Slickrock Paradox

by Stephen Legault

  “A lie detector test will help eliminate you as a suspect.”

  “That’s not going to happen, Agent Taylor,” stated the retired lawyer. “If you seriously think my client is a suspect, then arrest him, charge him with a crime, and we’ll do what needs to be done.”

  Taylor was silent for a moment. He regarded Silas across the table. “We won’t be charging Dr. Pearson right now, but don’t leave the state, please.”

  SILAS STAYED WITH KEN AND Trish Hollyoak for two nights, sleeping in the same room that Penelope had used so many times. Half a dozen members of the media had camped out at his Castle Valley home, angering his neighbors and interfering with his ability to plan his next series of searches. Silas laid low, spending his days pouring over a series of topographical maps he’d brought with him when he and Ken had left his home after the conference with the FBI.

  Despite Silas’s refusal to grant interviews, newspapers from across the state and from neighboring Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico ran pieces about the “Desert Solitaire murders.” They dug up a photo of him from the NAU website, where he was listed as professor emeritus. Several of the papers, including the Salt Lake Tribune, wrote background stories on the disappearance of his wife. By day three, however, most of the regional media had lost interest, turning their attention to a series of gruesome murders in Provo. Silas was able to return home.

  Within ten minutes of stepping into his house, his cell phone rang. It was Hayduke.

  “Does this mean you’re going to help me out?” asked Silas, by way of greeting.

  “Yeah, fuck, I’m going to help you,” grumbled Josh.

  “Can we get together? I want to try and reconstruct a map of where Penny was, what she was doing, right before she disappeared. I need to know what she was working on.”

  “Yeah, we can do that. But I’ve got a better idea. Meet me in Blanding tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “Because C. Thorn Smith, AKA Shithead, is going to be in his district office there making an announcement to his constituents that I think you might find interesting.”

  “I don’t like games, Josh. Get to the point please.”

  “Call me Hayduke.”

  “I don’t like games, Hayduke. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “The senator will be in town to announce some new project that involves a massive fucking oil and gas development project for the canyonlands. It’s going to be gigantic. You’ve heard that the feds have opened up a whole new slate of BLM lands for this sort of activity. They are calling it ‘energy fucking security.’ It’s harder to argue with, when they can paint you as a fucking terrorist for wanting to keep drilling rigs out of the canyons. The senator is the big champion for this in congress. He’s staked his political career on it. He’s going to be in this lonesome little corner of his district to make a big announcement tomorrow afternoon at 1:00 PM.”

  “Do we know what the announcement is going to be about?”

  “You’re Canadian, right?”

  “Yes, so?”

  “Ever heard of Canusa Petroleum Resources?”

  “No.”

  “Fuck, man, they are huge. This is the mega-machine that is devouring half the wilderness in the west. They do oil shale development, fracking, and traditional oil and gas projects, all across Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. Up in Canuk-ville too.”

  “Penelope would have—”

  “Fucking right Pen heard of them. She knew these motherfuckers, knew them well. Knew what they were up to. She had their number. Dug up all the dirt on them, but they’re good, really good. They have learned to burrow into the belly of the fucking beast, lay their little fucking eggs, and just wait. Now the eggs are about to hatch.”

  “You’re saying you think my wife was getting between these people and what they want?”

  “Pen got between a lot of people and what they want. A lot.”

  “Tomorrow at 1:00 PM?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Okay, I’ll see you there.”

  “I’ll see you first.”

  SILAS SAT IN the shade of the pergola and looked across the valley at the mesas and monuments beyond. He tried to unravel what it was that Hayduke had been telling him. His wife had gotten between a lot of people and what they want. A lot, Hayduke emphasized. The question seemed to be, had she come between the wrong person and what they wanted? He needed to learn more about Canusa Petroleum Resources and what exactly they were up to, and where.

