Slickrock Paradox

by Stephen Legault

  “This is the place?” asked Leon, taking off his ball cap and running the back of his hand across his forehead. The old man looked around him. Evelyn sat down on a large rock and looked up at the cliffs rising three hundred feet above them, their painted walls streaked with desert varnish, the rim leaning over the alcove where the ruins had been.

  “You say that someone took these places from our ancestors and destroyed them?” asked Leon again.

  “That’s right.”

  “So they could build a dam on that little creek back there?” Leon picked up a piece of adobe and tossed it in the dust as a raven wheeled overhead, turning cartwheels as the air warmed in the canyon and rose up the sheer cliffs. He shook his head and put a weathered hand against his face.

  “Do you think that our daughter—” started Leon and then stopped, looking down at his hands.

  “I don’t think so. I think she tried to stop them. She made that film Darla found because she wanted those men to be stopped.”

  “They killed our little girl because of it?” Leon had tears streaking across his dark brown skin.

  “That’s right,” said Silas. The group was silent for a while. The morning had warmed up and they sat in their shirtsleeves while Silas and Roger passed around water. The light shifted throughout the box canyon, shadows of clouds passing across the cliff faces, the changing mood of the stone world ebbing and flowing like a tide.

  Leon sat very still for a very long time. Silas watched him and his family, wondering what passed through their minds as they sat here in the blank shadow of the ruins their daughter had discovered. After more than an hour of silence Leon waved Silas over to his side. Silas sat down next to Leon on a boulder.

  “You know, our ancestors left these canyons when they were threatened with a terrible violence against which they could no longer defend themselves. They fled. They left almost everything behind. People seem to think we don’t want it anymore. So they come and they take it. The memory of this place, and many, many others like it, has all but been erased by time and by greedy hands that take what they want and leave nothing of our story. I think Kayah was trying to learn that story. But she got caught up in the echo of that violence. I think that’s why her ghost has been troubling you. I think that’s why her ghost chose you.”

  “I don’t understand,” confessed Silas.

  “Did you stop them from destroying this place?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not trying to save Canyon Rims, or anything else. I just wanted to find my wife.”

  “You followed our girl to this place. And what did you find?”

  “My wife’s journal—”

  “She won’t trouble you anymore.” The raven wheeled overhead, its body black as obsidian against the azure sky. He turned once more and then disappeared beyond the canyon rim.

  THEY SAT TOGETHER on a dome of Navajo sandstone above Green River Overlook on Island in the Sky. The mesa behind them was dusted with the first snowfall of the year. The sky was streaked with cirrostratus clouds forming broad fans of translucent white that allowed the pale November sun to reach the red rock earth.

  They both wore heavy jackets and sat on a worn, duct-taped foam pad that he carried in his pack during the colder months. Silas’s hair was uncharacteristically washed and bore only a passing resemblance to a nest of porcupine quills. Long shadows reached toward them over the vast, vertical earth.

  Katie accepted the cup of steaming hot chocolate and held it to her lips before taking a sip. They had spent the day searching Upheaval Canyon and the Buck Mesa region of Canyonlands National Park, and had taken a detour on their way back to Moab to watch the sun set.

  “Does this mean you get to color in another section of your map?” she asked.

  “Yup. I searched this area once three years ago, so it’s been cross-hatched. Now I get to color it in.”

  “Does that help?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Does it help you feel like you’re making progress?”

  “I guess, but only superficially. Really it just helps me keep track.”

  She sipped her drink. “Did you spike my hot chocolate?”

  “Of course, otherwise it’s just kids’ food. Does the Bureau know you’re out here?”

  She shook her head. “No, but what I do with my vacation time is my own business.”

  “I don’t know if Assistant Special Agent in Charge Taylor would see it that way.”

  “The information you’ve provided has been really helpful in bringing charges against Nephi. I doubt very much if Taylor or Nielsen would have fared as well without it.”

  “Are you saying you used your feminine wiles to coax information out of me?”

