by Jeff Soloway
“I wish we had more than one moment.”
“It doesn’t matter. That moment will never be over, because I’ll never forget it. Do you believe that at least?”
I did.
Chapter 27
She was gone, and I was left to my thoughts. One thought above all. She was going to have me killed. Grant would be waiting at Silver Bell Spring to do it, or they’d arrange for one of the Greenbaums’ underlings to do it, one who wasn’t in custody. I assumed she’d be unwilling to kill me herself.
Killing me wasn’t the only possibility. She might simply be giving Grant the chance to run, as she had hinted. He’d have to run for the rest of his life. She could never see him again. For me that was a perfectly acceptable scenario, even if it meant she still loved him. He’d be out of the picture forever. But perhaps I should hope for something better. It was still possible that she was entirely innocent—that she had helped Grant without ever understanding his purpose, that she had lied to me only because she loved Grant too much to believe in the truth. When the terrible facts were finally revealed, she’d be contrite to me and helpful to Doby.
Possible, but unlikely. I could afford hope but not illusions. If I hiked that trail, she would probably try to kill me.
I planned to hike it anyway.
What else could I do? The video proved that Grant had lied to Doby and had left the Grand Chalet that morning. The cellphone proved that Victoria had lied to me and had been at Tusayan that weekend. But what nobody and nothing had yet proved was whether Victoria had knowingly conspired in Jewel’s murder. I could refuse the hike, hand over my evidence to Doby, and leave Tusayan forever, in safety—but then only Grant would be prosecuted, not her. Victoria hadn’t lied to investigators, only to me. No, the only way to discover whether she was a murderer was to see if, to save Grant, she would also try to murder me. Suspicion wasn’t enough. How could I live the rest of my life without knowing for sure whether the woman I loved had wanted to kill me? Last night I had been certain that she had completed the transfer of her love from Grant to me. And there was still a chance that she had. I couldn’t give up on it.
I would take the risk. I liked my job and my life. I liked traveling, I liked gathering stories of adventures, romances, sights, and conversations. I liked Magda and Dov and my other writer friends, comrades in the solitary quest for novelty, experience, and the touch of influence that comes with a byline. It was true that, between trips and girlfriends, I got lonely; but I was always able to organize new trips and find new girlfriends. And I had plans for the future. I intended to write a book someday, a real one, not just a guidebook, a book that required perception and originality on every page, not just in the introduction and the cultural overview essay. I still had to see Angkor Wat, the Taj Mahal, and the Orkney Islands. I had always meant to make friends again with my mother. And yet it all seemed so little to lose. No one depended on me. None of my friends ever asked me to stay overnight at the hospital with them, or help select their mother’s nursing home, or bail them out of jail. I’d do those things for Dov and Magda, but they wouldn’t ask. They had people who loved them. I did too—from time to time.
My life seemed so dim compared to Jewel’s. She had believed herself always to be at the center of the world’s beating heart. I never had. But now she had become my cause. I would not abandon it. I would find out the truth about her murder, the entire truth. It would show me the truth about Victoria too.
I turned off the lights, lay down on the bed, and spent a few minutes indulging in my old inoculating ritual of imagining disaster. I’ve been doing it all my life, gazing into the dark for a glimpse at what I dreaded most. So far I’ve kept it away.
—
I slept some, woke up early, knocked yesterday’s dust off my daypack. I found the nearest snack machine and loaded up with several packages of everything, plus six bottles of water. I returned to the room to wait. Maybe she’d cancel our hike. Maybe she’d even explain why she was canceling.
But I couldn’t count on it. I had to be prepared. I was ready to risk my life to test her guilt, but not to throw it away. The last favor I had asked from Marlene last night was a gun. She had refused to open the security cabinet for me but, after further promises and some threats, had arranged to drop the key on the floor and look the other way as I stooped for it. I chose a gun similar to what I remembered from my afternoon at the shooting range. I tried to remember the tips they’d given me there. Well, I could hardly be a worse shot than Grayson.
I loaded the gun with the ammo I’d also filched, wrapped it in a sweatshirt, and stuffed it in my pack’s lowest geological layer, below water, snacks, and sunblock.
