Slickrock Paradox (38 page)

“I was under the impression that Nephi was working for Canusa all along and that he was doing time in the senator's office just to advance the interests of the oil and gas company. I was wrong. He told me so himself. He was working for the senator all along.”

“That may be true. We can't prove it yet. Senator Smith has put a mile of bureaucratic hurdles between Nephi and himself in the last two weeks.”

“He said it wasn't about money. It was about power,” said Silas.

“It's always about power in Utah.” Nielsen was leaning on the door. “Money is just
one
of the ways we get to hold onto it.”

“Anton, Williams, and Wisechild were acting on orders from Nephi to clear the ruins so they could report that Hatch Wash had nothing of value to prevent Canusa from proposing a dam. They could use the water for drilling on Flat Iron Mesa, along Hatch Point, and in Back of the Rocks.”

“Dr. Anton's affair with Ms. Wisechild got in the way,” said Silas.

“That, and the fact that Ms. Wisechild got cold feet. It was a deadly combination for her,” said Taylor. “Nephi found out and put pressure on Anton.”

“And he killed her.”

“That's right.”

“He took her to Courthouse Wash and killed her there. They walked down the wash and he strangled her and buried her body under the cotton­wood log.”

“Charles Nephi simply cleaned up the rest of the loose ends. He killed Kelly Williams,” said Taylor. “The story that Mr. Williams tried to blackmail him and he killed him in self-defense doesn't wash. The wound is in the back of the head. We believe that he asked Mr. Williams to meet him out at Canyonlands National Park and hit him with the butt of his pistol. That was a mistake. We're testing it for Mr. Williams's
DNA
. We've tracked down some of his possessions from his family and will test them in the next couple of days, but we're pretty certain we've got him on that.”

“If Nephi was closing up loose ends, why not kill Anton?”

“Well, expedience, for one,” Taylor answered. “For Wisechild and Williams to disappear was one thing. The girl was young, and her family Hopi, and unfortunately, her disappearance didn't raise too many alarm bells. Young people from the reservation sometimes just wander off. They go to Flagstaff, or Durango, or Phoenix. And Williams, well, he was in trouble for his activities in Grand Gulch, and elsewhere it turns out, and the antiquities trade is surprisingly violent. The fact that he wasn't reported missing by his family for some time after Ms. Wisechild didn't trigger a connection between the investigations—”

“You dropped the ball.”

“Yes, we did,” admitted Taylor.

“Nephi didn't need to kill Anton. Not yet, at least. He had him by the economic balls, tens of thousands of dollars' worth of artifacts, and a 10 per cent stake in the profit from drilling all across the Canyon Rims region. After the bodies turned up, and his relationship with Wisechild, and then with Canusa and the senator's office was revealed, he became a liability.”

“That's what we suspect. We haven't found the bodies of either Dr. Anton or his wife. Mr. Nephi has nothing to say on the subject.”

“They could have run.”

“It's possible, but unlikely, unless they went their separate ways and got some very good advice on how to vanish. Once they are in our system, the only way they could disappear is to do so on foot. They couldn't get on a plane, rent a car, use a credit or debit card, nothing. No, Dr. Anton and his wife are dead. We just haven't found their bodies yet.”

“Speaking of bodies,” Silas said, looking at the sheriff. “Did you ever find out who told Jacob Isaiah that I was the one who found Kayah Wisechild?”

Willis looked down. “I'm sorry about that, Silas. No, I haven't. Short of dragging ol' Jacob in here and putting the lamp on him, I'm afraid that one is simply on my head. I'm sorry about it.”

Silas let it go. “What about Darcy McFarland?”

“Dr. Pearson, to be honest, we don't know. The tire tracks on the road to Island in the Sky might be helpful once we've apprehended a suspect, but right now, they are not much use to us. We've eliminated your vehicle.”

Silas shook his head.

“Any vehicle we can tie to Charles Nephi, Peter Anton, and Tim Martin have likewise been eliminated, but we haven't been able to narrow the search for a suspect with that evidence. It's a possibility the work Ms. McFarland was doing to protect the Colorado River and other waterways throughout the Southwest brought her into conflict with Mr. Nephi at some point. We're going over her files, and his, but so far we've got no connection with the deaths of Williams or Wisechild, or Darcy McFarland. We think that Darcy McFarland's murder is unrelated. It's ‘open-unsolved' at this point.”

“But you're still working on it?” asked Silas.

“Of course.”

“Any person of interest?”

“We have people we're watching.”

“Me?”

The room was silent except the hum of the overhead fluorescent lights. “Dr. Pearson, this brings us back to the question of how it is you have been able to lead us to three bodies over the course of a single month.”

