Slickrock Paradox

by Stephen Legault

  “That’s just what I need. Trish pissed at me because you break the rules and drink.”

  “What she doesn’t know . . .”

  “Women always know,” said Silas. “The car’s down there,” he added, pointing down the dusty road that led to the trailhead where he had left his Outback two days before. Ken steered his Lincoln Navigator down the dirt track. “Looks to be all in one piece,” said Silas.

  “You call that all in one piece?” asked Ken. “That car looks like it’s never seen the inside of a car wash. Why don’t you let me buy you a new one?”

  “So I could trash it too? Thanks, Ken. Keep your money. I don’t need anything fancy.”

  Ken stopped next to it and they both got out. Stepping from the air-conditioned, cooled-seat luxury of the Navigator to the glaring furnace of the mid-afternoon desert was jarring.

  “Nobody should be out on a day like this.” Ken put a wide brimmed hat on his head. Silas looked at his Outback.

  “Might be a little hot in there.”

  “Witch’s oven,” said Ken. “I’ll follow you to the turnoff. Then you’re on your own.”

  “You don’t need to do that, Ken,” said Silas.

  “It’s not an option,” said Ken.

  IT WAS LATE in the afternoon when Silas turned off the road and into his driveway. He had driven back from the trailhead with the air conditioner blowing full blast. He turned the car off and retrieved a shopping bag from the back of the car. The half a dozen cans of beer were hot to the touch.

  He reached his front door and limped into the empty house. The light through the vaulted front windows in the living room lit up the kitchen. He pushed the door shut with his shoulder, and dropped his gear on the floor. He opened the fridge door to exchange the hot cans with a cold one. He popped the tab and drank the whole can, then reached into the fridge for another.

  Can in hand, Silas confronted the maps lining his living room walls. As he stood in front of the map showing Arches National Park, he took a long pull of beer. He reached out and traced with a split fingertip the line of his march down Courthouse Wash. The canyon had been the subject of two previous searches. It was also a busy part of Arches National Park. That her body had gone unseen for more than three years was surprising.

  Silas stepped back from the map. He drank the rest of his beer staring at the dizzying scale of his work over the last few years. On the small dining room table, the worn copy of Desert Solitaire lay open to the chapter called “Cowboys and Indians.” He sat down on one of the wooden chairs and held the book gently in his hands: “There is water in Sleepy Hollow, a big pool under a seep in the canyon wall, fenced off from the cows. We paused for a few minutes to drink and refill canteens, then moved on. No time for a swim today . . .”

  Silas read the passage three more times and nothing new emerged from the page, except that he, of course, had taken a swim on the previous day, though it wasn’t the sort that Edward Abbey alluded to. He then read the entire chapter again.

  There was nothing new there. Silas put the book down and remembered why he didn’t like Edward Abbey: the tendency toward hyperbole. He and Penelope had fought about it often enough. She had loved Edward Abbey, had loved every word he had written. Silas had dismissed her argument as a schoolgirl crush. She had chided him for being jealous of her passion for the man’s writing, citing Silas’s failure to write anything more than academic texts condemned to mediocre journals.

  In the end she had won the argument, taking the last word with her, it seemed, to the grave. It was fitting that the burial place was Courthouse Wash. He threw the book down on the table in despair. Taking his cane, he pushed himself up and went to the kitchen to get another beer—one last cold can behind a jug of pickles and a bottle of ketchup. While he heated a frozen dinner, he clomped down the hall to the utility room where he gingerly stripped naked. Hanging his cane on the bathroom door, he stood in front of the mirror to contemplate the damage done by his wild ride down Sleepy Hollow. There was almost no part of his body that wasn’t covered in bruises and cuts. Two of them still had gauze pads taped to them, which he carefully peeled off to reveal two-inch-long abrasions sewn together with black surgical thread. He looked exactly like he felt: as if he’d been through the wringer. He swallowed three ibuprofen tablets with the last of his beer and turned the shower on.

