Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

  Noelle nodded. “What exactly are they protesting?”

  “The council is deciding whether or not to allow the big lot across from the Southside Works to be developed. The meeting is taking place as we speak. Obviously, these guys oppose the development.”

  “What are they going to build down there?” Noelle asked.

  “I think it’s more condominiums—something like that.” He seemed indifferent on the topic, more troubled by the fact that there was a gathering in his town square without public notice.

  “Thanks.” Noelle walked back to her vehicle.

  Someone had thrown an egg against the front windshield during her short absence. “Oh, shit!” she said aloud, entering the vehicle and looking around for the culprit. When she got in, she activated the windshield wipers, spraying the egg and its shell remnants with cleaning fluid and running the wipers over the mess. The egg smeared, further hindering Noelle’s visibility, but she’d deal with it later.

  Noelle started north on Cache again, noticing that of the many vehicles parked along Cache, very few had Wyoming plates. Instead, she saw cars from Oregon, Colorado, California, and Utah. Even some eastern states were represented—New Hampshire, Vermont, and New Jersey.

  What would bring all these protesters to Jackson? All because of a condo development?

  As she drove, Noelle thought. Tomorrow, after her a.m. patrol duties, she would head south along the Snake River to see what she could find for Jake.

  But before that, Noelle had another stop in mind: she would go to the hospital to speak with the French woman widowed by the bear. If she speaks English.

  Noelle knew almost no French.

  The thought of hospitals always made Noelle squirm. The smell, the lighting. And worst of all, the moans of pain and despair that echoed down the corridors. Tomorrow would be a challenge for her, but she thought the visit might shed some light on the attack.

  It was dark now. The reflectors that stood atop the roadside plastic tubes shone brightly back at Noelle as she drove. She reached down toward the dark floor on the passenger side of her truck to feel around for her phone, finding food wrappers, CDs, and a pair of sandals. The truck veered intermittently across the centerline.

  Finally, she found the phone and dialed.

  9

  JACKSON POLICE HEADQUARTERS. THE SAME EVENING.

  It was 8:15 p.m. Jake was getting antsy. He was starving and thirsty as hell. Terrell hadn’t checked in for quite a while and not knowing what was going on outside the interrogation room bothered him. It was getting late in the evening and he had no desire to spend the night at the station. He was starting to fume.

  To this point I’ve behaved and cooperated. If I don’t get released in a few minutes, though, that’s going to change.

  Jake started to brainstorm procedural arguments that might get him out of the room. It had been a while since he had used that part of his brain. He knew there were plenty of tedious rules to follow when making an arrest and Jake hoped the chief had overlooked at least one of them.

  Got it! Booking procedure.

  An arrestee—a suspected criminal—had a right to be “booked” after his arrest. The booking procedures include a mug shot, a suspect lineup, and fingerprinting. When a suspect is detained by the police for an unreasonable amount of time without being booked, he has the right to request that a judge issue a writ of habeas corpus, which allows the suspect to ask a judge to determine whether his detention is proper.

  What defined an “unreasonable amount of time” varied from state to state, and Jake wasn’t aware of Wyoming’s protocol. But he remembered that an overnight stay in a holding area without a booking almost always constituted an unreasonable amount of time in any jurisdiction. It was worth a shot.

  Jake stood up, walked to the door, and knocked loudly. There was no response. He waited half a minute and knocked again, even harder this time. A moment later Terrell opened the door.

  “What do you need, Jake?” the chief asked. He looked overwhelmed. There was sweat on his brow and his face was red. Jake had no idea, but he had just disturbed the chief’s Internet research on “workplace stressors.”

  “I haven’t been booked yet.” The chief didn’t react.

  “So? You want to be photographed? Is that why you knocked on the door? You wanna be booked?!” The chief turned, shaking his head.

  Jake smiled a bit. He knew he had him.

