Clarence said, “Not in the South Valley.”
“People kept disappearing,” Janelle said. “The ones Miguel worked with. Prison, back across the border. One day they’d be playing with Carm on the floor of our apartment. The next, it was like they’d never existed. There were so many close calls. The pressure was always on. One day, when I was pregnant with Rosie, I looked at Carm, really looked at her—she was a toddler by then, just learning to walk—and I knew what I was doing was wrong. Just like that, like flipping a switch. I waited until Rosie was born. Miguel came to the hospital. Refused to touch her. His phone rang, some deal he had going. Rosie was in my arms. Carm was with my parents. I told him to get out, and he did.”
She looked straight at Chuck, her eyes shining. He looked straight back. This was why he’d fallen so hard for her. Just as she’d been as a new mother, she was her own person today. Stubborn, strong-willed, devoted to her girls. God, she was beautiful, even now, even in the midst of all this.
The muscles in Chuck’s jaw loosened. It finally made sense, what had attracted Janelle to him. It was the same thing that had drawn her to Miguel: Chuck presented her and the girls with a new world, one far different than the circumscribed world of Albuquerque’s South Valley. Maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t as different as she claimed from the impulsive coed she’d been eight years ago—except this time around she’d done a far better job of choosing her man.
Chuck pictured Carmelita’s pride-filled eyes, so like her mother’s, when she’d returned to camp from her trip to the bathroom last night. Carmelita. That’s who this was about, and seconds were ticking by.
“You said he threatened you the last time you talked to him,” Chuck said to Janelle.
“He needed money. I told him to forget it.”
“That was it? Nothing more specific?”
“He said he’d get me, the girls. But he always says that.”
“Why do you still speak to the guy?” Chuck asked, an edge to his voice.
“It’s safer,” she said flatly. “For the girls.”
“Okay,” Chuck said, backing off. “This Miguel, do you have any pictures of him? On your computer, your phone?”
“I got rid of them when he left. Every single one.”
“Is he fat?”
“Not really. Or he wasn’t, anyway, last I knew.”
Clarence tapped the collar of his shirt. “He has matching tattoos. Chinese letters running along each of his collarbones.”
“One side says ‘peace,’ and the other, ‘beauty,’” Janelle said bitterly. “He got them right after we met, to impress me.”
Clarence looked at Chuck. “Why are you asking? Think you saw him?”
“I don’t know a damn thing at this point,” Chuck said.
Clarence held the “NO COPS” sheet of paper up before him. “The only good thing about this is, if it is Miguel, then Carmelita’s okay.”
Janelle nodded stiffly. “He wants money. He won’t hurt her.”
Chuck looked from Janelle to Clarence and back. Janelle had just said Miguel had threatened the girls in the past. How could she and Clarence be so sure of Carmelita’s safety now? There had to be something else going on here.
“Carmelita?” Rosie asked in alarm.
“Hush, baby,” Janelle told her. “Your sister’s with her father.” Then she rounded on Chuck, bristling. “You’re the one who made her so independent last night. She woke up this morning, went off to the bathroom on her own—”
But Chuck was having none of it. “Maybe if I’d known. Maybe if you’d told me.”
Janelle looked away. She spoke under her breath. “I didn’t want to think about it.”
“Did he know about us?” Chuck asked her. “That you’d taken the girls to Colorado? Could he have followed us here?”
“He always knew what was up. He knew about the time Carm broke her arm when she was four. He kept tabs.”
“Was he still dealing, last you knew?”
Janelle shifted Rosie on her hip and shrugged. “He said he’d moved to prescription drugs mostly. Said it was easier. I don’t think he’s capable of anything else.”
Clarence growled, “Except kidnapping his own daughter.”
Gravel crunched on the campground road. Chuck turned to see Robert Begay’s white Suburban headed their way. Chuck, Janelle, and Clarence faced the Suburban as it rolled to a stop at their campsite, Janelle sliding Rosie from her hip to stand next to her.
Chuck studied Robert as he stepped out of his car. Yesterday the chief ranger had refused to acknowledge Chuck. Now here he was, with Carmelita having just gone missing, showing up for a personal visit. What was going on?
