Picnic in the Ruins

by Todd Robert Petersen

  “I know you’re getting your game face on,” Tanner interrupted, “but our window of opportunity is shrinking.”

  Dalton blinked. “Is Bruce going to get up and walk out of the house?”

  “We’ve got to tag evidence before the ME gets here. You know, and it’s June. So, heat.”

  “Is the A/C on?”

  “They’ve got a swamp cooler, but it’s off. It’s pretty bad in there already.”

  Dalton opened the door and went in and led himself down the hall and around the corner to the study. Tanner followed. The EMT was gone. “How’s Raylene?”

  “At the neighbors’.”

  “Please tell me she didn’t find him.”

  Tanner nodded sadly. “She came home from church after an hour because Bruce was sick. She said he was supposed to be at a collector’s convention, but he canceled.”

  “Does she know where that meetup was supposed to be?”

  Tanner shook his head. “She says she can’t remember.”

  At the doorframe of the study, Dalton stopped and gathered himself. He drew on his childhood memories to map out the space in his head, then he turned the corner.

  The blood-soaked desk was covered with numbered plastic A-frames marking the evidence. The top half of the tall leather office chair was blown off, the wood frame serrated like the edge of a flint knife. Somewhere on the floor behind the desk lay the body.

  “I told you it was bad,” Tanner said.

  “I’m a big boy,” Dalton answered.

  It looked like the shot knocked Bruce out of his chair, spinning it around so it faced away from the desk. He lay sprawled on the ground in a heap, the robe spread behind him, the shotgun flung from his hands, the books in the shelves behind him stuccoed with brown blood and bone. Dalton imagined what happened to the body when the gun went off, the energy of the shot oscillating through the jaw and brain, discharging from the other side of the skull.

  A camera flash strobed behind him.

  “And nobody’s touched anything?” Dalton asked.

  “Nobody did,” Tanner said.

  Dalton surveyed the Navajo rugs, porcupine quill baskets, cedar masks in blue and red, tiny unpainted clay birds, wooden flutes, small irregular petroglyph panels, old green and brown books, maps on wooden stands, bird fossils, purple crystals, whole geodes resting on plastic rings. There were so many treasures in this menagerie: a stuffed weasel, arrowheads in shadow boxes, spearpoints under glass, perfectly round stones of various sizes, framed newspaper clippings about Bruce and his discoveries, antique compasses large and small, steel protractors, and brass telescopes. But he noticed that quite a few shelves had empty spots.

  “This place is right out of an old photograph. How would anyone know if something was missing?” Tanner said.

  “Raylene might. There used to be a lot more pottery in here.” Dalton pointed at a plain bowl. “When I was a kid, this place was full of stuff like that.”

  Tanner’s face became still. “A guy like Bruce with all this Indian stuff in here. I mean some of this has to be in the gray zone as far as the law goes. Are we looking at another Federal pot hunter crackdown?”

  “I haven’t heard of anything.”

  “I mean, if the FBI is looking into collectors again, you know, like that guy in Page who drove himself off a cliff once they came after him—if that’s coming around again, we’ll have all kinds of trouble. The Carver family will go nuts, probably get on YouTube and take over another tortoise refuge.”

  Dalton walked around the body and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He thought he’d have some kind of deeper reaction, but it was all flowing around him, like floodwater going around a boulder. He was fine now, but he felt the sand underneath him starting to loosen. “If you’re wondering about garbage like that, go talk to Stan Forsythe at the paper,” Dalton said. “Crazy talk is his love language.”

  “I’m not wondering. I’m just thinking. The Feds would let you know if they were coming, right?”

  “Feds do what they want.”

  “That’s what the crazies say. I’m asking you.”

  Dalton’s phone buzzed and he looked at it. It was his ex-wife. He lifted his thumb to open the lock screen, but instead he sent her to voice mail.

  “The crazies aren’t wrong,” Dalton said. “I just can’t talk to them.”

  ___

  Sophia Shepard shut her book, which was bristling with Post-it Notes, and she set it on the orange Formica dinette table. The scholarly title, UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Human Factor, set it apart from the whimsical Airstream travel trailer she was living and working in for the summer.

