“Yes.”
“Okay, I’m on my way.” Maria snapped her seatbelt closed and pushed on the gas pedal. Even though nothing in Kanab was more than fifteen minutes from anything else, she wanted to be there in less than one. Things were starting to happen. The mayor could be home by supper if they played their cards right.
But then again, he could be dead.
Either way, Maria would see him that night.
Cortez, learning that Montezuma was preparing to attack the invaders … took him to the Spanish quarters and kept him a prisoner. Sometime later, the [Aztecs] chose another king and attacked the Spaniards.
–The National Geographic Magazine. “The Conquests of Peru and Mexico” by Gardiner G. Hubbard, Volume 5, 1893.
Chapter 3
PETE WAITED FOR MARIA outside the station. While she knew she couldn’t find a more responsible and trustworthy assistant, she also got the impression he didn’t dare do anything without her explicit direction.
“Get in the car and tell me where we’re going,” she called out the window.
Pete jumped into the passenger side, next to Maria’s grandfather’s box, and said, “I wasn’t sure if I should go on my own or wait for—”
“You did fine, Pete.” Maria flipped her lights on. Not that there was much traffic around to get in her way. “I’m actually not sure where we’re going. I’m not as familiar as the locals with the canyons around here. So thanks for sticking around.”
“Oh, good.” Pete breathed out a long sigh and then explained, “Take Highway 89 out of town. There’s a turnoff about ten minutes past Three Lakes we need to take.”
Maria knew about Three Lakes from stories her grandpa used to tell. The lakes were supposed to be haunted by a lost people.
Why did it always have to be ghosts?
“And by the way,” continued Pete, “Search and Rescue said the mayor’s truck was locked.” He rubbed his hand over the reddish stubble on his face. “They were trying to figure out a way to jimmy it, but it’s one of these newer models that are a real pain. Hopefully, they’ll have it open by the time we get there.”
Maria took a curve a little too quickly, and the car lurched to the left. Maria’s grandfather’s box tipped over, spilling its contents onto the floor at Pete’s feet. A puff of dust swirled at his ankles.
“What’s all this?” he asked. “Stuff to do with the case?”
“No. I just picked it up from the Thatchers. They’re the couple who bought my grandparents’ house. It’s some memorabilia of my grandfather, I think.”
Pete sneezed and picked through the random items. “It’s a bunch of newspaper clippings, some arrow heads, and … hmmm … here’s a photo of a pictograph. It looks Aztec. They’re pretty rare around here.”
Aztec. The word rang a bell in Maria’s memory. Now that she thought about it, her grandfather had mentioned the Aztecs and some sort of treasure they’d hidden near Kanab.
“Dang,” said Pete in his small-town accent, “he’s got some good stuff in here. I haven’t seen most of these rock drawings before. He must have known this area really well.”
He had. Her grandfather had lived in Kanab since his birth in 1928. He’d had a four-year stint in Salt Lake City where he attended college, but then he’d returned to his hometown and bought the local newspaper. He knew the hills like the back of his hand. He would have been a perfect member for this Search and Rescue team. He could track anything.
As they passed the Three Lakes, Maria saw a chain link fence around the entire area. That was different from when she was younger. A few minutes later, a dirt road came into view.
“This is it,” said Pete.
“Hold on.” Maria locked her jeep into four-wheel drive. “Looks like it’s going to get bumpy.”
*
The mayor’s brand-new extended cab pickup had been hurriedly parked on an slope, making it look like it might tip over at any time. Parking her own car a distance away, still in her exercise clothes, Maria jogged to the command post that Search and Rescue had already set up close to the abandoned vehicle. Pete followed.
Off in the distance, a few Search and Rescue dogs barked, anxious to do their job.
A short man in slick tan pants, a Search and Rescue t-shirt, and a shiny, bald head approached her. “I’ve been assigned to manage the command post for the next few hours. We got the door unlocked to the mayor’s truck. Is the sheriff coming?”
