Canyon Sacrifice

by Graham, Scott

  A darkened hallway led into the bowels of the building. The deserted passageway smelled of bleach and detergent. He made his way down the corridor past a large unlit room lined with commercial-size washers and dryers. Beyond the laundry room, the hallway turned a corner. Chuck peeked around it. The corridor continued deeper into the building past a lighted open doorway. The murmur of voices came from the opening. Chuck crept down the hall and paused, listening, at the edge of the doorway.

  “ . . . agree with you,” came the sound of a male voice Chuck did not recognize.

  “Who else could it be?” came Rachel’s voice in response.

  Chuck stepped through the doorway into a windowless office. A balding, round-faced man wearing rimless glasses sat at a desk before a large monitor, his hand controlling a computer mouse. The man’s forearms were thick and corded. His shoulders were broad and heavily muscled under his blue sport shirt. Rachel sat on a corner of the desk studying the monitor over the man’s shoulder.

  Chuck’s sudden entrance startled Rachel and the man at the computer. They stared open-mouthed at him. Rachel’s hand darted to the gun at her waist as the surprise in her eyes gave way to deep-seated sorrow; she’d known Donald since she’d started at the park a decade ago.

  “Chuck, Conrad,” Rachel said, dropping her hand and indicating each with a jut of her jaw. “Conrad, Chuck.”

  The auditor looked Chuck over before going back to studying the monitor in front of him.

  “Looks like we found her,” Rachel told Chuck.

  “And?” He leaned forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the monitor. Janelle’s phone continued its double-buzzes against his thigh, announcing group text after group text. Had he been spotted slipping inside El Tovar? Were members of the tourist group converging on the hotel’s service entrance? Were rangers close behind?

  “Francesca Calderon, that’s her name. But, as you’d expect, there’s nobody registered under it,” Rachel said. “Plus, quite a few people are paying cash, fifty or so between all the South Rim hotels. That’s the bad news. The good news is, they’re pretty much all Europeans avoiding currency-exchange fees.”

  “That’s still fifty rooms,” Chuck said.

  Conrad explained, “I sorted and batched the cash-only names and ran them as a subset. There are Heinrichs from Frankfort, de Fleurs from Paris—and one Francisco Contreras, supposedly from Santa Fe.”

  “You think?” Chuck asked the two of them.

  “Registering under a guy’s name?” Rachel said. “She might have tried that. But the Santa Fe thing? Who else could it be?”

  “She’s in Maswik,” Conrad said. “Building One, Room 211.”

  “Bingo,” Chuck said. Carmelita was little more than a hundred yards away.

  “Just like you thought,” Rachel told him.

  “I’m already there.” He pivoted to leave the auditor’s office.

  Rachel’s hand returned to her gun. “You know I can’t let you do that.”

  Chuck turned back into the doorway. “Go ahead, shoot. It’s the only way you’ll stop me.” He left the room and hustled down the hall. A backward glance told him Rachel was jogging to catch up, with Conrad close behind her.

  Chuck stopped at the end of the corridor to look out the window in the service-entrance door, allowing Rachel and Conrad to catch up.

  “I have to call this in, Chuck,” said Rachel at his shoulder. “I have to.”

  “Go ahead. I’ll still get there first.”

  Seeing no signs of movement in the shadowed loading-dock area, he opened the service door and stepped to the edge of the dock. Rachel muttered beneath her breath and followed. From the raised dock Chuck had a clear view up and down Center Road—and there, to the west, nearly a quarter mile away, was someone, no, two people, walking up the sidewalk alongside the road in the direction of the hotel. Rachel followed his gaze and held out a hand, bringing Conrad to a halt at the edge of the loading dock beside her.

  The two pedestrians grew more distinct as they continued up the sidewalk beneath the glow of the streetlights lining the road. One of the two was overweight. The other was much smaller and moved with a girlish gait.

  Chuck’s heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be, could it?

  The two stopped at a white compact car parked at the near side of the road. The larger figure climbed behind the wheel while the smaller took the passenger seat.

  Chuck leapt from the waist-high loading dock to the parking area below. Rachel hopped down with him.