  She took her insulated coffee mug and stepped out of the trailer and into the late afternoon air, which was hot and dry and riddled with the trilling of songbirds. The white sun filtered through the canopy of desert trees, mature sycamores, and cottonwoods that sheltered the trailer park from the blazing sky. In one direction lay the street, and beyond it, a self-serve car wash crouching in the open glare next to a run-down laundromat with two duct-tape Xs running across each of its dust-covered windows. Behind that bleached outbuilding stood an orange sandstone rampart that ran vertically for a hundred feet.

  In the opposite direction, the other trailers were arranged in a semicircle like giant silver beetles. Across the way was Mrs. Gladstone’s trailer. It was an Airstream like the rest but larger because she was the owner. It had been upgraded with a covered porch, Tibetan prayer flags, and potted succulents, not all of them thriving. Mrs. Gladstone was asleep in a rattan chaise lounge, a Pomeranian perched upon her stomach with its nose in a bag of cookies.

  Sophia shouted at the dog, who looked up at her, flicked an ear, and returned to the bag. “Hey, you little monster,” she said again, crossing from her trailer to the small patio. She wouldn’t call the dog by its name, Cleopatra, but had secretly renamed her Mīkrós Thḗrion, “the tiny beast.” Mikros, for short. It was one way she tried to keep up on her Greek while she was working in southern Utah.

  “Hey, Mikros, knock it off,” she shouted, which woke Mrs. Gladstone with a start. Mikros switched from licking the bag to bathing the woman’s face with her tongue. “Oh, you tiny starving thing. Did you get all your cookies?” Mrs. Gladstone looked inside, reshaped the bag, tipped the crumbs into one corner, and poured them into her hand.

  “Good afternoon, Sophia,” Mrs. Gladstone said while the dog snuffled up the last of the crumbs before jumping to the ground and sniffing around the potted plants. On a side table was a can of Diet Coke with a lipstick-printed straw sticking out of it. Behind her, a hummingbird buzzed through the covered porch and landed on a plastic feeder that hung from the edge of the corrugated roof. As it drank the sugar water, other hummingbirds buzzed in and scrapped for a spot. It was vicious for one explosive moment, then they disappeared all at once. The old woman paid them no mind.

  “Have you been reading all day?” Mrs. Gladstone asked.

  Sophia nodded. “Dissertations don’t write themselves.”

  “I don’t suppose they would,” Mrs. Gladstone said. “I also can’t imagine there would be so much to say about—what is it again?”

  “The ethics of preserving ancient artifacts.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Museums and national parks and providence. One of these days I’ll remember without a hint.” She smiled and brushed back stray wisps of hair.

  Sophia was about to correct her and say, it’s “provenance,” not “providence,” but she’d done this bit before and wanted to skip it this time.

  Mikros barked, sending a lizard across the patio and under Mrs. Gladstone’s chair. The dog growled but didn’t chase it. Mrs. Gladstone sat up. “I always wanted to be an architect, my dear, but I was told that was for boys. They told me to be a nurse or a teacher. I told them to blow it out their butts.”

  “So you went to college anyway?”

  “I went to Hollywood.”

  “You’re perfect, Mrs. Gladstone,” So
phia said. “Absolutely perfect.”

  “And look at me now. I’m the queen of all I survey.” Mrs. Gladstone unfolded her arms and let a dozen bracelets jangle down to the elbow. “But really, a girl like you should be out on the town on a summer night, not holed up. Don’t you have plans?”

  “I like to get out, but you know there’s not much nightlife around here. It’s a little dead unless you’re up for a milkshake.”

  Mrs. Gladstone sipped her Diet Coke and set it back on the side table. “Once upon a time, people used to call this hamlet Little Hollywood. Pretty glitzy for southern Utah, don’t you think?”

  “What was Kanab like before all that?” Sophia asked.

  Mrs. Gladstone shrugged. “What you would imagine. Frontier, red rock, tumbleweeds, Indians. Not much else. A whole lot of nothing, really.”

  “Mrs. Gladstone, Native people aren’t nothing,” Sophia said.

  “Well, you know what I mean,” Mrs. Gladstone said with a wave.