Maria shook her head. “The sheriff is out of state for training. He’s not due back for a couple of weeks. I’m going to be lead investigator on the case.”
“Well then,” the man said, “the truck is all yours.”
Unlike the Hayward’s house, the mayor’s truck was littered with junk. Empty juice bottles were on the seat, along with a laptop bag and three bottles of ibuprofen. Maria slipped on a pair of latex gloves and began to carefully place the items from the truck into plastic evidence bags. Just in case this turned out to be a homicide, she didn’t want to destroy any evidence while she looked for clues.
A woman, dressed in a Search and Rescue uniform, approached. “Most of the Search and Rescue team is already out looking. The rest of us were just about to leave.”
Maria quickly glanced up. Despite being dressed in Search and Rescue garb, the woman looked elegant. Auburn hair, a golden tan, and manicured nails. Beauty queen material. What was she doing on Search and Rescue?
The second after she thought it, Maria wanted to kick herself. If this woman was on Search and Rescue, she obviously had skills that had nothing to do with her looks. When Maria had worked in the CIA, she’d hated the judgmental stares she received for being a woman. And now she was doing it herself.
“Okay, thanks for letting me know. Good luck.” Embarrassed by having jumped to conclusions, Maria turned her attention back to the truck. “Officer Richins and I will finish up here and then head on up the trail ourselves. Can we get a topographical map of the search area?”
Maria reached for the map and then continued sorting through the garbage in the mayor’s truck. At the command post, the remaining members of Search and Rescue were using a laptop to calculate the best areas of probability to find the mayor. A few minutes later, everybody except the man in charge of the command post had an assignment and were on their way.
So far, they’d been extremely professional, especially considering they were all volunteers from a small town. Maybe that was the case because the Grand Canyon was so close. She wondered how many people they’d pulled from cracks and crevices in that place. Pete scooted to the passenger side of the truck with his own stack of plastic bags to fill.
The two of them worked in silence, making sure they didn’t make any mistakes. The air was hot, and soon sweat dripped off Maria’s temples.
It took more than an hour to bag and label the scattered items in the truck. Even worse, they’d found no clues as to where the mayor had gone. Maria was about to shut the door and call it a done deal, when she slid her hand in the deep crevice at the back of the seat. Her fingers hit something hard.
“Hold on,” she said. “There’s something else in here.”
Pete looked up.
“It feels like a …” Maria clasped the object and pulled it out. In her hand was a phone. A rubber protective made it feel slightly tacky. She hit the screen to see the last thing the mayor had been doing, but a password prompt popped up.
“We’ll have to take it to forensics,” she said. “Maybe they can break in.”
Pete grimaced. “Forensics isn’t very big in Kanab. It’s a one-person job. We won’t hear back for a few days. By then the mayor may be—” His words drifted off.
It was the first time Maria thought about the fact that Pete knew the mayor. Personally. He wasn’t just some random person he’d spoken to on the phone a couple of times and met once. Pete had worked in the city for a year. The mayor had been his boss the whole time. She wondered what Pete thought of the man. She’d have to ask him on the driv
e back to town.
Maria was about to drop the phone into its own plastic bag, when she saw that the edge of the rubber case was coming off in one corner, as if it had been hurriedly put back on.
“I wonder,” Maria mumbled. She began to pry the rest of the cover off, her latex gloves making it awkward. At last, a small, folded piece of paper fell onto the car seat. She picked it up and opened it, noting the type of paper, smudge marks, and ink type—all clues, though not necessarily big ones. She read the message out loud:
“Let’s meet. We need to talk about you and Cal Emerson.”
“Cal Emerson?” It was less of a question to Pete than it was to herself. She had seen that name in the mayor’s journal repeated several times. He must be someone important. However, Maria was too new in Kanab—in America as far as that was concerned—to know if it was a name others would recognize.
“Did you say Cal Emerson?” Pete frowned.
“Yes. Who is he?”
Slightly shocked, Pete answered, “You know, Utah’s state senator? He has a home in Kanab. He’s a celebrity around here, when he’s in town.”
