Slickrock Paradox

by Stephen Legault

  “Okay,” the pilot said over the din. “When we touch, Agent Nielsen is on the door and everybody moves to the west of the Black Hawk, heads down. We’ll dust off and stay on station on Flat Iron Mesa. We’re only two minutes away if you need us.”

  “Roger that.” Nielsen hunched down and grasped the handle of the door. The helicopter touched down and Nielsen threw the door open with experienced ease. Taylor jumped out first and reached back to offer Silas a hand. Heads down, they moved away from the helicopter. A hundred yards up the wash, toward the box canyon, they stood up and watched the others join them. The helicopter lifted off, straight up, and out of sight over the rim of the canyon. The world was silent once more.

  “Lead the way, Doc.” Rain adjusted her backpack. Silas led them up Hatch Wash five hundred yards and then found, amid the tangles of tamarisk, the side canyon that contained the ruins. The afternoon sun bore down on the small group of hikers as they picked their way up and over the rocks. Silas noticed that Nielsen and Rain handled the terrain well, while the others seemed to struggle with the difficult ground.

  “If you don’t mind my saying,” Silas said to Taylor, “you’re looking a little out of place.”

  Taylor looked up at him, a pearl of sweat caught in one eyebrow. “Why is that, Dr. Pearson? Because I’m black?”

  Silas laughed. “No, because you’re clumsy.” Nielsen and Rain both grinned.

  “I left Special Forces so I wouldn’t have to tramp around in the desert anymore, and what happens? I get assigned to a jurisdiction that’s nothing but desert . . .”

  “We’re almost there.” Silas pointed to the amphitheater where the canyon boxed up, protecting the ancient settlement.

  Katie took a few quick steps and walked next to Silas, her eyes up and alert. “Let’s stop here,” she said. Taylor came up beside them. “Let’s treat this whole location like a crime scene.” They made arrangements for Janet Unger to begin to document while John Huston started the laborious hunt for physical evidence.

  “Alright, Dr. Pearson, let’s see these ruins.”

  They moved forward slowly, Taylor searching the cobbled canyon floor for footing as much as for evidence. They stepped out of the tiny wash and followed Silas up the talus slope and came out onto the small plateau. Silas stopped dead in his tracks. The canyon was silent in the midday heat. The ruins were not there.

  “YOU SURE THIS is the right canyon?” asked Taylor, looking around.

  “I’m sure.”

  “There’s nothing here.”

  Silas walked along the floor of the canyon where the kiva had been; where a week before he’d been left for dead.

  “This is the place.” Where the floor had once been a smooth terrace, it was now jumbled with talus. He looked above at the alcove where the three tiers of ruins had once been nestled into the sandstone, but the walls were now vacant. “Someone’s demolished the ruins.”

  Taylor looked at Nielsen, who stepped up beside Silas. “Show me where.” The two men walked across the plateau and Silas pointed.

  “Well, the kiva was here. The opening . . . about here, and up there, where you see that hollowed-out alcove, that was the third tier of the granaries and dwellings.” Nielsen looked around the canyon floor and stamped his cowboy boots down in a few places. He moved off toward the canyon wall and examined it. He rubbed his hand against the smooth stone and then put his fingers to his nose to sniff, then to his tongue to taste the gritty residue.

  “No doubt about it, this place has been blasted. You can see where that streak of varnish, that black line, has been interrupted recently. That big piece right there,” Nielsen said, pointing to a slab of stone on the canyon floor, “has come off right there and has been moved. I can smell and taste TNT. I suspect that whoever did this had some mechanical help, so John should be looking for tracks, maybe even some diesel. We’re also going to want to get someone from the BLM down here who knows these artifacts to tell us what might have been here. And we’ll need the ground-penetrating radar so we can get a clear picture of Dr. Pearson’s kiva. See if anybody might be home.”

  Taylor looked around again. “Alright, let’s get to work. I’ll radio up for the necessary reinforcements.”

