The Same River Twice

by Stephen Legault

  40

  A FLASH OF LIGHTNING ILLUMINATED the Straight Cliffs to the west of the Hole in the Rock Road, and a few seconds later thunder rolled across Ten Mile Flat. The glare from the lightning brightened the road in front of him for a moment. He could see clearly the way forward was no easier than the three miles he had already walked. The road was a quagmire of mud, a foot deep in places. When he had crossed it ten minutes earlier there had been two feet of water pooling in Cottonwood Wash.

  Silas Pearson was soaked, shivering, and walking nearly blind through the downpour. Penelope’s prized journal was stuffed under his shirt and kept mostly dry by his coat. He was caked in mud; he’d slipped twice near Halfway Hollow and was now dragging himself through the gloom. Rage fueled his march. He would have lain down and waited the storm out back at the campsite had it not been for the boiling anger he now felt. He had no idea where Hayduke had gone, but he knew that he had to get out of the Monument and if that meant walking all the way back to Escalante he would do it.

  He had done it before. For almost five years he’d been tracking her last movements across the Colorado Plateau. It had all been for naught. He thought that she had gone off in search of sublime beauty and instead she had been killed in cold blood. And by this man, this caricature of an Edward Abbey persona, someone who Silas had come to trust, if only reluctantly.

  Why had Hayduke spent so much of the last year and a half befriending him? Why had he invested so much time helping him find Penelope? And the others? Darcy McFarland and Kiel Pearce?

  The answer seemed obvious now: deception. All this time Josh Charleston had been leading Silas away from the truth, not toward it. Silas wanted answers, and that desire kept him walking.

  He had covered another slow mile and was trudging through standing water on the road from one of the forks of Harris Wash when he saw headlights in the distance.

  He checked his watch. It was two in the morning. Who would be out in the Monument at that time of night? He slowed as the lights grew closer. Maybe Hayduke had changed his mind and returned. If the young man was coming back there was only one possible reason: to kill Silas.

  Silas stepped off the road and ducked down behind a clump of rabbit brush. The headlights belonged to a heavy vehicle grinding through the muck in low range at five miles per hour. It could be Hayduke’s Jeep.

  When the vehicle was alongside Silas’s hiding location, Silas could see the insignia on the door. Bureau of Land Management: the stewards of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. Silas jumped up and waved his arms and the vehicle came to a stop. The passenger window was rolled down.

  “You Dr. Pearson?”

  “Yeah!”

  The door opened and a uniformed woman wearing a slicker stepped out of the vehicle. “Better hop in, we need to get you back to Escalante.”

  “I’m covered in mud.”

  “It will wash. Get in, we’ve got some news we need to discuss with you.”

  Silas got into the backseat of the pickup. The driver started the process of turning around on the mud-stricken road and the ranger twisted in her seat to look at Silas.

  “I’ll get right to the point, Dr. Pearson. Your son, Robert, has been abducted. We believe a man named Josh Charleston, who we understand to be an acquaintance of yours, is responsible. He’s got a four-hour head start on us at this time. Is there anything you can tell us about Mr. Charleston that might help us find your son?”

  Silas sat silently for a long time. Water ran from his hair down his face. He was streaked with mud.

  “Dr. Pearson? Is there anything you can tell us?”

  Silas told them about the game Charleston had introduced.

  “Hayduke Lives? Jesus, that was a terrible book,” the BLM ranger driving said.

  “My son is now at the center of its plot.”

  41

  “THIS MIGHT BE OF SOME help.” Silas was in his hotel room with Eugene Nielsen and Katie Rain. The mobile command unit for the FBI was being established at the BLM headquarters just outside of town. Silas had quickly showered off most of the mud from the Monument and changed into dry clothing.

  He placed Penelope’s journal on the table in front of them. All three of them stared at it for a moment. “This is my wife’s journal. It’s a record of all the places that she visited in the Southwest. It’s also a list of locations she hoped to include in a presidential proclamation to protect the American Southwest. She was going to call it the Edward Abbey National Monument.”

