But smart had nothing to do with it. Silas was curious. What would make the man run? And why might he be looking for him?
As he threw his dirty hiking clothing into his bag he considered what he knew about Dallas Vaughn: truck driver, hard worker. The man sure hadn’t liked Macy’s when they had met there. He had hardly taken his eyes off the street the whole time they had talked. And what had he said?
More of an Uptown Billiards kind of guy.
THE UPTOWN WAS just around the corner from Silas’s hotel. He walked around the block and stepped into the building. The clack of pool balls colliding filled the air.
Dallas Vaughn was at the bar, hunched over a glass of amber-colored liquid. Silas sat down beside him.
“Word travels fast,” Vaughn said by way of greeting.
“If this was a spaghetti western, I guess my line would be I hear you’re looking for me.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I got a call from Sheriff Cross. She told me you’d gone walkabout, and had circled my name and my hotel on the sheet of paper I gave you.”
Vaughn fiddled with his glass. He poured some of the liquor down his throat. “I guess I was trying to figure out what I’d do when I came over there.”
“You know, I’ve left and come back since I saw you last. I’ve been in Page and down the Grand Canyon since then.”
“Good for you.” Vaughn drained his glass. Silas caught the bartender’s eye and pointed to Vaughn’s glass, and then pointed to the tap labeled LUMBERYARD IPA, a locally made ale. He waited for their drinks to come and then said, “If you were looking for me, I just saved you the trouble. Are you going to hit me again? Is that why you left your kids with your folks and skipped out on work?”
Silas expected an angry retort, but instead Vaughn just shook his head. “I know things didn’t go very well between us the last time we talked.”
“No, not so well.”
“I’ve found something that I think you might find interesting. That’s why I was coming to see you. I think it might help you find your wife.” Vaughn looked at Silas for the first time. “You still got a fat lip.”
Silas nodded and took a drink of beer.
“Sorry about that. I got a little hot. Sheriff’s people showed up after you left. One of the busybodies around my complex must have called it in.”
“It wasn’t me.”
“Yeah, I know. Anyway. Sorry.”
“You found something about Penny?”
Vaughn closed his eyes and took a long drink from his glass. “You know that they’ve been asking me about Jane. They think that maybe I did it. Can you believe that? Makes me so goddamned mad. Sheriff coming round, sticking her nose in where it doesn’t belong, accusing me of murdering Jane when the killer is out there.” He gestured with his drink. “They fired me. Well, told me to take some leave time.”
“Who? Your work?”
“Yeah, sons of bitches.”
“Did something happen?” Silas knew from his conversation with Cross that something had.
“Some guy got to bugging me about Jane. Called her a fish-kisser. I hit him pretty good. I think I broke his jaw. Maybe some teeth. He had it coming. Anyway, they told me to take some bereavement leave. I don’t think I’ll be going back. What the fuck is the point now?”
“You need to take a break. When Penelope disappeared I was a mess. And it didn’t help that the FBI started giving me the gears. It’s been four and a half years and I think they still like me for Penny’s disappearance.” As Silas spoke Dallas Vaughn seemed to have disappeared into his head. His eyes were vacant and his body limp. “Dallas?”
“What’s that?”
“You told me you found something that might help me find my wife.”
“Yeah, I got something.” He stood up shakily and pulled an envelope from the back pocket of his Carhartts. Sitting down again, Vaughn opened it and pulled out a sheaf of papers. Silas knew that it was Jane’s will.
“I never looked at this before the other day. We had these done up when we were married, but Jane updated hers and when she did I didn’t even read it. I guess I thought it would be a long time before I needed to. I actually figured I’d go first. My work and all. Likely get crushed or some fucking thing. But she went first and now I got this to deal with.” He held a single sheet of paper out for Silas.
“What is it?”
“Burial instructions.”
