by Gregory Ashe
As Jem had hoped, a service hallway at the back of the dining room connected with a narrow set of stairs. He passed a young woman in the same Pinyon-Pine Lodge polo that Russell had been wearing. She slowed, giving Jem a strange look, and he just smiled and trotted past her. He emerged on the second floor, let the service door swing shut behind him, and began checking rooms.
Probably because the lodge had been built in stages, the numbering of the rooms wasn’t exactly intuitive. Jem made his way up and down the first hall, where the rooms ran from 299 all the way down to 240. No 232 or 234. He followed the landing, which looked down on a lounge on the main floor. Voices floated up.
“—yes, Satan’s unholy fires are an ok reason to believe that life is purposeless and nothing we can do means anything,” Tean was saying, “but consider Heidegger’s proposition about Dasein and temporality, which really offers a fuller framework for the absolute meaninglessness of the universe—”
“I think my mom’s calling me.”
“I didn’t hear anything. Now, Dasein is interesting in Heidegger, but what’s even more interesting is his idea of death as a possibility.”
“Ok, Mom. Yes, I’m coming right now!”
For some reason, the next branch of the hallway was numbered 2200 to 2266, which didn’t make any sense to Jem. He passed an older couple, the man leaning heavily on a cane, the woman in a wig that would have made Dolly proud. The man tipped his Stetson at Jem, and the woman flashed a hand covered in silver and turquoise. He took the next branch and saw that the numbers started at 201A, which he wasn’t sure meant anything, and finally found 232 and 234.
This must have been one of the original sections of the lodge; the floorboards were warped and cracked in places, the light fixtures were tarnished, and the exposed joists overhead were rough-hewn. The doors were solid pine, and the locks were ancient. Jem could have breathed on one and it would have opened. He knocked at 232 and listened. Nothing. He knocked at 234. Nothing.
He let himself into 232 first. Blake was a pig, his shit everywhere, but Jem didn’t find anything more interesting than a bag of what he thought was oxy. He left it in the mesh liner of the suitcase. On the dresser, held open by the TV’s remote control, lay a pamphlet for the Onion Creek Wild Horses—SEE THEM IN THE WILD. He took a picture with his phone. He tried 234 next. Tanner wasn’t exactly going to pass a barrack inspection, but the room wasn’t a complete disaster. The only thing interesting was a stack of papers. The wall of text stopped him cold, but he made himself slow down and decipher the key words in a few of the titles: survey, assay, uranium, carnotite. The mine was called Nueva Vida. He took pictures of these papers too.
Time was up. He let himself out, made sure both doors were locked, and went downstairs. When he got back to reception, Tean was gone. Jem found him in the parking lot, walking Scipio along one of the grassy berms. Scipio was inspecting a juniper and sneezing every three seconds.
“I booked a room,” Tean said. “They accommodate animals, and it sounded better than trying to drive back tonight. Was that the right thing to do?”
“I don’t know.” Jem told him what he’d found, passing over his phone with the pictures.
“Is this their cover? Tourists who might be interested in mining rights?” Tean frowned as he swiped through the images. Then he stopped on a picture that showed him against an outcropping of gray, lichen-stained stone, with an intensely blue sky behind him. He was looking off at something else, just a hint of a smile. He looked young and alive and beautiful.
“Is that me?”
“Duh.”
“That doesn’t look like me.”
“Of course it does.”
“When did you take it?”
“After you watched that crow try to murder me.”
Tean blinked several times. “You threw a rock at it, and crows have phenomenal facial recognition and memory. They’re not above revenge, and besides, you brought it on yourself.”
“It was trying to get a rabbit!”
“Wait, you took this picture when we hiked Bridal Veil?”
“Yes, Jesus, will you let it go?”
“I don’t remember you taking any pictures of me.”
“That’s because whenever I say I want a picture with you—or a picture of you—you make that face.”
“I don’t make a face.” Tean hesitated. “What face?”
Grabbing the phone, Jem said, “Go find a mirror. You’re making it right now. Can we please drive out to this mine and check it out?”