  Nielsen smirked. “That wouldn’t have gone over all that well with the western delegation of Congress.”

  “Penelope was a pragmatist; she would have found a way to make it work.”

  “How do you think this might help?” asked Katie.

  Silas flipped the journal open and pointed to the notes scribbled on the inside cover. There were water stains now, and the pages had started to buckle from the dampness. He tapped his finger on the marker-scrawled words Call Hayduke. “That’s how I found him in the first place.”

  Nielsen pulled on a pair of latex gloves and spun the book around to look at it. He flipped open the first few pages and read them. He then went back to the front page and read the other notes jotted there.

  “If I sent this to Quantico they could spend some time analyzing the handwriting, but I don’t need to. This isn’t how you found Hayduke; it’s how he found you. This note—Call Hayduke—wasn’t a note your wife wrote to remind herself to call her buddy. It was a note that he wrote inside the journal to get you to call him.”

  The color drained from Silas’s face.

  “Silas, how did you find this journal? Have you had it ever since your wife went missing?”

  “No, I found it a year and a half ago.” He told them the harrowing story of finding the journal hidden in Hatch Wash.

  “So you thought Hayduke would be able to help you find your wife, and after you escaped with the journal, you called him up.” Nielsen was flipping through the pages.

  “That’s right. I needed to find someone from Penelope’s life before she disappeared that might help me locate her. I didn’t even know this journal existed! It made me start to think: what else don’t I know? Hayduke had so many answers.”

  “Lies, Dr. Pearson. Josh Charleston had so many lies.”

  “That’s becoming plain now. Hayduke—he took Penelope’s journal from her after he killed her.”

  “Dr. Pearson, we searched your home and it wasn’t there. Where was it?”

  “At my lawyer’s; at Ken’s place.”

  Nielsen nodded thoughtfully. “If we’d had this a year and a half ago—”

  Rain put a hand on Nielsen’s arm. “Eugene, not now.”

  Nielsen shrugged. “I’m going to get this up to Salt Lake. We have a forensic tech there who might be able to do some work with it. Is there anything else in it that might help?”

  “This was all about the Colorado River,” said Silas. “It was all about Glen Canyon Dam and Lake Powell. Penny, Darcy, Kiel, Tabby, and Josh, they were a team. They didn’t work for any conservation group; they had a plan of their own. They wanted to drain Lake Powell.” Silas told them everything he had learned. “They had photos—Tabby took them, he was a PI—of Smith with Eleanor Barry. They were … compromising. They would have thrown a monkey wrench in Smith’s career; maybe kept him from winning his party’s nomination for the big ticket. Penelope gave copies to the Salt Lake Tribune reporter Kresge but she wouldn’t let him publish them. Then Kresge died in a car accident. Brake lines failed. Doesn’t that sound like what happened to me on Comb Ridge last year?”

  Both Rain and Nielsen nodded.

  “I thought that Smith had them all killed.”

  “I can see why,” said Rain. “But now you think that Hayduke killed them all?”

  “Kresge is still up in the air,” said Nielsen. “Our Provo office is going back over records of that accident we’ve obtained from the local sheriff’s department. I like Hayduk
e for the others. Tabby is still officially missing, but Pearce and McFarland are in Hayduke’s column.”

  “But the way all these people were killed was so different. Don’t serial murders like to kill the same way over and over?”

  “Hayduke is different, Silas. He’s not a serial killer first and foremost. He’s pathological. Likely a sociopath or even a psychopath, but he’s not killing randomly. He’s using whatever means he has most available when the opportunity arises. Where did Hayduke come up with a supply of chloroform?” asked Katie.

  “I think I know. His parents are dentists. I bet he liberated some from them. They must have had a supply left over from when it was used during root canals. If you check I bet you’ll find that some is missing,” said Silas.

  “We’ll get someone to look into it. Right now our priority is getting your son back, Dr. Pearson.”

