Black Sun Descending (14 page)

“I have no idea what you're going on about. Now, if you don't mind, I was just heading out on a hike.”

“Like hell you are. You're going to explain to me where you get off destroying my property.”

“Mr. Love, I suggest you turn around and walk away from here, right now . . . or I'll be calling the Coconino County Sheriff's Department.”

“I'll save you the effort. I've already called them. They are on their way. So is the Park Service. You son of a bitch, you broke my key off in the ignition and then let the truck's emergency brake out and let it roll into the fucking river!”

Silas had to fight back a smile. “Love, after I left you last night I came back here and went to bed.”

Love, holding the key in his hand, poked Silas with a heavy finger. “You're a liar.”

“Don't do that again.”

Love poked him. Silas stepped back.

“Touch him again, I'm going to break your fucking face.” Hayduke was standing behind Love.

Love spun on Hayduke. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I'm camping next door. Heard the commotion. You got to settle down or you're going to get hurt.”

Love, his face red, his eyes bulging, looked at Hayduke and then back to Silas. “When the cops get here, you're going to have a lot of explaining to do.”

“So will you,” said Silas. Love straightened himself and stormed past Hayduke.

“What was that all about?” asked the young man.

Silas watched as Love disappeared around the corner in the campground round. “I suspect I should be asking you that question.”

“Shit, I was drunk when I left here. I went to sleep under that cliff over there.” He pointed vaguely in the direction of the Paria Canyon mouth.

“Really?”

“Yeah, you can ask the scorpions I slept with.”

“Well, I guess I can thank you for saving my butt again.”

“Ah, you could have taken him. I'm just glad I didn't have to shoot that motherfucker. That would have been tough to explain.”

IT WAS AGREED
that they shouldn't wait around the campground for the Park Service or the sheriff's department to continue the questioning. Silas told Hayduke about his dream, and the young man listened with what seemed to Silas like exaggerated interest, his eyes bulging, his head nodding rhythmically. “You had another dream? Right here? Holy shit!”

“It's not like it's some kind of paranormal experience.”

“But man, right here? You dreamt about Paria? How strange is that?”

“I will admit it's a little odd.”

“You think he's in Buckskin Gulch?”

“I think he's there, or in Paria.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Go for a hike.”

“You got a water bottle I can borrow?”

SILAS PACKED UP
his gear as Hayduke made suggestions about where they might find the missing Kiel Pearce. “If he was going to hike the whole thing, he likely dropped into the canyon at the White House Campground. We'd have to double back through Page, but it might be a good idea to get out of here quickly.”

“Kiel lived
here
during the summer months,” countered Silas. “If he was going to explore the Paria, he wouldn't have driven all the way from Lee's Ferry to Page and then up Highway 89 to do so. He would have started here.”

“So where's his rig?”

“I have no idea. I don't even know what he drove. If he was getting ready for a trip, it would likely be parked back at the landing. If the sheriff's department was looking for him, they would have checked there first.”

“That's why we should start up at White House. They likely didn't look there. You could park your truck there for a month and nobody would bother you.”

Silas held his ground. “Let's check the lower reach of the Paria, and if we don't find anything, we'll head around to White House tonight, and start fresh in the morning.”

“My guess is that old Paul Love will have set his friends in the Coconino County Sheriff's Department on us by then.”

“I don't have anything to worry about. Do you?”

“Nothing they can prove. Sucks when a big rig like that goes into the river, man. They got to get a tow from another giant truck and that means
mucho dinero
.” Hayduke was smiling.

They drove in silence for five minutes, out of the campground and toward the landing on the Colorado. Silas watched the road as Hayduke craned his neck to see the damage to Paul Love's rig. They managed to avoid being seen and found a place to park near where the Paria entered the Colorado. Silas quickly pulled on his day pack. He turned on his
GPS
unit and looked at the topographic sheet of the area. Hayduke watched him.

“I'm going to treat this like I would any other walk I do when I'm looking for Penny. If that's too slow for you, you can do what you like.”

“Shit, I'm just going to hope we don't find anything that's going to make this day any more complicated than it already is.”

Silas recalled his dream. “I wouldn't count on that.”

THE WASH OF THE PARIA
River was broad where it met the Colorado, forming the first minor rapids on any river voyage through the Grand Canyon. The grottos and slot canyons that the Paria and its tributary Buckskin Gulch were famous for didn't start for nearly ten miles. Silas didn't expect to reach them, not that day. He walked slowly, crossing the shallow, cold Paria often to search among the tamarisk and other shrubs just leafing out with the warm spring weather. The air was perfumed with the scent of green leaves and the season's first flowers.

Silas searched and Hayduke did his best to pick up his pattern so that after an hour or so of walking, the scruffy young man was crawling through the clusters of brush and poking around under sandstone escarpments too. Silas was
almost
grateful for his companionship.

They stopped after two hours and sat in the shade of a bank of the river, where they drank water and ate a handful of gorp and a piece of beef jerky.

“I don't think we're going to find Kiel here,” said Hayduke.

“Giving up so soon?”

“I just don't think we're going to find Kiel here.”

“Did you know him?” Hayduke was quiet for a moment and Silas thought he was trying to recollect, but when he asked again Hayduke feigned waking up. He smiled at Silas, who repeated, “Did you know him?”

“Who, Kiel? Yeah, I knew him a bit but not well.”