  If a company like Canusa was seriously considering large-scale development across the canyon country, he reasoned, they would need to do a lot of legwork before they could make an announcement. They would need to hire someone, or some company, to help them clear all the regulatory hurdles, such as the National Environmental Policy Act and ARPA, before they could announce a project like this. And who better to hire, reasoned Silas, than Dead Horse Consulting.

  “MR. STROM IS in a meeting,” said the woman at the front desk.

  “This won’t take long. I’ll just wait.” He sat down in the reception area and read the six-month-old magazines. From time to time he noticed the receptionist looking up at him, and after an hour he inquired again. With an exasperated look, she picked up the phone and spoke quietly. A few moments later Strom appeared by the counter, looking considerably less interested in talking with Silas than he had the last time. Undaunted, Silas rose to shake his hand.

  “I only have a moment. Walk with me to my truck.” He was carrying a thick white binder with the Dead Horse logo on it and several rolled up maps.

  “I really just have one question for you, Mr. Strom.” They stepped out of the air-conditioned office just as a semi-truck was gearing down on the outskirts of town. Silas waited for the sound of its engine brakes to recede. “Is Dead Horse working with Canusa Petroleum Resources?”

  Strom stopped and looked at him. “You know, it’s very unusual for any consulting firm to disclose who its clients are. This information is considered a trade secret to some.”

  Silas studied Strom, who was getting into his car. “I’m going to take that as a yes, Mr. Strom.”

  “You can take it however you want.”

  “Is Canusa exploring in the Canyon Rims region?”

  “I have to get to a meeting, Mr. Pearson.”

  “They want to drill on Flat Iron Mesa, don’t they? And Hatch Point and Behind the Rocks?”

  “Good luck with your search . . .” Strom closed the door and turned over the ignition. He didn’t wait for Silas to step away before he drove off.

  Silas stood in the parking lot in the searing heat. One thing he knew, and knew well, was maps. A quick glance at the topographical sheets that Strom carried rolled up with this binder told him that they were one-degree sheets covering the vast, unprotected region on the eastern side of Canyonlands National Park known as Canyon Rims.

  SILAS STEPPED OUT of his car at the San Juan County municipal building on South Main Street, Monticello. He had done the hour-long drive from Moab with the air conditioner cranked up high, the maps under Jared Strom’s arm emblazoned in his mind. He walked quickly up the steps of the building and went inside.

  “Hot one,” said the clerk from behind the desk, not looking up.

  “I’ll say.”

  “What can I do you for?”

  “I’m wondering about looking at land records.”

  “Municipal, state, or federal?”

  “BLM lands.”

  “Federal. What quadrants?”

  “The Canyon Rims area.”

  “Hold on a minute.” She stood and went through a wooden door and came back with a map tube.

  “If I give you a quadrant, can you tell me who has applied for any kind of development permit?”

  “If it’s come through the county, I can. You’ll need to go to the BLM office in Moab to look at any environmental assessments.”

  She opened the map tubes and pulled out the one-degree sheets. She placed a couple o
f paperweights on them to keep them from curling up. County boundaries and other things were marked.

  “Right here.” He pointed to a quadrant on the rim above the Hatch Wash ruins that he had been within days before.

  “Let me look, hon.” She sat down at her keyboard and typed in some numbers. “Okay, let’s see. Well, I don’t have anything for that area.”

  “You sure?”

  She looked at him. “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Can you check the surrounding quads?”

  She typed again. A few minutes passed. “Okay, if I get about five miles back, to the south, and another five miles, to the north, then we get some applications for exploration.”

  “Does it say who? The name of the company?” Silas was holding his breath.

  “All I get is a number, hon.”

  “Can I have it, please?” He pulled a sheet of scrap paper toward him and wrote it down. “Is that the number of a company?”

  “Must be,” she said.

