Slickrock Paradox

by Stephen Legault

  “Wasn’t sure how far your station wagon would make it,” he patted the hood. “I wanted you to see what they are talking about. This is what they will dam.” He pointed to Hatch Wash, with its thin trickle of water.

  “Not here, though, surely?”

  “No, down by Kane Creek. It will be a small dam, but it will flood Hatch Wash so they can draw on the water for injection drilling on Flat Iron Mesa and in Back of the Rocks.”

  Silas got out and looked down at the trickle of water. “It will take a long time to fill a reservoir.”

  “You think fuckers like Martin and Smith give a shit? They will take all the time in the world to destroy this, and not think twice.”

  Silas started to piece things together in his head. “How long has this been in the works?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe years.”

  “You don’t think Penelope—”

  “I don’t know. I think if they were planning it, she knew. Maybe she was on to them.”

  “Lot of money at stake,” said Silas. “Penny talked about water a lot in her notebook, about the dams that destroyed these places, Glen Canyon, especially.”

  Hayduke shook his head and spat. “We should have just blown that fucker up and been done with it.” He spat again. “Now they want to dam this one. It don’t look like much here, but you’ve seen it. The canyon’s a thousand feet deep, and with those ruins in them. They flood this and it’s game over.”

  “You can’t flood a canyon that’s got such an important archaeological site in it, can you?”

  “If nobody knows about it, you can.”

  “Somebody should document it. Get in there and photograph it. Take the press down there.”

  “Maybe that’s what them other two, Williams and Wisechild, were doing, and it got them killed. I know that I’m not going to let them destroy this place. Not after all the work me and Pen did to protect this area.”

  “Look.” Silas kicked a clot of sand on the side of the road. “I respect your passion, but I’ve got to stay focused. I’m trying to find out what happened to my wife. This whole business with Kayah Wisechild and Kelly Williams, well, I can see how it might help lead me to Penny. I’m not in this to stop somebody from building a dam or drilling for oil. I’m trying to find my wife.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought you’d stay. You want to find your wife, and then find out why Kelly Williams and Kayah Wisechild died. If what you tell me is true, maybe that’s what Pen is trying to tell you. Don’t be such a stupid fuck. The answer is staring you in the face. Those other two died because of something they knew about the ruins at the mouth of this here fucking canyon,” cursed Hayduke, pointing to Hatch Wash. “You find out what, and I bet you’ll find your wife.”

  SILAS HAD JUST PULLED INTO Moab when Roger Goodwin called.

  “Silas, I went to see Darla Wisechild last night. I was out on a project and just got back to my place now.”

  “It’s no trouble Roger. I really appreciate you doing that.”

  “I don’t mind. They’re good people. It seems like Leon in particular is having a pretty tough time with this. He’s convinced that Kayah was killed by a witch.”

  “I don’t think it was a witch, Roger. More likely flesh and blood. Did you find anything that might be helpful?”

  “I guess the FBI had been by again asking something similar. There was no cell phone, no incriminating letters sent home. They had someone working on Darla’s computer to see if there was anything from Kayah there. I don’t know if they found anything. But they overlooked something, and Darla gave it to me.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a memory card from a digital camera. It might be nothing. Darla doesn’t have a camera at home and it never occurred to her to look at it after her sister died. She just put it in a drawer with some other stuff that had been cleared out of her sister’s apartment after she had gone missing. Kayah mailed it to Darla—”

  “When did she say it was mailed?” Silas turned off Main Street and headed for his bookstore. He checked his mirror to see if Hayduke’s Jeep was following him, as they agreed. The young man was still behind him.

  “Two weeks before Kayah disappeared,” said Roger.

  “Have you looked at it?”

  “I’m almost back at my trailer. I’ll look at it on my camera, and if there’s anything worthwhile, I’ll call you.”

  “I’ll be at my store, Roger. If there is anything good, you can email it to me and I’ll look at it there.”

