Slickrock Paradox (8 page)

SILAS DRANK A SECOND CUP
of water, and when the sheriff offered him coffee he accepted. Willis brought back three cups, and he and Silas and Agent Taylor sat together in an interview room.

“This is a murder investigation now,” Taylor noted. “We have to do this by the book. The Park Service has ceded jurisdiction and this is to be a joint investigation by the Grand County Sheriff's Office and the
FBI
.”

“Do I need a lawyer?” asked Pearson.

“Do you
think
you need one?” asked Taylor.

“You're not a suspect, Silas.” Willis earned a sharp look from the
FBI
man.

“You're not a
prime
suspect, Dr. Pearson,” said Taylor. “But surely you must understand that whoever finds the body does make the list of people who need to be interviewed. If you want a lawyer, feel free to call. The sheriff won't mind you using his phone, I'm sure.”

“Not at all,” said Willis.

“I don't think I need a lawyer.” Silas raised the coffee cup to his lips with shaking hands.

“I'm sure this must be hard on you, Dr. Pearson, but we have to ask you some additional questions.”

“You think this is hard on me?” Silas looked up.

“I'm sure it must be—”

“You're sure it must be what?” Silas interrupted. “Difficult? I thought I found my wife in Courthouse Wash. I was almost killed, and when I came to I was lying next to bones I believed were my wife's. And you think that was difficult? I went to sleep last night thinking I could stop looking, that there might be some closure. And now, it's what . . .” He looked at his watch. “It's 8:30 in the morning, and you're telling me that the bones I found were from a stranger, and someone who was murdered at that. No, Agent Taylor, that's not difficult at all. But thanks for your concern.” Silas put his coffee cup down and crossed his arms in front of him. The sorrow he had felt over the last two days had ebbed and anger had taken its place.

Agent Taylor watched him a moment, his dark eyes inscrutable. “We have a few questions,” he said again after a moment. “Do you have any notion of who it was you found in the wash?”

“I have no ungodly idea.”

“None whatsoever?”

“None at all. I've been a little preoccupied over the last few years, Agent Taylor, doing for myself what my government could not, which was trying to find my wife.”

“In all your efforts, you didn't come across a missing person's report about two years ago that caught your eye?”

“I read half a dozen a day, Agent Taylor. Nothing in this area caught my eye. At least not that I remember.”

“When were you in Courthouse Wash last?” asked the sheriff.

“I'd have to check my notes,” said Silas.

“Estimate?”

“I'd say late in the fall, over three and a half years ago, then again early the next spring.”

“You had already moved here?”

“You have that in your files.”

“Would you answer the question?”

“I had just moved from Flag to the Castle Valley when I visited Courthouse Wash the second time. I had bought my place there, had set up my search. The local
S&R
folks and the Park Service gave me a grid of where they had looked. Courthouse was on that sheet, but I went back to look for myself.”

“Did you find anything?”

“I wouldn't be sitting here if I did, would I?”

“That's a no?”

“No, I didn't find anything. The first or the second time around.”

“What made you look again two days ago? Why go back if you'd searched it twice already?”

Silas looked down at his cup of coffee. “I had a hunch.”

“A hunch?” said Taylor.

“Yes, slang for an intuitive feeling . . .”

“I'm familiar with the word, Doctor, but what I don't get is how a hunch led you into this location at this
time
. I mean, the middle of August seems like a hell of a time to go setting off into a canyon in the middle of Arches.”

“When you have nothing else to go on, Agent Taylor, you use what you have. I follow my intuition.”

“And your intuition led you to Sleepy Hollow?”

“It did.”

“The young people who found you, they said you kept saying that you had found her.”

“That's right. I thought I had found Penelope.”

“You said
her
but all there was visible of the skeleton were the bones of the arm. How did you know it was a woman?”

Silas looked from Taylor to the sheriff and back. “Are you serious?” Neither man said a thing. “I just told you I believed I'd found my dead wife. I thought the . . . my hunch had been right. I was looking for my wife:
a woman
. What kind of asinine question is that?”

Agent Taylor ignored Silas's protest. “You said there was a flash flood, that you got caught in it. Has this ever happened to you before?”

“Yes, once. In Dark Horse Canyon, but it was minor, a foot or two of water. Nothing like this.”

“You're lucky to be alive.”

“You're making me feel otherwise.”

“What the agent is getting at, Silas, is that surviving that big a flood is, well, rare,” said Willis. Silas felt anything but lucky, but he didn't say anything.

“You say you blacked out?” asked the
FBI
man.

“I did black out. I got hit on the head. I have the lump to prove it,” said Silas, pulling aside some of his wiry hair.

“When you came to, you were next to the cottonwood.”

“That's right.”

“Do you remember it being there when you went up Sleepy Hollow?”

“I'm pretty sure it was. I remember checking it, but it moved in the flood. It was up against the canyon wall when I went in, and when I came to, it was in the middle of Courthouse Wash. It's a big log, and there aren't that many of them just lying around.”

“Do you think that the remains you found were under the cottonwood?”

“When I found them they were off to the side. A few feet away.”

“What about when the cottonwood was along the canyon wall, as you describe it?”

“I have no way of knowing.”

“You don't remember ever having seen anything . . . peculiar there in the past?”

Silas looked at the
FBI
agent. “I think this conversation is done.” He pushed himself up.

“I have a few more questions, Mr. Pearson.”

