The Same River Twice

by Stephen Legault

“That little ditch back there?”

  “It forms a narrow, and very challenging, slot canyon just downstream, then opens up into a wide grotto that empties into the Escalante River. I’ve never been down it. We might have to check it out.”

  “And where are we going now?”

  “To the end of the road: the Hole in the Rock.”

  WHEN THEY CAME to a place where the rough road turned to slickrock ledges and the track showed signs—dark black skid marks from oversized tires—that even off-highway vehicles had a hard time ascending, they parked the Outback and walked. Silas carried his pack, stuffed with his survival gear. Two miles across blowing sand and more ledges and they stood before the opening in the canyon rim. Below them was Lake Powell, its water iridescent blue under the black sky. It had been just over three weeks since Penny’s body had been recovered by the FBI; there was no sign that anybody remained at the crime scene. Careful inspection of the area showed, however, where a good number of heavy off-highway vehicles had been parked, and where a helicopter landing pad had been cleared in the brush.

  “What is this place?”

  “This, my son, is the Hole in the Rock. It was an improvised highway, used only once, by a group of some two hundred and fifty Mormons. In 1880 they were ordered to establish a colony near Bluff, south of Moab, and when they set off from central Utah they didn’t know what lay in their path. This did.” Silas pointed at the rim.

  “But these men and woman and children weren’t going to let a thousand-foot-deep canyon get in the way of the Lord’s work. They blasted their way down, lowering their wagons along the rutted road. There are stories that men were dropped down these cliffs in buckets so they could use hand drills and plant dynamite. Somehow nobody died. Maybe God intervened. They got down the notch, forded the Colorado River, and carried on the other side.”

  Robbie shook his head.

  “There’s a place back on the road a ways; you might have noticed it: a big dome-shaped rock. It’s called Dance Hall Rock. Those same pioneers held square dances there. They were in pretty good spirits before they saw what lay in store for them.”

  Silas shouldered his pack and the two men started down the trail through the notch at the top of the canyon rim. The first few hundred yards were easy going, but then they came to steep drops that required the use of their hands to down climb. “They got wagons down here?” asked Robbie.

  “Yup, and livestock.”

  After thirty minutes they were within sight of the water. Silas stopped. There was yellow crime scene tape tangled in a few shrubs. He sat down on the rock and regarded the scene. The waters of Lake Powell—what Abbey called Lake Foul—were just below. On the far side of the stagnant water more sandstone domes rose up on what should have been the inside bank of the Colorado River. It would not have been Penny’s first choice for a final resting place. “What were you doing here?” Silas asked out loud.

  “Did you say something?”

  “I was just wondering what Penny was doing here.”

  “Is there anything in that journal you found?”

  “She was always looking for a way to tear down the dam, or drain the lake, and bring back Glen Canyon.”

  “She might have been meeting with someone who could help her.”

  “More likely with someone who opposed her.”

  “You think this is where they found her?”

  Silas just nodded.

  “You want some time alone?”

  By way of answer Silas blindly reached for his son’s hand. Robbie let him find it and they sat that way for a long time.

  ON THE HIKE back up, Robbie quietly asked, “If she wasn’t, you know, killed down there, then where?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. The FBI have gone over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Metal detectors and whatnot. They didn’t recover any ballistics anywhere around the location she was found. Maybe the bullet is in Lake Powell.”

  “Could be,” said Robbie. “But the angle that the bullet, you know, entered her skull, would suggest that if she was killed here, the slug would be in the rocks, not way out in the water.”

  They reached the top of the rim and made their way back to Silas’s car. The storm had blown off, leaving tattered remnants of cloud on the horizon. Between dark anvil-shaped cumulonimbus clouds, rays of light fell to Earth like search beacons. They drove ten miles along the road and stopped at the cut-off to Dance Hall Rock.

  “Wanna camp where the Mormons did?”

  “Why not?”