Silas read the sheet of paper. He got halfway through the page of instructions about cremation and the service when he got to the section on where Jane Vaughn wanted her ashes scattered. It read,
We have an agreement: if Darcy, Penelope, or I die, then the other two will take our ashes to a place on the Colorado River still wild and free and scatter them there. For the Colorado River is the heart of the Canyon Southwest; that is where we wish to spend eternity. The boys are on their own.
The paper dangled loosely from his trembling fingers. Silas felt a tear forming at the corner of his eye and pushed it away angrily.
“It’s alright, man. I’ve shed more tears in the last two weeks than I ever thought a grown man could. This whole thing is fucked up, and this,” he pointed with his drink at the sheet of paper in Silas’s fingers, “is the icing on the cake.”
“Penelope said much the same thing in her journal. It was all about the Colorado River for her.”
“What do you make of this business with the boys?”
“You and me? Maybe this guy that Penelope hung around with: Josh Charleston. He was another Abbey aficionado. Thinks he’s Hayduke from The Monkey Wrench Gang.”
“I’m an operator. I fucking hate that shit. Somebody messed with my machine once and it cost me a week of pay while I waited for parts to come in to fix it. Kids almost didn’t get Christmas that year.”
“I’m an English professor. I hate it too. But maybe Jane was talking about him?”
“He’s just one boy.”
“Boy is right. But yes, he’s just one. I don’t know what that means.”
“Do you think this might help with your wife?”
“Like, I should be looking along the Colorado River? I’ve spent four and a half years crawling through the dust of this godforsaken landscape. I’ve spent more than a hundred days along the Colorado River alone. I’ve found other dead bodies. But I haven’t found my wife.”
“I thought it might help.”
Silas stood up. “It might. I just don’t know how.”
“You want this?” Vaughn held out the sheet of paper.
“No. You keep it. You’re going to need it.”
“Where do I do this?” He waved the paper toward Silas. “Where do I scatter her ashes?” Tears leaked down the man’s face.
“Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you. Before I go, can I ask you one question? I don’t want to get punched, though.”
Vaughn smiled weakly.
“Did you have a life insurance policy on your wife?”
“Yes. We both did. It was a group policy through my work.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that when I was at your place?”
“It wasn’t any of your business. Just because your wife is missing doesn’t give you the right to be asking anything you want, any time you want.”
It was Silas’s turn to smile. “You’re right. I guess I’ve gotten a little myopic.”
“The policy pays out twenty-five thousand dollars. But there has to be a death certificate, and you can’t get one of those in Arizona for a missing person until they’ve been gone for seven—”
“Seven years. I know.”
“Of course you do. So I can use that to pay off our credit card and put a little aside for the kids’ education so they don’t end up in some dead-end job like their old man.”
“I’m sorry to have made it seem—”
“Forget it. You want another beer?”
“I should go. Dallas, you’ve got to call Cross and talk with her. The longe
r you stay on the lam the worse they will come down on you. And you got to go get your kids. They need their father.”
“I know it. Hey, Pearson. I really am sorry. For hitting you, for everything.”
“I’m sorry too, Dallas. I’ll be in touch about that other thing,” he said, pointing to the paper.
Dallas Vaughn was still hunched over his drink when Silas left the bar.
SILAS COULDN’T BE CERTAIN IF Dallas Vaughn was experiencing grief or remorse; what he did know was that Jane Vaughn, Darcy McFarland, and his wife had all worked closely together, so closely that Jane’s dying wish was to have Penelope and Darcy scatter her ashes over the Colorado River. Silas considered it interesting that Penelope hadn’t updated her own will to reflect this, but then remembered that she had disappeared long before Jane had.
Silas was also certain that his wife, if ever found, would be along the main stem of the Colorado or one of its tributaries. That didn’t narrow his search by much, given that just about every river, creek, dry wash, and arroyo found its way to into the Colorado, but it helped him focus both his search and his investigation into who might have wanted Penelope, and the others, dead.