Chuck knew Robert to be the product of two worlds, Diné and bilagáana, Navajo and white. The chief ranger had been raised off the reservation in suburban Phoenix and had graduated from Arizona State University. His brown face, high forehead, thick lips, and dark eyes bespoke his full-blooded Navajo ancestry, while his straight-ahead manner of speech and willingness to tackle park problems head on, rather than in the communally circuitous way of the Diné, were products of a life lived in the bilagáana world.
Robert’s badge gleamed on his chest. He retrieved his wide-brimmed hat from the passenger seat of the Suburban and adjusted it on his head. After checking his reflection in the driver’s side mirror, he approached the campsite. At Chuck’s introduction, Robert touched his brim at Clarence and tilted his head to Janelle and Rosie. He spoke to Chuck, his tone inscrutable. “You were at Maricopa Point yesterday.”
Chuck gave Robert a tight smile. “Is this some sort of interrogation?”
“You could say that.”
Chuck swallowed. “You saw me out there,” he said evenly.
“Mind telling me why you showed up?”
“Mind telling me why you’re asking?”
“A man is dead. Another, gone from the park for a good long time, just happens to appear at the scene.”
“You’re saying you’re just doing your job.”
Robert did not reply. His eyes were still and watchful.
Because Chuck’s work at the Hermit Creek latrine site had overlapped with Robert’s first months as chief ranger at the park, Chuck knew him to be smart, capable, and unfailingly professional. Moreover, Chuck had heard Robert’s stature among the park’s staff had only risen in the two years since.
Chuck chose his words with care. “You know me, Robert. Curiosity’s part of my job description. My wife and girls and I passed Maricopa on the shuttle. I doubled back to see what was up.”
“You knew the overlook was closed.”
“I was looking for Podalski, to ask about a personal tour of the park. We’re here as tourists.”
Robert nodded. It appeared he’d received the same report from Donald. “Just that and curiosity, then?”
“You mean, why I was there?”
Rather than answer, Robert waited. He was good at that, his Navajo side coming to the fore. Taking advantage of the pause, Chuck determined his course.
The woman from Albuquerque had recognized him last night. It made sense, given the chief ranger’s unannounced appearance, that she’d told Robert as much. Chuck’s leveling with Robert about his having been at Maricopa Point would simply confirm what the chief ranger already knew. Plus, there was the outside chance Chuck’s coming clean might somehow help in tracking down Carmelita. But Chuck wasn’t ready to tell Robert about his involvement, however tangential, in the death of the woman’s boyfriend.
“Curiosity,” Chuck repeated with a nod. Then he zigged. “There was quite a crowd. I couldn’t see what was going on. What if you’d found the A. Dinaveri?”
TEN
9:30 a.m.
“The A. Dinaveri?” Robert scoffed. “You’ve gotta be kidding.”
Chuck mustered all the false enthusiasm he could. “You know the calendar, the dates. A lot of people think this could be the year.” He turned to Janelle. “The A. Dinaveri is a necklace tho
ught by the one-and-only Arturo Dinaveri to have been left by the Anasazi Indians in a secret shrine somewhere along the South Rim a thousand years ago, about the time the Anasazi disappeared from the Colorado Plateau. Dinaveri was a famous Italian archaeologist who worked at Chaco Canyon in the 1950s. You know where that’s at, north of Albuquerque, right?”
Janelle’s tight nod made clear her frustration at the delay in getting on with finding Carmelita. When Clarence cleared his throat to speak, she wheeled on him, her eyes flashing.
“According to Dinaveri,” Clarence said, showing off his own archaeological know-how despite Janelle’s obvious irritation, “the Anasazi hid a necklace in the shrine as an offering to Chirsáuha, the Anasazi god of fertility said to live under the river at the bottom of the canyon.”
Robert raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Dinaveri just wanted to make his time at Chaco look worthwhile.”
In Italian archaeological classification, the A. in A. Dinaveri stood for articulo, although everyone in the Southwest archaeological community, Chuck included, assumed that in Dinaveri’s famously self-inflated mind the A. stood for Arturo as well. How Dinaveri had come up with the idea of a hidden shrine at the South Rim from his study of the Anasazi at a site far from the Grand Canyon had been subjected, over the decades, to much ridicule.