Maria was about to make up an excuse of why she hadn’t heard of him when the radio hanging around her neck crackled.
“Chief Branson, this is Rod Thorton. We’ve got a 10-85 Echo. We need immediate assistance. I repeat, we’ve got a 10-85 Echo.”
Maria raised the radio and pushed the talk button. “Roger that. Please give me your GPS coordinates and we’ll be there as soon as we can. Restrict the area and keep secure.”
“Confirmed.”
Maria looked up. “Pete, please get the body bag from the back of my car. We’re going to need it.”
The Spaniards tried to flee unnoticed, but they were caught. More than six hundred Spanish conquistadors were killed, many no doubt weighed down by the gold they were carrying; several thousand [Aztecs] were probably lost, too. Cortez retreated in a wide circle through the north of the valley and over the mountains. The elemental horror of that night was never forgotten. It is still called “the night of tears.”
—Conquistadors. “The Fall of the Aztecs,” 2001 PBS Documentary.
Chapter 4
THE RED DIRT COATING Maria’s running shoes and calves brought back memories of tromping around these same canyons as a kid. For a moment, it felt like she was ten years old again, scaling outcropping after outcropping of rocks.
As she climbed, her grandfather would call her a mountain goat, encouraging her to go even higher, while her grandmother, on the ground below, would holler for both of them to get off the mountain that instant. Maria told herself to focus on those memories instead of contemplating what the dead body of the mayor would look like. Her stomach was already churning, and she still had a mile to go to get to the coordinates Rod had given her.
As they hiked, Pete assigned himself the job of asking Maria all about her life. She kept her answers simple:
She graduated from Jefferson High School in Pittsburgh. No, she hadn’t played any sports. Attended college at George Washington University. Yes, the law enforcement degree there was the best in the nation. Got an offer to join the staff of the Pittsburgh police force. Of course, she’d been very excited. Had an almost immediate rise to the position of police chief. It had surprised her too. Left to work at the CIA. Mostly just a paper pusher. Wanted to get back into the field. Kanab had just felt like the right place.
Next, Pete’s questions got personal. Again, Maria told herself to keep her answers brief:
No, she wasn’t married. Life had been too busy. No, she wasn’t divorced either. Thank heavens. Correct, she didn’t have a boyfriend. Who had time to date? And no, marriage wasn’t really on her mind.
After the Q&A session, Pete grew quiet. She wondered if he needed time to assimilate the news of the mayor, which was fine with her because she needed time to mentally prepare. The thought of going to see a dead body made her throat constrict. She mentally ordered herself to change the channel—a relaxation skill her therapist had been trying to teach her—but the remote seemed broken. Death. Ghosts. Fear. It was all she could think about.
Maria wished she’d brought a Xanax or two, but she’d promised herself two weeks ago to get off the stuff. It didn’t help calm the panic much anyway.
After almost an hour hiking, Maria and Pete arrived at the GPS coordinates. Rod and another man had staked a “do not cross” line in yellow tape. They stood outside the barrier, waiting. Both had large rings of sweat under their arms, and their foreheads glistened in the heat. Rod looked handsome in a rugged, wild sort of way.
It frustrated Maria to have the word handsome in the same thought as one about Rod. Sure, he was cute, but it was in a “full of himself” sort of way. He looked the part of someone who had lived the life of ease. He got what he wanted, when he wanted it. She knew his kind and stayed as far away from them as possible. Because she was a CIA officer, she seemed to attract men who liked power. But they turned her off big time. To be honest, she didn’t exactly know what kind of man she did want. Only that he had to be genuine and interested in her.
Maria strode up to Rod. “Thanks for your quick work.”
Pete came from behind her and shook Rod’s hand as well as his partner’s. “I knew it’d be you two that found him. You guys are the best.”
How quaint. Rod had a fan club.
Unfortunately, the scenario was not looking good for Maria. She was about to face her first dead body since Tehran in front of three men, all of whom were probably watching to see if the new chief of police was as top-notch as her resume said she was. Maria focused her attention on Rod’s face, which wasn’t a bad view—at least not for women who didn’t mind an overly pronounced bridge. Maria, of course, did mind. It was too domineering and pushy.
