by David Wood
“Interacted, maybe still interact.” Padilla waved his hand at the sky. “I’m not saying every UFO sighting is legit, but I believe there’s something going on here. I know reliable people who have seen things. I know military guys who let a little something slip when they drank too much. There’s been some crazy stuff in these parts.”
“We actually did some research into an incident outside of Quemadura,” Jessie said. “Have you heard of it?”
“Halcón Rock? Absolutely. That’s a prime example of what I’m talking about.” Neither Bones nor Jessie had to ask Padilla to elaborate. Warmed to his subject, he launched into a lengthy explanation of the underworld legends, the history of alien contact in the region, and stories of conflict.
“When I pull all the reliable bits together, it tells a story that’s fairly typical of human history. We get along for a while, and then things go bad. Time passes, and it starts all over again. Archuleta Mesa is one of the better situations—humans and aliens working together. But there are plenty of times where things sour and conflict ensues. Like the battle at Halcón Rock.”
“But if there are aliens living underground,” Jessie said, “why doesn’t anyone notice when they go to war?”
“War is probably the wrong term. More like minor conflicts, skirmishes. Maybe there aren’t many of them, maybe all they really want is to be left alone. Also, there’s ICE.” Seeing Bones’ and Jessie’s twin frowns, he went on. “Initiative for Communications with Extraterrestrials.”
“Haven’t heard of them. Someone told us about a group called STAR.”
Padilla laughed. “Bunch of rednecks in tinfoil cowboy hats. ICE is serious business.”
“Government?” Bones asked.
Padilla shrugged. “Don’t know. Some say it’s military, others say it’s para-military with its fingers in a lot of public institutions. Whichever one it is, rumors say they go to great lengths to stop anyone who gets too close to the truth. They ignore the crackpots and even a few of the people who know what they’re talking about, but that’s about it.” He cleared his throat. “A few years ago, a friend of mine told me he’d found a way to get into the passages beneath Archuleta Mesa. Two weeks later he was found dead at the foot of a cliff, miles from the mesa. They said he fell while hiking, but I happen to know he hated hiking and feared heights. They did him in.”
Bones and Jessie exchanged surreptitious glances. Was ICE the group that had been pursuing them?
“My advice to you,” Padilla said, “is to stay away from Halcón Rock, or any place like it. Stick to fake Hebrew carvings and you’ll be fine.”
Bones laughed and raised his beer bottle. “Cheers.” His phone vibrated, and he glanced at the screen. It was Amanda calling. “I need to take this.”
He knew there was a problem the moment he heard Amanda’s voice.
“Bones, we need you here right away. There’s a problem at the hospital.”
Chapter 30
“Are you there? I said, there’s a problem at the hospital.” This time, Amanda’s words hit home.
“What kind of problem?” Bones asked.
“Mari’s already checked out. None of the staff would tell me anything, HIPAA rules and all that. I asked around, and the patient across the hall saw her leave with a guy.”
“A guy?” Bones chewed on this new turn of events. “Did she leave voluntarily?”
“I guess so. I mean, she definitely checked out of the hospital. She wasn’t hustled away or anything.”
“She must have gone back to Matthew.” Bones wanted to hit something. Rather, he wanted to hit one very specific someone.
“That was my thought, too,” Amanda said. “It happens in these situations. The same personality traits that get you into that kind of relationship make it almost impossible to get out.”
“I know, but still...” There wasn’t much else to say.
“I’m sorry, Bones.” The words hung there for a long moment. “What do you want to do?”
“Nothing. If she went back to him voluntarily, there’s nothing I can do except hope the guy meets with an accident; preferably a grisly one.”
“What do you know? We actually agree on something.”
“Don’t get used to it. Anyway, we found what we were looking for. I’ll fill you in when we see you again.”’
He ended the call and turned back to Jessie and Padilla. Sadness painted the young woman’s face. She’d obviously been listening. Padilla wore a concerned expression.