“Why would they be there?”
“I don’t know.”
Tean frowned. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I feel weird. Something is weird, and I don’t like it, and I don’t know why they left those papers out unless they wanted someone to see them and know what they’re pretending to be interested in.”
“That sounds like a trap.”
Jem hesitated. He remembered Decker: an overheard conversation, the laundry room, the white-hot hope burning in his chest, and then the shadows waiting for him. His mouth was dry when he said, “Maybe. Can we just drive out there and see?”
“If it’s a trap—”
“If it even looks like there’s a possibility of that, we’ll turn around.”
“Jem—”
“Please.”
Nodding slowly, Tean led the way to the truck, and they used the lodge’s Wi-Fi to pull up a map to the Nueva Vida mine. They drove east on US-128 again. Without service on their phones, they had to rely on road signs and markers, gauging their progress against the downloaded map. Tean finally turned off at the BLM route marker, following a dirt road into the black box of a canyon. Clouds of dust billowed up, filling the truck, and Scipio began to sneeze again. The truck trundled over the rutted ground, and the only sounds were the creaking of the suspension and loose rocks crunching under the tires.
The mine looked abandoned. Old rail tracks led into the pitch-black opening. There was no sign of life, and in the dark, even with their phones as flashlights, it was impossible to tell if other vehicles had been up here recently.
“Do you feel any better?” Tean asked.
Jem shook his head.
“Do you want to look around some more?”
Jem shook his head.
“Maybe they’re in Moab. We could drive past the BLM office. If they’ve been stealing equipment like the dart syringes and the injection rifle, we might be able to learn something.”
“Where are the horses?”
“What?”
“The Onion Creek HMA. The flyer in Blake’s room.”
Tean was quiet for a long moment. “East. But I don’t see why they would—”
“The injection rifle. The flyer. The horses. Please?”
Tean guided the truck back to the highway, and they went east again. The mesas and broken buttes on their right. The Colorado an albino, starlight snake on their left. They turned off on another of the BLM roads. Two miles later, at the mouth of a slot canyon to the south, moonlight glittered on glass.
“Stop,” Jem said.
Tean stopped the truck. They left Scipio there and jogged down the loose shale, slipping, trying to catch their balance. Jem grabbed a scrubby brush to balance himself and swore as thorns punctured his hand, but he waved Tean off when the doc tried to make his way over. When they reached the flat, sunbaked ground at the bottom of the slope, they could move faster. The night was bright enough that the scrub and thistles and tumbleweeds threw shadows.
When they got closer, Jem’s suspicions were confirmed: it was a car parked less than a hundred yards from the slot canyon. They went to the car first. It was a Camaro, only a year or two old. It couldn’t have been there long—someone would have noticed and called it in—but the hood was cool to the touch. Jem used the hem of his shirt to open the door. He smelled weed and a Hawaiian Punch air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. He was reaching fo
r the glove compartment when Tean called his name.
When Jem turned, he was surprised to see the doc at the mouth of the canyon, kneeling next to a shadowed bulk. It wasn’t until Jem got closer that he realized it was a horse. It had to be one of the wild ones because it was so thin its ribs were showing. It was dead; its chest was still, and several dark wounds marked its neck and side.
“She’s still warm,” Tean said, his voice tight in a way Jem had only heard a handful of times before. “Someone shot her.”
The moonlight made the bloodstains black against the cracked earth. Something clacked deeper down the slot, and Jem turned to look.
“No,” Tean said.
“I’m just going to take a look.”
“Jem, no. Someone shot this mare. There’s an abandoned car. For all we know, the shooter is still here. Let’s go back and call the sheriff and the BLM rangers.”
Another sound came, like rocks striking together. The echoes made it hard to judge distance, but it couldn’t be far. Jem pulled out his phone, switched on the flashlight, and started forward.
Swearing, Tean came after him.