But who cared what he looked like. Maria’s goal was to not let her eyes wander anywhere on the ground where the body would be. She wasn’t quite ready to face reality yet.
“Hey Chief, this is Grant, my younger brother.” Rod pointed to the man standing next to him.
It wasn’t surprising they were related. Both were tall, broad shouldered, with hands that could easily palm a basketball. They also shared a lopsided grin they’d tried to hide when Maria had introduced herself.
So immature.
“Good to meet you, Grant. I’m Chief Branson. Can you give me the run down?” Now she kept her eyes steady with Grant’s. Not only did she hope to avoid seeing the mayor’s dead body, but she also wanted to look at someone besides Rod. There was no way she wanted to give the man the wrong impression—like she thought he was anything special. At all.
“The body’s back there.” Grant pointed over his shoulder.
Instinctively, Maria looked past Grant and onto the ground. Yellow tape blocked off a good twenty, maybe thirty feet out from a jagged canyon wall. But as far as she could see, there was no body anywhere. However, footprints clearly showed there had been activity in the area.
“You did call in an Echo, correct?” she asked, questioningly.
“We did.” Rod elbowed his brother. Another goofy smile. “It’s a good thing Grant did more hunting in high school than he did studying or we would have never found him.”
Maria waited for the rest of the story. Pete was at her side, breathing heavily from exertion. The hike in hadn’t been easy.
Rod continued, “We found a set of two tracks a while back. They were easy to spot. One matched the mayor’s tread. Anyhow, they led up to the canyon wall and then stopped. I thought maybe they’d scaled the cliff, which seemed crazy. Plus, there wasn’t any trace of climbing equipment having been used.”
Just get to the dead body already, thought Maria. The sooner she dealt with it, the sooner her panic symptoms, which were ramping up by the second, would go away.
“It was Grant who figured out what had happened. He said this part of the canyon was known for rock overhangs that could hide caves behind them. I didn’t believe him, but he was right. We sta
rted hugging the wall by the footprints and sure enough, over there, behind that hanging ledge, is a thin passage that opens up into a tunnel big enough to slide into.”
“And the mayor is in the … cave?” Maria hoped her voice didn’t sound as terrified as she felt. The last thing she needed was a dead body in a small, confined space.
“He is,” said Grant. He sounded proud, which to some might have seemed morbid considering he was talking about a person’s body. But in this type of work, you had to be proud of your find, even if the outcome wasn’t what was wanted. At least there would be closure.
And closure was important. At least that was what Maria’s therapist was always rambling about.
“We figured since you were on your way, we’d just keep the area secure so your investigation wasn’t impeded,” explained Rod. “I know you’ll want to go in and take pictures and everything. Is the medical examiner coming?”
“No.” It was Pete who answered. “I called her, but she wanted us to do the initial inspection. She’s not much of the hiking type.”
“Okay,” said Rod. “You’ll want us to stick around until you’re ready to bring the body out, right?”
These guys knew their stuff. Maria half wished they were idiots and she could send them on their merry way, but they knew procedure too well.
“Of course. You can write up your report while it’s still fresh. Do you have a form?”
“Always.” Rod took his backpack off and pulled out a piece of paper and pencil.
His brother Grant looked at him with an expression that said, “You’ll be filling that out for me too, right?” He was obviously in Search and Rescue for the adventure. Rod, on the other hand, looked like a ten-page form wasn’t the least bit intimidating.
Maria stalled as much as she could before going into the cave. She still hoped the Thorton brothers would leave, but they were determined to stay and help. This meant Maria had more eyes on her. More people would know if she could handle it or not. She questioned her decision to hold back from her therapist just how bad the PTSD was. If she had, however, the CIA probably would have never found this job for her. And Maria needed to work. Being useful was the only thing that saved her.
Robbed of Soul: Legends of Treasure Book 1 Page 3