Chuck leveled Donald’s gun and fired twice at the running figure, again blinding himself. He waited for his eyes to clear, then fired a third and fourth time with greater care, emptying the gun’s eight-shot clip despite the fact that, with so many trees between Chuck and the retreating shooter, the shots stood virtually no chance of reaching their target.
Chuck blinked the muzzle flashes from his eyes and watched as the shooter disappeared into the depths of the grove. Chuck left the cover of the trees and hurried to the end of the railroad wye, the .45 hanging from his hand. He knelt at Donald’s side, ready to grab the extra magazine from Donald’s waist belt and give chase.
But that would mean leaving Donald behind. Chuck hesitated. The shooter was gone now. That was enough.
Chuck dialed 911 on Janelle’s phone. He bent close over his friend after making the call and was relieved to find that Donald was still alive. Donald tried to speak, but his mouth moved only in silence.
The wail of approaching sirens reached the clearing seconds after Chuck completed the emergency call. He slipped his pack from beneath Donald’s head, removed Rachel’s goggles, and took Donald’s spare magazine from its stiff leather pouch. He stuffed the goggles, magazine, and .45 into his daypack and flung the pack to the edge of the trees at the back of the clearing. He knelt again at Donald’s side and held his friend in his arms, his hands growing wet and warm with Donald’s blood, as the headlights of the oncoming park vehicles lit the clearing.
Chuck drew a sharp breath. Shots meant for him were taking Donald’s life. And what of the shooter? Would he panic? Would Carmelita be his next victim?
Chuck fought to remain calm. He whispered reassurances in Donald’s ear. The smell of creosote from the wooden ties beneath the tracks mingled in the night air with the musky odor of Donald’s blood. The vehicles bounced down the tracks, an ambulance followed by a string of ranger patrol cars. Donald turned his head with great effort and looked up at Chuck, his body shivering in Chuck’s arms. The headlights of the ambulance washed across Donald’s ashen face. Donald’s breath left him in a long, drawn-out sigh. His body slumped to the railroad ties.
Chuck checked Donald’s neck for a pulse. Finding none, he bent over his friend’s inert frame and began chest compressions. The ambulance slid to a stop twenty feet up the tracks, its headlights illuminating Donald with Chuck bent over him, compressing the ranger’s chest. Two paramedics leapt from the vehicle as the sound of its siren died away. They hurried to Donald’s side, gear boxes in hand, but even as Chuck made way for them he knew they were too late. Donald’s face was tinted white now. His eyes were fixed and unseeing.
One of the paramedics placed a plastic mask over Donald’s mouth and squeezed an attached air bag while the second took over for Chuck, pressing on Donald’s chest. Chuck rose and stood on unsteady legs, looking down at the ranger’s lifeless body.
Donald’s death was Chuck’s fault. Chuck had insisted on coming here alone. He’d told no one where he was headed, but his friend somehow had stumbled upon the site of the exchange.
Bile rose in Chuck’s throat. His hands, wet with Donald’s blood, hung at his sides. He stumbled down the gravel embankment and across the grass to the edge of the trees as the ranger sedans that had followed the ambulance from the village careened off the tracks and down the embankment into the clearing. The cars swung around one by one and came to a stop in the meadow with their headlights directed at the working paramedics.
Chuck bent double at the edge of the woods, retching. He wanted nothing more than to grab his pack and run. But he owed it to Donald to tell the rangers what he knew. He straightened and nudged his pack deeper into the forest with his toe, then followed after it. He glanced back to make sure he was out of sight among the trees before picking up the pack and heaving it as far into the woods as he could.
He reemerged into the open, wiping his mouth with one hand and clutching his stomach with the other. He entered the circle of light created by the parked patrol cars. Rachel was bending over the paramedics to check on Donald. She approached Chuck, her eyes wide. Chuck spoke softly. “We can’t say anything about Carmelita. Not yet. Look what he did to Donald. He’ll kill her, too.”
“What happened?” Rachel asked, her voice shaking.
“He must’ve thought Donald was me.”