  They made their way to the informal campsite and set up. After they had eaten, the two men took cans of beer and wandered around the site. The dome of rock made an imperfect dance stage, but it would do, thought Silas.

  Robbie prowled around the site. “Hey, Dad,” called Robbie.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did the Mormons set up their camp on the rock?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt it though. Why?”

  “Come look at this.”

  Robbie was on the far side of the massive stone. “What is it?” asked Silas, kneeling.

  “That. I thought it might have been an iron spike driven into the stone, you know, where someone had set up a tent. It’s too small.”

  Silas’s face was just inches from the stone. There was a one-inch-deep impression in the rock; embedded there was something dark and metallic. He turned to look at his son, the question etched on his face.

  Robbie dropped to his knees and put a finger in the rock. The stone was sharp. The metal plug had a smooth finish.

  Robbie looked out over the empty desert. “I think we had better call your friends at the FBI.”

  10

  “IT’S NEARLY DARK,” PROTESTED ROBBIE.

  “I have headlights.”

  “I know. My point is, it’s eight o’clock. Who are you going to call?”

  “I have Katie’s cell. I think I even have Special Agent Taylor’s cell. I’ll wake them up if I have to.”

  “It will be midnight before you reach Escalante. We don’t know what we’re looking at. Even if it is a bullet, maybe some redneck was just horsing around and thought it would be fun to shoot a rock. Some of these folks are a few rounds short of a full clip, I’ve heard.”

  “No, this is it. This is the place.” Silas was looking up at the curving stone of Dance Hall Rock looming high above him.

  “What is the place?”

  “This is where she died.”

  SILAS CONCEDED THAT there was nothing that could be done before morning, but he didn’t surrender to sleep. While Robbie retreated to their tent, Silas sat on the slab of stone and watched the night sky revolve around him. Sometime in the night he heard a pack of coyotes nearby start to howl and yammer as they moved off toward the Escalante River. Nighthawks and bats took turns divebombing the dark sky for flying insects. He fell asleep on Dance Hall Rock sometime after three and woke a few hours later stiff, aching, and half frozen. As quietly as he could, he lit his stove and made coffee, and as the first hint of morning colored the eastern sky, he stuck his head in the tent.

  “I’m heading to town. I’ll be back by noon.”

  “You want me to come?” Robbie asked sleepily.

  “Stay here and keep any tourists off the rock.”

  Robbie nodded and went back to sleep.

  BY NOON SILAS had returned to Dance Hall Rock. Within an hour a helicopter arrived carrying FBI agents and their gear: Janet Unger and John Huston from the FBI crime scene identification team along with Dwight Taylor and Eugene Nielsen. Shortly after, members of the Kane County Sheriff’s Department arrived. Kane County Sheriff John Danforth, who had been on the Green River when Silas was notified of Penelope’s body being found, greeted Silas and asked how he was doing.

  The team went to work. They erected a tent over the location of the divot in the stone and photographed it and sketched the suspected crime scene. The tent was then enclosed, and as darkness fell, Unger sprayed the area with a latent blood reagent an
d exposed the site to ultraviolet light. Tiny hemoglobin particles—able to withstand years of harsh conditions—that had adhered to the slickrock were illuminated by the light.

  “You’re going to want to see this,” Unger called to Taylor, who was standing with Silas outside the tent.

  “Give me a minute.” Taylor held his hand up.

  “I need to see this too,” Silas insisted.

  “Silas,” said Taylor, using his name for the first time that Silas could remember. “You need to let us do our job. Be patient.”

  Taylor disappeared into the wall tent. Silas could hear him talking with his colleagues. Taylor came out. “It’s positive.”

  Silas started to approach the tent.

  “It’s a crime scene, Dr. Pearson. We’ve got to preserve this as evidence, and if I let you in there, it could be used against any case we bring forward in your wife’s murder.”

  “What’s in there?”