That done, I made one last phone call. By 9 A.M., my arrangements were done. Victoria had neither come by nor canceled. I decided I was sure of a few things: that she loved me; that she hated Grant; and that she loved Grant; all three at the same time. What I didn’t know was whether she hated me too. Maybe she didn’t know either. We would both find out soon.
I unlocked the door, lay sideways on the bed, my boots dangling over the edge, and fell asleep.
—
She was standing over me when I woke. It was almost 11. She bore a daypack and wore the same hiking gear from yesterday. As I sat up, she bent and kissed me matter-of-factly, as if she were heading off to work, as if we’d been starting our days like this for years. We could start all our days like this. Developing the routine wouldn’t require a lifetime of study or a series of courageous acts. All we had to do was forget the Grand Canyon and board a plane to New York City together right now. I’d agree not to ask any more questions. She’d agree to forgo the hike. Would she take the deal if I proposed it?
“I’m ready,” I said.
—
It was midday by the time we arrived at Hermits Rest. Families were picnicking at the tables by the trailhead. A boy tossed a tennis ball to his father. It bounced past his boots and settled near the base of a prickly pear. The man pinched the ball carefully with two fingers to avoid a cactus sting. Kevin could use a father like that. I hoped Meat was willing to learn to catch. But maybe Kevin would have better luck making friends wherever they were going.
A ranger near the trailhead stopped to ask us about our hiking plans. “Getting hotter,” he said. “And there’s no water at Dripping Springs.”
I watched Victoria carefully, to see if she’d try to avoid the eyes of this potential witness or pull her hat brim down low. She wore a black baseball cap that read MYRTLE BEACH—probably overstock from one of Grant’s clients. But her eyes were exposed. Because of her glasses she wore no sunglasses.
“We’ve got a gallon each, thanks.” She didn’t hide her face or try to hustle on by. I felt a sliver of hope, but instead of lifting me, it niggled, like a splinter. I was sure I’d have to pull it out later. Victoria would certainly have prepared a story.
“Was there a ranger here yesterday?” Victoria asked me.
“No, but I set out a lot later in the afternoon.”
I resisted the temptation to glance back at him.
Victoria went first on the trail. My knees and quads immediately recalled their ordeal from the day before, and with the pain came the shadow of yesterday’s fear. A faint and fleeting shadow—my body couldn’t believe it was in danger again. The trail was quiet except for our footsteps and the breezes skimming over the pines and scrub. The high sun seemed to wash out the trail’s colors, but it also soothed my nerves. I wasn’t yet thirsty or hot; all the sun could do, for the moment, was burn off my gloom. It was easy to pretend I was simply on a companionable stroll with Victoria. It was even possible that I was. The trail was too narrow for two hikers abreast, but I cruised just behind her shoulder. In the quarter view I had of her face, I could see her quarter smile.
My best hope was that she would stop soon and reveal her lies, apologize for them, explain them, but insist she was, deep down, still innocent. Given the barest chance, I would forgive her.
> But as we disappeared down the first slope and she continued not to admit or explain anything, I realized my chances rested less on her innocence and more on her ambivalence. Maybe she was leading me to my death, but that wasn’t the same as killing me—she still had time to change her mind. Perhaps she was right now trying to gather the strength of will to defy Grant.
I realized I’d missed the brachiopods. “Do you want to backtrack for a minute?” I asked.
“For what?”
“So I can show you some fossils.”
“On the way back.”
Did she believe we’d be coming back? Did she hope so? She must still be agonizing over her decision. I almost pitied her. I had made mine.