  “Is that a protest?”

  “No.”

  “Plus, I like you Silas. You’re a good man. I want to help you find your wife.”

  He looked at her. The evening light painted her face the same hue as the crimson desert all around. She held the hot chocolate to her lips a moment and then took a sip.

  He asked, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to help me find Penelope?”

  “I was married once. I understand.”

  “You were married?”

  “Yes, why is that so strange?”

  “I just thought . . . I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought.”

  “I was married. He was in the air force. He died in Iraq.”

  “I am so sorry.”

  “I know what it’s like to lose someone you love, Silas. I want to help you find Penelope. Maybe then you can move on.”

  He looked back out over the agoraphobic distance, down to the Green River where it snaked around the Anvil, and beyond to the Maze, the distant Henry Mountains, and the endless, searching sky. Silas felt an urge to put his hand on her arm and tell her that he was sorry once more, but instead changed the subject back to one they had discussed on and off all day.

  “You know, the first time I saw Charles Nephi was on the Hopi Reservation.”

  “With all the media you can see how Taylor would have agreed to a ride-along by a senator’s aide to console the family.”

  “Nephi was really just checking up on how much the family knew.”

  “Lucky for them, they didn’t say anything.”

  “It’s a good thing Nephi didn’t speak Hopi.”

  “It’s a good thing your friend Roger did or we might still be in the dark.”

  “What about Darcy?”

  “That has us all scratching our heads. Different time frame, different MO, and we have only the thinnest thread of connection between her work and what was going on with Hatch Wash. The evidence of connection you mentioned to me that time—”

  “It hasn’t panned out.” Silas looked away. The documents Hayduke claimed to have connecting McFarland to Canusa and Senator Smith never re-materialized, and he hadn’t heard from the elusive desert rat for nearly two months.

  “You still don’t want to tell me who your friend is?”

  “I’m still working on it. There is no friend, Katie. I was trying to get the info myself.”

  “This ever goes to trial you’re going to be put on the stand, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “You know I saw your buddy Charleston in your bookstore, right?” Silas was silent. “Taylor and the others believe his being there that night on Comb Ridge was random. You and I know differently. We don’t have anything hard connecting McFarland with Nephi, Anton, or any of the other players here. If she knew about the plans to dam Hatch Wash, then she might have threatened to cause trouble, and maybe Nephi might have zeroed in on her. Nephi killed Williams with a blow to the head. McFarland was drowned, and in potash solution, no less. This one remains “open-unsolved” in our books. I’m sorry to report, we can’t tie either Anton or Nephi to Penelope. There is simply nothing in any of their homes, offices, records, emails, that even mentions your wife, Silas.”

  They s
at in silence for a while. The sun disappeared. “What’s next?”

  Rain shrugged. “Taylor’s team keeps the investigation into Darcy McFarland’s death open. We keep looking for Peter Anton. And we keep looking for your wife.”

  “Who’s we?”

  “You and me.”

  SNOW FELL THE next night in the Castle Valley. It wasn’t a blizzard; just a gentle dusting to cover the dry upland desert. He sat in his living room with the lights out, drinking a bottle of Fat Tire. He had decided to try something new and had bought a case of this micro-brew while in Colorado. It was good. Silas watched the snow fall like stars from the heavens across the baked earth. When it melted the desert would bloom again, even if just for a few days, and the earth would feel fresh and new.

  He stood and put the bottle of beer down and scanned his maps. He took a colored pencil from the bookshelf and carefully colored in the section of desert around Upheaval Dome and Whale Rock. He and Katie had searched there that morning before he had driven her to Canyonlands Fields, the local airport, to fly back to Salt Lake City.

  He missed her, and it made him feel confused and disloyal. He had been an awful husband all of his life, but he had never been disloyal. But now, strangely, with his wife missing for nearly four years, and with him scouring the desert for her, he felt as if he was cheating, even though he had never so much as touched Katie Rain.