  BY 4:00 PM there were half a dozen additional agents and BLM officers in the box canyon. Silas sat in the shade, his back to a giant boulder, surveying the busy scene. The ground-sensing equipment had been lugged up the canyon by two of the new FBI agents and two BLM field officers and they were now making an image of the kiva. There was nobody home. An archaeologist with the BLM, who had talked with Silas when he first arrived, was now making a map of what the ruins may have looked like. Huston had talked with Silas, too, about where he thought Anton, Williams, and Wisechild had been in the video they had recovered.

  In all it was a chaotic scene, taking place where just a week before Silas had discovered his best lead in his search for Penelope. Left on his own for a moment, he contemplated the loss of the ruins. Had his wife discovered this site? If she had, it surely would have been her crowning moment of exploration in what she called Ed Abbey Country.

  Taylor approached Silas. “Our scan clearly shows the outline of the kiva you told us about,” Taylor said, adjusting his FBI ball cap. “There is no sign of any bodies within. It appears to have had its roof caved in, maybe with a small explosive charge. John says he’s found traces of TNT residue all over the place. After that someone moved a lot of material from these surrounding cliffs into the hole and tamped it down. We’ve found lots of pieces of the adobe from the granary walls. They may have had some small pieces of machinery in here, maybe a hand-held unit. We haven’t found any tire tracks, and I don’t think they could get a rig up here no matter how hard they tried. Our guess is that a crew of half a dozen men came down here. We’ve found some boot imprints along the cliff that we might be able to match.”

  Silas looked back at Taylor from his scan of the cliffs. “Did you check those ledges along the opposite wall?”

  “We did. No tracks, but remember, the video Ms. Wisechild made would have been two years ago—”

  “Do you think that whoever did this might be the same people who left me for dead?”

  “From the evidence, there’s no way to tell.”

  “Are you going to be able to find out who did this?”

  Taylor gazed at him levelly. “We think we may already have.”

  SILAS SAT IN THE DARK of Red Rock Canyon Books. It was 11:00 PM; he hadn’t been home in two days and was still wearing the same clothes, now caked with dust and soaked with sweat, he had on when he left to talk with Charles Nephi. His hair stood on end, brittle from the parched air, baking sun, and salt of his brow. He drank a can of Molson’s and waited.

  When his phone rang he almost jumped out of his chair. He grabbed the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Hey, fuck, you’re there. Wow, okay, that’s great.” Hayduke. Not who he had been expecting. “I wasn’t thinking I’d get you.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s been quite the day.”

  “What happened?”

  “Well, the FBI sent a team down into Hatch Wash. I went and braced Jared Strom and he let on that somehow I had done something to destroy the ruins there. Sure enough, they’re gone.”

  “What do you mean, gone?”

  “Someone got in there with some TNT and a jackhammer and destroyed them.”

  “Motherfuckers! I find the fucker who did that and they are going to be sorry—”

  “Well, you’re going to have to get in line. The FBI took Peter Anton and Jared Strom in for questioning this afternoon. I’m waiting by the phone to hear from Agent Rain. She said she’d call to let me know what they had found. Are you still in Flag?”

  “Those sons of bitches—” Hayduke was still raging. Silas thought he sounded like he was reading from a script for The Monkey Wrench Gang. “Nothing in this goddamned desert is sacred. Nothing is holy to those people! No, not people. Fucking animals. No, not even animals . .
. I don’t know what they are, but they aren’t from this fucking planet.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m in Flag. I wanted to ring and tell you what was up with that lady, Darcy McFarland. I found someone who worked with her and she filled me in on what Darcy was doing. You know how she was into water rights? Well, according to this source, Darcy McFarland was digging up a whole bunch of dirt on your buddy Tim Martin. It turns out that he was in thick with the political elite of the state and with some dirty people in the federal government, greasing the fucking wheels with political contributions—”

  “We knew this—”

  “Keep your shirt on, man. It looks like the contributions went beyond just paying for Nephi. It turns out they were rigging water deals. All over the state, and down along the Kaibab Plateau in Arizona, north of the Grand Canyon, and over in the Escalante, the places where Martin wants to drill. He needs water, and the only way he was going to get what he needs, according to the work Darcy McFarland was doing, was to bribe his way through the fucking system. He’s funneling money through that fucking senator’s office to pay off half of the Bureau of Reclamation and the BLM and the Park Service and who the fuck knows who else—”

  “And it all begins—”

  “That’s right; it all begins in Hatch Wash. There’s enough water coming down that little canyon to operate a hundred fucking drilling rigs, but only if they dam it up. I guess Darcy McFarland found out.”