As he walked Silas thought about his own maps at home flagged with the yellow Post-it notes bearing the names of the bodies he’d found over the last year. For some of them the mystery had been solved, but not for Darcy McFarland—her yellow sticky note was at Potash on the Colorado—nor for Jane—at the Atlas Mill. Kiel, who didn’t have a sticky note yet because Silas hadn’t been home, had been found in the Paria. The killer—or killers—was still at large. Silas thought about the configuration of the notes, trying to make any sense of it. Jane and Darcy were separated by less than twenty miles, but Kiel was found more than three hundred miles distant. It didn’t help.
He considered the timing. He had found Darcy the previous August, and she had been killed within the few weeks before, according to Katie. Jane he had discovered just two weeks ago, but she had disappeared at the beginning of the previous November. Kiel had been discovered just five days ago, and he had been missing for ten days at that point. The killings, if related at all, were spaced out over the last year. Was there any significance to this time span?
Had whatever happened to Penelope set in motion these other murders?
He shook himself awake. Despite a few hours of fitful sleep he was still dead tired, sore, bruised, and blistered.
Silas thought about the emptiness that seemed to have consumed Dallas Vaughn in the week since Silas had seen him last. He wondered if he himself projected that same emptiness. Silas also realized that despite himself, he was thinking of Penelope more and more in terms of someone who wasn’t lost, who hadn’t fled a bad marriage, who hadn’t fallen down a crack in the earth and perished; he was thinking of her as someone who had been murdered. It left him crestfallen and despondent.
He got back to the Monte Vista at seven, took another shower, and walked two blocks to Café Express for something to eat. Sitting at a table by the window, watching the sun fade from the streets of his former home, he felt a loneliness creep into his bones. He would leave Flagstaff in the morning and he would never, ever come back.
Silas went to the cocktail lounge in the hotel. The room was warm and a band was tuning up on the stage. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a pint of draft. He was on his second beer when he heard a voice behind him.
“Drinking alone tonight?” Katie Rain sat down next to him. She was dressed in a blazer and blue jeans.
“How’d you find me?”
“We put a transmitter on you when you were at the office this morning.”
“Really?”
“Silas, come on.”
He smiled. “I’m too tired to care.”
Katie motioned to the bartender. “Can you make me a Manhattan?” The bartender nodded. Katie turned to Silas again. “You alright?”
“I’m not going to find her alive.”
“I’m sorry, Silas.”
“It’s been obvious to everybody but me. She’s dead. And she was almost certainly murdered.”
“Did something happen this afternoon? I thought you were going to get some sleep.”
“Sheriff Cross called and told me Dallas Vaughn was missing. When I found him he told me he had something that would help me.”
“What did he find?” Katie sipped her drink.
“I don’t know if it’s really that significant.” Silas told her about his conversation with Vaughn and about the will.
Katie listened, watching him. When he was done she put a hand on his arm and smiled. “We’re going to figure out what happened to Penelope, Silas. I promise.”
“Who, the FBI?”
“Well, maybe. But I mean we’re going to figure it out. You and me.”
Silas finished his beer and ordered a third pint. He looked at Katie through the haze of fatigue and alcohol. “So, did you arrest Chas Hinkley and Paul Love?”
“Not yet. We’re going to pick them up at Marble Canyon when they finish their trip. That’s two days from now. Love hasn’t called to request medical, and we’re going to spend some time building our case. We’ve executed a search warrant for both men’s offices. Someone has likely called them to tell them what’s happening. If we find information to corroborate what you’ve told us, we’ll be able to open an investigation into Hinkley’s business dealings. We’ve got our white-collar crime division investigating that.
“I wanted to tell you about something else we’ve been working on. You understand, Silas, that this isn’t my area of expertise. Remember, before I did bones, I was a field agent, but I never did much serial work.”
“Serial?”
“Serial killer.”
“You think that’s what this is?”
“Hear me out—”
“Does Taylor know you’re here?”
“Yes. I wouldn’t be telling you this if he hadn’t okayed it.”