  He shook his head and turned his attention to the maps. He would have to lay out a plan soon for searching lower country. The snow would make travel in much of the high canyon country impossible. He considered his options: a week or two in Grand Gulch, a few weeks down in the inner gorge of the Grand Canyon? And maybe as far afield as the Escalante, before the Hole in the Rock Road was snowed under. It might be time to break in his new Subaru Outback.

  Silas pulled Penelope’s notebook from the shelf and sat in one of the hard-backed chairs, and drinking his beer, opened the book. He had waited a month after the capture of Charles Nephi to retrieve it from Ken Hollyoak, on the off chance that the FBI zeroed in on him again. He had read it every night since mapping out the parameters of Edward Abbey Country: Penelope’s plan to preserve her heart’s true home, the great American wilderness.

  He opened it to the first page and read again, as he always did, the line from The Fool’s Progress that his long lost wife had clung to as her mantra: “I want to weep, not for sorrow, not for joy, but for the incomprehensible wonder of our brief lives beneath the oceanic sky.”

  He studied the journal until it was dark, and then he flipped on the overhead light and read some more, searching for the answers that he knew only these pages would contain. Exhausted, he stood and walked on stiff legs to the bedroom. He lay down, and touching his wife’s face on the portrait beside the bed, fell into the darkness of sleep.

  THEY SAT TOGETHER on a dome of Navajo sandstone above Green River Overlook on Island in the Sky. It was the brightest of mornings, in May, the earth verdant with wildflowers and the crispness of a new day. He held her hand. There was a breeze and it tossed his wife’s long dark hair like the tail of a mare. The world was perfect. And he was dreaming.

  “Silas.”

  No. Please no.

  “Silas, it’s okay. Trust me.”

  Just one more moment here. Please.

  “There will always be one more river, not to cross but to follow. The journey goes on forever, and we are fellow voyagers on our little living ship of stone and soil and water and vapor, this delicate planet circling round the sun, which humankind call Earth.”

  He woke weeping. Blindly stumbling through the darkness of morning, he found the book, and after two hours, found the passage, the last lines of Down the River. He didn’t bother to wait until dawn, but dialed the phone.

  “Are you okay?” Katie asked by way of greeting.

  “The Dolores River. It rises near Cortez. The Dolores River. You’ll find Peter Anton there.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I WISH TO THANK GREER Chesher for introducing me both to the ecology of the American Southwest, and to the mystery genre, when I worked for her as a volunteer at Grand Canyon National Park in 1993–94. Greer also read early drafts of my never-to-be-published attempts at fiction and gently pointed out that these stories would benefit from a plot.

  Dirk, Darren, and Devin Vaughn of Tex’s Riverways of Moab have been friends and guides to the Canyonlands region since 1997. I am deeply grateful for their effort to explain many facets of the region to me, as they shuttled me back and forth on various trips on the Green and Colorado Rivers.

  Dr. Erik Christensen, the Assistant Medical Examiner for the State of Utah, Denny Ziemann, the Chief Ranger for Canyonlands and Arches National Parks, and Darrel Mecham, the Chief Deputy for Grand County provided helpful insight into investigative procedure for this book. Thanks also to the staff at the Grand County District Attorney’s office. Any mistakes or errors of omission are mine.

  I wish to express my gratitude to independent bookstores like Back of Beyond in Moab, and so many others across Canada and the United States, who have stocked my books and promote them among readers. It’s because of you that I get to do what I love.

  Without the enthusiastic support of my publisher, Ruth Linka, and editors Frances Thorsen and Lenore Hietkamp, The Slickrock Paradox would likely be a heap of unintelligible verbiage riddled with unpublishable tripe. One cannot underestimate the importance of fabulous editors and a visionary publisher.

  My deepest thanks are reserved for all those I have traveled with in Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona. So many amazing adventures have led to the creation of the Red Rock Canyon Mysteries and there is a little bit of all of you between these pages. But most of all, my thanks go to Jenn, who, as always, supports me on the greatest adventure we share together.

