The Last Descent

by Jeff Soloway

Suddenly I remembered the Broncos fan and his canyon-misdirection trick. Freddie Bridgewater had improved on it. Maybe I could do them one better.

  There, where the trail made its hairpin turn, was a gap between two barrier rocks. Was that where the fat hiker had pointed? I sidestepped through the gap. A thin sandy line trickled ahead on a ridge across the slope, wending between boulders and juniper trees, creosote bushes and prickly pears. There were no switchbacks on this phantom path, no gain in altitude. It would have been an inviting prospect for a tired hiker. I thought I heard a voice from below. Miguel’s? I darted down the trickle path to where it squeezed between a boulder and a couple of twisted junipers that rose above a creosote bush. I hooked behind the trees.

  Should I continue on or hide? My instinct told me to keep running, get as much distance as possible between me and my predators. But I knew that instinct was an idiot. The pair of junipers I was hiding behind turned out to be a single tree that had split into two twisted trunklets. Its crown was thick with fish-scale leaves, and was about as high as my chest. I crouched down so that I could see just above the crotch of the two trunklets and over the creosote bush. I fit my left hand in a curve of one of the branches. It was rough underneath my fingers, a good handlebar grip. I could see the main trail. I scrabbled blindly in the dirt with one hand until I came up with a rock. Now they’d be sorry.

  I heard footsteps. Were they coming from above or below? If from the lower trail, if the steps were Miguel’s, I’d wait till he passed by and continued up toward Grayson; then I’d dart back onto the trail and scurry down as fast as I could. Eventually I’d meet returning hikers, maybe find someone with a satellite phone. Or I could keep going all the way to Santa Maria Spring. I remembered that that spring too was dead. I had water, but not enough for a long hike. Suddenly my throat seemed as dry as dust. Ignore it.

  If instead the steps were Grayson’s coming from above, I’d wait for him to pass by on his way down toward Miguel, then I’d shoot out to the trail and power upward as fast as I could. That would be a much harder journey, but there would be no one between me and the parking lot, my car, my freedom. I just had to keep going fast enough that they couldn’t catch me from behind.

  My crouching legs were growing stiff. My adrenaline rush was draining. It would return when I started running. But Grayson’s adrenaline would too. He knew Gus would kill him if I got away.

  I saw something on the main trail—a flutter of jeans and work boots, but moving right to left, that is, down from the upper trail. Grayson. His face was hidden by a juniper branch. I hoped mine was hidden too. Then he was gone.

  I stood up. His face flashed back into view. I ducked again and huddled behind the boulder. Had he seen me? I didn’t dare move to look. I listened for footsteps. He would be trying to walk silently.

  I removed my phone from my pocket, turned on the camera, and pushed the lens of the phone just past the side of the boulder. The phone served as a periscope; I could look on its screen and see through its lens back to the trail. There was Grayson. It was like watching him on TV. He was looking not toward me but up and down the trail. I could see the gun in his hand, the muzzle pointed safely off into the canyon. Good gun hygiene. They’d taught me the same thing the one time I’d been to a gun range—point the weapon in a safe direction, unless you’re shooting at something. Of course, when I was shooting, the safest place to be was on the target I was shooting at. I assumed Grayson, now that he had his bearings, would prove to be a better shot than that. I didn’t want to find out.

  I tapped the screen to take a few pictures. If I got back to the top, I could show them to Doby. Later I could print them out and hang them on my wall.

  Grayson turned to look straight at me from the screen. I fought the urge to snatch back the phone. Any movement might give me away. He must have guessed I’d left the trail but didn’t know exactly where.

  I kept watching. What else could I do? I had dropped my rock to handle the phone. I skimmed the dirt with my left hand until I found it again.

  Grayson was still looking my way. He took a step toward me. “Miguel!”

  I had trapped myself. I was always trapping myself. Then I realized what I’d forgotten. The misdirection.

  With my clumsy left hand, I hurled the rock down the slope as far as I could. I heard it thunk somewhere below, perhaps on the path. I kept watching the phone.