“
Doctor
Pearson, and no, you don't. You're trying to tie me to this somehow, and that's the most insulting thing I think I've ever experienced from the
FBI
. Let me tell you, having dealt with you and other agents for the last three and a half years, that's saying something.”

“We're just trying to eliminate you as a suspect, is all,” said the sheriff. “Why don't you sit down and we can finish up.”

“Thanks, Dex, but no, I don't think I will. I believed I'd found my wife, and now I have to accept that all I found was some random stranger, and someone who got murdered on top of that. My ankle is killing me, my head is pounding and my ears are ringing. I keep feeling as if I've been put through the tumble cycle in an old-fashioned washing machine. I'm going home. I'm going to sleep and I'm going to try and forget all about what I found in Courthouse Wash. If you want to interview me again, I'll bring a lawyer. Otherwise, I'm washing my hands of this. Good luck, Agent Taylor,” Silas said, looking at the man, who was still seated. “I hope you do a better job finding this young lady's killer than you have done finding my wife.”

Silas walked to the door and tried to turn the handle but it was locked. He looked at Willis. “Dex, would you open the goddamned door, please?”

Willis walked over and knocked. One of his deputies opened the door. Silas walked past the maze of cubicles that amounted to the Grand County Sheriff's Office and into the growing heat of the day.

SILAS SAT IN THE OUTBACK
until the heat became oppressive. He decided to go to his Red Rock Canyon bookstore instead of home. He drove through the stifling streets and soon arrived at the store. Inside, he dumped the mail and the newspapers on the desk and sat down at his computer. He wanted to look at the various news sites for anything on Penelope.

A story in the
Salt Lake Tribune
caught his eye: “Body found in Arches
NP
by hiker.” He'd grown so accustomed to scanning for such a story that his eye was naturally attracted to it. But the bones weren't Penelope's and
he
was the “hiker” noted in the story. He scanned the article and felt a wave of relief that he hadn't been named. The story noted that the
FBI
had been called in and that the circumstances surrounding the death were suspicious, but that a murder investigation hadn't officially begun yet.

Yet
. Silas knew that within a matter of hours, or maybe days, the
FBI
would announce that the young Native American woman had been murdered. He read the rest of the story and considered for a moment how he would feel if it was Penelope's body he was reading about. He felt a strange kinship with whoever had lost this young woman only to have her turn up murdered. When the
FBI
identified the skeletal remains, they would send someone to find this young woman's husband, or her parents, or maybe her siblings, and inform them of her murder.

Silas sat at his desk and considered the case for a moment. The body had been hidden—likely buried—under the cottonwood, for a long time, Dr. Rain had said. Any trail leading to a killer would have grown cold in the intervening years.

Silas shook his head and continued his online search. There were more stories about the corpse in Courthouse Wash, but nothing else that would lead him to his wife. He shut his computer down. The ring of the telephone at his elbow startled him and he waited for a second ring to compose himself.

“Hello?” he said into the receiver, forgetting to add the name of his shop.

“Silas, that you? It's Ken.”

“Hi Ken.”

“I've been trying to call you all morning!”

“I think my cell phone is dead. Literally dead. Got a little water and sand in it.”

“Of course. Did they
ID
the . . . the remains?”

“It's not Penny,” said Silas. “I was wrong.”

“Who is it?”

“They don't know.”

“Then how do they know it's not Penny?” Silas explained to Ken what Rain had told him that morning. “What are you going to do?”

“Go home. Get some sleep.”

“No, I mean about the remains?”

“What do you mean?”

“
You
found it.”

“Ken, this isn't a kid's game. It's not finders keepers. The
FBI
will handle it.”

“Like they handled Penny,” said Ken, echoing Silas's own doubt-filled sentiments.

“It's not my problem. I'm going to go home, sleep, rest my ankle, and as soon as I can, I'm going to start looking again.”

“Silas, don't you think you found that young woman for a reason?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Your dream.”

“You said so yourself, Ken: a product of an over-active imagination. Too much sun. Not enough water. Delusions. There's nothing more to it. So don't go all Sedona on me. I got enough of that when I was at
NAU
. I don't need it from you.”

“Easy, Silas, easy. I'm just saying that you were all convinced that Penny had led you to her . . . to her body yesterday. You had
me
convinced—and I think New-Age hippies should be used for cord wood in the winter!” He laughed at his own joke. “But you had me convinced. And now, you're just going to ignore it.”

Silas was shaking his head. “Ken, it was a dream. Nothing more. I dreamt about my wife, because—”

“. . . you miss her, amigo. Listen, do you want to come by the place? We'll fix you a big dinner tonight. You can drink that Canadian beer you like. There's nobody in the second cabin. You could stay the night. We'll sit out and howl at the moon. What do you say?”

“I'd like to, Ken, but not tonight, some other time. I need to go home and—”

“And what? Stare at your maps?”

“Maybe that's what I need to do. Right now I just want to sleep. I'll be fine. Kiss Trish for me and tell her some other night.”

“¡Hasta luego!” said Ken.

“See you soon,” said Silas as he hung up the phone.

HE TOOK THE
long way home. He wasn't ready to face the emptiness of his house, but he didn't want company either. Silas drove his Outback south on Highway 191 and took Spanish Valley Road on his way into the La Sal Mountains. He wove along the dirt roads until he'd left the inferno of the canyon country behind and had passed into the cool sub-alpine area. Here and there the tangled forest opened up and sweeping meadows stretched across the rolling earth like a soft green sheet across a lumpy mattress. Cows dotted the hillsides, grazing their way down to the quick.