“It makes a great story though,” Clarence responded, avoiding Janelle’s acidic glare. “Myth says the Anasazi people first came to the Earth’s surface from beneath the river.”
Chuck gave Janelle a look of understanding and brought the story to a close. “Dinaveri’s team discovered a shadow calendar at Chaco, one that tells time by directing the sun’s rays between lined-up slabs of sandstone. Dinaveri claimed the calendar indicated Chirsáuha was due to lead a reemergence of the Anasazi to the Earth’s surface here at the Grand Canyon sometime about, well, now.”
“I can’t believe you, of all people, believe Dinaveri’s drivel,” Robert said.
Drivel was the right word for the Italian archaeologist’s brash prediction. But at least all the talk of the A. Dinaveri had steered the chief ranger away from discussing Chuck’s appearance at Maricopa Point. “Your nephew believes it,” Chuck said.
“Marvin?” Robert grunted. “That’s his problem. Yours, too, I guess, long as you’re still working for him.”
“Final report’s due in a couple of weeks.”
“Still enough time to find the A. Dinaveri for him,” the chief ranger replied dryly.
“It’s supposed to be hidden right here under your nose.”
“Doesn’t exist. You know it and I know it.”
“Someday, Marvin’ll know it, too. Meantime, I’ll make sure to leave the possibility open in my final.”
“Spoken like someone who wants another contract to come his way.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Janelle broke in, “but Rosie really needs some breakfast.”
“Yessireebob,” Rosie proclaimed from Janelle’s side. “I’m hungry!”
“I apologize, miss,” Robert said to Rosie. He addressed Chuck with mock formality, “Mr. Bender.”
Chuck dipped his head in return. “Chief Ranger Begay.”
Robert walked to his Suburban. He turned to Chuck as he opened the door. “Girls,” he said, his tone measured.
“What’s that?”
“You said girls, plural, on the shuttle with you and your wife yesterday.”
“Oh. Right.” Chuck had introduced only Rosie to Robert. “Carmelita,” Chuck said after a second’s hesitation. “Carm. Rosie’s sister.” He waved vaguely in the direction of the camper.
Robert waited, unmoving, next to his car. It was Rosie, finally, who broke the silence. “My sister is with her daddy,” she told Robert. She did a little dance, her arms above her head. “Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.”
The chief ranger scanned the campsite from one side to the other until his eyes came to rest on the camper. “Well, okay then,” he said slowly. He looked at Janelle. “I hope you and your girls enjoy your visit.”
He tossed his hat on the passenger seat, climbed in, and drove away.
Chuck turned to Janelle and Clarence. They’d lost precious minutes dealing with Robert’s visit; it was time they came up with a plan. “Should we have told Robert?” he asked. “Do we go to the police?”
The two shook their heads.
“The paper, the ‘NO COPS,’” Janelle said. “Miguel means it.” She took Rosie by the shoulders and pointed her in the direction of the picnic table. “He’s used to getting what he wants.”
“He’s not stupid either,” Clarence told Chuck. “Dude’s never been busted. Not once. He’s got a clean sheet, far as I know. Everybody around him has done time. But Miguel? Not so much as a parking ticket.”
“He always bragged about how hard he worked to keep things quiet,” said Janelle. “He was a master at staying in the background, getting other people to do the dirty work for him, letting everyone else take the heat.”
“If he’s so smart,” Chuck said, “why was he broke when he called you? Why is he reduced to coming all the way out here and kidnapping his own daughter for money?”
Janelle and Clarence exchanged looks. Clarence gave Janelle a small nod.
“I’ve never known a more jealous person,” she told Chuck. “He put a knife to a guy’s throat once just for looking at me the wrong way. And he’s vindictive, always saying he never forgets anyone who wrongs him, how it might take years, but he’ll get them back.”
“You think he’s coming after you?” Chuck asked. “After all this time?”
“No. He won’t hurt me on account of the girls. It’s all part of his messed up sense of familia, his Latino honor. I’m their mamá. He can’t hurt me, and he won’t hurt the girls, so . . .”