  That brought Silas back to the moment.

  “Silas,” said Rain. “Where do you think Hayduke is going?”

  “I don’t know. I doubt he’s trying to get out of the country or anything like that. And I doubt he’s going to Salt Lake or some other city. This guy really believes that he’s George Washington Hayduke.”

  “You’re a literature professor. Where would Hayduke take someone?”

  Silas smiled wanly. “You know, before all of this with my wife, I hated Edward Abbey. Now I’ve read all of his books twenty times trying to figure out where my wife went missing. I know them pretty well. Or at least I thought I did. Turns out I didn’t.”

  “You better hope you know them pretty well, Dr. Pearson, because right now we’re in a race against time to find your son.”

  42

  IT WAS AGREED THAT KATIE Rain would stay with Silas in his hotel room until an FBI technician could set up a phone trace on the landline into the room. They would wait to see if Hayduke called. Agent Nielsen left to go to the mobile command post at the BLM offices.

  “Do you need anything?” Katie asked.

  “Besides the obvious?”

  “We’ll get him back, Silas.”

  Silas just nodded. “I feel like an idiot.”

  “Don’t—”

  “He hoodwinked me.”

  “Not just you. All of us. We had him in our Monticello office last year, remember? We had his vehicle. I bet when we find that Jeep and measure the tires we’ll get a match with the tracks that led up the Island in the Sky from Potash. Remember we found a half-dozen or so sets of tracks? I bet that Jeep is one of them. Don’t beat yourself up. Taylor and Nielsen are good agents and they missed it too.”

  “I can’t lose him, Katie. I need to call his mother. She’s going to kill me.”

  “You need to keep your room phone line open.” Katie dug out her cell. “Use my phone.”

  “I should be out there looking for him. I found him once tonight …” Silas looked at his watch. It was four in the morning. “Last night I mean. I can find him again.”

  “Silas, you need to stay put. You can’t go running all over the place. If you do, we’re going to have to divert resources from the search to find you. Do you understand?”

  Silas reached his hand out for her cell. “I think I’ll make the call from outside. The rain’s slowing down. I do this outside, you won’t have to listen to her yelling at me.”

  Silas walked to the door. It was cool outside and the desert smelled like rain. It was an odd juxtaposition. Silas opened the phone function on Katie’s iPhone and queued up the keypad. He noted on the desktop that there were unread text messages.

  He dialed the familiar number of his ex-wife in Vancouver, Canada. She answered after three rings. “Who is this?”

  “Terri, it’s Silas. Yes, I know; I’m aware of what time it is. Listen, stop for a minute. We need to talk.”

  HE STOOD ON the balcony of the second floor of the motel for a long time after he hung up the phone. Just what he needed: his ex-wife would be on the first flight into Salt Lake that morning. But could he blame her? He knew that he would do the same thing.

  Dawn was approaching and Silas hadn’t slept. Somewhere, out there in the desert, there was a madman holding his son hostage. He hoped he was still holding his son. What did Hayduke want? In the sequel to The Monkey Wrench Gang, called Hayduke Lives, four crusaders from the first novel reunite to carry on in a comical parody of their first more genuine adventures. Abbey had as much as admitted in his published journals—Confessions of a Barbarian—that he wrote it to make some fast cash for his family after he had been told he was dying. Silas couldn’t blame him for that.

  What had Hayduke meant by “game”?

  Katie Rain’s cell phone buzzed. He thought it might be Terri calling back, but it was a text message. Silas looked back toward the room, then opened the message.

  You haven’t responded, the text read. It was from a Utah area code.

  Silas thumbed down to the message before it in chronological order and read it.

  On your feet! It’s Hayduke, Dr. Rain. This message is for Silas. I fucked up his phone and I’m betting that you two are getting cozy right now. Here are my instructions. Neither you or Silas are to inform the FBI or any other law enforcement agencies of this message, or involve them in any way. If you do, I will kill Robbie Pearson. Text me when you’re ready to start our adventure.