“Gentlemen,” said Ken Hollyoak, “that's where I get to earn my generous fee. You can either charge Dr. Pearson, or we are going for breakfast.”

“There's no charge at this time,” said Willis. “Silas, you're free to go.”

“What about Penelope?” Silas asked after a moment.

“What about her?” asked Taylor.

“Don't you think that before all of this started, before Anton discovered the ruins, she must have found them? Don't you think that Nephi maybe—”

“Killed her too?” asked Taylor.

“Surely you can see it's possible.” Silas was almost pleading.

“It is possible, Dr. Pearson. We haven't ruled that out. Nephi had already moved back to Utah at that time, but there is absolutely nothing to suggest that anybody, including your wife, had set foot in the ruins until Dr. Anton made his detailed survey of the canyon. Given that these ruins have since been destroyed, well, it's going to be impossible to determine if your wife ever had anything to do with them.”

Silas remained silent. He contemplated the journal that was still in safe-keeping at Ken and Trish's home. He decided against mentioning it to Taylor. If he told them about it, the
FBI
would seize it as evidence, and he would lose the only thread that tied him to his wife.

“You told me when we were in the ruins that you knew who had destroyed them,” Silas said to Taylor.

“That's right. We are building our case along with the
BLM
.”

“It was Jared Strom, wasn't it?”

“He did the dirty work; Nephi gave the orders.”

Silas asked, “What about whoever left me for dead in the kiva? Have you got that figured out?”

“I'm guessing Peter Anton could illuminate that mystery, if he hasn't already taken the secret to the grave with him.”

Anton seemed like the only possibility. He was the one who sent Silas there in the first place. In doing so, he must have known that he was setting himself up, and so his best hope for evading detection as Kaya Wisechild's killer was to follow Silas there and wait for the opportunity to kill him.

That didn't put Silas's mind at ease. None of the explanations did. He figured at best the
FBI
had a fifty-fifty chance of winning a conviction against Charles Nephi on anything besides his own kidnapping. To win that conviction, Silas would likely have to incriminate himself in the break-and-enter at the senator's office. He knew that he could make a deal for immunity, but as a Canadian in the United States on a long-term work visa, he might risk being sent home. That would mean an end to his search for Penelope.

While the line of inquiry they were discussing made perfectly good sense to him, there was little or no actual evidence to lead to a rock-solid conviction against Charles Nephi. It was like the country that surrounded them. Even the most solid thing in it—bedrock—sometimes was slick with paradox.

SILAS CAMPED ON THE RIM
of Hatch Wash for three nights. He combed the ledges and benches of the wash, scoured the canyon bottoms, ticking off the miles with his
GPS
. Each evening he returned to his camp, cooked a simple meal, kindled the fire, and studied his topographic sheets. Before going to bed each night he read the journal Penelope had left in the now ruined kiva at the bottom of the canyon, tucked away in a hidden alcove, unseen.

Every day he searched, but she was not there.

On the fourth morning he heard a pick-up truck grinding across the Point in low gear, four-wheel drive. He put the pot of coffee on and prepared to greet his guests. Five minutes later, as he brewed a dark blend of coffee, he watched as Roger Goodwin piloted his truck over an outcrop of naked red earth and came to rest near Silas's new Outback. Two men and two women sat in the truck's king cab with him. Roger waved and got out and opened the passenger door for his guests. He helped the women down, and the men followed.

Silas had been practicing for the last two days. He smiled at the woman and extended his hand and said: “
Um pitu
?” You have come.

She took his hand in hers. “
Um waynuma
.” Yes, we have come. It was a traditional greeting for the Hopi of Third Mesa.

“
Owí
,” said Silas and he greeted each member of the Wisechild family in turn: Leon, his wife, Evelyn, and their daughter, Darla. Roger introduced Silas to the fourth member of the party, a member of the Kykotsmovi Council named Frank Quochytewa.

“Mr. Quochytewa is here to help the family put Ms. Wisechild's memory—and her ghost—to rest,” explained Roger.

They had coffee, sitting on folding lawn chairs that Roger pulled from the bed of his pick-up. As the sun chased the morning chill from the landscape, Roger and Silas donned heavy packs filled with extra clothing, food, water, and ropes, and the six companions started down the dry arroyo toward the drop-off into Hatch Wash. The procession was quiet and somber, with Leon Wisechild asking the occasional question about the ongoing investigation into his daughter's murder, and Silas doing his best to answer.

When they were at the rim of the canyon Silas rigged a rope and helped each member of the party descend the tricky sections. Soon they were all on the canyon floor, making their way through brightly colored tamarisk and willow to where the box canyon opened onto the main stem of the creek. They came to the head of the canyon where it opened into a semi-circular amphitheater, once filled with ancient Pueblo ruins, now choked with emptiness.

“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.”