the door.
“Go back inside!”
“What are you doing?”
“Go back inside, Steven. Now.” The wind seemed to leave Dallas Vaughn’s sails at that moment. Instead of punching Silas, he gave him a weak shove and Silas fell into the street. He could see several neighbors watching from their tiny yards. Vaughn stood with his fists balled, breathing hard, his face knotted with rage. “If I ever see you again, Pearson, I will kill you,” he hissed.
KATIE RAIN SOUNDED GENUINELY CONCERNED over the crackling reception of Silas’s cell phone. “You might have a concussion. Did you call the police?”
“So they could do what?”
“They could arrest Vaughn for assault.”
“The guy has two kids. I’m not going to get him thrown in jail so social services can take his kids away.”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“Nothing right now. But I thought you’d like to know what instigated all of this.”
“Those guys think I’m involved with this somehow. You should have heard them the other day. They raked me over the coals. They think Penny was some kind of domestic terrorist, that she and Jane wanted to blow up the Glen Canyon Dam. They think my wife had taken a page out of Edward Abbey’s The Monkey Wrench Gang.”
“Did they say that?”
“They told me Penny has an FBI file. What else could it be? I’ve got my lawyer looking at accessing that file.”
“You think Dallas Vaughn had something to do with his wife’s death?”
“He could have. I’ve been assuming that Jane’s death was related to her work. But maybe it was something as simple as domestic abuse. Or desperation.”
“Let me see if there is some way for me to bring this up with Agent Taylor here in Moab. I might be able to suggest he look at the husband, given the manner of death. It’s consistent with many other domestic homicides. What doesn’t make sense is why Vaughn would bury his wife at the Atlas tailings site.”
“Yeah, that doesn’t really hang together, does it?”
“Unless …”
“What?”
“Well, what if he was so angry about his wife’s activism and its consequences for his family—you know, no money, and maybe he was getting the gears at work—that he killed her and literally buried her in her work?”
Silas thought about this for a moment. “That could be a possibility.”
“Alright, I’ll bring this up tomorrow with Taylor and see what he thinks. I’m going to have to tell him you and I spoke. It’s the only way this will have any credibility. Where are you now, Silas?”
“I’m on my way out of Flag. I’ve got to go to Page. A lot of what Jane Vaughn was working on was centered there. But first I’m taking a detour to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon. There’s something I have to check out.”
Black Sun Descending Page 7
