The Same River Twice

by Stephen Legault

  “What are you talking about?”

  “This project needs water. They need it for the resort and they need it for the marina that Paul Love wants to build, and yet you have been silent on that matter. You used to be a booster for Lake Powell, and five years ago you clammed up on the matter.”

  “I haven’t! Gentlemen, you mistake a few letters for something that actually has my undivided attention. My aides write letters on my behalf a dozen times a day. If we failed to pen one to the Bureau of Reclamation insisting that they refill Glen Canyon Reservoir, then that’s an oversight we shall have to remedy. Now, I have to get to Monticello to make another presentation on the vital matter of water in this great state. Excuse me.”

  The senator walked off toward a waiting SUV. Two aides accompanied him. Even from a distance Silas could hear the aides being dressed down for not coming to the senator’s rescue.

  “You don’t need any fancy training to tell he was lying.” Silas watched the senator’s vehicle speed off.

  “How can you tell?”

  “I didn’t have to tell him that the letter to Reclamation should have advocated for refilling Lake Powell. For him it was pretty much top of mind. I wonder what’s really behind Senator Smith’s current interest in water.”

  17

  THE HEAT IN MOAB WAS fierce. A few cool days earlier in the month of October had given way to a resurgence of autumn heat; when Silas and Robbie drove into the Spanish Valley at the end of the day the temperature was still ninety degrees. Thunderheads rested on top of the Poison Spider Mesa like dark clots of soiled cotton. In the distance, virga trailed behind a bank of cumulus clouds over Arches National Park, the water vapor never reaching the ground.

  “We’re not going to your place?”

  “Got to pick up some groceries and some beer first. I also thought I’d check and see if Jacob Isaiah was in his office.”

  “You don’t think you’ve had enough for one day?”

  “I’m not some decrepit old man—”

  “That’s not what I mean, Dad. Don’t you think you’ve stirred the pot enough?”

  “Not until I get some answers.”

  After shopping, Silas drove north into the downtown.

  “You mind if I check on the store?”

  “Only if there’s a cold Dr Pepper in the fridge.”

  They stopped at the store, Silas checking his email.

  “Why don’t you have a computer at your house?” Robbie sipped his soda and browsed the titles on the shelves.

  “Same reason I don’t have a phone. Don’t need one.”

  “How many books you got in here, Dad?”

  “About seven thousand.”

  “It’s nice. The store, I mean. The wood beams, the old adobe, the lighting. It’s tasteful.”

  “I tried to imagine what Penelope would have done.”

  “She would like it, Dad.”

  Silas threw Robbie the keys and left to walk the four blocks to Jacob Isaiah’s office. “Pick me up in an hour?”

  “I might go and have a beer at Eddie’s.”

  Silas walked through the late afternoon sunshine, the heat rising in waves off the asphalt. He caught Jacob Isaiah just closing up his office. “Good evening, Jacob.”

  “Not tonight, Pearson, I’m in no mood for the likes of you.”

  “And to think that just last week you were wishing me well and giving me condolences for my wife’s death.”

  “Well, that was then.”

  “And this is now. I’ve spent the last week out in Escalante.”

  “You don’t say. What a surprise. Just like I said, you can’t leave well enough alone.”

  “How is your investment in the Escalante Resort doing, Jacob?”

  “That’s a private business matter, Pearson; it’s no interest of yours.”

  “But it seems that it is. Did you know that Eleanor Barry is being investigated by the FBI?” It was pure supposition, but so far he had been able to make it work to his advantage.

  “That’s ridiculous, Pearson. Once more, you have no goddamned idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I? How is it that the FBI knew I’d been out to talk with her? Maybe she phoned them, but if she felt as if I were harassing her, she’d call the sheriff’s office, don’t you think? Get a faster response. But sure enough, not two hours after Ms. Barry and I had a lovely chat—our second, I might point out—on her front porch, along comes the FBI to warn me away from her. Why do you think that is?” Silas was walking alongside Isaiah down Main Street.

  “You had better leave this alone, Pearson.”

  “Or what? You’ll pop me in the head? Like this?” Silas poked his own forehead between the eyes. “You own a gun, Jacob?”