  Jake shouted, “Well, I expect then that you aren’t going to ask me to spend the night here? You’ve gotta book me if you are going to keep me detained.” Jake paused. “Otherwise, I’ll just get a writ tomorrow morning from the judge and the court will release me. You know you haven’t got enough to keep me here in the court’s eyes.”

  Terrell thought for a moment, his hand still on the doorknob.

  Yep. Got him.

  He surely knew Jake was right—it was stupid of Terrell not to simply book him on the way in, when the men at the desk had inventoried and locked away his possessions. Now the officers who usually booked prisoners were gone for the evening.

  Jake figured Terrell was leaning toward allowing him his freedom, partially for convenience’s sake. The questioning, if you could call it that, had yielded very little that truly justified Jake’s detention. Besides, the chief was tired.

  “Okay, Jake. You’re free to go. Please don’t embarrass me by flying the coop tomorrow. Please. Did you speak with Noelle about this ‘hunch’ that she’s got?”

  Jake was relieved and he let his guard down too. “I did. That’s the reason she came in to see me. I assume you have the evidence now?” Jake hoped Noelle had done as he asked.

  “She gave it to me before she left.”

  “Good.” Jake was pleased. “Are you going to get a second opinion on the tooth?” he asked.

  “Second opinion about what?”

  “The tooth. Whether it’s real.”

  The chief just rolled his eyes. He didn’t say a word.

  The two men walked through the open door that had held Jake in for the past few hours, past the desks, usually empty at this hour, and computer monitors, which were usually dark, and finally arrived at the reception desk of the small police station. A nervous energy filled the air, despite the late hour. A few cops and support staff still bustled about. They were working overtime because of the recent events; there were public statements to prepare, crime scenes to preserve, and new evidence to process.

  Terrell stepped away for a moment and then reappeared with the rest of Jake’s possessions. Just as Jake looked at his cell phone—realizing that its battery had died—the chief asked him whether he could find his own way home. He told Jake he was awaiting an important phone call.

  Jake told him he could find his own ride, in part because he didn’t want to inconvenience the chief, but also because he didn’t really like the idea of getting back into the police cruiser. Jake wasn’t easily embarrassed, but he nevertheless preferred that his neighbors and friends didn’t see him being released from a cop car.

  The valley had adequate public transportation in the form of buses—and there was a stop nearby. Jake walked from the police station past the town square and waited at the stop that sat just north of the square. A few early season tourists were still out taking photographs of the famous elk antler arches that haloed the entrance to the square. It was chilly again. The cool air helped Jake feel human after his temporary incarceration.

  He waited a few minutes and caught the bus west toward Teton Pass, requesting that the driver stop at the small town that sat at the bottom of the pass before the road started its climb over the mountains. From there, a single-lane road paralleled Trout Run to the south. He could follow it and be home in a few minutes on foot.

  As he walked, anxiety regarding the council’s meeting that he had missed arose again in him. He was impatient to get home and to his cell phone’s charger, so he could call Begaye and, he hoped, hear some good news.

  Nick Begaye was a
forty-something man of Navajo descent who had moved to Jackson Hole in his twenties from Taos, New Mexico. A competitive free skier, Nick moved in search of more consistent snowfall and better sponsor exposure. He’d faded from the extreme skiing scene as his injuries, and his age, piled up, but he stuck around in Jackson. Like many, he’d discovered the extraordinary variety of activities available in the area. River sports and kayaking in particular had kept him entertained for years. Kayaking had the convenient attraction of being a comfortable sport for those with harshly used and battered legs. He had joined the town council five years ago.

  Jake looked up to Nick. The two got along well and shared a common worldview. In the case of the current issue before the council—the development—Begaye agreed with Jake wholeheartedly, but Jake suspected Nick would hold his position with less tenacity. Nick Begaye took almost everything in stride. He didn’t like to make a big stink.

  Oh well. No use in guessing the outcome, Jake thought as he walked down the drive leading to his home. He looked around for Chayote, who was nowhere to be seen.