The canyon floor sloped up, and after a hundred yards, the brittle, crumbling texture of soil underfoot changed. Jem panned the light across the ground and saw red rock that had been washed clean. He moved more slowly, trying to keep from making noise, but the narrow walls of the canyon seemed to give back every sound: his sneakers scuffing stone, his breathing, even his heartbeat, although he knew that had to be his imagination. Tean, of course, made no noise at all. When Jem glanced back, he was just a ghostlight bobbing along behind him.
The noise came again, and Jem was sure this time that it was close. Breathing, too. At first, he took it for the distorted echo of his own exhalations, but after another thirty yards, he was convinced: something else was here, something breathing wildly. On the verge of panic. He slowed enough that Tean caught up. When he looked over, the doc was just a shadow against the steep red walls. Tean shook his head.
Jem moved forward again. The canyon jagged left, and when they came around the corner, the slot opened into a fork. Where the two paths met, floodwaters had converged for thousands of years, and a slightly wider section opened up. Wide enough for more of the night’s weak light to filter down. Wide enough for a scraggly juniper.
The tree flinched, branches snapping, hard berries raining down, and Jem scrambled back. His heart pounded in his chest. Tean put a hand on his back; with his other hand, the doc forced Jem’s light down. When Jem opened his mouth, Tean shook his head again.
As Jem’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw what Tean must have already understood. A foal was caught in the juniper’s gnarled branches. Jem could see only the back legs. One of the hooves came down hard, clipping against the red rock, and the sound echoed up the slot.
Then Jem saw a body. It lay ten yards past the juniper, past the foal, and even in the weak light filtered by the canyon’s high walls, Jem knew the man—woman?—was dead. He could smell it now, the smell of ruptured bowels and body cavities, a smell that had sent the foal into a panic. He took a step forward.
Tean caught his arm, and the doc’s grip was iron.
“I’ll be—”
“No.” Tean pointed past Jem, farther up the righthand fork. After what felt like an eternity of watching, Jem saw something move.
“Someone’s waiting for us.”
“It’s not a person,” Tean whispered. “It’s another mare. She’s not going to leave her foal.”
“Well if it’s just a horse—”
Tean’s grip tightened, yanking Jem back a step. “I said no. If you get between her and her foal, she’ll lose her mind. She could kill you.”
“She’s a horse; I think I’ll be ok.”
“She probably weighs close to a thousand pounds, and most of that is muscle and bone. She’ll be terrified for her young, and she just needs to hit you once.”
“Can’t you talk to her?”
“I’m a trained professional, not Dr. Doolittle. Let’s go. We’ll call this in, and they’ll get a team out here. They can tranq the mare, get the foal loose, and take things from there.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Jem—”
“I’m not. If it’s Tanner, I want to know.” He swallowed against the sudden tightness in his throat. “I know I’m acting weird. I know I’m not making any sense.”
Tean said nothing.
When Jem tried to peel Tean’s hand away, Tean shook him by the arm. “Stop. Just stop.”
“I’m not—”
“I know you’re not. You’re driving me crazy right now. Stay put until I tell you it’s safe.”
And then, before Jem could say anything, Tean gave another savage yank, propelling Jem toward the canyon wall. The doc slipped forward into the night, pocketing his phone as he went. He was speaking quietly, calmly, words that Jem couldn’t hear but that he knew were probably nonsense. The juniper thrashed again. The falling berries sounded like a hailstorm. When a breeze rolled down the canyon, it washed away the dead body’s stink, and Jem smelled horse, something he thought of as sweat and lather and terror.
By then, Tean had reached the tree. He was still talking in that calm tone. Based on cues that Jem couldn’t perceive, Tean moved forward by inches. The whole process dragged on and on until it felt like hours. Then, with a suddenness that made Jem startle, Tean grabbed one of the juniper’s branches and pulled. Wood crackled, and the foal burst out of the tree. Tean flew backward and landed on his ass. The clatter of hooves filled the slot as the foal raced to rejoin its mother, and then both horses streaked away, becoming shadows, then vanishing.