  I heard a shout. Grayson’s face dipped, his legs flexed, and his whole body disappeared—to the left, down the path.

  I bent and, keeping my hands near the ground, chimp-walked back down the trickle path toward the trail. Up ahead was the little gap between the two barrier rocks. No one was visible there now. But were they coming? I slipped through the gap and was again on the switchback. The trail was empty below and above. I glanced up at the rocky staircase ahead, took a breath, and charged upward. By the next switchback, I was winded. I thought I heard something behind me but wasn’t sure and wouldn’t look. I kept charging.

  If I could only get back to the rim. My legs were already heavy and slow, my knees braying. I grunted, ordered myself not to grunt, and powered up to another switchback. Adrenaline or not, I couldn’t keep this up much longer.

  At last I hit the straightaway. It felt like the twentieth time that day I’d seen it. I made myself jog. My knees felt better, but my thighs burned. I risked a few glances behind me. When I wasn’t glancing I was listening for footsteps or a gunshot. The next turn in the trail was two hundred feet away. Until then I was completely exposed. I tried to run.

  There was the first rocky ascent to another switchback. I looked back; Grayson and Miguel hadn’t appeared. Maybe they weren’t coming. I surged forward. I had to fight gravity now, and rough unyielding rock underfoot, but hope was energizing me.

  I rounded the switchback, paused, took two breaths, then shot up again. By the next switchback I was moving at a quick trot. Then it was a slow trot, then an even march. I remembered that this was the longest series of switchbacks.

  After several more, I saw, up at the next switchback (it had to be the last), a man’s extended leg. He was sitting on the trailside slabs. I stopped. Could it be Miguel? Had he gone up while Grayson went down?

  I was too tired to run anymore, not even downhill away from him. Just off the path was a weird kind of cactus, tall and thin and straight, like a wiffle-ball bat with needles. I could swing it at him.

  The man leaned forward. He waved. It wasn’t Miguel or Grayson. It was the fat hiker. He hadn’t made it very far.

  “I’m done,” he announced. “Making camp right here. Hey. You hear something down there? Maybe hunters?”

  The muscles in my legs were quivering. I whipped them on.

  “Did anyone pass you on the way up?” I asked, as I worked my way up to him.

  “No. Not since you. And no water either.”

  “You can have mine.” I took a swig and then gave him my last full bottle. I’d be quicker without it.

  Doby was waiting at the trailhead.

  Chapter 22

  Doby had been at the Grand Canyon Plaza, Meat’s workplace, trying fruitlessly to find out where Meat might have fled to, when she got a call from Victoria, who had contacted her office to track her down. Doby described her voice as a prescribed fire—the controlled and purposeful burn rangers sometimes set to prevent a future wildfire. She told Doby where I was going and who was going after me—two Grand Chalet security guards. I wondered who had told her.

  Doby set off immediately for Hermits Rest. She kept a water bottle and a daypack in her backseat. Her idea was to gather her team and catch up with me on the trail—she anticipated little difficulty with that—and escort me back to the top. She was worried that the security guards had already found me, but she wasn’t going down that trail alone. She knew enough about Grand Chalet security not to the trust its agents, especially after the death of Freddie Bridgewater.

  She had just arrived at the trailhead and was waiting for the other ran
gers. I told her my story and illustrated it with cellphone photos of Grayson and his gun.

  “My guys’ll be here in five,” she said. “We’ll take them in. You got to leave. They might be coming up.”

  “But you’re staying.”

  “Yup.”

  “I’ll wait too,” I said.

  We found a shaded, frost-chipped picnic table with a view of the trail.

  A young couple, hand in hand, wandered up from the road behind us. Doby informed them that the trail was closed this evening.

  “Loose rocks,” she said. “We’re on it. Come back tomorrow.”

  The couple was just as content to wander off. They were interested in privacy, not wilderness.

  When Doby sat down again, I asked, “Are the trees always so bare?”

  “Not this time of year. And not so many burnt-looking ones either. It’s been a bad season.”