  “It’s faint. It’s been five years and there’s been a lot of weather, but I believe what we’re looking at is a lot of blood.”

  “IT’S BEEN TOO long for us to do some of the things we’d normally do around a crime scene,” said Agent Taylor. Silas and Robbie were sitting in folding camp chairs; Taylor stood before them. Sheriff Danforth shifted from one leg to the next beside him. “For example, normally we’d check for tire tracks, for garbage that might have been left behind at the scene, but it’s been too long. Hundreds of people have been to this spot since.”

  “Fingerprints?” asked Robbie.

  Taylor shook his head. “There’s nothing to take prints from.”

  “What about the bullet?”

  “We’re working on recovering it. It’s embedded in the rock so we’ll have to chip it out. If there’s enough left of it we can start running a ballistics match. It’s not going to be easy; a slug that deeply embedded in stone will have been flattened. We’ll get it to our Firearms and Toolmarks lab at Quantico and see what they can do with it.”

  “What else are you looking for?” asked Robbie.

  “Witnesses,” said Taylor. “We know when Ms. de Silva disappeared. We can pinpoint her murder to a week-long window. We’ve been canvassing the nearby towns for anybody who might remember her. She was definitely in Escalante; a few merchants recall her from around that time. We’re also going through the Bureau of Land Management’s records to see who they sold permits to for that time period, but that’s a long shot. This area isn’t well regulated, so anybody could have been out here camping and we’d never know it. We’re thinking about running a segment on the news, and maybe even on America’s Most Wanted, asking that anybody who was in this vicinity and might have heard something to give us a call. It’s a long shot, but sometimes we get lucky.”

  “Can we stay here tonight?”

  “You can. We’ll be working the scene in the morning,” Taylor looked at his watch. “There will be a Kane County sheriff’s deputy on site all night. Please don’t try to enter the active crime scene; it’s really in your interest to preserve its integrity.”

  Silas just nodded.

  “Alright then, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  The light was nearly gone from the sky. Agent Taylor and his team boarded the helicopter and it slowly fired up its engines. Silas and Robbie shielded their eyes as dust swirled around them. Then the helicopter lifted off and flew toward Escalante. The sheriff and all but one of his deputies drove down the Hole in the Rock Road, their taillights blinking in the dark as they navigated the rough track.

  The daylight faded and was replaced by a mottled darkness. “You really alright to stay here, Dad?”

  Silas bobbed his head. “I know it sounds dumb, but I actually feel a little better being here, you know? I feel closer to Penny than I have in years.”

  “That doesn’t sound dumb.”

  “Rob, I need you to know: I plan on finding the person who did this,” Silas pointed toward Dance Hall Rock and the crime scene tent. “And making them pay.”

  11

  SILAS AND ROBBIE WERE DRINKING instant coffee from tin mugs when the helicopter landed with members of the Kane County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI Evidence Response Team. Agent Taylor approached them carrying two large takeaway coffee cups bearing the logo of the Devil’s Garden, the local coffee shop and pizza parlor. He handed them to Silas and Robbie.

  “I wasn’t sure how you took them so you both got cream and sugar.”

  Silas deadpanned, “After all these years, Agent Taylor, you don’t know how I take my coffee?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve always declined coffee on all of our previous meetings, Dr. Pearson.”

  Silas took a sip. It was lukewarm but better than what he had just brewed on his camp stove. He put down his tin mug. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. We’ve got a specialist with us this morning who will extract the slug from the rock. We’re also going to take some of the sandstone to our lab in Salt Lake City to run a comparison on the blood with DNA that we sampled from your wife’s hairbrush when she first went missing. That should help us make a positive match between this scene and Ms. de Silva’s death. There really isn’t going to be much to see, Dr. Pearson. You can both head home.”

  “We’re going to stay in the area for a while.”

  “I thought you might. I’m going to ask you not to interfere with our investigation, Dr. Pearson. Special Agent Nielsen is heading up the interviews in Escalante. He doesn’t need to be tripping over you as he’s doing so.”