  * * *

  Back at the station, Chief Terrell was on the phone with the weeping mother of the man found in the river—the call he had been awaiting when Jake left the station.

  The call wasn’t as helpful as the chief hoped.

  No, Bryan never got into any trouble, and no, she had no reason to believe that someone would have purposefully murdered him.

  Interestingly, though, she indicated that Bryan was her closest friend—and vice versa. Apparently the man had kept in touch with just a few friends by email, but otherwise he was quite the loner. The conversation continued—the man’s mother sniffling and asking for verification that it was indeed her son who was found in the river.

  It was.

  She spoke a bit more about his personal life. The only thing that Terrell deemed worthwhile enough to scrawl down on the otherwise blank piece of tablet paper were the words “Ondine’s curse,” apparently a health condition the man had suffered from. Terrell knew nothing about it, but at least it was something.

  After about twenty minutes, Terrell, as much as he pitied the woman, couldn’t listen to her bawling monologue anymore. He was just too exhausted.

  He thanked her for her time, expressed his condolences, gave her the 800 numbers for a few loss hotlines, and hung up. Then the chief decided to call it a day. He locked the front door of the police station and headed for his car. Until morning, the police force in Jackson would operate through a shared dispatch center at the hospital and just a single patrolling officer.

  * * *

  Home at last, Jake walked into the guesthouse and went upstairs to the loft, where he could charge his cell phone and call Begaye to get the scoop on the meeting.

  Jake plugged the phone into the charger next to his bed and waited while it started up, slipping off his shoes and lying down on top of the covers. When the phone finally lit up with life, he reached over and dialed Begaye’s number. He was sitting up now, too anxious to hear the news lying down.

  It hadn’t gone well, Begaye informed him. Yes, Jake’s letter was read and everyone had genuinely appreciated his efforts. Many council members even expressed the same concerns.

  “But where da hell were you, man? What happened?” Begaye kept asking, his Navajo accent struggling to convey anger over the phone. Jake deflected the question each time.

  When it came down to it, the council as a whole couldn’t resist the money pledged to the town by the developer. Recent years had been difficult for the tourist town—the national economy was faltering and as a result, people were stashing away their checkbooks and staying at home. Unnecessary spending such as vacation expenses was among the first to be cut from the budget of cash-pressed families. The town just wasn’t collecting the lodging tax revenue that it needed to maintain its public buildings and facilities.

  This reality flew in the face of Jake’s philosophy in many ways, but he always felt he could reconcile the two. Of course the town needed resources for the public good. Nobody could argue with that. But to Jake there was not so fine a line between making rational compromises for the greater good and pawning off irreplaceable natural resources for cash.

  Still, he wondered: If there was no greed, if nobody came to Jackson to pay to catch fish after fish or to develop land, wouldn’t our little community collapse?

  He had pondered the question before.

  Begaye was still talking, but Jake wasn’t listening.

  This is exactly the point of the political process and the beauty of being human, though. We are supposed to be too smart to pick something and stick with it regardless of the circumstances. We’re supposed to innovate and compromise.

  The council, Jake felt, had fallen under the sway of the idea that all growth is good growth. They were afraid that rejecting the proposal would leave the town behind the Joneses. Aspen, Park City. They wanted to keep up, to be a destination with the best and most modern facilities.

  Jake knew this plan couldn’t be sustained forever.

  How long would a fishery last if all the fishermen remained in the first stage of the hierarchy and always caught as many fish as they could?

  Jake knew such an ecosystem would be doomed. A functioning fishery, community, or society needed participants with different ideals. It needed healthy debate. Decisions had to be made through negotiation between individual principles, not influenced by a constant pressure to get bigger, better, and faster.

  The council members were principled and opinionated and Jake knew that, but they had disregarded those things in their decision. And for what?

  It was a scary thought to Jake, who feared that if this continued, man would keep trying to perfect Jackson Hole until all its perfection was gone.