—
We walked on. Beyond a pine-dotted slope just beside us, a partial view of the Grand Canyon finally burst open. From this limited perspective, the mesas, buttes, and ridges to the north no longer seemed like frozen waves in an endless sea. They were easily distinguishable monuments. Any decent guidebook would note the names of the Grand Canyon’s major formations—Shiva Temple, Osiris Temple, Excalibur Tower, Apache Point, Alligator Ridge—but many of the minor ones had names too. Jewel would have known them. Since I didn’t, I could name the formations myself. I’d name one after Jewel, perhaps that long, thin, graceful spire, a wind-beaten ruin of Rapunzel’s tower. No, Jewel deserved something more robust. To the west was a purposeful, streamlined mesa that looked like the hull of an overturned boat, except that it was probably a quarter of a mile long. That would make it an overturned cruise ship, so not right for Jewel. But I could imagine it as a giant Greenpeace ship, in dry dock after a season of antagonizing Norwegian whalers. I’d name it Jewel’s Rest. Someday I’d come back to the Grand Canyon; sit with a ranger to plot out the route; buy a sleeping bag, tent, and all the other backcountry supplies; and hike to Jewel’s Rest. I’d pick flowers from the oasis nourished by a rejuvenated spring along the way and lay them at its base. The spring, the flowers, the very practice of backcountry hiking—all the things she’d been trying to protect.
I wanted to tell Victoria about my plan. I deserved a formation too. She’d have to choose it for me if I died. Maybe that littler spire near the one I’d first pegged for Jewel, the one that rose from an isolated hill like a stinger out of a bee-sting bump. I’d take it. The years had ground that rock almost to a needle, but it would still last longer than the human race.
We kept on, past straightaways, down stony switchbacks. I saw what I thought was a condor wheeling far below us, soaring in and out of the mottled pattern of shadows. We arrived at the series of switchbacks where I had escaped from Grayson. Victoria paused to drink from her bottle but not to eat, sit, or talk. When we passed the little trickle path off the trail, I wanted to point it out and recount my adventure, but our silence by now bore too much momentum.
She finally broke it. “I want to show you something.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. Just ahead.”
Two men were coming up. The first one peered at us under sweat-shined brows and grunted in greeting. Victoria and I huddled together at the side of the trail. As he passed, Victoria turned and kissed me on the cheek.
Had she done it to hide her face from him? Perhaps the story she’d prepared for the authorities depended on her being spotted only at the top.
“You look surprised,” she said.
“Tired. I had trouble sleeping.”
“Me too. Your advice was horrible. I thought myself sick.”
The second man could have been the father of the first, the hale hiking father who, in retirement, still takes camping and skiing vacations. He paused on a step just below us, rapped the ground with his walking stick, and boomed, “Good day!”
“Getting close,” said Victoria, smiling full in his face.
—
After another few switchbacks, she stopped and pointed at a smooth slab along the trailside. I followed the line of her finger not to where it was pointing but back up her hand and her arm, to her shoulder, neck, and face. She was squinting into the light that reflected off the white rock and sand all around us. Her whole face seemed squeezed, as if some confession were struggling to break through.
“Look,” she said.
I saw parallel pockmarks running up the slab.
“They’re fossilized lizard prints,” she said. “Motion captured in stone.”
The Grand Canyon was a comprehensive zoological library.
“The fossils I wanted to show you were like seashells,” I said.
“Those are at the top of the trail, in the Kaibab limestone, a different geologic layer. This is Coconino sandstone. It’s a few million years older. Back before the sea came, when everything here was dry.”
“How did you know all this?”
“I went on a few guided tours, back when I used to come all the time. I thought you’d like these.”
“When were you coming here all the time?”
“Months ago, just after Grant was hired.”
“Do you want to sit and rest?” It was time to talk about something besides paleontology.
“Not here. The trail’s about to get shadier.”
More hikers were coming from below. It was a busy time on the Hermit Trail.
—
The trail leveled and swerved along the side canyon so that we were no longer in view of the main canyon’s vast and violent flow of multilayered stone. Around us, the cliff faces, slopes, rocks, and dirt underfoot were not pale but rust-colored. Victoria said we were in the Hermit Formation layer. The trail began to run along the dry wash of some once-a-year creek. I tried to imagine the ferocity of the storm that could make this dry wash live—the colossal barrage of rain that would uproot cacti, drown canyon mice, convert the dirt trail to muck, and resurrect the creek in its dead channel. Such storms still came in the summer. The thirsty wilderness sucked everything dry by the next day or two, but just enough water seeped into reservoirs deep belowground to keep the place alive. For now.