  “Will do.”

  “Thanks, Roger,” said Silas, his hope growing that there might be something of value on the memory card.

  “No trouble. I’ll call you one way or another.”

  Silas parked on the street across from the shop and Hayduke nosed in behind him. The young man got out of his Jeep and offered Silas a beer, which he declined. Hayduke opened one for himself.

  “You going to start measuring distances in cans of beer?”

  Hayduke grinned his wide grin and tossed an empty into the back of the Jeep. “Maybe I will. That your place?”

  “Such as it is.”

  “You got any Edward Abbey in there?” Silas opened the door of the shop. “Hey, what a great store!” said Hayduke, sounding like a kid. They walked in and Silas turned on the lights and the air conditioning. Hayduke wandered the aisles. Silas sat in his desk chair and pressed his fingers against his temples.

  Hayduke called, “Where is the Edward Abbey section?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  “Fuck off, you’re kidding me.”

  “I’m not an Abbey fan.”

  “This is a Red Rock Canyon bookstore.”

  “They’re my books.”

  Hayduke looked around him. “You’re shitting me.”

  “Nope.”

  “Every one of these books—”

  “Came off my shelf in Flagstaff when I moved here,” said Silas, his fingers still massaging his head.

  “Fuck me,” said Hayduke. “Why did you have so many books?”

  “I taught literature.”

  “That’s right, Pen told me about that.”

  Silas closed his eyes. This young man and his wife had shared stories about his life. He opened his eyes and asked Hayduke, “What exactly was my wife working on before she disappeared, Josh?”

  The young man looked at him. “It’s Hayduke,” he grinned and put his beer can down on a shelf so he could pick up a book. “She was working on a lot of things. This whole Ed Abbey Country idea had totally possessed her. She wanted to lobby Congress to pass an act declaring most of the wilderness left in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico as all part of an Ed Abbey Country National Monument. She spent most of her time traveling around, hiking in the canyons, making notes on locations.”

  “And getting under people’s skin.”

  “And that. Pen figured if the developers were going to fuck everything up before she could get her bill passed, well, she was going to fight back.”

  “Right before she disappeared—what was she fighting? And who?”

  Hayduke shrugged. “Lots of stuff.”

  “Come on, what exactly?”

  “That whole Hatch Wash thing, really. She wanted Canyon Rims included in the bill. She wanted it added to Canyonlands National Park. That wasn’t going to happen if it got fucked up.”

  “Who was she fighting? Jacob Isaiah?”

  “Yeah, him for sure.” Hayduke, beer can in hand, sat in the chair next to the desk. “This whole oil and gas thing was rearing its ugly fucking head back then too.”

  “Was Canusa the proponent back then?”

  “I don’t remember. We’d have to do some digging.”

  “Then let’s. My assumption is that Penny learned about the ruins and was documenting them so she could stop whatever development was planned for the Hatch Wash area, whether it was Jacob Isaiah’s resort or Tim Martin’s oil play—”

  “Or both,” said Hayduke, drinking from hi
s can.

  “Or both? I hadn’t considered that. I can’t really see how having fifty oil derricks as your view would be all that enticing to people in a resort setting—”

  “It’s a big fucking piece of country out there. They could have the resort sitting on one side of the wash, and those fucking jackknife derricks scattered all across Flat Iron Mesa and Back of the Rocks. Those people don’t give a shit what they look at. They just want to stuff their faces, get a massage by some pretty girl, and chase a little white ball around. Hell, if Canusa dammed up Hatch Wash then it would be easier for ol’ Jacob Isaiah to water his fucking golf course.”

  Silas agreed. “Penny was onto something and she was documenting the kiva. Something must have happened, because she left her notebook behind, and then I found it.”

  “And then you found me.”

  “That’s right. I found you.”

  “Now we’re partners!”

  “Listen,” Silas said, “we’re partners, but only as far as it helps me find my wife. I’m not an environmental crusader. That was Penelope’s job. Look where it got her!”