  A trio of hikers crested the top. We jumped up from the table like an ambush to question them. They were too tired to be surprised. The one with the most breath told us that, near the junction of the Waldron Trail, farther down than I’d gone, they’d seen a pair resembling Grayson and Miguel. They were standing just off the trail glowering at each other.

  Doby’s backup arrived moments later—five more rangers, all men, all armed. The driver had a gray horseshoe of hair on his scalp. Several had jowls that wobbled as they hustled up to Doby. I had expected something more paramilitary, but Doby seemed satisfied with her troops. She refused to let me come. I wished them luck. They pretended not to hear me until Doby introduced me as the one who’d been shot at. Then they asked me what kind of a gun he had. They seemed a little embarrassed for me when I admitted I had no idea. All I could do was show them the picture.

  They set off with Doby at the head. She didn’t want the sun to set over those two on the trail.

  I drank the water I had left and ate one of my sandwiches at the picnic table. The fat hiker finally came struggling up. He tried to wave but couldn’t lift his hand higher than his stomach. The sun was dropping, the light growing redder, the air cooler, the shadows longer. I pulled on my sweatshirt. The view from Hermits Rest would be at its finest now, but I didn’t move from my view of pinyon pines, junipers, bushes and cacti, slumping fence posts, and battered picnic tables. I felt at home with these tenacious, homely things.

  An hour later, all six rangers returned, with Miguel and Grayson, both in handcuffs.

  —

  The two confused thugs didn’t even notice Doby and her crew until they were almost on them. They complied with her orders immediately. Perhaps getting arrested wasn’t the worst of their options. Or perhaps they assumed that the Greenbaums controlled law enforcement on the trail as well. Doby found their guns hidden in their backpacks, buried under mostly empty water bottles and chip bags (and, in Grayson’s case, also under a sawed-off sledgehammer). Firearms are permitted in the Grand Canyon National Park—which is, after all, in Arizona—but my photo and statements provided sufficient cause to seize Grayson’s, which appeared to have been recently discharged, and Miguel lacked a permit for his. Doby arrested them and ordered her associates to haul them to the Coconino County jail—not the newer jail in Tusayan.

  Doby had me follow her to her office in Grand Canyon Village, where she made me write down, to the best of my memory, exactly what had happened and what Grayson had said to me. She would use my statement for her interrogation.

  “I want Gus Greenbaum for murdering Freddie,” she said. “Those two idiots’ll talk. I’m hoping one of their guns turns out to be the one that killed Freddie.”

  “Do you think one of them murdered Jewel too? Grayson didn’t exactly say it was Miguel, but he came close.”

  “We’ll see what they tell us.” She sounded a lot less confident. Jewel hadn’t been killed with a gun.

  “I still have to find that water meter,” I said. “If it’s a fake, I have to let people know. That’s what Jewel wanted.”

  “I’ll come with you, but not tomorrow. I’m spending all day with these shitheads. Where are you staying tonight? Better not be going back to the Grand Chalet.”

  “Not a chance.”

  But I knew I had to. Victoria was there.

  Chapter 23

  It was dark by the time I returned. The lobby was busier than ever. Young couples in hiking boots were rerunning, with bonus commentary, the day’s adventures. Parents chatted while children fidgeted, probably impatient to get back to their room’s on-demand video games. Teens hunched over Wi-Fi-connected phones, like Yukon trappers warming their hands by a fire.

  The guests could have been any satisfied customers of any successful resort, but the Grand Chalet itself was somehow off-kilter. The lobby was weirdly devoid of staff. The concierge had disappeared, as well as the security guards. The three clerks at the front desk stood huddled together, heads bent, as if they were sharing a joint. The scrolling LED display listed last night’s performances and parties.

  On my ride back, all the muscles in my back, legs, and even arms had stiffened. I looked at the mounted trophy animals above and felt their soreness too. They’d each maintained that same agonizing position, standing, crouching, snarling, for so long.

  “Jacob.”

  Victoria stood up from the yak-haired sofa in the corner, where Marlene had met me the night before.

