Black Sun Descending

by Stephen Legault

  Taylor spoke first. “We’d like to talk with you about any connection between last year’s open, unsolved case of Darcy McFarland’s murder and the more recent discovery of Jane Vaughn and Kiel Pearce. We hope you might be able to help us piece together what we already know. Our investigation last fall showed us that Darcy McFarland was a water rights activist based in Flagstaff, and that she was friends with your wife. She was working on issues related to the Colorado River, and that sometimes brought her into conflict with people who didn’t share her world view. We know that she was murdered—most likely rendered unconscious with a blow to the head with a rock and then drowned in the settling ponds near the potash. You led us to her body.

  “We also know that Jane Vaughn was found near Moab, along the banks of the Colorado, also in an industrial site. We are still trying to determine cause of death. Whatever the case, her body was dumped in the waste at the Atlas Mill location. She also knew your wife. She was working on a wide range of issues, all associated with the Grand Canyon.

  “Finally, we have a body we assume will be confirmed as Mr. Pearce. From the preliminary information Dr. Rain and the Coconino County Medical Examiner have been able to provide, it appears as if he was also murdered, and much more recently. He too knew Penelope de Silva. Unlike Ms. McFarland and Ms. Vaughn, he wasn’t known to participate in activism, other than writing the occasional letter to his congressman or signing an online petition.”

  “So you’re saying you didn’t have a file on him.”

  “No, Dr. Pearson, we didn’t. As you can see, the threads that clearly link these three people are you and your wife.”

  “And as you haven’t found her yet, despite four and a half years having passed, I’m on the hot seat.”

  “You know,” interrupted Agent Nielsen, “in other agency offices you’d likely be held as a suspect. There’s lots of evidence—”

  “Then put it on the table!” demanded Ken, pounding his palm on the wood in front of him.

  “People!” said Taylor.

  Silas put a hand on Ken’s beefy forearm. The lawyer’s face was red. Silas said, “I don’t know how these three murders fit together,” he said. “Or even if they do. Kiel might not have been a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club, but he was involved in the fight to protect places like the Colorado River. So were Darcy, Jane, and my wife. I just don’t know if they were all in it together. Jane’s name wasn’t in the register at the North Rim Fire Lookout.” Silas turned to Katie. “Is there anything about how Kiel was killed that might help?”

  Katie nodded. “There might be. We’ve been working on him a little more this afternoon. We’ve been looking at his neck and throat. The rope cut in very deeply right here,” she said, pointing to her own jawline. “It’s impossible to tell for certain, given how much damage was done by carrion feeders after his death. There was a significant pool of blood below the body where he was hung, leading us to believe he wasn’t dead when he was hung or, if he was, that he was hung within minutes. The hyoid bone was crushed, which is common with manual strangulation, but that’s not necessarily the cause of death. We’ve seen this before in other cases, Silas.” Silas nodded, thinking of the insanity of the last year of his life.

  “But the rope doesn’t appear to have been on the hyoid. It was a good two inches above it. That means whoever killed Kiel knocked him unconscious with chloroform, strangled him, and then hung him from that log before cutting him open.”

  “They must have been counting on the fact that in early April there isn’t a lot of traffic in Paria. The water in the narrows is very cold, and so not many people are hiking there yet,” Sheriff Cross added. “We’ve checked with the BLM and only half a dozen parties would have passed that side canyon in the last ten days.”

  “What about the … what about the wound to his belly?”

  “I think,” said Katie, “that might have been a diversion. I think whoever killed Kiel wanted carrion feeders on his corpse as soon as possible, in order to dispose of his body quickly. The wound, however, was made with a very large blade. A hunting knife or something like it. We’ll know more in a few days.”

  “If I hadn’t seen the birds, I wouldn’t have looked there.”

  “We’re going to interview everybody who was registered to hike Paria and Buckskin to see if they noticed anything, but it’s going to take some time. Some of these folks have already left the state,” said Taylor.

  “Was he killed at the scene?” asked Silas.