  Sophia didn’t veer. “I’m not sure I do.”

  Mrs. Gladstone closed her eyes and tilted her head to show she disapproved of this turn in the conversation. “Back in the day, my dear, you might bump into Ronald Reagan, Ernest Borgnine, Sidney Poitier, Raquel Welch. Everyone who was anyone came to town. We were surrounded by stars, and there were a thousand different flavors of nightlife. A girl could get into the right kind of trouble, if that’s what she wanted.” She looked around, smiled, and shrugged a coy shoulder. “This girl did.”

  Sophia knew she wasn’t ready for a detailed description of the right kind of trouble, so she steered the conversation back to her work. “Tomorrow I’m going into Arizona to check sites in the Antelope Valley. South, near the bluffs. I’ll be back by nightfall. Send in the cavalry if I’m not back by Tuesday morning. I’ll leave a map in my trailer.”

  “Speaking of the cavalry, that gorgeous ranger dropped by to see you the other day,” Mrs. Gladstone said. She lifted her penciled-in eyebrows and sang: “And he was on a mo-tor-cy-cle.”

  “Paul?” Sophia asked, hiding a smile with a sip of her coffee.

  “There isn’t an ounce of fat on that man,” Mrs. Gladstone said. “He said he was planning a trip for you two to go off into the backcountry.” Mrs. Gladstone smiled. “So, that’s what they’re calling it these days?”

  Sophia sprayed her coffee.

  Mrs. Gladstone shrugged dramatically, sending the dozen bracelets clattering in the other direction. “I’m just an old woman, trying to live vicariously through the nomads who stay here with me.”

  Sophia held up her book. “Well, tonight you’ll get the chance to absorb information about UNESCO World Heritage Sites.”

  “Vicarious education is the best kind, darling,” Mrs. Gladstone said.

  Sophia laughed. “Did Paul want something specific, like to ask me if I wanted to go into the backcountry?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Gladstone said, looking around, trying to recall if there was something she was supposed to remember. “He has very good manners for a young man.”

  “That is true,” Sophia said. “If you happen to see him again, could you tell him to email me?”

  “Don’t the young people just Chap Snap now? Email is so old-fashioned.” Mrs. Gladstone took another sip of Diet Coke, and Mikros climbed back into her lap. The phone in her trailer rang. She struggled to get up, until Sophia offered to get it, then she eased back in her chair. “Thank you, dear,” she said.

  Sophia stepped into the trailer, which was a patchwork of bright color: shelves hand-painted orange, purple, and green, full of self-help books and poetry. Two ceramic parrots stood atop overturned terra-cotta pots, arranged to look as if they were chattering to each other. The space was filled with messages written in script on planks of wood: YOU ARE SUFFICIENT—DON’T TOUCH MY CHOCOLATE—FRIENDSHIP IS FOR KEEPS—SOMETIMES LIFE JUST GIVES YOU THE LEMONADE. The whole place smelled of jasmine and garbage.

  “It’s next to the fridge!” Mrs. Gladstone called out.

  What she meant was that it was under a stack of magazines next to the fridge. Once Sophia found it, she dashed back with the ringing phone and handed it over. As Mrs. Gladstone listened to the caller, her face fell. “You can’t be serious?” she said, then she covered her mouth with one hand. “A shotgun?” Her eyes found Sophia’s. “That doesn’t sound right at all. No, I do not accept it.” Sophia heard the woman on the other end say that a neighbor heard the shots. “The police are still there? What about Raylene? I’ll come get her.” Mrs. Gladstone paused and listened, her face hardening. “Well, how long until the sedation wears off?” she asked.

  Mikros trotted back to the porch with a wet sack of trash in her mouth. Sophia tried to take it away, but the dog ran off.

  “I don’t like it,” Mrs. Gladstone said into the phone, then she switched it off and set it carefully on the side table and gripped the arms of her chaise, tears softening her mascara. “I’m sorry for this, Sophia,” she said, gesturing to her face. “An old friend took his life today. Bruce Cluff.”

  Sophia knew the name. “I was introduced to him my first week in town. When I tried to ask about some of the pieces in his collection, he got pretty angry with me.”

