Dalton shrugged.
They stood at the fence and panned from side to side, slowly, like old windmills. The air around them buzzed with insects. The gossamer filaments of a dozen spider webs lifted on the breeze and blew across the road.
“We gonna sniff him out or set and wait?” Tanner asked.
“A little of both.”
They stood for a few seconds, then Tanner pointed at the webs. “That’s baby spiders.”
Dalton shivered and shook his head. “Don’t talk about it.”
“Think about what it takes to live like that, just letting the wind take you wherever it wants to.”
Dalton sniffed twice, then said, “Karen wants me to sell the house.”
“I heard.”
“I was going to, since it’s just me living there. But watching those things blow around makes me think I’m going to buy her out. Eventually the kids are going to want some place to come back to.”
Tanner cleaned his sunglasses. “We came back.”
“Yes, we did.” Dalton pointed to a duck-shaped sandstone formation. “Last photo this guy posted was of Duck Rock through what looks like a trailer window. It’s got to be on Tillohash’s land somewhere. Then there were shots of his wrecked car out by Dutch John’s Butte, then some coyotes at night. Seems like he was at Entrada Wash for that. Then vacation photos. Bryce Canyon. A chuckwagon dinner. Vegas Airport. Selfies on the plane. Before that, some pictures of him dressed up like an Indian. He had a whole headdress and everything.”
“That’s weird.”
“Well, it’s different. The dress-up pictures were from back in Germany.”
They heard voices through the bushes. Tanner unsnapped his holster and kept his hand on the grip of his sidearm. They moved together toward the south side of the house so they could see around the trees. They saw two men in plaid work shirts and Carhartts, one with his arm in a sling and the other sitting in a lawn chair holding a bag of frozen peas against his head. They were in the middle of a frantic conversation.
“We’re looking for Reinhardt Kupfer,” Dalton said.
Paul turned slowly. Reinhardt’s hands shot up, and the bag of peas fell to the ground.
“Two for one,” Tanner said.
Paul said, “My name is Paul Thrift. I’m ready to go with you, but our friend has been kidnapped. Could you please get this out on the radio?”
___
Sophia woke, trying to gasp. Her mouth was taped shut, her wrists and ankles also bound. She panicked until her brain sensed the trickle of oxygen making it through, which gave her a fragmented sense of the space enveloping her: some steel point digging into her back, her face against a coarse mat, everywhere the smell of fuel. She kicked, and when her feet met the enclosure, the counterthrust bashed her head against a box.
After a minute, an explosion of whiteness. The reaching arms of a tattered black silhouette. A failed scream. Everything black. Then a duration. The smell of onions. A headache. She was no longer in the car. Beneath her was the softness of a bed, strange pillows, and a blanket around her. Two voices: male, female. The female had questions. The male gave short answers.
“You were referred to me as a cleaner, one of the best, but your performance does not measure up to your fee. Everything you’re doing now is not work I hired you for, it’s you cleaning up your own vomit.”
“You wanted me to hire some locals to shake down Cluff—well, it’s their vomit. If you would have started with me, we’d be done by now.”
“I needed more degrees of separation. And your contract was very specific. I paid you on your terms, and when the situation changed, we renegotiated. You’re asking to be paid in full for failing to deliver the maps. That is—what would you call it?—a shakedown. It’s beneath you, Nicholas.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
“And yet you still asked.”
Sophia strained to listen, which sent a hot arc of pain through her neck. The conversation halted. She heard them approach and felt them hovering over her. She blacked out again.
A second duration, then the blanket came off and the man sat her up. Orange light slanted through the west windows. The red digits on the alarm clock swam out of focus, then sharpened to read 7:32 p.m. One of them was wearing a Batman ski mask that was too small, the eyeholes stretched out of shape. She was handed a bottle of orange Gatorade with the cap off.
“Scream, and it’s lights-out again,” the man said.
She nodded, and he pulled the tape off in one clean jerk. The pain of this distracted her from the throbbing in her head and spine. In the silence that followed, he let her drink. It was room temperature but she couldn’t stop.
“A little at a time,” the woman’s voice said.
He took the bottle away, and she fell back to sleep.
After the third duration, she awoke to an argument at full pitch. She lay still, feigning sleep.
“I will not pay you for something you did not produce,” the woman said. “You are the one who has breached this contract.”
“Breach?” he shouted. “Breach? What are you going to do, call your lawyer?”
“You need to keep it down.”
“Silence is the only protection you’ve got.”
“You’d be surprised at the resources I have at my disposal.”
“Disposal is alright with me,” he said. Sophia heard the click of a gun’s hammer, then nothing. She clenched her eyes.
“Go ahead and put a bullet into everyone. We won’t bleed money.”
“It’ll give me some satisfaction.”
“You’re on a losing streak, Nicholas. Which means it’s time to walk away. From what I understand, if you had learned not to double down when your luck turns, you’d still be in a cape and sequins, with a show of your own at the Luxor.”