  “That’s a good question,” Taylor acknowledged. “We think so. Kiel Pearce weighed about two hundred and five pounds. He was six feet, three inches. Not huge, but heavy enough. There were no drag marks in that side canyon, and nothing that we could find anywhere in the main stem of the Paria. We have agents on the scene still, but I don’t think they will find anything.”

  “So he was there under his own steam. That means he either went there with his killer, or the killer snuck up on him,” said Silas.

  “The latter seems unlikely.” Taylor shook his head. “That part of the canyon is pretty wide, except for the constriction where that log was hanging.”

  “I guess the third option is that he went there on his own, but met his killer there. Maybe it was someone he knew and just bumped into. The killer making it seem like a coincidence.”

  “That’s possible,” conceded Taylor. “What I don’t understand, Dr. Pearson, is how it was you were already at Lee’s Ferry when you had your dream.”

  “I found him on Facebook,” Silas said. He saw Katie Rain raise her eyebrows. “I saw that he listed Lee’s Ferry as home, and that he worked for a rafting company, and he was missing. I called Agent Nielsen and told him all this, then I drove straight here. That night I had another dream.”

  Silas could feel the stillness in the room. He looked around at the faces staring at him. “Look, I know you think I’m crazy. I think I’m crazy. But the fact is, I found him. I had a dream about my wife, and I found him.”

  “Let’s talk about your friend, Josh Charleston,” said Taylor.

  “He’s not my friend.”

  “How would you describe your relationship?”

  “He’s … he knew Penny. They had a common cause.”

  “Protecting the environment,” said Taylor.

  “Yes. Protecting the Southwest. Same with Jane Vaughn and Darcy McFarland. I don’t know if Kiel shared their passion, but he likely did. Maybe Kiel was just quieter about the whole thing. Maybe he didn’t want an NSA file.”

  Taylor let the quip slide. “This is the second time you and Mr. Charleston have been involved in a situation together. There was the incident at Comb Ridge last fall.”

  “The incident? You mean, when someone tried to kill me and he saved my life?”

  “At the time, you told us he was just passing by, a good Samaritan. That’s not entirely true, is it?”

  Ken held up a hand. “Don’t answer that.” He turned to Taylor. “Agent Taylor, you’re crossing a line between cooperation and interrogation.”

  Taylor shook his head. “Alright, have it your way, Counselor. Dr. Pearson,” Taylor turned his attention back to Silas, “how did it come to pass that Mr. Charleston was with you when you found Kiel?”

  “We’ve kept in touch. I ran into him in Flagstaff. He came to Lee’s Ferry after I told him about Kiel Pearce.” The truth was, Silas wasn’t really sure how Hayduke ended up in the same place as he had. As he always did, Hayduke just showed up.

  “Did you know that Mr. Charleston has a criminal record?”

  “Sure. He told me.”

  “Did you know that he was arrested three years ago for assault?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “What’s the point, Mr. Taylor?” Ken interrupted.

  “The point is, Counselor, that your client has a relationship with a man who has a record of questionable behavior. Dr. Pearson has involved Mr. Charleston on two separate occasions in situations involving a violent crime. The FBI
considered this … interesting, to say the least.”

  “Duly noted, Agent Taylor.”

  Silas was quiet. The air in the room seemed heavy. The space felt oppressive to him and he wanted to get out of the sheriff’s office and draw a deep breath, even if it was tainted by the Navajo Generating Station.

  “Dr. Pearson,” said Sheriff Cross. “What really happened to your face?”

  “I hit it on a—”

  “We got two separate 9-1-1 calls about an assault in progress from the trailer court where Dallas Vaughn lives on the day you were in Flagstaff.” Cross folded her arms across her chest.

  Silas looked around the room. He felt a sudden loss of testosterone.

  “Did Mr. Vaughn assault you?”

  “I went to his house to talk with him about Jane. I think he took offense to my line of questioning. He hit me. I was out of line. I didn’t bother to report it.”