  He thanked her, and perplexed, stepped back out into the midday sun. If there were no applications to drill in the immediate vicinity of the ruins in Hatch Wash, Silas simply couldn’t see how Canusa’s development applications could in any way be linked to Kayah Wisechild and Kelly Williams, or his wife, for that matter. The existing applications for exploration—for seismic testing, where the petroleum company would send shock waves into the ground and listen for oil or gas deposits far beneath the earth—were for important and beautiful areas, the Back of the Rocks region and the vast Hatch Point mesa. These were nearly ten miles from the ruins in the box canyon. Still, he would need to track down the players behind the numbered company to determine if they were connected with Canusa.

  Back in his car, he let the motor idle as the air-conditioning kicked in. He had convinced himself that Kayah Wisechild and Kelly Williams’s involvement in the discovery of the Hatch ruins was connected to their murders. He knew when he held this proposition up to the light that it was thin, based more on intuition than evidence. His own experience in Hatch suggested that he was getting too close to the truth for someone’s comfort. But who?

  If it was the case that the murders were related to the ruins, then why wasn’t Peter Anton also dead? The only explanation he could come up with was that somehow Anton was involved. Had the FBI made that same connection? Why, then, wasn’t Peter Anton behind bars? He would have to find out. He would make a call to Katie Rain later in the day.

  On the drive back to Moab, something else occurred to him. If Kayah Wisechild or Kelly Williams had learned something about the Hatch ruins, had they left anything behind that might lead him to what they had discovered? He didn’t know anything about Williams, and would have to find out. He did know Darla Wisechild. He would see if Kayah had given her anything that might be helpful. He picked up his phone and dialed Roger Goodwin’s number.

  “Roger, it’s Silas.”

  “Dr. Pearson, how are you today? I read in the local newspaper that you’re developing quite the reputation across the Four Corners.”

  “I try not to read the papers,” he lied.

  “What’s next? Open a curio shop on Main Street in Moab? Souvenir T-shirts, ‘I found a body in Arches National Park?’”

  “Funny. Listen, does Darla Wisechild have a phone? A cell?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “Can you give me the number?”

  “I can. What’s up?”

  “I want to know if Kayah sent her anything before she died.”

  “Do you want me to run over there for you? I’m out on Third Mesa later today.”

  “Would you?”

  “Yeah, no problem. What are you looking for?”

  Silas told him the story of the ruins and the kiva. Goodwin whistled, “Jesus, Silas. I need to come and check them out. This could be a class one find.”

  “If it isn’t, it’s close. There’s not a lot of art, but the ruins themselves are in good shape. They look like they’ve been totally cleared out of artifacts. Peter Anton told me that they were brimming when he went through them, but they’re barren now.”

  “Does the BLM know about them?” asked Goodwin.

  “I don’t know. Anton told me that Dead Horse put a lid on the find after he made his report. There’s no paperwork on it either. He told me that he was doing work for Jacob Isaiah at the time. I’ve also got wind that a big oil giant called Canusa wants to drill in the same area, though farther away from Hatch Wash, up on the Point, on Flat Iron, and in the Back of the Rocks region. It’s ten miles away at the closest point. I’m still looking for the connection—”

  “If Anton claimed that the ruins were thick with artifacts when he went through them three years ago, and they are cleared out now, I’d suggest you go back to the source.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Silas.

  “Artifacts from ruins of that nature could be worth thousands, maybe tens of thousands of dollars. More if there was anything like a woven basket preserved there.”

  “You think that Peter Anton cleared them out?”

  “Maybe.”

  “He could have killed the girl and this Williams fellow to cover his tracks.”

  “I didn’t say that,”

  “No, but it’s a possibility.”

  “I’ll run over to see Darla Wisechild this afternoon. I’ll call you if I learn anything.”

  “Thanks, Roger. I owe you.”

  “I’ll collect the next time I’m in town. I hear you’re quite the chef,” said Roger. Silas laughed and they hung up.

  SILAS STOPPED AT the Red Rock Canyon bookstore on his way through Moab. He sat in the back at his computer and searched for the name Kelly Williams. It returned more than 8 million results. He narrowed it down: “Missing Kelly Williams.” He found what he was looking for at the top of the page. The first three or four stories were about the recovery of the man’s body at Grand View Point. After that, the stories went back over two years, and he slowly read through them.