  After his shower Silas ate his dinner and then retreated to the hammock under the pergola. He lay down and listened to the end of the day: cars on the road leading further up the valley, poor-wills in the willows, and somewhere, a canyon wren’s tremolo tripping down the harmonic scale.

  And his Penelope, found at long last, seemingly, inexorably, by her own will. He jolted and twitched toward sleep, the hammock gently swaying, his last thoughts on his long-lost wife.

  THE TELEPHONE WOKE him. Silas struggled to free himself from the hammock. Around midnight he had woke, chilled, and found a thin blanket in the house and returned to the cooler out-of-doors. Wrestling to free himself now, he came down hard on his damaged foot and winced. He bent over to find his cane, but the phone stopped ringing. He rubbed his face and stood awkwardly, then made his way into the house. There was a cordless handset in the bedroom and he went to see who might be calling him at 6:00 AM. As he picked it up it rang again.

  “This is Pearson,” he said. His voice was raw and gravelly.

  “Mr. Pearson, this is Agent Taylor. Would you please come to the Grand County Sheriff’s Office this morning? As early as you are able?”

  “Is this about my wife? Have you identified the . . . have you identified her?”

  “It is about the body found in Courthouse Wash. I need you to come into the Sheriff’s Office. You know where it is?”

  “Yeah, East Center. Can’t you tell me what you’ve found over the phone?”

  “Will you be here by 7:00 AM?”

  Silas shook his head. “Yes, yes, I will,” he said, then hesitated. “Do I need a lawyer, Agent Taylor?”

  “That’s up to you,” said Taylor.

  IT TOOK SILAS A SURPRISINGLY long time to leave his Castle Valley home to make the drive to Moab. For some inexplicable reason he couldn’t decide which shirt to wear. For the longest time he’d dressed in whatever T-shirt fell to hand, but this morning he kept thinking, What would Penelope want me to wear? When he was teaching at NAU she would dress him most mornings before he left for class; those mornings that she was away, in canyon country, his students would take note of his shabby attire. It had become a running joke between them.

  As he drove down Hal Canyon the Colorado River was visible through the tangles of invasive tamarisk and native willow; it reflected the orange glow of the adjacent cliffs in near mirror-like perfection. It was a good morning, he thought, to put this business to rest. The thought that his manic search might have come to an end gave him some comfort. He almost allowed himself to feel relief.

  Almost. Doubts plagued him as he neared the junction with 191 and the turnoff to Moab. If the body had in fact been that of his wife, why hadn’t Agent Taylor simply said so? Was there some official Bureau procedure that had to be followed around notification? Maybe he had to be present to receive the news so it could be witnessed. Maybe they would be watching him for his reaction. He wondered if he should call Ken and ask him to join him at the sheriff’s office. In his prime, Hollyoak had been a fire-brand defense attorney until a heart attack had sidelined him a decade ago. He decided that if it became necessary, he’d make the call. Silas parked in front of the red brick building housing the County offices and turned the car off, then just sat in it with the door open.

  “You coming in, Silas?” a voice said and he looked up. Sheriff Willis was standing in front of him on the sidewalk. Silas realized that the sheriff had probably been waiting for him. He got out of the car and followed the man into the building.

  “You like coffee?” asked Willis.

  “No thanks,” said Silas, his mouth dry. “A glass of water maybe.”
/>
  “We can do that.” They stepped past the reception area and the sheriff used his pass to unlock a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” Silas had been in this area on several occasions, to file the missing person’s report, and later, to be updated from time to time on the search for Penelope. It was unnerving to think that this was where the search would finally come to conclusion.

  Silas drank the water Willis handed him and tossed the paper cup in the garbage. Silently, Willis led him through another set of doors and into a conference room full of people. Taylor stepped forward, towering over the rest of the crowd. He extended his hand.

  “Thanks for coming in so early,” he said. They shook. “You know Special Agent Nielsen and Deputy Derek Penshaw, who is representing the Medical Examiner. And this is Special Agent Janet Unger. She’s a member of our Evidence Recovery Team. You might remember her with the video camera. That’s John Huston, also with ERT, and Stan Baton, with the Park Service.”