Chuck’s eyes widened as he remembered what Janelle had said before Robert’s arrival at the campsite: “Tag. You’re it.”
“So I’m fair game,” Chuck finished for her.
“I’d bet everything I had on it,” Clarence interjected. “He knows all about you by now. Probably has the Bender Archaeological website memorized.”
“But why Carmelita? Why not just track me down, put a gun to my head, and be done with it?”
“Because that would be too easy?” Clarence pondered aloud. “No. There’s more to it than that.” He looked at Chuck. “Miguel Gutierrez is mean. And I mean mean, as in e-vil. You have no idea how happy I was, my parents were, when he left. Every time I’m with the girls, I think how lucky they are to be rid of him. But I can’t help having visions of him showing up again sometime. I know how bad he must want to hurt Jan, especially now that she’s so happy.” He shuddered. “I agree you’re fair game, but I think he just can’t help going after Jan, too, sticking the knife into her even while he convinces himself he’s not.”
“You’re getting pretty deep here, Clarence.”
“Yeah, but I’m certified, remember?”
Chuck smiled at what had been an ongoing joke between the two of them throughout the transmission-line contract. Clarence had teased Chuck mercilessly for getting an archaeology degree from tiny Fort Lewis College to do what Chuck did for a living: assess, dig, screen, report; assess, dig, screen, report; contract after contract, year after year. In contrast, Clarence claimed, his degree from Albuquerque’s renowned University of New Mexico School of Anthropology in anthropological archaeology gave him license to do much more.
“I’m an archaeologist and an anthropologist,” he boasted. “I’ve got a brain and I’m certified to use it.” Which had led to Clarence’s telling an imagined story about virtually every hunting point and potsherd he came across.
“Bag it and move on,” Chuck had admonished him each time. “We’re doing a job here, not making a movie.”
But Clarence never could let go. “I wonder . . .” he would begin, holding up his latest discovery. “What if . . .” he would continue, outing himself as just the sort to believe in the A. Dinaveri—not because the idea
of the necklace made any logical sense, but because the possibility made such a good story.
Chuck doused his smile as quickly as it had come. “Okay. We’ve got a crazed maniac who has kidnapped Carmelita to somehow get at me and Jan at the same time.” He faced Clarence. “So tell us, swami, what’s he going to do next?”
“One: he’ll take good care of Carm. She’s having fun right now. I’m sure of it. I bet she doesn’t even know she’s been kidnapped. Two: this is going to come down to money, one way or another. Everything else aside, that’s how Miguel measures himself. He’s going to make you pay. First in cash. Then, but only then, and only maybe then, in blood.”
Chuck thought about the guy he’d punched, who’d fallen to his death off Maricopa Point. “Is Miguel a monster-SUV type? Big, showy, and bad-ass?”
Clarence took a moment, considering. “Could be by now, I suppose. But he was into sportier stuff before.” He turned to Janelle. “The Miata. ¿Recuerdas?”
“Two seats,” Janelle explained to Chuck. “That’s what he had, we had, when Carmelita was born. He refused to get anything else. If I wanted to go anywhere with her, I had to go by bus or borrow somebody else’s car.”
Chuck dug the toe of his shoe into the ground. It didn’t sound as if Miguel was the guy he’d tangled with on the promontory.
Rosie twisted back and forth beside the picnic table. “I said I’m hungry!”
Janelle went to her, and Chuck stepped away from the campsite.
Did Janelle and Clarence know that all national park rangers were trained and deputized as full-on law-enforcement officers? That they were, for all practical purposes, cops? Betting the answer was no, he pulled his cell phone from his pocket and scrolled to the number he wanted.
ELEVEN
10 a.m.
Janelle sat at the picnic table, Rosie eating a banana beside her. Clarence sat across from them, gripping a cup of coffee so hard his knuckles were white. Chuck hovered at the head of the table. Miguel was about to call, Janelle and Clarence claimed, any minute now.
Chuck had suggested calling the girls’ father rather than giving him the chance to initiate contact, but Janelle and Clarence nixed the idea, arguing that Miguel wouldn’t answer anyway, that it was better to let him make the first move. Besides, Janelle had explained, Miguel changed phones so often she had no idea what number to call.
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