  “You think someone killed her because of it?”

  “Seems like.”

  “Jesus. Did this friend of Darcy’s . . . did she say anything about Penny?”

  “She knew Penny alright, but she says that Pen wasn’t involved in this.”

  “I can’t believe that.”

  “Well, maybe this friend didn’t know Pen all that well. I mean, I didn’t know who she was.”

  “The FBI is going to want to talk with her, this friend. I’m afraid you as well—”

  “Fuck, man, I don’t want to get mixed up with the feds.”

  “You’re going to have to tell them what you know.”

  “Can’t we leave me out of this? Just tell them that you made some calls? I mean, I’ve got a bit of a history . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing serious. Listen, you know I served, right. Desert Storm. Afghanistan. I did my time, but when I came home, I got in some trouble. My head was pretty messed up. I got in a couple of fights, and well, someone got hurt, and fuck, well, it wasn’t me. I just think that if you drag me into this, well, they’re not going to believe me.”

  “Alright.” Silas leaned his face on his hands. “Can you give me the woman’s name, I’ll call her and go over all this and see if the feds can interview her themselves.”

  “Oh man, I don’t know. How about if I just give you the files that I got here and leave it at that?”

  “You’ve got paper on this?”

  “I got a smoking fucking gun. Darcy had a bunch of records on this whole deal that she was going to go public with before she disappeared. I’ll get them to you tomorrow or the next day, as soon as I get back.”

  Silas cradled the phone to his ear. “Okay. I think this can wait. In the meantime, I’m going to try and learn more about how Charles Nephi was connected to all of this.”

  “How you going to do that?”

  “I don’t know.” There was something about that office that spoke to Nephi’s contempt; what was it?

  “You there?” asked Hayduke.

  “Yeah, hold on. It was the boxes.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Boxes. Nephi had boxes in his office. He’s been here longer than I have. Yet there are still stacks of boxes in his office. From Canada. They had been shipped from Canada.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’ve got to figure out how to break into a senator’s office.”

  “Fuck, yeah! Count me in!”

  “You said you didn’t want to get tangled up with the FBI. You get caught, and you’ve got a record, it’s not going to be pretty—”

  “Yeah, but fuck, man, imagine the damage we could do.”

  “Listen, Hayduke. I’m not going to torch the place and I’m not in this to stop a dam or save a canyon. I’m trying to find out what happened to my wife. If I have to expose cronyism in the process, well, that’s fine.”

  “Yeah, okay, I get it. Pen always said you didn’t give a shit about the cause. I guess she was right.”

  “You listen to me, Hayduke.” Silas’s eyes felt like they were on fire in the dark of the bookstore. “Penelope might have been your pal, and maybe you guys shared a passion for the desert, but she was my wife. Got it? In all the years I’ve been searching for her, two weeks ago was the first I ever heard of you. Got it?”

  The line was quiet a moment. Silas could hear the man breathing on the other end of the phone. “Yeah, I got it,” Hayduke finally said.

  “Call me when you get back from Flag. I’ll get the documents from you and turn them over to the FBI. You can disappear if you want to. Alright?”

  “Whatever you say.”

  HE WAITED IN the dark for another half hour. He drifted into a restless sleep sitting in his chair, his head propped on his hand. When the phone rang again he started and knocked over a stack of books.

  “Yes?” he croaked into the phone.

  “It’s Katie.” She sounded as tired as he felt.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not bad.”

  “Did you, well, arrest anyone?”