Today the only water to be found was sloshing in our backpacks. The afternoon sun had become, for the first time on this trip, brutish. My shirt was a sweaty mess under my backpack.
At the next junction, Victoria halted. A crossroads was marked by a wooden arrow sign. I stopped and slipped off my pack. My shirt felt weirdly clammy against my back.
“We don’t want the Waldron Trail,” she said.
“I can’t even see the Waldron Trail.” The Waldron Trail arrow pointed to a flat spreading wasteland of dry mounds, grass tufts, and a few pinyons and junipers, beyond which loomed a high craggy wall of stone. I could imagine bandits leaping out of a hidden cave to ride us down. Grant and some hired help.
We continued on to another crossroads, not far away, where the Dripping Springs Trail branched from the Hermit Trail. We kept to the Dripping Springs. The Boucher Trail junction was now only a mile away, and Silver Bell Spring was supposedly a mile beyond that. Every moment that passed drew with it some of my hope. By now she should have stopped to admit her lies.
“Should we have some water?” I asked. “There’s no reason to hurry.” Unless someone was nervously waiting for us at the end.
“Just ahead is what they call an amphitheater. That’s where I want to stop. It’s a huge curving wall at the far edge of a tributary canyon off the main Canyon. We’ll be walking on a shelf right in the middle of a cliff the size of the Hoover Dam. It’s the most beautiful part of the trail.”
“Maybe we should rest for a while, so we can enjoy it when we get there.”
“It’s not far.”
—
The oxygen at this lower elevation provided sufficient nourishment for a few deciduous trees, daring strivers in the struggling neighborhood, fuller and greener than the wiry pinyons and junipers around them. More flowers ornamented the slopes. We passed several Indian paintbrush and some purple ground flowers that looked like torn scraps of tissue paper missed after the birthday cleanup
. I didn’t know their name, and they weren’t in my guidebook. From writing up a hundred museums, I’ve learned all the major painters from Giotto to Jackson Pollock, but flowers are beyond me. But I could also see bare branches and yellow leaves, scars of the drought.
I stopped in my tracks. “What do you think right now? Before we see the evidence. Is the meter fake or is it real? Was Freddie right or not?”
She took a few desultory steps forward and then gave up. “I don’t believe it’s fake. I don’t believe in conspiracies and supervillains. But we’ll see.”
“I don’t believe in villains either, but I believe in crimes. I even believe in forgiving them. But you’ve got to have justice first.”
“You wouldn’t forgive Grant’s crime. I mean, if you’re right about what he did.”
“I’d try to. He was in love. He made a terrible mistake. If only someone had stopped him in time.”
I wanted to say more, but I no longer trusted my voice. If it just once cracked or wavered, all my determination would collapse. I fell silent. I had to give her one last chance to confess. It was the only way I could forgive her.
She kicked at the dirt underfoot. A little red cloud curled up around her boot. She watched it closely, as if to read the swirls like tea leaves. When they faded, she turned and walked on.
We rounded a bend in the trail and suddenly we were walking on a ledge in midair. The cliff shot straight down for a hundred feet to a scrub-covered red slope that angled sharply into a narrow slot canyon in the distance. The hungry birds that had wheeled far below us at the rim now wheeled just overhead.
“Is this where Jewel died?” I asked.
“Up ahead. Around the next bend there’s another amphitheater just like this one. That’s where they found her, at the bottom of the set of cliffs. That’s what Pierre told me.”
Why had the killer—it was Grant, it had to be—waited until the second amphitheater? It was a long way to walk when you knew you were going to kill someone. Perhaps he had spent the time second-guessing himself, gathering his courage, or just waiting for that perfect moment of distraction. But the walking here was so easy. The ledge was narrow, but the trail level, the surface all dirt, no stone. The red cliffs and the surrounding greenery on the slopes softened the sun’s glare. As we walked a little farther we could see into the slot canyon below us and, for a brief time, through the slot to the wider Grand Canyon beyond, glowing a glorious red and orange in its narrow window, like a gigantic stained-glass panel when the sun blazes right behind it. Grant must have been dazed, for a few minutes, by the unexpected ease of all this beauty.