  “I own plenty of guns. If you don’t stop badgering me, Pearson, I’ll have good reason to use them. The district judge for this region is a golfing friend; he’ll be happy to see it as self-defense.”

  “Is that how you justified killing Penelope? Self-defense? Was she attacking you? Was she disrupting your plans to build another resort in the middle of nowhere? Did she come between you and the American dream?”

  “You’re fucking crazy, Pearson, you know that?” Isaiah crossed the street to the plaza where Eddie McStiff’s beer parlor was.

  “How much are you in for?”

  “None of your business. Now,” Jacob stopped at the door of McStiff’s. “This is a members-only club, and you are not a member.”

  “I am, actually. I own a business in town; I’m a member in good standing. Tell me, Jacob, did you do it yourself or have someone else do it?”

  “Get the fuck away from me, Pearson!” Jacob pushed past Silas, out of the blazing heat and into the cool of the bar.

  Silas followed him. “Penelope was threatening your project. She had you over a barrel on water supply, didn’t she? There was nothing you could do. You couldn’t make your case to Senator Smith; he wasn’t listening. For the first time ever, he wasn’t listening to you. Why was that, Jacob?” Silas was right behind him, so close that he could smell the man’s perspiration.

  Jacob wheeled on him. Despite being in his seventies he was still quick and strong. His fist caught Silas in the chin and Silas careened backwards. Several patrons in the bar jumped up and a woman shouted. Silas caught himself before he fell. He felt hot and his vision seemed to narrow. In front of him was an old man, his hair now wild and in disarray, his face a mass of disjointed lines. Silas started to lunge toward him when someone caught him around the middle and yelled “Dad!”

  Silas stopped. Robbie was grappling with him. Jacob Isaiah pushed his hair back into place and whipped the spittle from his mouth with the back of his hand. “If I ever see you again, Pearson …” He let his words trail off into the quiet bar.

  “What, Jacob, you’ll kill me? Like you did Penelope?”

  “Dad, let’s go.”

  Silas relaxed and Robbie let go of his father. The patrons in the bar slowly drifted back into conversation.

  Jacob Isaiah spat on the floor at Silas’s feet, wiped his mouth again, and walked into the darkness.

  Silas and Robbie walked back out into the heat. “Holy shit, are you okay?”

  Silas wiped his own mouth; his hand came away bloody. “I’m alright.”

  “What were you going to do?”

  “I don’t know. I just saw red. It was like in some cheap paperback when the protagonist loses control.”

  “Have you ever been in a fight?”

  “Do sternly worded arguments over the meaning of allegory in contemporary Western literature count?”

  “No, they do not.”

  18

  THERE WAS A BUM ON the steps of the Red Rock Canyon Bookstore when Silas and Robbie arrived the next morning.

  “That’s not—?”

  “It is,” said Silas when they stepped out of the Outback.

  “Holy Christ, would you look at you!” roared Hayduke as he stood up.

 
Silas extended his hand. “Good morning, Josh.”

  “Hey, yeah, good morning to you too!” Hayduke embraced Silas and lifted him off his feet. He put the man down and turned to look at Robbie.

  “Josh, this is my son, Robbie.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. Sweet Jesus, I’ve heard a lot about you!” Hayduke extended his hand and Robbie shook it. Hayduke held his hand tightly.

  “And I’ve heard a lot about you,” said Robbie, pulling his hand away.

  “Name’s Hayduke. As in George Washington Hayduke.”

  “So I should just call you George?”

  “No, fuck no, just Hayduke will do.”

  “You look different,” Silas said, unlocking the door. “You got a haircut and trimmed your beard.”

  “Yeah, had to. Hospital.” He tapped his leg.

  “And how is your leg?”

  “It’s good! Real good. I can run, even. Not for long, or very hard, but then I wasn’t ever much for sprinting. I’m slow and steady.”

  Silas stepped into the bookstore, followed by Robbie and Hayduke. “You got any beer?”

  “It’s ten in the morning.” Silas sat down at his desk.

  “Shit, already? We got to get started.”

  “How long were you waiting out there?”

  “I don’t know, all night I guess. I slept under the cottonwood.”

  “I have neighbors, Hayduke.”

  “Nice ones too. Gave me coffee this morning.”

  Silas shook his head. “Not that I’m not happy to see you, but what are you doing here?”