“So you’re really here as Agent Rain, not Katie Rain, friend of Silas Pearson …”
“Silas, I’m both. You’re going to have to accept that. Now, do you want to hear about the profile we’re working up?” Silas nodded. “After you found Kiel Pearce’s body last week, we started to get curious about things. Three vics, all found by the same person. Lots of similarities between them. They all worked in the environmental movement or with outdoor guiding interests. Outdoorsy types, as Agent Nielsen put it. We fed all of this, along with the dates that these people were reported missing and when their bodies were discovered, back to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime—our criminal profiling division—in Quantico and what we got back surprised us. The Behavioral Analysis Unit Four deals with actual or attempted homicides against adults, and they specialize in this sort of random-appearing crime. They weren’t conclusive—they rarely are—but we thought that we’d get a profile of someone.”
“What did you get?”
“Two killers. One is a profile, and the other just random.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Well, neither do we. Our profilers believe that the Darcy McFarland and Kiel Pearce murders are related. Both bodies were found shortly after they were reported missing. It appears by the MO that both knew their victim and trusted him or her. There was chloroform present in their lung tissue. Jane Vaughn, on the other hand, was missing for a long time before she was found, and the cause of her death leaves nothing to suggest she was familiar, or friendly, with her killer. Based on that we think we might be investigating two separate cases.
“Our approach will be different for these two separate cases. Two murders don’t make a serial killer. It could still turn out that all three of our victims were killed by different people.”
“Do you think that points the finger back at Dallas Vaughn for his wife’s murder?”
“I can’t say. I’ll tell Taylor what you’ve told me and see what he thinks.”
“What’s next?”
“You g
et some sleep. Check with us in the morning. I’ll be here for one more day before I fly back to Salt Lake. There are a dozen cases waiting for me there. Hang in there, Silas. We’ll get this sorted out, and we’ll find out what happened to Penny.”
SILAS WOKE FEELING ENERGIZED, DESPITE a mild hangover. When he was ready to check out, he called the FBI’s Flagstaff Field Office. Special Agent Ortiz responded to his call.
“I’m heading out.”
“If the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department wishes to arrest Mr. Love and Mr. Hinkley for unlawful imprisonment, they will need you to file a charge.”
“I’ll call in at the sheriff’s office on the way out of town. Are you still investigating the allegations of fraud?”
“Yes, we are. We’ve seized the papers you referred us to at Jane Vaughn’s office. You know, Dr. Pearson, you might have saved us all some trouble if you’d alerted us to these findings a week ago.”
“I didn’t know what I had found until I started having conversations.”
“We appreciate that you have a special relationship with these disappearances, Dr. Pearson. Don’t get me wrong. But please, sir, leave the investigation to us. We have concerns that you may unwittingly sully evidence that could be used to convict a killer.”
Silas sighed deeply. “Agent Ortiz, all I want is to find my wife. I have no intention of stopping my efforts there. Tell Special Agent Taylor that he really should look into the relationship between Paul Love, Chas Hinkley, and Jane Vaughn’s advocacy for Wilderness along the Colorado. I think that’s what this is all about.”
“We’re already doing that, Dr. Pearson. Thank you for your call.”
HE STOPPED AT the Flagstaff office of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department. Hilary Cross was still in Page supervising the investigation into Kiel Pearce’s murder, so Silas gave a statement about the events at Phantom Ranch. When asked about the whereabouts of Josh Charleston, AKA Hayduke, he told the sheriff’s deputy that he wasn’t sure and didn’t really care, which elicited a raised eyebrow from the young officer.
SILAS SAT IN his car on the outskirts of Flagstaff for the second time in as many weeks. He had just gotten gas, bought two six-packs, and filled his twenty-gallon water jug. Now he was watching traffic pass on the highway. It would be a long drive around the Grand Canyon to the North Rim. He looked east along the highway. If he turned left and headed in that direction, he could be back in the Castle Valley in seven hours. If he turned right, in the same amount of time he could resume his search for Penelope along the North Rim.
Black Sun Descending Page 16