  Hayduke shrugged. “Suit yourself. So you think this Wisechild girl and this Williams guy were onto whatever Pen might have found out?”

  “The timeline is weird. If Penny found out about the Hatch Wash ruins, that was at least eighteen months before Wisechild and Williams went missing. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “It does to me,” Hayduke continued, “I think that Pen knew about the Hatch Wash ruins. She could have been prowling around there even if someone like Isaiah, or maybe Martin, had only the slightest inclination of developing the region. She would have been documenting the place for her Ed Abbey Country bill. She would have been building her case so when it came to a hearing, she could blast away at them.” Hayduke pounded his fist on the table. He belched, then smiled and said, “That’s the way Pen did things.”

  “You think it’s possible she was onto the Hatch ruins before Peter Anton started documenting them, along with Williams and Wisechild, and long before Dead Horse Consulting deep-sixed the report on the site.”

  “I’m fucking certain of that.”

  “That means we’ve got three people who might very well have wanted Penny—”

  “Dead,” Hayduke finished his sentence. Silas felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

  Silas mused, “Jacob Isaiah, because he stood to lose millions—tens of millions—if his mega resort was quashed because of some ruins. Tim Martin because he stood to lose hundreds of millions if he couldn’t drill for oil. And Peter Anton—”

  “Why Anton?”

  “I think that he must have been in on things with either Isaiah or Martin. Look, he’s the one who claims to have discovered these ruins. What if he did? He tells his boss, Strom, and they decide they would tell their client—”

  “Either Isaiah or this Canusa company—” added Hayduke.

  “That’s right. Instead of making a report to the BLM about the archaeological value, the client decides to keep it quiet, and clear the place out.”

  Hayduke was sitting up and leaning on the table now. “That’s right! Clear the place out, destroy all the evidence—”

  “Keep the pots and bowls and baskets and arrow points and sell them. There was likely tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of antiquities in those ruins. When it came time for the client to file for a development permit, they could say there was nothing in the way of archaeological value, and the development permit would sail through the regulators.”

  Hayduke was silent. He had finished his beer and was looking around the store as if another can might materialize amid the McCarthy and DeVoto and Doig.

  “That means we have five suspects,” Silas added.

  “Five? Who else?”

  “Jared Strom. Anton worked for him. What if Anton went to him and told him about the ruins and they decided to cut a deal. Anton could clear them out and keep the proceeds in exchange for keeping quiet.”

  “Strom finds out that Pen knows. She confronts him, the way she often would—”

  “So he—”

  “Fucker kills her.” Silas looked down at his hands. “Sorry, fuck. I’m a fucking jackass. I know it. Sorry.”

  “You’re right. I need to get my head around that possibility. All this time I keep expecting to get a postcard from France saying, ‘Sorry, Si, just couldn’t stand you being such a prick all the time.’ Or maybe worst case, she pulled an Aron Ralston and got pinned by a rock in a canyon somewhere but didn’t have a pocket knife to cut her own arm off. I think both of those possibilities seem less likely now, knowing what we know.”

  “Maybe it was Anton, or maybe Strom, trying to prevent Pen from fucking things up for one of their clients.”

  “Maybe one of the clients themselves, Isaiah or Martin.”

  “That’s four,” said Hayduke, holding up his fingers.

  “C. Thorn Smith, Senior Republican Senator for Utah.”

  “Fuck off,” said Hayduke, by way of agreement.

  “The last thing Senator Smith would have wanted was Penny, or anybody else, doing something that would have scuttled his much trumpeted Utah Land Stewardship Fund. I bet if we dig around, we’re going to find that the good senator from the ‘great state of Utah’ has a significant financial relationship with both Jacob Isaiah and Tim Martin, and the others who were on the podium today. Do you know how to look up political contributions?”