  “Well, my leg’s all better, and it’s time to get back in the game, I guess.”

  “Josh, you heard about—”

  “About Pen? Fuck yeah, of course. Shit, I’m really sorry. They had newspapers and the web and everything where I was.”

  “Where was that?” asked Robbie.

  “I was in a hospital, man, didn’t your old man tell you about that?”

  Robbie just nodded.

  “I got here as quick as I could. Thought you could use some help tracking down the motherfucker who did this to her. I didn’t know you already had a sidekick.”

  “Son, not a sidekick,” said Robbie.

  “Whatever. I been along on this ride from the start, man. Silas here found me up in the Mante LaSals and we’ve been a team ever since. Where you been?”

  “At school, in Vancouver.”

  “What you study? Fine arts?”

  “Criminology.”

  “A real live sleuth. You find the killer yet?”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “What you got so far?” Hayduke turned to look at Silas for his answer.

  Robbie filled Hayduke in.

  “That fucker, Love, is still on the lam?”

  “He’s out waiting for his trial. Didn’t you get a notice to appear? You must have been called as a witness.”

  “Who knows? I don’t have a mailing address. I haven’t seen any US Marshalls waiting to escort me to the trial.”

  Robbie continued, and for five minutes Hayduke nodded, paced, and ranted about developers ruining the Southwest and how Lake Powell was the foulest, most hideous monstrosity ever created by man. “I mean, have you seen Glen Canyon? Have you?”

  “Only pictures,” admitted Silas.

  “Have you?” asked Robbie.

  “No. The fuckers stole it. From me, from you, from your father, from all of us. Me and Pen were going to get it back.”

  “But isn’t it back now? Most of it, I mean?” asked Robbie.

  “No!” Hayduke roared and slammed his fist down on a bookshelf. Several books hit the floor. “No,” he said more calmly as he bent awkwardly to pick them up. “There is no compromise on Glen Canyon. That’s how we lost; that’s how they got it in the first place. There’s no compromise on getting it back.”

  Hayduke put the books back on the shelf, backwards and upside down. When he had paced back and forth a few times inside the store like a wild creature, he said, “We going to catch this fucker. You really think it’s Isaiah?”

  “He’s pretty pissed.” Silas rubbed his mouth.

  “That old fart actually hit you?” asked Hayduke. Silas nodded sheepishly.

  “We need to figure out why,” said Robbie.

  “Greed, man, plain and simple.”

  “Maybe, but I would like to find the paper trail. Maybe it was Isaiah who, you know …” said Robbie.

  “Pulled the trigger?” blurted Hayduke.

  Robbie winced.

  “Fuck, sorry, I’m such an oaf.”

  “Glad you said it. But yes, maybe Isaiah did it, but who else was involved?” asked Robbie.

  “That chick in Escalante?” Hayduke was still pacing.

  “Maybe Eleanor Barry was involved. But I want to know what Senator Smith is hiding,” said Silas.

  “Well, shit, let’s go and put the hurt on him!”

  “We cornered him yesterday. He’s surprisingly cagey on the matter of Lake Powell.”

  “Maybe he has an ounce of common sense,” said Hayduke, grinning.

  “What do you mean?” asked Silas.

  “Nothing—just that this guy can’t be for absolutely everything that is evil in the world, can he?”

  “I wouldn’t put it past him.” Silas turned off his computer and stood up.

  “So, what now?” repeated Hayduke.

  “I’m going to Salt Lake in the morning,” said Robbie.

  “And I’m going to spend another day or two around here watching Isaiah, and then head back to Escalante. We can meet up there.”

  “Yeah, that sounds good! Let’s celebrate tonight! The three amigos! I’ll get some steaks. You got a BBQ out at your place?”

  “Sure. A grill, at least.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Yeah, perfect,” said Robbie.

  19

  HAYDUKE WENT TO GET STEAKS for the BBQ, and after sharing his concerns over Hayduke’s mental state, Robbie said he was going to dig around the county office to see if he could learn more about connections between Jacob Isaiah and Senator Smith. That left Silas alone for the first time that day to contemplate matters. He spent the afternoon in the bookstore absorbed in thought.