  It turned out that there was more to Kelly Williams than a simple undergraduate student on a dig as a summer job. Williams had been twice charged with grave robbing under ARPA. Once he’d been charged with disturbing an ancient Pueblo site in the Grand Gulch area, west of Monticello. A second time he’d been accused of pilfering a grave on the Navajo Reservation. In both cases the district attorney didn’t have enough evidence that Williams was directly involved to win a conviction, so the case was dropped. What was Williams doing working on a highly sensitive site like the Hatch Canyon ruin?

  Silas began to wonder when the site had been cleared out. Peter Anton mentioned hundreds of artifacts. Were they stolen before or after Williams and Wisechild were killed? Did Williams play a role and somehow pay for it with his life? If Williams and Wisechild had been involved with the grave robbing—which is taboo for the Hopi—and paid for it with their lives, there might not be any connection with Canusa, with Jacob Isaiah, or with Penelope. He knew that this shouldn’t bother him, but it did. He wanted there to be a connection.

  The stories on Williams mentioned the charges against him only in the context of his disappearance and recent unearthing. He would have to look back through the records in San Juan and Coconino Counties, where the charges had been laid, to determine the timeline. He also decided that it was time to press Peter Anton for more information. Cortez was only an hour and a half from Blanding, so before going to Senator Smith’s announcement tomorrow, he would pay Anton a visit.

  The bell to his shop sounded. He looked up to see Jacob Isaiah walking down the center aisle, looking at the shelves packed with books as if he were simply browsing. Silas stood up.

  “Sit, sit,” said Isaiah, “I don’t need no help picking out a title.” Silas remained standing.

  “I understand,” said Isaiah, as his stroll down the shelves brought him to the desk, “that you went and got yourself in another heap of trouble, Pearson.”

  Silas opened his mouth to speak, but Isaiah
cut him off with a pointy finger in his face.

  “That’s a nasty-looking cut, Silas, nasty. Now, what were you up to this time that got you all cut up like you’ve been in a knife fight with a Mexican?”

  Silas closed his mouth. He wasn’t going to play this game.

  “Poking your nose into the wrong people’s business, it seems.”

  “And what business is that, Jacob?”

  “Business is business. That’s what your wife never could understand. Seems like you’re going down that same sorry path, nothing but trouble. Look at you! You look like something that the dog up-chucked in the yard.” Flecks of white saliva formed at the corners of his mouth.

  “Jacob, I don’t have time for your insults today.”

  “Maybe you have time for this, smart guy,” Isaiah barked, poking Silas in the chest with his finger. “A warning. You think that what you got in your professor head is going to help you find your wife. I’m here to tell you that’s not the case. Nothing you know means what you think it does. Your wife ran off, plain and simple. There’s nothing more to it. Not a goddamned thing. So get your head out of your ass and everybody else’s business. Leave well enough alone.”

  “You seem awfully agitated, Jacob, for a man who doesn’t have anything to hide.”

  “I’ve got nothing to hide, Pearson. I do have a lot to lose, and I’m not going to let you get in the way of a good business proposition that’s going to put a lot of people around here to work, and put some money into this economy—”

  “And into your pockets?”

  “Maybe you don’t like to make money up in Canada. Maybe you’re all a bunch of fucking communists with your free health care and your socialist ways. Down here in America, we believe in the free market. We don’t like people like you, or that wife of yours, poking your nose into our business. Fucking foreigners, Mexicans, Canadians, you’re all the fucking same. Now your wife has gone off, and that’s all there is to it. Them others, well, they had a run-in with some bad men, maybe. Lots of people on the road who would be happy to throttle you or bang you on the head with a stone as soon as look at you; sick people, sick times. I’m telling you, Pearson, this has got nothing to do with your wife, so you go back to your hiking and leave us to do our business. You got it?” He poked Silas with his finger again, his eyes wide and wild.