  “Oh, Bruce was angry with everyone.” Mrs. Gladstone dabbed at each eye with a fingertip. “But I shouldn’t speak ill,” she said.

  “Seems like he must have had a lot on his mind.”

  “Bruce had his head in the clouds most of the time—in the dirt, really. I said he was an old friend, that’s not quite right. He was not a particularly nice man, if you ask me. But his wife was a dear, dear friend. She’s not well. I need to see her as soon as I can.”

  Day Two

  Uncrossed t’s : Illegal search and seizure : Fieldwork interrupted

  Byron Ashdown clenched a small tactical flashlight in his teeth as he carried two giant sloshing gas cans to the back of the pickup. Lonnie followed with two shovels and a duffel bag slung across his shoulder. The sky was still dark and speckled with stars, Jupiter low against the western horizon, the galaxy core faded down to a single spray of white. As they continued loading their vehicle, dawn tipped the scales, and the stars disappeared.

  Lonnie sat on a stump between the truck and their single-wide, and he began to lace his boots. “This isn’t a criticism,” he said. “I just wanted to say something, and you don’t have to do anything about it. But I want you to hear what I have to say.”

  Byron plucked the flashlight from his teeth and pointed it straight at his brother. “Not now. We’re on a time frame.”

  Lonnie covered his eyes, the light blasting around his fingers. “Money’s been tight and I know you’re trying to get everything to work out good for us—hey, everything just went purple. Would it be okay if you shined that somewhere else?”

  “Now that I’ve got your attention, I need you to carry what I tell you to carry, put it where I tell you to put it, and sit where I tell you to sit. I don’t need a play-by-play or your analysis or any of your regular horseshit, Lonnie. Not today.”

  Lonnie crisscrossed his hands in front of his face to protect his eyes from the flashlight. “It’s just, you know, going out there to dig up pots and stuff instead of taking the maps to the guy like he told us to. I mean, maybe we shouldn’t.”

  “They bought the maps, not the stuff that’s on the maps. With your logic, I could buy a map of America, and the next thing . . . I’m president. Besides, what if the maps aren’t even legit? Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “Then, I don’t know, if that happens, these people would be pretty mad.”

  “Of course they will, but we ain’t in the business of real,” Byron said. After a moment, his expression changed and he exhaled. “But then again, what if they are real?”

  “Now you’re confusing me.”

  “What if they have real treasure in them, then maybe we don’t have to settle for the dog scraps here. I mean we know our way around the monument, Lonni
e. He don’t know nothing about it. What if we just kept one of those maps for ourselves?”

  “You know they’re not treasure maps. It’s not Pirates of the Caribbean. It’s just a list of ruins. Pots. Whatever. I read them. It’s not going to lead us to any gold, you know. We should just get rid of them. Then no one can say we took them.”

  “Quit making it sound like you’re the only one who reads.”

  “I just never seen you read anything, so I—”

  “Can and does are not the same thing. I can kick your ass, but I do not. Restraint is how I exercise my freedom.”

  “Is that another lesson you got from jail? Because maybe if we clean out the artifacts from these places first, they’re going to be pissed about it and come hunt us down.”

  “We’ll be long gone by then, baby brother, living large in Mexico.”

  “Yeah,” Lonnie said. “I remember.” He stood and glanced over his shoulder to the east. The Vermilion Cliffs sat low and black against the horizon, and a pale stripe along their flanks began to glow. The shadows around their home were softening. “Ain’t you gonna give me hell?”

  “For what?” Byron said.

  “I should have just left that geode right where it was.”

  “It don’t make any difference now. None of it does. You got rid of the rock, right?”

  Lonnie nodded. “We’re going out to the desert so you can—did that guy tell you to . . .”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Do you think he told me to put a bullet in you?”

  “I mean, maybe,” Lonnie said.

  Byron dropped a duffel bag into the truck, then lowered his head and touched it to the tailgate.

  “You know I was trying to help with the geode and everything. I just was gonna knock him out a little. It was heavier than I thought,” Lonnie said.

  “Not going to talk about it.”

  “I know it was a bad thing.”

  “You can’t unspill a beer, Lonnie.”

  “I know that. It’s physics. Energy just wants to spread out and—”