There was another long silence, then the sound of a door opening and slamming shut. After a few seconds, Sophia opened her eyes. The boiling in her head was no longer rolling. The room had stopped colliding with itself. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at the dull, custardy walls and the strange green foliage climbing out of the blue curtains. She rolled over, saw a woman sitting in the upholstered motel chair, her legs crossed at the knees. She wore caramel-colored sling-back kitten heels, and she covered her face with a fox mask made of felt and fur, which she held on a thin, elegant baton. The fine whiskers caught the last of the sunlight.
“I must apologize for the theater,” the woman said. “We are finished with that brute.”
“Was he planning to kill us?”
“All brutality is, at its core, cowardice. And cowards often bluff.”
Sophia tried to sit up all the way, but her head was pounding too much. She fought to get there anyway. Once she was upright, she said, “I’ve seen him in action.”
“Violence lacks nuance. It is a shell game. The noise before the defeat.”
“It seems like he’s the hands, but you’re the brain.”
The woman smiled.
“What do you want from us?”
“Us? No, I am only interested in you, Sophia Shepard.”
“I’m nobody.”
“A clever literary allusion, but I don’t buy it. You have a BA in linguistics from Duke, an MA in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, and soon you’ll have a PhD from Princeton with a dissertation on the mechanics of site degradation occurring on NPS- and BLM-managed cultural sites. I’ve read your current draft. You’re a disruptor.”
“You have my dissertation? Who are you?”
“Ms. Shepard, your work is promising. You are arguing for archeology to take a stand against a hundred years of government intervention. You have a reputation as a firebrand, calling out a certain distinguished male scholar last year during a symposium. It’s not easy to speak truth to power. We’re not even dealing with power here, just quaint, clumsy, ham-fisted ideologies. It’s nonsense, isn’t it, that we should try to preserve anything u
nimpaired for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of the unwashed masses. It’s all one great curio shop for them.” She bobbed the toe of her shoe and stared at Sophia. The woman’s eyes darted around from behind the calmness of the mask. “I would hate for this to seem like some kind of oral defense, but I am intrigued. What do you think our government would have done with your work once you put it out into the world?”
Sophia was too groggy to respond coherently, but she was seething.
“I used to work for the Department of the Interior. Let me help you with that. I can say with absolute certainty that they would have redacted everything, gagged you. Your academic career would have been over before it started. They’d have offered you some G6-level position and stuck you in the basement. And the worst part about it is, when you took the grant money, you agreed to it. This administration has no compunction. They will bury you. It’s that simple.”
“But I have only been hunted down by you and your pit bull, not the government.”
“This is all sleight of hand. The government only cares about what the argument of energy independence will allow them to get away with. It is the latest incarnation of the military-industrial complex. But let’s get back to you. I assume you didn’t get into this work to serve men in a bureaucracy. When I read your ideas, I see that you still believe in truth.”
The woman tilted her head slightly, cocking the mask’s ears to one side. Sophia became self-conscious of her clothes, the prairie dress and low-cut hiking boots. Her vision was collecting and solidifying, and she looked at the windows, the locked door, the bolt and chain. During the silence, the air conditioning unit shuddered on.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
“Fancy,” Sophia said.
“That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. My recently departed operative doesn’t believe in truth. He is a failed illusionist, sawing ladies in half, freeing himself from strait jackets, guessing the correct card. He has told me that people only believe in what they have paid for. I have learned through sad experience that it is impossible to make this equation work in reverse.”
Sophia sat a little taller. “This is monologging, right?”
The woman paused, the stillness of her mask amplifying the tension. “I am working on a possible future for you and me, and a way for the two of us to be free of these men and their noise.”
Sophia raised her bound wrists. “All this duct tape doesn’t feel much like freedom.”
“You are a flight risk.”
“Abduction is a trigger for me.”
The woman laughed, then she rose from the chair. “Let me make you comfortable,” she said. With the mask in one hand, she helped Sophia hobble from the bed to the other chair. She opened a leather briefcase, removed a photo album, set it in Sophia’s lap, and opened the cover. The first image was a marble relief of a woman’s face set atop a frieze of repeating smaller faces. She could see that the work was in the living room of a vast, open, modern home.
Sophia’s face froze. “This is the Woman of Wakara. How do you have this picture? Where is it?”
“I own it,” the woman said, sitting again.
“Nobody owns it. It was destroyed in 1990 during Desert Storm.”
“That is the cover story.”
“Explain that.”
“Why don’t I free your hands so you can continue reviewing these photographs,” the woman said.
___
Reinhardt sat in an office chair in the sheriff’s department, a paramedic shining a penlight into each eye.
“I’m okay,” Reinhardt said. “No need to continue doing that.”
“Once an hour,” the paramedic said. “Sheriff says you’re safer in custody or you’d be in the hospital after getting knocked cold like that.”
Dalton came in and spoke with the paramedic, who said Reinhardt had a pretty good lump and probably a mild concussion to go with it. “Don’t let him sleep for a while.”
Dalton sat in the chair across from Reinhardt. “You’re lucky to be alive, Dr. Kupfer. That guy mostly leaves behind bodies. You hear what he said about sleeping?”
Reinhardt nodded.
“Okay. If you need anything let me know. The FBI is working this case now, but just for my own edification, how did you end up in the middle of all this?”
“It’s silly to say out loud.”