“Donald,” she said. She put a hand to her mouth. “You. They were after you.”
“I was trying to make the exchange. Donald stepped into the middle of it. He never had a chance.”
Rangers gathered in front of their cars in the center of the clearing. Most wore street clothes, having responded from off duty. Among them was Hansen Conover, the ranger-in-training who had rescued Chuck in the canyon. Chuck stepped backward at the sight of Hansen and the rest of the rangers huddled together looking his way. But Rachel grabbed his arm.
“Someone just tried to kill you,” she said. “You have to tell us everything you know. I’m with you on the girl, okay? But everything else.”
“What ‘everything else’? This is about getting Carmelita back. It’s only about getting her back now.”
Opposite Chuck and Rachel, Hansen bent his head to speak into the ear of a uniformed ranger.
Chuck thought of his pack, filled with incriminating evidence, less than a hundred feet away in the trees. What had made him think he could hide it, and the story of Carmelita’s kidnapping as well?
Robert Begay’s white Suburban bounced into the clearing and braked to a stop behind the ambulance. The chief ranger climbed out of his car.
“The phone calls,” Rachel urged Chuck. “Where you went today. Tell Robert everything you know about what’s going on. For Donald.”
Robert left the Suburban with its door open and headlights shining and marched past the ambulance. He headed straight for Chuck, with barely a glance at Donald lying motionless between the two paramedics. Robert’s steps were deliberate, his dark eyes menacing.
Chuck’s heart hammered in his chest. How often was a national park ranger killed on duty? Essentially, never. Yet that’s what had happened on Robert’s watch. The National Park Service bosses in D.C. would want this incident off the front pages as quickly as possible. That meant naming an initial suspect, any suspect, to create closure in the public’s mind.
And that suspect undoubtedly would be Chuck.
Robert could report that while, yes, one of his rangers had been shot and killed in Grand Canyon National Park, a suspect was in custody. The park would remain open and tourists would continue to visit. The park service would be subject to far less scrutiny than an open murder case would engender. No matter that the initial suspect wasn’t the actual perpetrator of the crime; finding Donald’s true killer could come later. Robert’s first order of business would be to reassure the public on behalf of the park service, and that meant arresting Chuck right here, right now, at the scene of the shooting.
Chuck had Donald’s blood all over him. Donald’s gun, covered with Chuck’s fingerprints, was stowed in Chuck’s backpack a few feet away in the woods. A single sweep by Robert’s rangers through the trees would divulge the pack with the gun inside, and the necklaces from Cope Butte as well. Chuck would be locked away for weeks, perhaps months, while he sought to prove his innocence. Janelle would be faced with trying to win Carmelita’s release on her own. And Miguel would get what he wanted: Chuck away from Janelle. For her part, Janelle would see Chuck as a failure. She might well see him as a murderer, too.
Chuck took another step backward. Rachel clung to his arm. Robert picked up his pace. Chuck wrenched himself free of Rachel’s grasp, darted across the clearing, and dove into the trees.
FRIDAY
“Only the melancholy murmur of the wind ascended from the Grand Cañon of Arizona, that sepulchre of centuries. It seemed the requiem for a vanished world.”
— John Stoddard
John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 10, 1898
TWENTY-ONE
Midnight
Shouts rose in the clearing behind Chuck. The beams of the rangers’ high-powered flashlights cut into the stand of trees, lighting the way ahead. Chuck scooped up his pack and sprinted deeper into the woods. The flashlight beams grew dimmer as the rangers, moving slowly through the grove to guard against ambush, fell behind.
Chuck exited the far side of the woods and slid to a stop on a thin strip of pavement at the rear of the dog kennel. Downward facing lights outlined the steel building’s exterior. Between the strip of pavement and kennel, a dozen dogs in side-by-side pens lunged against a wire fence, their howls filling the night.
Chuck set off again at a run. He pulled Rachel’s night-vision goggles from his pack, settled them over his eyes, and left the pavement where it turned toward the front of the building. Chuck disappeared into the forest that blanketed the broad plateau south of the village. He passed the wide trunks of towering ponderosas, holding to a southerly course. The cries of the dogs grew faint, then died away.