  Jacob Isaiah was an angry man. His anger seemed beyond what might be fueled by frustration with an environmentalist bent on protecting landscapes he wanted to develop; it seemed personal. Silas looked at his watch. It was almost six. By now Isaiah would have left his Main Street office and retired to his ranch on the plateau south of town. Silas rubbed his chin and felt the raw bruise there. He had pushed things; he had been pushing things since learning that Penelope had been murdered—no, executed. He would keep pushing things until he found out who killed her.

  THE SUN WAS setting when Silas stood by the back door to the two-storey Main Street building that housed Isaiah’s office. He felt a wave of déjà-vu; it had been a year ago that he had broken into Senator Smith’s office. He had learned an awful truth that night, and it had nearly gotten him killed. Silas felt a wave of nausea flood over him and wondered if maybe he should just drive out to his place in the Castle Valley and forget about this. Instead he pulled a crowbar from his bag and looked around the quiet alley, then jammed it into the frame of the door. Using a mallet, he pounded the crowbar into the loose door jamb and pried the door open. The lock popped and pieces of metal and wood fell to the ground. With another cautious look around Silas slipped into the building. He fished his headlamp from his bag and headed up the stairs that led to the second floor.

  The building was old and the floor creaked. Silas hoped that the shopkeeper in the art gallery below wouldn’t wonder who was using the back entrance at this time of night. He reached the top and quickly found the entrance to Isaiah’s land development office behind a locked, large, glass-paneled metal door with Isaiah’s name stenciled on them. Silas used the same technique to open this door. He didn’t expect an alarm and didn’t hear one. He returned his
tools to his backpack and stepped inside.

  The first thing he realized was that he could hear everything from the shop below. There was soft music playing, a piece from Kristen Larsen’s Canyonlands Suite. He could hear the owner of the art gallery—a man named Lars Gorman—talking with a patron. It sounded like they were in the room with him. He walked on the balls of his booted feet into the room.

  The room was sparsely furnished. There were only two desks and a large, cluttered conference table at the center of the space. Two windows adorned with plastic venetian blinds looked out onto Main Street. Even though Jacob Isaiah was one of the wealthiest men in Grand County, and in the top one hundred in Utah, his frugality—downright stinginess—was legendary. The office appeared not to have been refurnished since the 1970s.

  The two desks were on opposite sides of the room. Silas first went to the one on the southern wall and quickly determined that it belonged to Isaiah’s assistant. There were two framed photographs of smiling children on the desk, and Silas knew Isaiah was childless. He quickly rifled through the desk anyway, looking for a file or paperwork that might contain something on Penelope. The computer on the desk was at least five years old and Silas dared not turn it on; if it was anything like his own ancient desktop machine it would wake the dead.

  He quietly crossed to the other side of the room to Jacob’s desk. He heard the shop owner below laugh loudly. The man continued to speak and Silas started breathing again. He reached the desk; it was sparse. No photos; no computer. Just a desk blotter, a phone, a few notepads and pens. The only personal item on the desk was an award from the Moab Chamber of Commerce for businessperson of the year. Silas suppressed a laugh. He opened the drawers in Isaiah’s desk one at a time. He did it slowly so they wouldn’t make any noise.

  In the first two drawers he found nothing but more pens, most of them taken from hotel rooms in small towns around the state. He found a few from the same hotel he and Robbie had stayed at in Escalante.

  In the third drawer he found a set of files, neatly hung in a file rack, each bearing a label typed on an old-fashioned typewriter. He fanned through them; each file was half an inch thick and bore the name of a project Isaiah was involved with. He found the project file from Hatch Wash, south of town, where Silas had discovered plans for another of Isaiah’s elaborate resorts. Then he found the Escalante project file. He pulled it from the drawer and opened it on the desk. Neatly typed pages of notes, a copy of the summary of the project description submitted to the BLM, pages of correspondence. All of this confirmed what Silas already knew: this was Jacob Isaiah’s coup de grâce, his crowning achievement, and it would be the death stroke for a wild and beautiful landscape. Except for a few heretofore unmentioned details—Silas found particular irony in the proposal to create a summer festival at Dance Hall Rock—there was little new in the file. A short letter from Senator Smith explained that for the time being all discussions on water withdrawals from the Colorado River were on hold while the Bureau of Reclamation discussed the future of storage in Lake Powell.