  “It has to be them,” he told her breathlessly.

  “You’re sure?”

  “A little girl like that? This late at night?”

  “But she wasn’t forced into the car.”

  “She knows to do as she’s told. Hell, she may not even understand she’s been kidnapped.”

  The car pulled a U-turn and headed east on Center Road, approaching the hotel.

  “Come on, Rachel,” Chuck said urgently as the compact passed below them, its interior hidden behind the sheen of the streetlights shining on its windows. “They’re getting away.”

  He hurried to the passenger side of the patrol sedan and tried the door, but it was locked. Rachel moved to the driver’s door, her eyes on the receding compact. Chuck laid his arms on top of the sedan, his wrists pressed together.

  “Cuff me and throw me in back,” he begged. “I’ll be your prisoner.”

  Rachel ignored him and slid into the driver’s seat. Chuck watched the taillights of the compact grow dim as the car headed east out of the village.

  “Whatever you do, don’t lose them,” he commanded, stepping back from the patrol car as Rachel slammed her door. She gunned the car in reverse down the service drive and bounced backward into the road. She braked to a stop, turned hard, and accelerated in pursuit of the white compact, her emergency lights flashing.

  Chuck studied Building One of Maswik Lodge on the far side of Center Road. “I could use your help,” he told Conrad. Chuck led the way at a run down the sloping service drive and across the road to the front of the complex, the auditor’s pounding steps following.

  The sound of a siren rose from the east. Rachel had the compact in sight. More sirens sounded from the clearing at the end of the railroad wye to the west as rangers took up the chase. Chuck slowed as he approached Building One. A string of patrol cars, lights flashing and sirens screaming, sped by on Center Road. Conrad drew abreast of Chuck.

  Like the other five Maswik buildings, Building One was two stories tall, forest green with a shake-shingle roof. The scuffed brown doors to its rooms opened onto a sidewalk on the first floor and an open-air balcony on the second. Chuck led the way across the strip of xeric landscaping surrounding the building to the foot of the nearest stairwell. He hurried up the stairs and along the second-floor balcony to Room 211. Wasting no time, he rapped on the door as Conrad caught up with him.

  “¿Quien es?” came an inquiry from inside the room.

  Chuck put his mouth to the edge of the closed door. “Clarence,” he responded in a deep, Ortega-like voice.

  The door to the room swung open and the woman from Albuquerque filled the doorway. Francesca Calderon’s eyes widened. Before she could slam the door shut, Chuck put his shoulder to it and piled into the room.

  Francesca fell backward to the nearest of the room’s two double beds. She was barefooted and wore jeans and a black T-shirt. Chuck caught himself and straightened just inside the room. The sound of the receding sirens came through the doorway as the rangers raced eastward out of the village. Janelle’s phone single-buzzed in Chuck’s pocket, indicating an incoming call. He stepped aside and motioned Conrad to keep an eye on Francesca as he yanked out the phone.

  “Janelle!” a woman’s voice screeched into the phone the instant Chuck took the call. “They’re chasing us! They’re after us! What do we do? What do we do?”

  It was Dolores. The sound of a lone siren came over the phone in the background.

  Shocked, C
huck stood rooted in place, the phone pressed to his ear. The small pedestrian with the girlish gait had been Dolores making her way up the sidewalk in her tippy sandals, while the larger of the two had been Amelia. The generic white compact, Chuck realized, was Amelia’s car. Janelle’s friends had ignored his admonition that the members of the tourist group not drive to and from their assigned posts throughout the village, and now Rachel was pursuing them.

  “Dolores, is that you?” Chuck said, speaking fast.

  “Yes!” Dolores shrieked.

  “Listen. It’s me, Chuck. You’ve got to tell Amelia to slow down.”

  “They’re after us! They’re after us!”

  “Slow down. Stop!” Chuck pleaded. “They won’t do anything to you. They’re rangers.”

  “Look out!” Dolores screamed.

  In the motel room, Francesca sat up on the bed, ready to make a break for it. Before she could so much as stand, however, Conrad stepped to her side, spun her by the elbow, and planted her face down on the bed. He put a knee to the small of her back and twisted her forearm up between her shoulders.