  STEPHEN LEGAULT is an author, consultant, conservationist, and photographer who lives in Canmore, Alberta. He is the author of five other books, including the first three installments in the Cole Blackwater mystery series, The Vanishing Track, The Cardinal Divide, and The Darkening Archipelago, as well as The End of the Line, the first book in the Durrant Wallace mystery series. Please visit Stephen online at stephenlegault.com or follow him on Twitter at @stephenlegault.

  MORE MYSTERIES FROM STEPHEN LEGAULT

  The End of the Line

  A Durrant Wallace Mystery

  by Stephen Legault

  It's the winter of 1884, and five hundred Canadian Pacific Rail workers have halted their push through the Rockies at Holt City, an isolated shantytown in the shadow of the Continental Divide. The men are tired and cold, and patience is as scarce as the rationed food. Then, Deek Penner, a CPR section boss, is brutally murdered at the end of the track. His body is found frozen on the banks of the Bow River.

  Durrant Wallace, a veteran of the celebrated March West by the North West Mounted Police a decade earlier, is returned to active duty to investigate the murder. Durrant lost his leg in a gun battle with whiskey traders three years previous, and he struggles with being a Mounted Police officer who cannot ride. When Durrant arrives, Holt City is ripe with possible suspects: illegal whiskey smugglers, spies for rival railways, explosives dealers and a mysterious Member of Parliament who insists on getting his meddling fingers into everybody else's business. Durrant must use his cunning and determination to discover to identify the killer before he finds his next victim and derails the great Canadian national dream in the process.

  “For those looking for a glint of Canadian history set in a more riveting narrative, Stephen Legault’s Western The End of the Line combines the guilty pleasure of a page turning murder mystery with the brain food found in Pierre Berton’s history books.” —Avenue Magazine

  The Third Riel Conspiracy

  A Durrant Wallace Mystery

  by Stephen Legault

  It is the spring of 1885 and the Northwest Rebellion has broken out. Amid the chaos of the Battle of Batoche, a grisly act leaves Reuben Wake dead. A Metis man is arre
sted for the crime, but he claims innocence. When Durrant Wallace, sergeant in the North West Mounted Police, begins his own investigation into the man’s possible motives, he learns there were many who wanted Wake dead. What Durrant uncovers is a series of covert conspiracies surrounding Metis leader and prophet Louis Riel. And, during the week-long intermission in Riel’s trial, he sets a trap to find Wake’s true killer.

  The Third Riel Conspiracy is the second book in the Durrant Wallace Mysteries, a series of historical murder mysteries set during pivotal events in western Canada’s history.

  The Vanishing Track

  A Cole Blackwater Mystery

  by Stephen Legault

  When his best friend, and advocate for the homeless, Denman Scott asks him to help stop the demolition of the Lucky Strike—a once majestic hotel in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside that is now home to nearly three hundred of the city's least fortunate residents—Cole Blackwater gets more than he bargained for.

  Working with Vancouver Sun reporter Nancy Webber and street nurse Juliet Rose, Cole and Denman discover that homeless people in the area have been disappearing without a trace. As they venture into the dark corners of the city's underworld, and into political corruption at City Hall, they find themselves in the middle of a dangerous cabal of city officials, high-ranking cops, condo developers, and crime bosses. Can Cole and his friends unravel the mystery behind the Lucky Strike—before any more of the Eastside's homeless find themselves on the vanishing track?

  Tackling the real big-city issues of housing shortages, political corruption, and murder, The Vanishing Track is the third Cole Blackwater Mystery and the most compelling yet.

  “The soul of The Vanishing Track is in the dialogue: it shapes the raw tension, exposes the layers of greed and cover-up . . . The portrayal is clear; the action sharp and brutal . . . The Cole Blackwater stories are among the most riveting today, and The Vanishing Track is the best yet in this intensely dramatic series.” —The Hamilton Spectator