  “No. We may still. The district attorney and the US state attorney agree that we don’t have enough to lay charges yet.”

  “I see.”

  “Listen, we’re three blocks apart and there’s a bar in the middle. Buy a girl a drink?”

  “Okay. Eddie’s in five?”

  “I’ll be half a beer up on you.”

  THE BAR WAS nearly empty and it was half an hour to closing when Silas walked through the door. Katie Rain was sitting at a table, her coat on, concealing her sidearm and badge. She had a pint glass in front of her and stood up when she saw him. “Thanks for coming.”

  “No trouble. You sounded tired on the phone.”

  “Well, it’s been a while since I was on a field investigation. Long hours.”

  “Taylor has you fully integrated on the team?”

  “The trace evidence is going to be so critical he wants me in on all of the interrogations.”

  “That makes sense, I guess. What happened with Strom and Anton?”

  “I can’t tell you everything, you understand. Strom admitted nothing, told us that his comments to you were merely made out of frustration with your trespassing at his business. He said he was going to file a complaint with the sheriff. I told him that the sheriff was on the other side of the one-way glass and that he’d take notes.”

  Silas ordered a beer when the waitress appeared.

  Katie continued. “We’re going to get a search warrant and will likely case his place tomorrow looking for explosives and the like. But I think that’s pretty much a dead-end. We may get lucky and find residue in a vehicle or in a backpack or something, but by now he’ll have been able to cover his tracks.”

  “What about Anton?”

  “We did a little better there. He didn’t admit to anything, but he was a much less practiced liar than Jared Strom. We asked him about his relationship with Kelly Williams and Kayah Wisechild first. Like before, he admitted that he’d worked with them. That’s pretty hard to deny, given the paper trail with Dead Horse. We put some pressure on, you know, thumb screws, water-boarding—”

  “Really?”

  “You Canadians really think we’re all malevolent masochists, don’t you?”

  “No. Well . . .”

  She took a drink. “Here’s the kicker. He admitted to having ‘relations’ with the Wisechild girl, an affair.”

  “I guess that lands him in pretty hot wa
ter, doesn’t it?”

  “Gives him clear motive. We pressed him some more, but he wouldn’t confess to murder. He was in tears before the interview was over. I think he would have given up his mother if he thought it would help.”

  “Did you get anything on the ruins?”

  “He started off saying he had worked with Dead Horse on the assessment. Said he didn’t know who the client was; explained that this was part of the procedure: minimized conflict of interest. He said that he had discovered the ruins and reported it to Strom, and that Strom had ordered him to back off.”

  “Doesn’t sound right. If you were a professor of archaeology and you discovered a new set of ruins, wouldn’t you tell everybody? Publish a paper?”

  “This is where it gets interesting. You see, we knew we were going to want to interview him before you called this morning, so we had the paperwork done up with our Durango office and had them standing by with a judge. As soon as we got him to confess on the Wisechild affair, we pushed the paperwork through and searched his home. We must have found five hundred artifacts there. There’s no way of knowing which are legit and which were stolen, but we’ve got the BLM’s top archaeologist on her way to Cortez in the morning. We were able to tell him this about four hours into the interview. We also told him we had the video. That helped.”

  “Just helped?”

  “We’re going to need our facial recognition expert to match his face with the image on the Wisechild video, but he didn’t know that.”

  “So he rolled over?”

  “He admitted to clearing the site, but not to destroying it, and insisted he had nothing to do with Wisechild’s and Williams’s deaths.”

  “You believe him?”

  “No, but he wouldn’t give anything else up. Not yet.”

  “Did you guys look into Kelly Williams’s history?”

  “Agent Nielsen did. Williams had two charges but no convictions against him for offences under ARPA. He was a pot hunter and a grave robber, but nobody could prove it. Not hard to imagine him working with Peter Anton to clear the site and then things getting out of hand between them. You talk with the enforcement people at the BLM and they’ll tell you that they’ve never seen a more violent culture than the one around the illegal artifacts trade. I guess these grave robbers make poachers look like a bunch of Sunday school students.”