  Hayduke grinned. “Fuck yes. I’m not just another pretty face, you know,” he said, as he pretended to groom his gamey beard.

  “Alright, let’s start there. See what kind of financial relationship these guys have with one another. I’m going to pay a visit to the other men on our list of suspects: Isaiah, Martin, and Strom.”

  “I want to come too!” shouted Hayduke, sounding like a little boy.

  “Due respect, but I think I’ll get farther if it’s just me. I don’t want to intimidate these guys . . .”

  “You’re probably right. Just the sight of these guns and they’re likely to wither . . .” The young man flexed his not insubstantial arms. “When do you want to, you know, compare notes?”

  “How about we meet tomorrow, around noon, back here?”

  “Yeah, that sounds good.”

  “Okay, then—” said Silas, just as his cell phone rang. He answered. “Yeah, I’m in front of my computer right now, actually . . . Okay, hold on.” Silas opened his web mail and Roger’s email containing a link. He turned to Hayduke. “It’s a video. I’ve got to download it. Hold on.” In a moment a grainy image appeared on his screen. Hayduke leaned over the desk to watch.

  A high set of cliffs came into focus. The camera panned and the bottom of the box canyon off the side of Hatch Wash came into focus, complete with the courtyard and entrance to the kiva where Silas had spent a night. Above it were the ancient Pueblo ruins laid out in tiers across the back of the canyon wall. The camera focused in on some activity taking place around one of the dwellings. A man could be seen emerging from the small door, his arms cradling something. A second man walked into the frame and approached the first man, taking whatever it was he was holding.

  “It’s a pot,” said Roger Goodwin on the phone. “It looks like early Pueblo design to me, as best I can tell.”

  The first man disappeared back into the ruin and a moment later emerged again, this time with what was clearly a basket. He handled it gingerly. The second man entered the frame and took the basket and disappeared off frame again. The camera panned back and Silas could see that the two men had rigged a ladder to reach the second tier of ruins.

  “That’s what made the marks on the canyon walls,” Silas said.

  “It goes on like this for a bit. They finish this dwelling and move onto the second.”

  “Where was the camera?” asked Silas.

  “Hold on a minute. You’ll see.” Silas and Hayduke watched. After another few minutes the camera jiggled and turned around to face a youn
g woman. She had a narrow face with light-brown skin and dark, almond-shaped eyes. She smiled sadly.

  “So,” she spoke into the camera, “This is how I spent my summer vacation.” Then the camera was turned off.

  “That was Kayah Wisechild,” said Roger.

  “Is there a date on this file, Roger?” asked Silas.

  “Yeah, it was shot June 11, two years ago.”

  “That was right around the time that Peter Anton said he was doing the work for Dead Horse,” Silas added.

  Silas clicked his mouse and the footage started again near the beginning. “I don’t know who the man in the ruin is, but I’m willing to bet that the man taking the artifacts is Anton. It looks like him for sure. Just the way he walks . . .”

  “I think the other man is Kelly Williams. I only met him once,” said Roger over the phone, “but I’m sure that the FBI could enhance this.”

  “Roger, thanks for this. Do you think anybody knew Kayah took this?”

  “No. I don’t. If whoever killed her knew about it, they would have come looking. Given the date, she took it a few weeks before she disappeared . . . was killed . . . and sent it home for safekeeping. Maybe she was in on it and needed an insurance policy in case things went bad. Maybe she caught onto what Williams and Anton were up to and wanted evidence.”

  “It’s hard to tell where she is in this video.”

  “I don’t think she’s on the rim above; there’s Navajo sandstone behind her when she turns the camera around.”

  “I think there is a ledge across from the ruins,” said Hayduke.

  “Who’s that?” asked Roger.

  “That’s Josh Charleston. Josh, meet Roger. Roger, Josh.”

  “Call me Hayduke.”

  “I don’t think I will,” said Roger.

  Hayduke shrugged. Silas asked, “You’ve been there?”