  “The gang’s all here,” Silas said dryly.

  “This is Dr. Kathleen Rain,” continued Taylor, indicating a woman who rose from the conference table, notepad in hand, and came to shake Silas’s hand.

  “I’m with the FBI’s Forensic Anthropology program. We’re a new subgroup of the Trace Evidence Unit.”

  “Silas Pearson. I own a bookstore.”

  “You found these remains?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Well, the deceased does not match the description we have on file for your wife, Mr. Pearson.”

  Silas felt his vision grow dim. He looked around and spotted a chair next to the wall, but his legs wouldn’t respond. The sheriff moved the chair under him just as he started to sag against the wall. He sat down. Dr. Rain crouched down so that she was at eye level.

  “I’ve only been able to do a preliminary examination here. Thanks to the morgue at Moab Regional, and with the tools I brought with me from Salt Lake City, I’ve been able to determine a few facts. When the remains are transported back to the Medical Examiner’s lab in Salt Lake, we’ll undertake a more thorough examination, but here’s what I can tell you. The remains you discovered in Arches belong to a woman, but one who is no older than twenty-five. I’d say closer to twenty-two or twenty-three. She was five-foot-four, give or take an inch, and weighed maybe one hundred and ten pounds at time of death.”

  Silas was focusing on Rain’s face. He struggled to hear what she was saying. He blinked several times as she spoke. “How do you—”

  “There are some relatively straightforward means for determining these things. First, we were able to exhume nearly a complete skeleton. We’re still looking for other bones in Courthouse Wash. There were several smaller bones missing, but all of the larger bones were there. I can take measurements and determine height and approximate weight. We add a few inches to allow for soft-tissue loss. It’s not that difficult a calculation.

  “As for age, the last bone in the body to stop growing is the collarbone,” said Rain, indicating her own. “That usually happens in the late twenties. In the subject you found in Courthouse Wash, there was no indication that this bone had reached maturity. No fusing, no deterioration. There are also several fusion points in the skull,” she continued, touching the back of her skull, “where ossification occurs at different times. Finally, dental wear. This young woman had pretty good teeth. Very little wear. It all adds up to someone in her early twenties.

  “Sex is easy to determine. Wide hips, an open pelvic bone, for childbirth. So what we have is a woman, say twenty-two to twenty-four years old, to be on the safe side, five-foot-four, and one hundred and ten pounds.”

  “Penny was—”

  “Older, taller, a little heavier. If the remains had been of your wife, we would certainly have seen early signs of calcium deterioration. By age thirty the bones start to lose density. By forty we see notable bone loss.”

  Silas, who was in his mid fifties, thought of his own bones and the miles he’d put on them over the last few years. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands across his face.

  “There’s a little more, if you’re willing to hear it. This young woman was murdered. We have conclusive proof. We don’t always get it from a set of remains this old, but in this case there is no doubt.”

  “Mr. Pearson,” Agent Taylor interrupted. “You understand, you’re being told this in some confidence. We need your help here.”

  “How can I help?” Silas asked, looking away from Dr. Rain to the FBI agent.

  “You found the body. I have a couple of questions,” said Rain. “When you discovered the remains did you get the impression that they had been there for some time, or that they had been washed down in the flood?”

  Silas cleared his throat and looked around the room. “It was hard to tell. I’m not an expert—”

  “I just want your impression. It may be important later on,” said Rain.

  “I got the feeling that the flood uncovered them, that they had been in Courthouse Wash. The force of the flood had unearthed them, maybe from under the cottonwood log.”

  “That’s how I felt when I came on the scene. We have an agent working with the Park Service and the National Meterological Service to determine if there have been any additional floods in the area over the last two years.”

  “You say two years?” asked Silas.