  I sat down next to her. She was wearing a dark gray trail shirt and thin olive hiking pants with pockets on both thighs. She must have accompanied the writers on their trail outing earlier in the day.

  “Everyone said you were dead.” She seemed to be searching my face for signs of the underworld.

  “Oh, what does everyone know?” I tried to wave my hand humorously, but my arm felt as stiff as a robot’s.

  “I came here to wait for you.”

  “Good. I appreciate your faith in me.”

  “It was the opposite of faith. I just decided to doubt everyone, even myself. Claudia told me she heard you had left for the airport. I refused to believe her, and then I got your email. Then Peter—I mean Pierre, the concierge—told me that Grayson and Miguel had come by and demanded to know where you were. He had to tell them. I was afraid they were going to kill you. So I called Doby, and I could hear in her voice that she was worried too. That’s when I knew they were going to kill you. Then someone at the desk said you’d been shot. But I figured we would have heard from someone, Doby or another ranger, a police officer, an EMT. I decided to watch that door for you. I told myself I’d watch all night.”

  “I’m fine, Victoria. But thank you for calling Doby.”

  “Don’t thank me. Do you know what I was just about to do? Give up. Go back.”

  “It’s all right. I would have come and found you.”

  But if she had given up, she might have gone back to Grant. Was that what she meant?

  “Where is everyone?” I asked.

  “The Greenbaums are gone. No one knows where. Maybe they’ll come back now that you’re not dead.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “So does most of the staff. Some of them didn’t show for their shifts.”

  I wondered where the Greenbaums had gone. Las Vegas? Brazil? I imagined Gus sullenly ogling a volleyball game as Glenda gazed at the sea from under an enormous sunhat and pondered a scheme for ditching him.

  “Freddie Bridgewater’s dead,” I said.

  “I heard that too. Pierre told me he killed himself.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Did you get to talk to him?”

  “No.”

  “Then we’ll never know what happened with Jewel that morning.”

  “We know one thing,” I said. “Grant’s in the clear. Doby’s witnesses didn’t identify him. It’s clear enough that the Greenbaums ordered Freddie’s murder, and Doby’s pretty sure they’re behind Jewel’s too. I still wonder if Freddie had something to do with it, but it doesn’t matter. The point is, Grant doesn’t have to worry. And you don’t eithe
r. Nothing you say or do can put him in jail. He’s just the jerk you married, not a murderer. So now you can make your own decision. You can be free of him or you can go back to him. Whichever you want.”

  “I made my decision. You know that.”

  “You’re allowed to change your mind. Go back to your room, turn off the lights, stare into the dark, figure out how you feel. If you still love him after all this, then you’ll love him forever. No one can change that, certainly not me.”

  “I’ve been sitting here,” she said, “for two hours.”

  Longer than I had waited at the picnic table. I realized my hair was all clumped to the right side of my head. My boots and lower jeans were coated with canyon dust, my face had to be streaked and smudged since I hadn’t washed it, my fingers were dark with ground-in grime. I must have made quite an entrance when I limped into the lobby.

  “I should go shower,” I said.

  “Come do it in my room.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t you think it’s time?”

  —

  Her room was a Hermit Hut. A few iron hooks jutted from the faux-timber walls beside the TV. You could hang your bathrobe from them or hitch your mule. The bed was naked of canopy, as befitted an ascetic. Victoria dropped so hard on the bed that she bounced.

  “You can sit if you want.” She grinned nervously.

  “I’m dirty.”

  “I don’t care.”

  The synthetic fabric on her hiking pants looked as smooth as skin. All I wanted was to touch her. I sat. If she didn’t care, I didn’t care.

  “Should I get something out of the minibar?” She looked away from me toward the minibar, as if grateful for the interruption.

  “If you want.”

  “Not really.”

  She still wasn’t looking at me. I was so close I could feel the warmth of her body. I wanted to touch her, but I resolved to wait. She seemed to be gathering herself to say something.

  So,” she said. “Do we just start or what?”

  “Start?”

  “Look, you’re supposed to be the expert.”