  “Two of Mr. Vaughn’s neighbors did. By the time we got a car to the scene you had left. Mr. Vaughn’s neighbors tell us that he has quite the temper.” Cross tapped a pencil on the legal pad in front of her. “What did you ask him, Dr. Pearson?”

  “He told me the first time we met that with the discovery of Jane’s body he could get back to business as usual. He seemed cavalier about the whole thing. I asked him if he was collecting a life insurance policy on his wife.”

  Ken smiled beside Silas. “You sure have a way with people.”

  “Do you think that Dallas Vaughn killed Jane?” Silas asked.

  “It’s too early in the investigation to say,” said Agent Taylor.

  “I think we’re done for the—” started Ken.

  Silas stopped him by saying, “Was chloroform used on Darcy McFarland or Jane Vaughn before they were killed?”

  Agent Taylor looked at Katie Rain. She said, “We don’t know with Ms. Vaughn. Decomposition didn’t follow any predictable pattern due to the extremely unusual circumstances surrounding her remains. While there are other tissues intact for us to test, most of her major organs have decomposed. Her liver and lungs were badly affected by the radioactive waste, and that’s where we would normally look for trace elements of something like chloroform. Ms. McFarland drowned, but the salt in the potash actually preserved her lung tissue. We were able to run a full toxicology report and we have found trace amounts of chloroform.”

  Silas opened his mouth to say something but shut it, closing his eyes.

  Taylor watched him and then continued. “She had been hit on the head, or had hit her head on sandstone before being submerged. The blow was sufficient to have rendered her unconscious. The toxicology reports conducted by the ME suggest that she may have already been unconscious when this blow was delivered. That would suggest a high degree of anger in our suspect. Whoever killed Ms. McFarland by drowning her took the time to vent his or her frustration before she was dumped in the pond.”

  “So there is a connection?”

  “Between Kiel, who was knocked out with chloroform before he was killed, and these other two unsolved crimes,” Katie picked up his thought.

  “That’s right. There is a connection, isn’t there?”

  Taylor tapped his pen on his notepad. “We don’t know that for certain, Dr. Pearson. While the presence of chloroform in McFarland and Pearce’s lung tissue is certainly a link, the strongest connection still seems to be you.”

  SILAS DROVE KEN TO THE Page airport to catch a charter flight to Moab. They stood next to Silas’s Outback as the sun descended toward the horizon.

  “Ken, are you alright?”

  “Yes, yes, fine, amigo. You should be worried about yourself, not about me.”

  “I’m alright, really. Thank you for coming.”

  “Now you owe me. You’ll have to come by the house when you get home and let Trish cook you a big meal.”

  “I don’t see how that is making it up to you, but I will. I promise.”

  “When will that be?”

  Silas looked toward the placid waters of Lake Powell. Lake Foul, Abbey had called it. “I don’t know.”

  “If you stay here, no good will come of it, Silas.”

  “You don’t think so? I think I’m close, Ken.”

  “I think you’re close to getting yourself thrown in the Coconino County jail.”

  “You mean that thing with Love and his truck? I had nothing—”

  “No, not that. I believe we’ve gotten you and your hairy friend off the hook for that. There was no evidence that the brake failure was because of any—”

  “Monkey-wrenching?”

  “I was going to say tomfoolery. You’re going down a road that you’ve been on before. In the fall, with the Hopi girl, and the archaeologist almost got you killed, and you are no closer to finding Penelope.”

  “That’s not true, Ken. I found her journal. And that’s helped me narrow my search. And it’s led me here. I’m getting close.”

  “Silas, three people are dead—”

  “You don’t have to tell me, Ken! I found them!”

  Ken closed his eyes. “Whoever killed them does not want to be found. You are the connection between all three. Why, we don’t know. Whoever killed these people—one person or two or three—will not want you poking around.”

  “If poking around leads me to Penelope, then that’s what I have to do.”

  “IT’S NOT TOO late to call, is it?”

  “No, Dad, it’s just nine o’clock here. Is everything alright?”