“That doesn’t sound good,” the rancher said.
“Some people don’t want to be helped.” Returning to his seat, Bones focused his attention on his beer. While Jessie and Padilla chatted about legends of underground dwellers, he sat, drinking and reflecting on his last conversation with Mari. He’d been so certain she’d turned the corner. As he ruminated, snatches of conversation drifted through.
“According to the Zoroastrians, the god Ahura Mazda instructed his people to build underground cities to protect themselves from what he called evil winters...”
“He soared through the skies on a divine chariot. Some people think he was an alien...”
“Look at Derinyuki. Thousand-pound doors that only open from the inside...”
As Padilla shared his extensive knowledge, Bones found his interest piqued, and his thoughts drifted back to the mystery they hoped to solve. The rancher knew his stuff. Perhaps he could be of help.
“Mister Padilla, have you ever heard of the Book of Bones?”
Padilla jumped like he’d sat on a scorpion. He gaped for an instant and then laughed.
“So that’s what’s going on. All right, what’s the story? You heard I keep an eye on the mountain, so you went up there hoping to meet me? You played it off as a coincidence, then worked the conversation around to the book?”
“I don’t understand,” Jessie said.
Padilla fixed her with a hard look and then did the same to Bones. “Lay your cards on the table or get the hell out of my house.”
Bones wasn’t sure what had brought about this sudden change in their host’s demeanor, but he knew it would be a bad idea to hold anything back. He started with his first visit to Halcón Rock and then traced the chain of events that had brought them to Hidden Mountain. “That’s the truth,” he concluded. “We held back because we don’t know who’s after us or how dangerous they might be.”
“Why don’t you give up the chase, then?” Padilla asked. “Get the hell out of their way and let them do what they’re going to do?”
“I’m not sure that would work. They have no way of knowing what information we might have unless they extract it from us, if you know what I mean. I’ve been in situations like this before, and I don’t believe they’ll stop until they have what they want.”
“Or until someone beats them to it,” Padilla said. “Is that the only reason?”
“That, and I don’t run away.” Bones took another swallow of beer.
Padilla nodded. “I can believe that.” He cleared his throat, looked around for his wife, and then began speaking softly. “Mama doesn’t like it when I mess with this stuff, but I’ve been interested in the Book of Bones for a long time. I agree with you; Gregory Glade found it and included it with his treasure. I’ve got some ideas about its location, but nothing solid.”
“If you’ve got somewhere private we can talk, we’ll take a look at Mari’s father’s work.”
Chapter 31
A tiny room at the corner of the house served as Padilla’s office. Stacks of papers covered the simple wooden desk. A battered file cabinet, a heavy-laden bookcase, and two folding chairs completed the furnishings. Padilla cleared off his desk to make room for the documents Bones and Jessie had recovered.
Some of the work was dedicated to topics other than the Glade Treasure: cryptids, aliens, and local legends. Bones would have dearly loved to read them all, but first things first.
“Here’s the info on the treasure,” Jessie said. She q
uickly scanned each page, summarizing its contents, then passed each to Padilla.
The first page listed the clues Glade had provided. Different colors of ink indicated that the list had been added to each time the eccentric millionaire had released a new clue. The subsequent pages, which she passed over quickly, consisted of listings of possible locations, hand-drawn maps, newspaper clippings, and summaries of failed attempts to find the treasure.
“How about we flip to the end?” Bones suggested.
“Philistine,” Jessie scolded. “We’re almost there. I want to make sure we don’t miss anything important.”
“You do that. Meanwhile, I’ll cut to the chase.” With deft fingers, he slipped the bottom page out of Jessie’s hands and laid it in the center of the desk.
“Oh, Jesus,” Padilla grumbled. “It’s in code.”
The page was filled with lines of number pairs. Clearly, Mari’s father had been confident enough in his conclusions that he sought to protect them from anyone who might get their hands on his research.
“How are we supposed to translate this?” Padilla asked.