  “Yes, two years. The condition of the remains suggest that this young woman was killed no more than two years ago. The loss of some of the small bones and the generally good condition of the larger bones suggests that time frame. We’re obviously checking national missing person files and will be able to check dental records shortly. I believe we’ll have a positive ID in another day or two.”

  Rain continued, “Did you happen to notice anything else that might have been associated with the deceased, Mr. Pearson?”

  “It’s ‘Doctor,’ by the way,” said Silas, looking down at his hands.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It’s Doctor Pearson. I have a PhD in Comparative English Literature from the University of British Columbia. I was a tenured professor at NAU until Penny disappeared . . .”

  “Of course, I’m sorry, Dr. Pearson—anything?”

  Silas shook his head. “I didn’t see anything at all. No clothing, nothing.”

  “It’s possible in two years, especially if the body had been buried near the stream bed, for the clothing to rot away entirely,” said Rain, standing up and looking around the room. “Gentlemen, I don’t have any further questions at this time for Dr. Pearson.”

  Silas felt dizzy. He needed to get outside and out of the clinical room with all these faces glaring at him. He stood up and steadied himself with his cane. He turned to make his way to the door.

  “Oh, Dr. Pearson,” said Rain, pushing her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat.

  He turned to regard her. She had an intense, almost troubling gaze. “The deceased was Native American. You can tell by the teeth.”

  The room was silent a moment. Then the sheriff said, “I’ll show you out. We’d like a few more minutes of your time, Silas, but you look like you could use some air.”

  “Don’t be long,” said Agent Taylor. “Doctor Pearson and I need to have a chat.”

  SILAS DRANK A SECOND CUP of water, and when the sheriff offered him coffee he accepted. Willis brought back three cups, and he and Silas and Agent Taylor sat together in an interview room.

  “This is a murder investigation now,” Taylor noted. “We have to do this by the book. The Park Service has ceded jurisdiction and this is to be a joint investigation by the Grand County Sheriff’s Office and the FBI.”

  “Do I need a lawyer?” asked Pearson.

  “Do you think you need one?” asked Taylor.

  “You’re not a suspect, Silas.” Willis earned a sharp look from the FBI man.

  “You’re not a prime suspect, Dr. Pearson,” said Taylor. “But surely you must understand that whoever finds the body does make the list
of people who need to be interviewed. If you want a lawyer, feel free to call. The sheriff won’t mind you using his phone, I’m sure.”

  “Not at all,” said Willis.

  “I don’t think I need a lawyer.” Silas raised the coffee cup to his lips with shaking hands.

  “I’m sure this must be hard on you, Dr. Pearson, but we have to ask you some additional questions.”

  “You think this is hard on me?” Silas looked up.

  “I’m sure it must be—”

  “You’re sure it must be what?” Silas interrupted. “Difficult? I thought I found my wife in Courthouse Wash. I was almost killed, and when I came to I was lying next to bones I believed were my wife’s. And you think that was difficult? I went to sleep last night thinking I could stop looking, that there might be some closure. And now, it’s what . . .” He looked at his watch. “It’s 8:30 in the morning, and you’re telling me that the bones I found were from a stranger, and someone who was murdered at that. No, Agent Taylor, that’s not difficult at all. But thanks for your concern.” Silas put his coffee cup down and crossed his arms in front of him. The sorrow he had felt over the last two days had ebbed and anger had taken its place.

  Agent Taylor watched him a moment, his dark eyes inscrutable. “We have a few questions,” he said again after a moment. “Do you have any notion of who it was you found in the wash?”

  “I have no ungodly idea.”

  “None whatsoever?”

  “None at all. I’ve been a little preoccupied over the last few years, Agent Taylor, doing for myself what my government could not, which was trying to find my wife.”

  “In all your efforts, you didn’t come across a missing person’s report about two years ago that caught your eye?”

  “I read half a dozen a day, Agent Taylor. Nothing in this area caught my eye. At least not that I remember.”

  “When were you in Courthouse Wash last?” asked the sheriff.

  “I’d have to check my notes,” said Silas.

  “Estimate?”