  “Me, interfere?”

  THEY DROVE THE Hole in the Rock Road back toward Escalante. It was well past noon before they rolled into town. Silas gassed up his car and bought beer and then they went in search of food. They found the espresso and pizza joint called the Devil’s Garden, named after a local land feature in the Escalante Monument. It doubled as a bookstore and guide-outfitting shop. Silas and Robbie ordered lunch and Silas went to look around the bookstore.

  “Help you find something?” asked a big man in a ball cap from behind the counter.

  “I wonder if you’ve ever seen this person around town?”

  The man looked at the photo that Silas handed him.

  “You’re not with the FBI? I just told someone that this lady used to come in from time to time, but it was a while ago.”

  “I’m not FBI. She is my … she was my wife. Do you remember when, exactly?”

  The man looked at his feet. “I’m real sorry to hear that.” He looked up, searching his memory. “Like I told the man from the G, she used to come in here for coffee and a pizza sometimes. This was, I don’t know, five, six years ago.”

  “Do you remember if she was ever with anyone?”

  “Yeah, I think she was, but I don’t really remember. You know what I do remember? She was here once for a town hall meeting we had. Got up and spoke and everything.”

  “What was that meeting about?”

  “About a resort proposal out on the Monument.”

  “The Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument?”

  “We just call it the Monument; saves a lot of breath. She got up in front of fifty townfolks, almost all in favor of this proposal, and tore a strip off the BLM and the folks who wanted to develop it. I think it set things back some, because the folks who were backing the proposal are still trying to get it through the red tape over at the BLM.”

  “What’s the project called?”

  “Escalante Resort and Marina.”

  “What was it all about?”

  “You’d have to ask the developer. I seem to remember a big hotel and a marina.”

  “A marina? The Escalante plateau is a thousand feet above the nearest water.”

  The man just shrugged.

  “Who was proposing this resort?” asked Silas.

  “A come-from-away who fancies herself a local now, Eleanor Barry. Come here via a stint in Salt Lake where she spent some time in politics. She inherited a lot of money from her
old man who was in oil. She’s now into these so-called eco-resorts. A lot of folks around here think it would be good for the town.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. I figure I’m doing alright. But folks want to see more tourists. We’ve got this massive national monument and not even a paved road to get into it.”

  “Do you know if this Eleanor Barry is back in town?”

  “Back? She never left.”

  “And the resort?”

  “It’s still on the books as far as I can tell. I guess the BLM sent them away to do some kind of environmental assessment, but I read last month that they were bringing it forward again.”

  Silas thought that five years was an awfully long time for a project to be tied up in an environmental assessment. “Do you know how I might find Eleanor Barry?”

  “Give her a call. She’s listed in the phone book. Runs a real estate business just down the street.”

  Silas thanked the man and went back to where Robbie was sitting. Their pizza was just being served.

  “What did you find out?”

  Robbie served his father a piece of pizza. “You’re going to find this hard to believe, but Penny was well known here. She was butting heads with a local developer. Seems like she caused some considerable delay on a resort project.” Silas told him about the proposal.

  “Cause for murder?” Robbie asked in a low voice.

  “I don’t know yet, but I’m going to find out.”

  “MS. BARRY, THIS is Silas Pearson calling.”

  “Who?”

  “I’m Silas Pearson. We don’t know one another, but I think you may have known my wife. Penelope de Silva.”

  There was a brief pause. “Of course. I saw on the news last night that she was murdered out in the Monument. How terrible. I’m so very sorry.”

  “Thank you. Ms. Barry, I’m trying to understand why Penelope was out there in the first place. I wonder if you have time to have a cup of coffee with me.”

  “I don’t know how I could be of help.”

  “Well, I don’t know either, to be honest, but I just want to talk with anybody who saw Penelope before she disappeared.”