“I’ve actually got some experience with this sort of thing.” Bones thought back to a trip to London that eventually led him and Maddock into the Amazon. “When you see number pairs like this, it’s usually referring to a line number and column number on a source document. You count down and over, and it gives you the letter.”
“So, what’s the document we’re supposed to refer to?” Padilla turned to Jessie. “Anything in there?”
“This is why I said we should go through the papers in order,” Jessie said, riffling through the last few pages. “No documents. Just research, journal entries, and finally a photo of the Decalogue Stone.” She held the image out for the two men to see.
Bones and Padilla exchanged knowing grins.
“Okay, so it’s not a document,” Bones said.
“You think this is the source?” Jessie asked.
“It makes a certain amount of sense. Mari did say Hidden Mountain is one of her father’s favorite places.”
“And when you were going through those papers,” Padilla added, “did you find any mention of the stone or the mountain?”
“I didn’t,” she said. “So there’s really no reason for the picture to be in here.”
“And there’s the added safeguard that the source will have to be translated from Hebrew,” Bones said. “Not much of a safeguard, but it’s something.”
The inscription on the stone was not a perfect match for modern Hebrew, so they used a translation of the stone as a reference guide. Jessie had only transcribed a few letters before she laid her pen down.
“It’s not working. We’re not forming words here, just a string of letters.”
Bones glanced at the transcription and grinned. “Keep going.”
“But...”
“Trust me.”
Jessie’s eye roll was worthy of a junior high student, and not a woman in her middle twenties, but she kept going. When she finished, she slid the paper over for Bones to see.
“There you go, smart guy. Do you see a single word there? Except for this one, which might be pygmy, but nothing else.”
“Sure do. Lots of them.” Bones grinned against her withering stare.
“I got it!” Padilla pounded his fist on the desk. “There’s no vowels in Hebrew. We have to figure those out ourselves.”
“Exactly.”
“You could have told me that from the start, and not let me think I was wasting my time.” Jessie’s pout was a sight to behold, and attractive.
“But that wouldn’t have been any fun for me. Usually, in situations like these, it’s my friend Maddock who gets to be the smart guy. I just wanted to see what it felt like.”
“And was it everything you hoped it would be?” The pout was gone, replaced by a blank stare.
“So far, so good. Now, let’s figure this thing out.”
“Fine.” Jessie took out the list of clues and set them beside the translation. “If we assume that the translation goes in the same order as the clues, then Through the window becomes lvntn. Any ideas?”
“Lava nation,” Bones said.
“Lav.. la ventana?” Padilla asked.
“The answer to Through the window is the Spanish word for window?” Jessie tapped the end of the pen against her chin. “I’ll write it down for now.”
They spent the next thirty minutes working at the translations. Some sets of letters, such as ccv, defied their best efforts, but others came quickly. Where God looks down translated to big skylight, and Where small secrets are hidden became pygmy forest.
“Okay,” Jessie said, “for Where the moon stands in line we’ve got chnfcrtrs. Thoughts?”
“Chain of craters,” Padilla said immediately. “And Esau and Jacob, that’s Twin Craters.” He pointed to another line. “And now that I think about it, ccv is ice cave.” He folded his arms, rocked back in his chair, and smiled.
“You seem pretty sure,” Jessie said.
The old rancher nodded. “I am. Because I know exactly where it’s hidden.”
Chapter 32
“This is like walking on hot asphalt.” Jessie mopped her sodden brow and looked out over the lava fields of El Malpais National Monument. Located one hundred miles west of Albuquerque, the forbidding yet beautiful landscape included lava flows, sandstone bluffs, cinder cones, craters, and caves. And heat. Lots of it.
“So what, exactly, does El Malpais mean?” Bones asked.
“The Badlands,” Padilla said. The old rancher had insisted on joining them on their search, much to his wife’s chagrin. Despite her protests, he’d helped Bones recover his pickup, and the three of them had set off along Interstate 25 and into the parched lands that lay between Albuquerque and Flagstaff, Arizona.