“Try me.”
“I was on a quest.”
“Who sent you?”
“Me. I sent myself. I was trying to follow my bliss.”
Dalton sighed. “Okay. And you don’t have any idea why this guy would take Sophia other than she had a map he wanted?”
“That is correct. It’s a map of a place called Wïiatsiweap, a city hidden in the cliffs. I knew about it from a book called The Rifle and the Tomahawk, by Sigmund F. Krause.”
“But the FBI has that map now,” Dalton said.
“Tell them to be careful. Apparently, there are some politics involved.”
“There’s a little politics in everything.”
“I am German, so that makes sense to me, but we should try to focus on Sophia. When this man finds out she does not have the map, we could lose her.”
“Can you describe the guy who was after you?”
“He was plain with unfashionable clothes, like a golfer.”
“Anything else?”
Reinhardt shook his head. Dalton led him back to the holding cell uncuffed. Paul was inside sitting in a half lotus, meditating. As Dalton unlocked the cell door, Paul opened his eyes.
“It’s no Hilton, but the security is good,” Dalton said.
“Any word on Sophia?” Paul asked.
“Nothing yet. We’ve got roadblocks at the state line in both directions. I’m going to guess he didn’t take off with her across the Grand Canyon.”
“He might not have taken her anywhere,” Paul said.
“Your friend said he was after Cluff’s map. How’d she get hold of it?”
“Should I be talking without a lawyer?” Paul asked.
“You want your girlfriend back?”
“She’s not—never mind. She got the map off those Ashdown brothers, right before they got shot.”
“With your weapon?”
“Apparently. But I didn’t—”
Dalton’s radio came alive. “Dalton, this is Tanner. I just picked up a guy on Main Street. He’s got a bandage on his shoulder. He’s in a pair of boxer shorts and that’s it. No ID. Won’t talk. I’m just about there.”
“He match the description of our guy?”
“Not really. He looks like one of those dudes who had a peyote thing go south on him.”
“Not tweaking or anything?”
“Nope. Just sitting there.”
Dalton ended the radio conversation and turned back to Paul and Reinhardt. He explained how everything had turned federal and what that meant for him. He explained that the FBI was using the state police and marshals, but leaving the peacekeeping to him. He asked Reinhardt again if he saw the guy who hit him.
“I did not see him, but it had to be the crazy person who was pursuing us,” Reinhardt said. “It is difficult to knock someone unconscious with one blow. He got me right in the carotid. I must have hit my head when I fell. I do not think it was luck.”
Dalton left them, and Reinhardt lowered his head into his hands. Paul stretched his arm and rotated it. His face was grim. He stood and took hold of one bar and used it to stretch his shoulder. Reinhardt watched him make each movement. “They asked me about you. The story they tell is like the one you have told us, but with more to it. They thought you were the one who did this until Sophia was kidnapped. So, that is lucky.”
Paul laughed. “Oh, good.”
“But did you help bring these calamities upon us?”
“I don’t know, Reinhardt. Maybe. I was just trying to save what’s left out here. I thought the end justified the means.”
“The world does not change
to suit us. You know Sophia saved me, then you saved us, then I put your arm back in its socket, then Dreamweaver, then Euphrenia, then Kimball. Problems will always be with us, but so will the helpers.”
“Do you think he’s going to call and try to negotiate a trade with us?”
“I don’t know, Paul.”
They sat in silence for a time, then stood and sat again on different benches. This cycling went on for a while until a door opened and a sheriff’s deputy brought in a man who was naked but for a pair of plaid boxer shorts. He entered the room like a disgraced fighter, his head bowed and hands cuffed behind his back. After the deputy pushed him into the cell, the man crossed to the opposite side, where he stood, facing away from Reinhardt and Paul until the deputy left.
The moment the hallway door closed, the man began to hunch and gag, and before the two of them knew what to do, the man spat something heavy onto the floor of the cell. Then he rose, adjusted his posture, and turned theatrically to present himself.
Reinhardt recognized him as the man he’d met on the road.
“It’s you,” Reinhardt said, looking at Paul for confirmation. “How?”
Scissors tilted his head and smiled. “How, indeed. Paul Thrift, who used up one of his nine lives. How many do you have left?”
Paul stood and took a defensive posture, which he dropped when the pain in his ribs and shoulder flared. Paul pointed to the bandage on the man’s shoulder. “So that old woman took a chunk out of you,” he said.
“A shoulder for a shoulder,” Scissors said, gesturing to the way Paul favored his bad arm.
“I meant how did you know we were here?” Reinhardt asked.
Scissors lifted his eyebrows and said, “You can thank the loudmouth newspaperman at the diner for giving you up. But hush for now. Let’s not scuttle our reunion before I get the chance to tell you where Sophia is.”
He crossed to the bench and sat and twisted his body to one side and shoved his rear end through the loop of his arms. Once his arms were in front, he picked up the packet he’d spit out. It looked like a condom, which he tore open to reveal a package of small tools and a handcuff key. He quickly released himself and set the cuffs on the bench. He checked the bandage on his shoulder, then turned to Reinhardt and said, “Give me your clothes, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
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