The Dead Priest of Sedona

by Charles Williamson

  Next we checked the satellite photos. We found the circular pine grove with the large juniper in the center. The ring of trees looked too perfect to be natural, but the trees forming the outer band had to be fifty years old, maybe more. The small opening in the circle that Chad had found was at the exact northern point. We could see traces of the jeep trail in the photo. They ended about half a mile directly north of the grove. That would explain the missing footprints. If the pagans had come from the end of the abandoned road, they would have entered through the opening in the north section of the circle of trees. In the open area the snow was gone when we arrived.

  Using a magnifying glass we traced it back to another more distinct road. Cross checking on the maps, we came up with the coordinates for the point where the thin line diverged from Forest Service Road 1152.

  I remarked to Chad that if this route was used, the criminals must be very familiar with the forest south of Flagstaff since the abandoned road was not on the maps.

  CHAPTER 7

  Soon, Chad and I were driving south on 89A toward the great ponderosa forest. It’s the largest continuous stand of ponderosa in North America. Before leaving town, we’d stopped for a KFC lunch, which I didn’t plan to mention to Margaret. Fried chicken was not on my low cholesterol diet. The rule seemed to be that I could not eat high fat foods unless Margaret had cooked them as part of her hobby. We also stopped at Babbitt’s Backcountry to purchase a copy of the Dutton Hill USGS map.

  It was a near perfect afternoon with blue skies and no sign of the forecasted snow. Chad was watching the GPS receiver for the exact coordinates for our turn onto the forest service road. Traffic was light, and I was enjoying the forest bordered two-lane highway when a big black Lincoln Navigator began to pass. It pulled back sharply into our lane, much too quickly.

  Cursing the bastard, I swerved off the road missing his rear bumper by inches. Luckily, I retained control and brought the Explorer to a stop a few feet from a large pine. We were fortunate not to have been hurt. I’d been driving slowly as we neared our turnoff.

  It was a California license plate, and I called the tag number in to the office and asked that someone stop the driver. The Arizona Highway Patrol, the Sedona police, or our deputies would find him. There were no exits from Oak Creek Canyon between our location and Sedona. The reckless driver was going to jail for leaving the scene of an accident. The huge SUV’s windows had been heavily tinted, so we didn’t get a view of the driver. Our colleagues would need to catch the driver while he or she was still in the vehicle. In Arizona, it’s not a good idea to run a law enforcement officer off the road and drive away.

  The Explorer and both of us were unhurt. I asked Chad, “Should we go after the guy?”

  “Let’s go on with our investigation. The guy was a scumbag to drive off, but being a thoughtless jerk off is normal for Californians in sixty thousand dollar SUV’s. We’re less than a mile from our turnoff. We might lose the opportunity to investigate this approach if it snows tonight . ” He seemed to have forgotten that I was born and raised in LA. I’d spent more than fifty years as a Californian, and I also drove an SUV.

  Soon, we turned onto the cinder-covered road. This first part was well maintained by the county. Campers and hunters would use it to reach the remote forest south of Flagstaff. It had been re-graded sometime over the summer. This section was on all of the forest service maps. We drove slowly to the next GPS checkpoint that we’d recorded in Flagstaff. Taking the left fork of the “Y”, we headed deeper into the forest. The rutted jeep road was narrow, only one car wide. I could hear a bull elk bugle in the distance. Hunters would be the logical users of this primitive road. An experienced hunter might know how to reach Pagan Point along an abandoned jeep road.

  We traveled south at ten miles an hour with the pines within a few feet of either side of our vehicle. By now it was mid-afternoon, but little of the sky was visible from the narrow track. If the murderers had come this way, they would have needed high-clearance four-wheel-drive vehicles. I could picture a four-wheel-drive truck with the cage in the back followed by an SUV full of pagans.

  We had stopped periodically to check the road for previous vehicle tracks. In spots where the surface was dirt, we could see that the road had a number of overlapping tire tracks. We were still on the map, so some level of travel would be normal. Eventually, we came to a trailhead parking lot. A row of boulders blocked any further progress using our vehicle. This was the point marked as the end of the road on the Forest Service maps.

  We investigated the parking area on foot, photographing and measuring tracks. When we walked over to the boulders, we found evidence that they had been moved. Scratches around several of the huge volcanic stones indicated that they might have been dragged with a chain. We examined the nearby tracks carefully. Someone had pulled several of the stones to the side and then pulled them back into place probably using a wench on a four-wheel-drive vehicle. We made a plaster cast of the tire tracks and took dozens of photos.

  Just beyond the boulders, a Forest Service sign marked the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness. The road would have been blocked off four decades ago when the area was designated a federal wilderness. No motorized vehicles were allowed. The overlapping tracks of two vehicles were clear in the soft ground a few hundred yards into the wilderness. If you were willing to roast a person over a slow fire, violating a wilderness boundary was no big deal.

  We made casts of these tire tracks and took other photos. The tracks were recent. They were the best physical evidence we’d found in this homicide case, but we were still about three miles from the crime scene. They would be of limited use in court. Chad, carrying the crime scene kit, and I walked at a brisk pace along the abandoned road.