  Silas felt all of the blood drain from his face. His hands began to shake. He tried to use the keyboard on the phone’s surface to craft a response. After several tries he got something typed.

  This is Silas. I’m ready. He hit send.

  He waited a moment and another message appeared on the phone.

  It took you long enough. I thought I might have to just kill Rob now instead of playing our game. The Chase Begins: “The bridge still stands, apparently essentially intact, arched above the flood, above the trench of the darkening canyon.” You’ll find what you are looking for there. No FBI or Robbie dies.

  SILAS STARED AT the phone in his hand. He knew the reference. Hayduke was directing him to the bridge over White Canyon. The line was from The Monkey Wrench Gang. The White Canyon Bridge was the Gang’s final target. They had intended to melt the girders that supported the bridge, but failed, and ended up on the run from the San Juan County Search and Rescue Team. The bridge was located at the northeast end of Lake Powell where the Dirty Devil, White, and Colorado Rivers all converged. It was at least a three-hour drive. Hayduke had started both messages—

  On Your Feet and The Chase Begins—with chapter headings from his namesake’s book.

  The FBI, the Kane, Grand, and Garfield County Sheriff’s Departments, state troopers, even the Bureau of Land Management were already involved. By morning the Park Service would be flying over Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, Capital Reef, and Canyonlands National Parks. Hayduke must know this. He’d be taking precautions to stay off the main roads and cover his tracks.

  Silas leaned on the railing. The door behind him opened and Katie said his name. He turned to look at her. “How’d that go?”

  “About as well as can be expected. She’s coming out.”

  “I don’t blame her.”

  “This will be over soon, right?” Silas felt as if he might throw up.

  “I don’t know, Silas. Agent Nielsen is one of the best at this sort of thing. He’s had lots of experience. And Taylor will be here in a couple of hours. We’ll find Robbie.”

  “Alive?”

  “Alive.”

  “I need to take another quick shower. I still feel as if I’m covered in mud.”

  “I can watch the phone while you do that.”

  “Could I have just a few minutes alone?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea. If Hayduke calls, I need to be listening in.”

  “Just a few minutes.”

  She hesitated. “Alright. I’ll go and change too and be right back up. Can I take my phone now?”

  “Rob’s mother said she would call me back when she’s got her ticket booked. Do you min
d?”

  “That’s my personal phone, so no problem. Silas, we’re going to get Robbie back.”

  Silas forced a thin smile and nodded. “I’ll leave the door unlocked.”

  Katie left and Silas slipped into his room and closed the door. He grabbed a dry jacket and a few other pieces of clothing and jammed them in his pack. He stuffed Katie’s phone into his pocket. He then took Robbie’s keys from the dresser. He opened the cabinet under the sink to look for a water bottle. The stack of papers that Robbie had hidden there were on the shelf. He picked them up and looked at the first page or two. His heart sank further. He stuffed the papers in his bag.

  Silas quickly left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. He went to the far end of the catwalk and went down the stairs to where Robbie’s car was parked. He opened the door and sat in the front seat, breathing out as he did. The rain had stopped but the world was still glistening with moisture. He slipped the keys into the ignition and turned the engine over.

  As he did, the passenger door opened abruptly and Katie Rain sat down in the vehicle. “Going somewhere?” She was smiling, but there was an edge to her voice.

  “I was heading over to the BLM office.”

  “Give me my phone, Silas.” He handed her the phone. She scrolled through the conversation with Hayduke. Silas stared straight ahead as Katie read the messages.

  “You know where he’s talking about?”

  “Yeah, it’s the bridge over the White Canyon.”

  “This line, it’s from one of Edward Abbey’s books, isn’t it?”

  He told her about what Hayduke had told him out at Devil’s Garden, and about the scene in The Monkey Wrench Gang that takes place at the White River Bridge.

  “You go off and try and confront this guy on your own and you’re going to get your son and yourself killed.”