  “Everything is fine, Robbie. Listen, last year, when I was digging around with that business with US Senator C. Thorn Smith, you ran down a business for me. You remember?”

  “Sure. No big deal. What do you need?”

  HE WAS PREPARING to take a shower when there was a knock at his door. He looked through the peephole and saw the shaggy head and beard of Josh Charleston filling the frame.

  Silas opened the door. “Hey, you okay?” asked Hayduke.

  “I’m fine. How about you?”

  “Yeah, fine. Looks like your lawyer got us off the hook for that thing with Love’s rig.”

  “For the time being.”

  “Yeah, so, you want to go get a beer or something?”

  Silas looked over his shoulder at the sterile room. “Sure.”

  HAYDUKE TRIED TO find the cowboy bar where Abbey’s Hayduke and Seldom Seen Smith got into a fight in The Monkey Wrench Gang, but after twenty minutes of driving around Page they settled on a place that looked more like a family-style restaurant than a honky-tonk bar. Hayduke grumbled his disappointment as Silas ordered them beers.

  “What the fuck happened to this town?” muttered Hayduke as he scanned the crowd.

  “You’re basing your expectations on a novel written almost forty years ago.”

  “America just isn’t what it used to be.”

  “America never was what it used to be. It’s just mythology. But what do I know? I’m Canadian.”

  “I forgot. You got a green card or something?”

  “Yeah, but for how much longer I don’t know. I guess they’ll kick me out sooner or later now that I’m not at the university.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  “Go home I guess.”

  “Not before we find Pen.”

  “No, not before I find Penelope.”

  “So, they rake you over the coals?” asked Hayduke, signaling to the harried waitress for another beer.

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Me too. Wanted to know how I knew you and what we were doing together in Paria. I stonewalled those fuckers. I stuck to our story. I told them we were just out for a hike.”

  Silas drank from his beer. “They know about my dreams. It’s alright.”

  “Really? Shit, man, what a mess.”

  “You got that right. We talked about connections between Jane Vaughn, Kiel Pearce, and that woman I found last year, Darcy McFarland. Paul Love has got to be at the top of the list.”

  “Shit, man, I should have
braced that dude instead of fucking up his rig.”

  “Watch your language, Josh.”

  “I can’t hardly talk if I don’t curse.”

  “Stop trying to sound like a fictional character. You sound foolish.” Hayduke looked as if he had been slapped. He took a long pull from his beer. Silas watched him from the corner of his eye; the young man seemed to be gritting his teeth. “We need to sort things out. Make a list of suspects,” Silas continued. This seemed to brighten his drinking companion’s mood.

  “Yeah! Figure out what we know and who we have to put the thumbscrews to!”

  Silas nodded.

  “So what do we know?” asked Hayduke.

  “Well, that we got three dead people. Darcy McFarland was found last fall. She was drowned. Hit on the head first, and then drowned in the waste pits at the potash mill near the Colorado River. No witnesses, no leads. Tires tracks nearby, but nothing conclusive. The killer may have used an old jeep trail to leave the scene and drive up onto the Island in the Sky.”

  “This McFarland woman, she worked out of Flag on water issues,” Hayduke said.

  “You found some information on her, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but remember, I dumped it when things got hot. Something about water deals between those oil companies working along the Canyon Rims area, near Moab, and the government. It was a mess is all I remember. But you ran that down and came up empty, didn’t you?”

  “There wasn’t any smoking gun, that’s all I remember. So that’s body number one.” Silas held up a finger. “Number two,” he held up a second finger, “is Jane Vaughn. This gets more complicated.

  “We know that she was tangling with a whole host of players. Paul Love, this Slim Jim Zahn, Chas Hinkley, even a town councillor, Terry Aldershot. She was butting heads with all of these guys. Paul Love and Chas Hinkley over Wilderness designation on the Colorado, Slim Jim over uranium mining on the Arizona Strip, Chas Hinkley over the impact of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado, and this Terry the Terror over God knows what. And then there’s Jane’s husband. His motivation was different. His motivation may well have been as simple as an insurance payout.”