  “Jesus!” Francesca cried out, her voice muffled by the bed’s flowered comforter. “You’re breaking my arm.”

  “Snap it in two if you have to,” Chuck told Conrad grimly.

  The squeal of tires issued from the phone, followed by a second of silence. Then Dolores breathed, “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.”

  “Dolores,” Chuck barked. “Are you all right?”

  “That way!” Dolores screeched suddenly. “Amelia! Left, left, left!” Her voice was distant, as if she’d lowered her phone to her side.

  “Dolores!” Chuck yelled. “Can you hear me?”

  “Chuck?” Dolores asked, her voice full in his ear again.

  “Where are you?”

  “Some big building. A paved circle. We spun around, almost hit the car chasing us.”

  The paved circle had to be the shuttle-bus turnaround in front of the South Rim Visitor Center at the east end of the village. And the car they’d almost hit was Rachel’s.

  Should Chuck try to reach Rachel and tell her to give up the pursuit? No. Making the call would take too much time. Nor was there any chance Rachel would answer her phone in the middle of the chase. His only hope was to stay on the line with Dolores and, through her, convince Amelia to pull over.

  “Left. You said left. Which way are you headed?” he asked, trying to keep Dolores talking.

  “Away somewhere. It’s dark. No more lights.”

  Over the phone, Chuck heard the whine of the car’s engine as it climbed through its gears, gaining speed.

  “We gapped ‘em,” Dolores said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice. “Bought ourselves some time.”

  Chuck gulped. Precisely what Dolores and Amelia didn’t have was time.

  Before Rachel had caught up to them, Janelle’s friends had been headed out of the village on Center Road, presumably on their way back to Mather Campground. When Rachel had come up behind them with her lights flashing and siren howling, Amelia must have gunned the compact past the turnoff to Mather and stuck with Center Road as it curved north to the visitor center. There she’d ended up at the shuttle-bus turnaround in front of the center.

  Amelia had spun a tight circle in the paved cul-de-sac and nearly struck Rachel’s oncoming patrol car on her way out. The trailing patrol cars would have been approaching the visitor center along Center Road at about that time, prompting Dolores’ cries for Amelia to turn “left, left, left” onto Desert View Drive from Center Road.

  Desert View Drive followed the canyon rim east for thirty miles past a series of overlooks and trailheads to the park’s East Entrance. Unlike dead end Rim Drive on the opposite side of the village, Desert View Drive was open to the public. For most of its length, Desert View Drive stayed well back from the canyon’s edge. Half a mile from the visitor center, however, a shallow wash forced the road close to the edge of the canyon, then south at a hard ninety degrees to drop into the wash before climbing up and out the other side.

  The low-walled drainage that forced the sharp turn in the road had been formed over millions of years by the intermittent waters of Pipe Creek, a seasonal stream that flowed north to the South Rim and plunged into the canyon and on down to the Colorado River whenever drenching thunderstorms swept across the Colorado Plateau. A thousand years ago, the Anasazi had dammed the wash at intervals to capture the infrequent rains of the high desert, creating a number of small reservoirs a mile or two upstream from where Pipe Creek poured off the canyon rim. The stored water had supported a handful of Anasazi families, whose abandoned, rock-walled homes still stood beneath the low overhanging cliffs that lined the wash. The Anasazi families were long gone from Pipe Creek, but tonight, this instant, Amelia was racing her compact through the darkness straight toward the ninety degree turn in the road where the wash fell away into the canyon.

  “There’s a curve!” Chuck yelled. “Dolores! It’s just ahead of you. You’ve got to get Amelia to slow down!”

  Dolores screamed in his ear. He clutched the phone as the screech of rending metal and the crackle of breaking glass choked out Dolores’ shriek.

  “Dolores! Amelia!” he shouted into the phone. But there was no response.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  3 a.m.

  Chuck crammed Janelle’s phone into his pocket and slammed the motel-room door closed behind him.

  First Donald. Now Amelia and Dolores.