  After half an hour of walking, I used the satellite phone to call the office and report what we had found and to provide our current coordinates.

  Rose answered the phone and took my report. She updated us about our bad driver by explaining, “The California license you called in for the hit and run Navigator was registered to Hertz Rental Car in Los Angeles, the LAX location. It should be on a Ford Taurus that was rented for a month to a middle aged German couple. Hertz doesn’t rent Lincoln Navigators. There is no sign of the vehicle yet, which is hard to explain since there seems to be no other route that would get them off Highway 89A in Oak Creek Canyon.”

  “We’ll catch them soon,” she said with false confidence. I grunted some sort of acknowledgement. I was pissed that we hadn’t gone after them immediately.

  “Boss, there’s a big storm coming our way. We expect an inch of rain in Sedona, and eight to ten inches of snow in the high country. You gentlemen will be embarrassed if you need to be rescued tonight.”

  I promised Rose that we wouldn’t stay much longer in the forest and that I’d call when we started back to the jeep. The sky was still blue, but storms can come quickly in northern Arizona. I was glad we had winter gear with us in our vehicle and that we had checked in before we headed down this remote track. We verified our location and decided that we had time to hike up the end of this trail. Now, nearly jogging, we continued until we reached the end of the original road on a rocky promontory overlooking the West Fork Canyon. It was near the spot that Chad and I called Pagan Point.

  We checked the area, but found it was too rocky to give usable footprints or tire tracks. Chad and I circled the area looking for any signs of recent use. They were there. Rocks had been disturbed by passing vehicles or by hikers. Chad found a path down from the promontory that led to the grove where the murder was committed. We followed the rocky path until Chad spotted a single footprint in a small patch of soil. We took photos and measured it. It appeared to be a woman’s hiking boot. Chad made a cast while I followed the path all the way to the crime scene without finding another print. When the route passed through the trees, the ground was covered with pine needles, but where there were no trees the soil was very rocky.

  Just as I was about to t
urn back, I saw it. There was a tire track. It was only a few inches of tire mark in a tiny patch of soil among the rocks. A wide flat tire had made the shallow impression. It was not from a truck or car. It was much too wide for a mountain bike. I didn’t recognize the tire type.

  As I looked up to see if Chad was ready to make another cast, I noticed the first clouds of the incoming front. We were using a quick drying formula to make the prints, and we would just have to make time to get this one. I called to Chad to bring the equipment down as soon as he finished. By the time we had the cast of the tire track made, it was snowing. I checked in with Rose to let her know we were finished. Chad and I headed to the Explorer after putting on our rain gear against the cold wind and snow. Actually, the first snow was more like tiny ice pellets than the nice white fluffy stuff. My right leg ached from the cold and the hike, and I couldn’t avoid limping. Chad certainly noticed but didn’t comment.

  When we got to the protection of our Explorer, the snow was falling fast in large white clumps. To a former Californian, it looked like a blizzard, and it was a long slow drive back to Highway 89A. The snow turned to rain at the lower elevation of Oak Creek Canyon. We got to the Sedona Sheriff’s station just after dark.

  Rose had already gone for the day, but the night duty officer updated us on the black Navigator. It had not been found and no one could explain why. They had checked every parking lot, motel, and campground between Flagstaff and Sedona. There was an APB out for it. We stored our tire and footprint casts in the evidence room, and I headed home for dinner. Chad would probably take Susan out to eat or order pizza since neither of them ever cooked.

  When I called Margaret to check on tonight’s dinner plans, she suggested that we take Kevin out for a steak dinner. She was trying to fatten him up. Kevin had spent the day using the bike to explore the town. After a pleasant dinner, I checked in with the Flagstaff office to see if there was anything new from the crime lab on the identification of the murder victim. They reported that we should know for sure by morning.

  When Margaret and I were alone, she asked me to update her on our investigation. I told her the bad news about the corpse matching Father Sean’s perfect teeth. She was surprised that Father Sean had authored several books. He was not a man who would have bragged about the books or about his Stanford Ph.D. Margaret is an avid reader, and she suggested that she read both of his books and let me know if they had a connection to the case. That would save me a lot of time. I thought it was a great idea. Margaret and I talked about the case until bedtime. Neither of us realized that this was just the first murder, or that the next one would also involve someone we both knew.

  Vatican City, November 2, 2005

  Monsignor Francisco de Navarro knelt in prayer, meditating on the peculiarities of God’s methods on earth. Although the Arizona project began under his predecessor, Benedict XVI had show great interest in continuing the research. When he informed the Holy Father of the death of the young priest in Arizona, they had prayed together for God to guide their actions. He requested the Holy Father give him some sort of dispensation from his promise of secrecy, but the German pope had not. The laws of God superseded the laws of man. Francisco knew what was required, but it made him sad. He suspected that other lives were at risk and yearned for justice in this world even though he understood that true justice was in God’s hands.