Tean was already picking himself up by the time Jem reached him.
“Are you ok?” Jem said.
“I’m fine,” Tean said, dusting himself off. “I just got a little too close.”
Jem caught the glasses before they fell, resettling them on Tean’s nose.
“Thanks.”
“Are you hurt?”
Tean shook his head.
“Did that mean horse hurt your bummy?” Tean met Jem’s eyes but didn’t answer. After a moment, heat filled Jem’s face, and he looked away. “I’m sorry. I just need some sleep; I feel like I’m going out of my mind.”
To Jem’s surprise, Tean found his hand and squeezed, and Jem had to blink to clear his eyes. He pulled free after a moment and trotted up to where the canyon widened. Taking out his phone, he squatted for a better look. The stink of death was thick, and a few flies, untroubled by the darkness, buzzed and flew up from the body. A white man, average height, still relatively young. Dark hair. Aside from that, it was hard to tell. He had been trampled to death, dozens of hooves crushing him underfoot. His face was destroyed. His body too. Blood had soaked the thin t-shirt, and in places, broken bones poked through his clothing.
They walked back to the truck. Jem retrieved a pair of disposable gloves. He checked the registration in the Camaro’s glovebox: Tanner Kimball. He closed the car and headed up the slot canyon again while Tean stayed behind with Scipio. He lifted the dead man a few inches and worked the wallet out of his back pocket. Even in the filtered moonlight, he recognized Tanner’s name and picture on the driver’s license. More than five hundred dollars in cash. Visas and Mastercards in different names—Jem took those. Gas receipts from the last few days, stations up and down US-6 and US-191, the roads between here and Salt Lake. Jem replaced everything except the credit cards and returned the wallet to the dead man’s pocket. He walked back to the truck.
Tean and Scipio were sitting in the Ford’s bed, the dog’s head in Tean’s lap as Tean stroked his ears.
“That’s not Tanner,” Jem said. “But someone sure wants us to think it is.”
11
They had to drive back to Moab before they got a signal, and by then, it made more sense to head directly to the police station to file their report. After that,
everything became a jumble. They spent an hour answering the same questions over and over again; when they weren’t answering questions, they were sitting on a bench just outside the holding cells, in case they hadn’t gotten the message. The woman who did most of the questioning, Tebbs, was middle aged, Native American, no nonsense, her salt-and-pepper hair in a butch cut. A younger man took over after a while, introducing himself as Chief Nobles. In his office, framed pictures hung on the wall: a blond wife and two blond kids; a boat on what Tean thought was Lake Powell; a house that might have come out of LDS Living.
An hour later, the Grand County sheriff showed up. Sheriff McEneany, nervous and pale, looked all of twelve years old and probably still didn’t need to shave. His belt buckle proclaimed him the 2017 Silver Star Rodeo Champion. He asked them a few questions and stood around, thumbs in his Sam Browne belt like he’d just cracked the case. Nobles and Tebbs didn’t exactly roll their eyes at each other, but their vicarious embarrassment was so intense that Tean found himself trying to find somewhere else to look.
After that, they had to drive back to the canyon. Scipio stayed with Tebbs; the last thing Tean saw when he glanced back was Scipio already on his back, Tebbs laughing under her breath while she scratched his belly. When they got to the canyon, they walked Nobles and McEneany back to the body. McEneany and Nobles looked at the body and then moved a dozen yards away to confer in low voices. McEneany shook his head vehemently at whatever Nobles was saying.
“Trouble in paradise,” Jem whispered.
Tean agreed, although he couldn’t figure out the reason for it.
When the two law-enforcement officers came back, Nobles called Highway Patrol while McEneany called the BLM office. Then there was more waiting. The highway patrol cruiser arrived first, lights and sirens, the whole production. The trooper introduced himself as Haggerty. He was Native American, young, and his haircut reminded Tean of Jem’s. Haggerty studied Tean and Jem just long enough that when he finally moved on, Jem whispered, “Ping, ping, ping. That’s the sound of my gaydar exploding.”