  He crossed the room to where Francesca was face down on the bed. He shoved Conrad aside and flipped Francesca over so she lay on her back looking up at him. Before he could say anything to her, Francesca kicked upward with both feet, trying to catch him in the groin. He jumped out of the way, then returned to her side and brought his boot down on one of her bare feet, pressing it into the room’s beige carpeting.

  Francesca sat up and scowled at Chuck. She cradled the arm Conrad had twisted behind her back. Her toenails were painted blood red to match her fingernails. Her hair was pulled back with a Harley-Davidson-orange bandana. The rouge on her jowly cheeks was uneven. Eyeliner trailed like tiny snakes from the corners of her eyes.

  A single corner lamp lit the room. A pair of framed photographs of the Grand Canyon beneath a mantle of snow hung on the wall above the double beds. A bag of chips lay open on the side table between the two beds. A television droned on the bureau along the near wall. At the far end of the bureau, a liter bottle of soda rested on the edge of a detailed map of the inner canyon. The room smelled of stale food and unwashed clothes. No sign of Carmelita.

  “Where’s Carm? Where’s the girl?” Chuck demanded, keeping his boot on top of Francesca’s foot.

  “I don’t gotta tell you nothin’.” She spat defiantly on the front of Chuck’s shirt.

  Chuck pressed harder on Francesca’s foot. She’d been here at the canyon with her boyfriend at the start of all this. She was a party, somehow, to everything that had happened since.

  Chuck lifted his boot and spun Francesca around so she again lay face down on the bed. Pressing her head into the mattress with a pinscher-like grip at the back of her neck, he removed his pack with his free hand and fished out the length of rope he’d taken from the alcove the afternoon before. He brought Francesca’s hands together behind her back and wrapped the rope around her wrists. Moving fast, he trailed the rope to her ankles and tied them together as well. He pulled her knotted ankles toward her wrists and secured the rope, then swung his pack back over his shoulder and stepped away, allowing the trussed Francesca to slide slowly off the bed and land on the carpet with a resounding whoomp. She lay on her side, her belly spilled out before her, glaring sideways up at him.

  “My daughter is missing,” Chuck told her. “My daughter. And you know where she is.”

  “Your daughter,” Francesca imitated him. “For all of, what, a week?” She raised her head from the floor. “I don’t know where she is.”

  “But you know where she’s been. W
hich is right here in this room, with you.”

  Francesca looked away. “I don’t know nothin’.”

  Chuck swung back a booted foot, feigning a blow to Francesca’s midsection. Before he could find out if threatening a kick would elicit any information from her, Conrad took hold of his shoulders from behind and pulled him backward, then stepped around him and knelt beside Francesca. The auditor helped her to a slumped sitting position on the floor, her back to the bed and her roped legs off to one side.

  “You’ll only make matters worse for yourself if you keep lying,” Conrad told her as he straightened and stepped back.

  “Don’t I get a lawyer or somethin’?” Francesca snarled, eyeing Conrad from where she sat propped against the side of the bed.

  “Your Miranda rights are waived during an active kidnapping,” Conrad replied, his unruffled tone that of a television-show police detective. “You’ve heard of Megan’s Law, haven’t you? Your sentence will be doubled if it’s found you didn’t cooperate during the ongoing abduction of a child.”

  Francesca worked her thick brows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “This is your one chance, Francesca.” Conrad tapped the chest pocket of his sport shirt. “I’m recording every word of this interview. You know the sentencing guidelines for kidnapping? Ten years, minimum. Double that if you don’t come clean right now.”

  Francesca’s lips drew back. “I didn’t do no kidnapping.”

  “That’s good. Accessory to kidnapping is only probationary—” again Conrad tapped the chest pocket of his shirt, “if you’re found to have been helpful from the start.”

  The auditor’s shirt pocket appeared empty to Chuck. Even so, Francesca puffed her cheeks and said, “He came back and took her. Took my phone, too, the one we been using. Didn’t say nothin’ to me. He was in a big-ass hurry.”

  “Who was?” the auditor asked.

  Francesca looked at Chuck, then back at Conrad. “He knows who,” she said.