“That’s a good name for it.” Bones sidestepped a spiny cactus that had somehow taken root in a fissure in the hard, black surface. “I wonder what the natives made of this place?”
“Most considered it a place of evil for obvious reasons. Mostly they kept to the sand bluffs and came no closer. It’s not like there’s game or water out here on the lava flow.”
“Yeah, you’d have to be an idiot to cross this thing.” Bones grinned at his two companions. Padilla chuckled, but Jessie ignored him. Bones worried that the heat was getting to the young woman and she was too stubborn to tell him if she was overheating. She dismissed his concerns with curt reminders that she was the native New Mexican, and not he.
“Not many people come here, that’s for sure. Tourists and hikers mostly. Every once in a while, someone dumps a body out here, but that’s about it. Used to be treasure hunters out here. Until the murders, that is.”
Bones frowned at Padilla. “Wait a minute. Were they looking for Glade’s treasure? And what murders?”
Padilla chuckled. “This was a long time ago. There are all kinds of legends of treasure hidden out here: bandits hiding stolen loot, miners holing up in a cave or lava tube and dying, even Spaniards searching for gold came here. At least, that’s what the stories say.”
“What about the murders?” Jessie’s eyes darted to and fro as if danger lurked somewhere on the obsidian landscape.
“A local fellow, nicknamed Old Man Gray, used to patrol the area, trying to chase off treasure hunters. He was quite a character—rode with Teddy Roosevelt and the Roughriders, came back and worked as a lawman for a while. Anyway, he hated the treasure hunters. Said they trespassed on his land and even dug up a family grave once. Locals knew to steer clear of him, and outsiders figured it out pretty quick. Except for two fellows who must have seen a withered old man, he was near a hundred years old at the time and thought they had nothing to worry about. Old Man Gray killed them, but he died before he could stand trial.”
“So he won’t be shooting us today,” Jessie said. “That’s a relief.”
“Mister Padilla,” Bones said, “when this is over, I want to spend a few days drink
ing beer and listening to your stories.”
Padilla threw back his head and laughed. “You’re the only one, son. The only one.”
Bones stole a glance over his shoulder but saw only scorched blackness. They’d left La Ventana, the prominent sandstone arch, far in the distance. Padilla had recognized its name, as well as those of several other nearby landmarks, as belonging to this area. Their final destination lay somewhere up ahead.
“I hope it’s cooler in the cave than it is out here,” Jessie said.
“Believe me, once we get down in there, you’ll freeze your backside off,” Padilla said. “Being out here in this heat is only going to make it seem even colder in there. We should take our time making our way down.”
“Don’t you think it’s kind of weird that Gregory Glade hid his treasure in a place that’s so popular with treasure hunters?” Jessie asked.
Padilla made a noncommittal gesture. “I don’t know. Not many folks took the treasure stories seriously. The Old Man Gray incident sealed it. What better place to hide a treasure than a place that’s been combed over for a century and nothing found?”
“What if someone’s already combed over the cave?” Jessie’s normal, upbeat personality seemed to be wilting in the intense heat.
“The treasure hasn’t been found,” Bones said.
“Not many people know about this cave,” Padilla added. “It’s only accessed through a narrow cleft in the rock, followed by a tight squeeze through a lava tube. The rangers don’t list it on any park maps because they don’t want the bats disturbed. They’ve had problems with White-Nose Syndrome, and...”
“Hold on. Bats?” Jessie stopped in her tracks and gaped at Padilla. “Down in the cave where we’re going?’
“Yes, a whole colony of them. We’ll have to disinfect all our gear before we go inside. Bones being from back East, there’s a chance he could be carrying the fungus on his boots.”
“Am I on a different planet than the two of you? Why would we go into a cave filled with bats?”
“Bats are cool,” Bones said. “They’re basically just flying mice. Sort of.”