  Jake tiredly wiped his hand over his face and tuned back in to Begaye, who nervously brought up one other point before bidding Jake good night: the council had become aware that Jake was in jail, though they didn’t know why.

  Great. Really helps my credibility.

  Worse yet, the council always had the option to vote him off.

  Insisting he wasn’t the leak, Begaye finally let Jake off the phone. It was probably someone at the police station who told another councilperson. Gossip always annoyed Jake; it was a reckless transgression motivated only by the selfish desire to have someone pay attention to you.

  Jake’s mind turned for a second to the development issue again as he searched for some stowed-away knowledge regarding property law and administrative procedures, but he quickly shut that inquisitiveness down, as he could sometimes do. The day had just been too long and too frustrating. Instead, images of Noelle—her smile, her skin, her body—ushered him to sleep.

  10

  CAMP BODHI, SIX MILES SOUTHWEST OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. THE NEXT MORNING.

  “This came for you, sir.” The proselyte, Sam, was nervous as he approached the Shaman, who was sitting alone, looking like he was stewing over something. The Shaman didn’t respond. Sam placed the envelope on the desk and slunk from the room.

  The Shaman opened the letter, took a quick glance, and crumpled it, then closed his eyes for a second to calm down. Serenity eluded him. Visions of a woman were projected on his eyelids by his mind’s eye. The woman was lying in a pool of her own blood, horribly mutilated, motionless. That woman was his mother.

  Twenty minutes later, Sam entered the main lodge of the camp for the first time. He was ecstatic. In only a few days among the others, it had become clear to him that being invited to the lodge was quite an accolade for a proselyte.

  Proselyte was the name given to new members, and the proselytes were rarely invited into the central cabin—that was an honor generally reserved for the votaries, the members closest to the Shaman. Sam had been told that from time to time, when a proselyte had shown extraordinary courage or commitment to the cause, the Shaman would invite them in, allow them to participate in the meeting, and personally thank them for their de
dication.

  Sam was still learning the ropes, although he had followed the Shaman’s underground podcast for ten years, until it unexpectedly disappeared.

  When he first heard the Shaman’s voice, Sam was a small fish. Making efforts that were merely a drop in the bucket while this collection of rogue superheroes was out changing the world. If they believed that an area should remain undeveloped, they protected it themselves. They didn’t waste valuable time lobbying and negotiating with big business like Sam had. They simply fought for the land that they were entitled and destined to protect.

  Now, Sam was finally there, at the main community and the hub of all the action. The Shaman’s cabin. Camp Bodhi. Shuffling inside with a few others, he found himself thinking that the cabin was not exactly what he’d expected. He knew the Shaman was a devout nature worshipper like the others, but there were no dream catchers or totems. The cabin looked like an old tool shed. The mostly bare walls displayed farming equipment, a few rusty machetes, two rifles, and two wooden spools, one each of barbed wire and razor wire.

  The votaries sat on whatever they could find, milk crates and old wooden stools, and settled in. Having wasted a moment taking in his surroundings, Sam lost his opportunity at a seat and so he sat down on the wooden floor. The men and women in the cabin talked quietly among themselves in a way that reminded him of the pre-bell murmurings in high school. These students, however, wore long, matted hair and dirty clothes in place of prep school uniforms and tight haircuts.

  It wasn’t long until the Shaman stood. There was nothing particularly impressive about his appearance. The man was of average height and thin, but his frame featured long, sinewy muscle. Much like the others, he wore a hodgepodge of old, worn-out clothing. Unlike most of the men, though, his hair was clipped short and he had a clean-shaven face. His appearance suggested a man around thirty-five when in reality he was older.

  He walked toward the center of the single-room cabin, causing the small crowd to turn their bodies to face him. Sam spun around on the floor and watched. The leader turned back to address the crowd. Before he began, Sam noticed his hands trembling. He was seething.