Breathing hard, Chuck slowed to a jog. He was a fugitive, alone and on the run. Every ranger and employee in the park would be on the lookout for him now, as would, by morning, every tourist at the South Rim.
He had to get out of the park and regroup. That meant continuing to the collection of chain motels, fast-food restaurants, and parking lots that comprised the community of Tusayan immediately outside the park’s South Entrance. He would work his way there on foot through the night, get his hands on a car, and ditch the area. Then he would call the 505 number. With the necklaces from Cope Butte in his possession, he would be in position to direct what would happen next. This time, the exchange would take place at a time and place of his choosing, not the kidnapper’s, and in a manner that would ensure Carmelita’s well-being.
Miguel had to be ready for all this to end. He’d shot and killed Donald by mistake. Now the heat was on him in the village. No question he was loading Carmelita into his car this very minute, getting ready to leave the park. Logic said he would head for a large city, to blend in with the masses. Phoenix was nearest. Albuquerque a close second.
If Chuck kept moving through the night, he would reach Tusayan by daybreak, at which point he would check in with the kidnapper. Assuming Chuck managed to nab a car without wasting too much time, he could be in either Phoenix or Albuquerque by noon. His thoughts ran ahead of him. Where in either city could he safely pull off an exchange with Miguel?
He came to an abrupt halt.
Phoenix? Albuquerque? What was he thinking? No one was going to a big city. Not Chuck, and certainly not Miguel and Carmelita.
Grand Canyon Village would be in an uproar after Donald’s shooting. No one would be able to make a move without raising suspicion. Moreover, both the south and east park exits would be secured by now, with every departing vehicle subject to search. Miguel wouldn’t dare attempt to leave the park with Carmelita. The highway south of Tusayan, though outside the park boundary, was sure to be blockaded by now, rendering Chuck’s plan impossible.
Chuck turned 180 degrees to face due north, his boots planted in the thick layer of pine needles covering the forest floor. The next chapter of this saga would not take place in Phoenix or Albuquerque. Miguel was trapped in the park, and Chuck was trapped here with him. Miguel had murdered Donald. He was holding Carmelita hostage. Chuck had to take the fight directly to him.
Chuck set off back through the trees toward the village. In his pocket, Janelle’s phone continued its double-buzzes. He would check the latest in the stream of group texts soon enough, but he wanted to think things through on his own first.
A national park ranger had been murdered. The story would make headlines across the nation in a matter of hours. Donald’s fellow rangers would not rest until they’d caught or gunned down a suspect, any suspect, in the killing—including Chuck, regardless of any defense Rachel might be mounting on his behalf. Having been posted on the Internet for much of the day, Carmelita’s disappearance was destined to grow exponentially more public in the hours ahead as well. It wouldn’t be long before someone linked Donald’s murder with Carmelita’s disappearance.
Tonight, it was easy enough to predict, most of Robert Begay’s rangers would cruise the village and park roads while a core team developed a comprehensive strategy for moving forward at daylight. Robert’s troops, along with an army of additional law-enforcement officers summoned from Flagstaff, Williams, the Navajo Nation, even Phoenix, would turn the park inside out, systematically searching every building and vehicle in the village and surrounding campgrounds and parking lots, and using bloodhounds to track Chuck’s flight into the forest. The army of searchers would not stop until Chuck and Miguel and Carmelita were found.
Chuck had until daybreak, no longer, to track down Carmelita in advance of the rangers. He did not want to think of what Miguel might do to Carmelita if cornered by the authorities. Staying ahead of the rangers meant quickly arranging another exchange with Miguel, and this time making sure the handoff worked. By now, Miguel would have made his way from the railroad wye back to his hotel room in the village. He likely was flying low, possibly trying to reach Chuck.
As if on cue, Janelle’s phone gave the single-buzz indication of an incoming phone call—but the call was from Clarence’s number.
Before setting off for the Backcountry Information Center from camp, Chuck had insisted Janelle and Clarence not call him. Instead, he’d assured them, he would call them as soon as the exchange was complete and he and Carmelita were in the clear. But that had been before the shooting.