  CHAPTER 8

  The night’s rain was gone. I woke two hours before dawn to the drama of the Arizona night sky. The Milky Way divided the dome of stars into unequal halves. No moon dulled the points of starlight. My anxiety about the Secret Mountain Wilderness case had awakened me early on this Wednesday morning. I made coffee and watched for the dawn in the darkened breakfast room while I considered the next steps in the case.

  Yesterday, when Sheriff Taylor reported that the victim had perfect teeth like Father Sean, I had been certain. A Jesuit priest had been murdered in a barbaric manner up at Pagan Point. I needed to understand who had the opportunity, but most of all I needed to figure out the motive. The physical evidence might lead somewhere, but motive seemed the best project for today.

  Both my experience and intuition convinced me that it was no accident that an expert on medieval cults, pre-Christian rituals, and ancient pagan religions had been killed in a manner that emulated a pre-Christian human sacrifice. I was having some serious doubts about the idyllic nature of my little Arizona tourist town.

  When I got to my office, I wanted to contact Father Sean’s superiors to find out why he was sent to Sedona. My guess was that it was connected to the concentration of New Age religions in the area. Maybe his investigation was too successful. I would ask Chad to pick up Father Sean’s laptop and bring it to our office this morning. Maybe Chad would learn something useful from it.

  Since Margaret had volunteered to read the two books Father Sean authored, I’d start on the other two, on Celtic magic and on one called New Wicca. Today, I’d also contact someone at Northern Arizona University who might be able to speed my research. Even with the best possible turnaround, we were unlikely to have reports from the FBI lab for several days. We also had the tire impressions and footprint cast that Chad had made yesterday. First thing this morning, we should send them down to the crime lab in Phoenix for identification.

  The dawn light was beginning to reach the highest levels of Sedona’s mesas when I heard Margaret in the shower. We had breakfast together watching the sunlight move progressively down the red rock buttes, showing us the new snow on the tops of the formations. We talked more about the case before Kevin was up.

  “I remember reading something in my Latin class about four decades ago, an account of this bizarre method of murder in something we translated. I’ll track that down,” Margaret said.

  “Call me if you think of anything else, “I said. As we parted I said, “I’ll get the evil bastards, I promise.”

  She laughed and kissed me. “Sweetie, every criminal is a bastard to you. You’ve called then that for thirty years. It’s when you call them an evil bastard that I know you’re really serious.”

  As I put my Explorer in its parking place, I had a new perspective about the shops that shared our small strip mall. The Mystic New Age Bookstore had shared our small strip mall for years. I had never been inside the store, but it might be a good place to start learning about some of the folks who shared the town with us. I checked the sign on the door and found that it opened at 10:00. I greeted the night duty officer and made fresh coffee.

  I began the book about Celtic customs that I had found in Father Sean’s room highlighting passages of interest with my yellow marker and making notes on a yellow writing pad. After an hour of reading, I heard Chad’s voice out by the front desk. I said good morning to Chad and Rose and asked Chad to pick up the laptop from Father Sean’s room and check it out. I was still convinced that understanding the motive was the key to solving this murder. Although the crime looked like a bizarre pagan sacrifice, the method of murder might be a cover for some other unrelated motive.

  When I returned to my reading, I glanced over my notes and shook my head in wonder. In just an hour of reading, I had discovered what a lot of the New Age stuff that surrounded us in Sedona was all about. How could Margaret and I have been so unaware of the underlying NeoPagan elements, which were often part of the undercurrents in Sedona? The beliefs seemed harmless, but I had totally ignored these elements until I started this case. After another hour of reading, I had formed some opinions.

  The modern pagans seemed to be trying to recreate a religion that had disappeared centuries earlier. When Celtic countries became Christian, these old beliefs were discarded and forgotten. These books indicated that twenty-first century Americans were trying to resurrect these ancient beliefs based mostly on fantasy and imagination rather than specific knowledge of the pre-Christian Celts.

  In general, both books explained how to use magic. It was not the kind that magicians use on the stage, but techniques for channe
ling a supernatural power to change things in the real world. I understood using prayer, but that was an attempt to influence God or intended to worship him. These books rejected God and his actual power. The local witches might be deluding themselves about their magic powers, but would they commit a heinous and barbaric murder in pursuit of this religion’s supposed magic powers?

  This belief system was based on taking some sort of energy from another plane of existence and using ritual magic to form that energy into something that would impact the real world. For the first time, I understood what folks were talking about when they mentioned Sedona’s vortices of power. Many New Age adherents believed that several locations in the Sedona area were especially close to the power in this other plane of existence, and therefore they were especially powerful spots for working ritual magic.

  I recalled the time that Margaret and I had found a group of nine people singing a song in a foreign language while standing inside a stone circle in Boynton Canyon. I also remembered people who seemed to be praying at Bell Rock and on Airport Mesa. I felt a little silly to have been so oblivious to what was going on all around town. However, nothing that I had read seemed to be a motive for a murder. Nothing in either book indicated that local pagans would kill someone as part of a ritual. On the surface, it all seemed harmless. I was a tolerant guy, and I didn’t care about my neighbors’ religion or lack of it as long as they did not murder Jesuit priests in Pagan sacrifices.