“Where are you? What’s going on?” Clarence asked the instant Chuck answered.
“Let me talk to Jan,” Chuck said.
“We need to know—”
“Jan,” Chuck repeated. “I need to talk to her.”
“Okay,” Clarence grumbled.
“Chuck, is that you?” Janelle asked when she came on the line seconds later, her voice laced with fear.
Chuck’s heart leapt into his throat at the sound of her voice. “Yes,” he said.
“You’re alive. You’re okay.” Her relief was palpable even as she tried to speak quietly. “Give me a minute. I’m walking away. It’s a zoo here.” A pause, then, a little louder, “They say there’s been a shooting, that somebody’s been killed. We heard the shots. They said it was an adult, not a child . . . but still . . . oh, Chuck.”
“What about Carm? Anything?”
“You don’t have her?” When Chuck didn’t reply, she provided her own answer. “I knew it.” Her voice gathered strength. “Everybody’s checking in, but nobody’s seen anything. They’re all over the place. Rangers, too. They’re everywhere.”
“The rangers will be coming your way. It won’t be long.”
“They’re already here, asking all sorts of questions. The shooting, I thought it was—” She stopped, then started again. “I don’t know what I should say to them. We have to tell them about Carm. It’s time. But . . . you didn’t call.”
“I couldn’t call.”
“You were there?”
“It was Donald. He’s dead, Jan.”
“My God, Chuck. Donald? And you? You’re all right?”
“I got away, but they think . . .”
“They think you did it,” she finished for him. “They’re being careful, what they’re saying, the way they’re asking, but I can tell. Where are you? We have to figure this out. We have to find Carm.”
“Whoever’s got her, I’m gonna kill him.”
“I’ve been thinking about it. The voice. I’m sure of it now. It’s not Miguel.”
“You’re right,” Chuck agreed. He’d held that thought in the back of his mind since Janelle had first expressed doubt, back in camp, about the computerized voice.
The caller had known the correct pronunciation of Boucher, had been familiar with the network of inner-canyon trails, had pronounced BIC as a word, and had directed Chuck to the perfect ambush site at the edge of the village. All were things
a small-time drug dealer from Albuquerque wasn’t likely to know—though plenty of others would.
“We have to talk,” Janelle said. “Now. Face to face. But you can’t come here. They’ll arrest you. They haven’t said so, but I know they will. I can’t think straight, Chuck. Carm. My baby.” She began to cry.
“Okay, okay. It’s gonna be all right,” Chuck soothed. “I’ll meet you south of the Backcountry Information Center,” he continued, making a quick decision. “Back in the trees. It’s quiet there, dark. But you’ll have to get away from camp.”
“They can’t stop us, right?”
“Us?”
“Clarence and me. We’re not under arrest or anything. Mami and Papi can look after Rosie.”
“Fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen,” Janelle repeated. “And Chuck?”
“Yes?”
“I love you.”
Chuck swallowed, his knees weakening. “We’ll get through this, Jan,” he told her. “Carm’s going to be okay. I swear to you, we’ll find her.”
He pocketed Janelle’s phone and cut through the forest toward the information center, his thoughts turning to his mounting worries about Carmelita. It was closing in on twenty-four hours since she’d gone missing, a long time for a little girl. And, assuming she was being held by someone other than her father, someone who had ruthlessly gunned down Donald, there was no telling what might be happening to her now.
TWENTY-TWO
1 a.m.
As he headed toward the village, Chuck worked his way through the many possibilities for what lay ahead, growing increasingly perplexed.
The kidnapper knew the Grand Canyon well, and knew about Chuck’s unreported find deep in the canyon, too. Who might that be? Any number of people. Even though Chuck had gone silent about his discovery around the time of the Bland of Brothers and Anasazi-cannibalism controversies, most members of the Southwest archaeological community likely had heard something about it over the years. The question was, who might set enough store by what they’d heard to deem it worthy of kidnapping Carmelita?
Canyon Sacrifice Page 15