“But obviously Penny did.”

“Yeah, I think she did a river trip with him.”

“I remember her going on that trip. That was a long time ago. Six, maybe seven years ago.”

“She told me it was what made her get serious about protecting the Colorado Plateau.”

“I remember her saying the same thing.”

“Why didn't you go?” asked Hayduke.

“It was during exams.”

Neither man said anything. The sun was high and hot in the sky. “Do you sometimes wish that you had done things different?” asked the young man, sounding more like Josh Charleston than Hayduke.

Silas was silent for a moment, watching the birds. “Yes,” he finally said. “Every single hour of every single day for the last four and half years.”

THEY FOUND A
place where a narrow cleft in the sandstone entered the main stem of the Paria about half a mile from where they had rested. It wasn't a slot canyon, more a fissure in the sandstone walls jumbled with rock. Above, a congregation of vultures glided on the day's warming air. A dozen of the birds drifted in lazy circles, effortlessly planing above the naked earth.

Silas went first with Hayduke close behind. “Something died up here,” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“What makes you say—” Hayduke started to say when he nearly ran into Silas. He had stopped in the bottom of the grotto.

There was a log jammed fifteen feet off the ground, wedged between two sides of the sloping canyon. As they watched, another dozen heavy, lethargic turkey vultures lifted off of the log, the ground, and the corpse that dangled from a length of climbing rope fastened to the log. The body spun slowly as the great birds took flight. The vultures had gotten at the man's face and his guts hung out of a great rent in his belly where the birds had been gorging themselves. Silas bent over and vomited on the ground, and Hayduke looked pale and put a hand on the rocks for balance.

When Silas stood up, wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, he took a few steps closer to the cadaver swinging from the rope. “Three guesses as to who this is.” Silas spit in the red dirt at his feet.

THEY RETREATED OUT
of the canyon, the circling vultures watching them from a safe distance.

“What do you want to do?” Hayduke asked when they were back by the Paria.

Silas took his hat off, cupped the cool water to his face, and rubbed the invisible stench from himself. He looked up at Hayduke and shook his head. “I don't know.”

“You want to walk back down to Lee's Ferry?”

Silas nodded. “I haven't got any cell reception here. I'm not staying behind to fight the vultures off.”

“Let's get a move on.”

As they walked Hayduke seemed to become even more animated than usual. “You're not going to call the cops, are you?”

“What do you mean? We've got to report this.”

“Whoever this is obviously went out of his way to find a nice quiet place where he could string himself up. We call the pigs and they will be all over this place. They'll cut that poor bastard down and poke at him and put him in a rubber sack. This dude looks like he
wanted
to be vulture food. You know, it's what Abbey always wanted: to be reincarnated as a vulture.”

“Yeah, well, this isn't Edward Abbey hanging from that log back there, and I seriously doubt he hanged
himself
.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't think he killed himself. I think he was killed.”

“That's fucking crazy. There's no evidence to support that. The dude is swinging from a rope. What makes you think this is murder?”

Silas was silent for a long time. They were walking fast and Hayduke was winded. Hayduke started again: “What makes you think—”

“I don't dream about suicides, Josh.”

“Don't call me—”

“I dream about murder. That's it. I dream about people who have been killed. Not people who have killed themselves.”

“You call the cops and you're suspect number one.
We're
suspect number one. I got a record. I don't want to get involved in this.”

Silas ignored him. “You're just along for a hike. It was me who found the body.”

“The fuzz has a funny way of overlooking facts like that when they get a look at a guy like me.” Hayduke was scowling.

“Maybe you'll have time for a haircut when we get back to the campground.”

“Funny. I don't think so.”

It took them an hour and a half to reach Silas's vehicle. They didn't have to look far for the authorities. The Coconino County Sheriff's Department had a patrol car waiting when they stepped up the bank from the wash.

“Are you Silas Pearson?” the sheriff's deputy asked. He was a tall man, middle-aged, with a bushy gray mustache. He wore aviator sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hat.

“Yes.”

“And who are you?”

Hayduke cleared this throat. “Josh Charleston.”

“Sir,” the deputy was addressing Silas. “We have a complaint against you made by one Paul Love.”

“Due respect, Officer, Mr. Love is full of crap,” said Silas. “And I have more important business.”

The deputy straightened up. “You'll have to come with me to explain yourself.”

“I'm sorry, Officer. I don't mean to be contrary, but about four miles up the Paria River there is a body hanging from a log, slowly being consumed by turkey vultures. I'm pretty sure that trumps whatever delusions Mr. Love has been complaining to your boss about.”

IT TOOK TWO
hours for a team to assemble at the mouth of the Paria River. It was late in the afternoon, the sun already starting to sink toward the plateau. Coconino County Patrol Sergeant Dave Ricks stood in for the sheriff, who was flying in from Flagstaff along with the county's medical examiner. A member of the Coconino County Sheriff's Criminal Investigation Division who had been in Page was on hand along with two officers from the Bureau of Land Management that oversaw the Paria Wilderness.

While the team was getting prepared for the hike, Dave Ricks took Silas aside.

“We've got a couple of things we need to talk about, Mr. Pearson.”

“I had nothing to do with Love's truck. I was in my tent and asleep twenty minutes after talking with him.”

“He says you did it.”

“And I say I didn't.”

“Well, it appears we got bigger fish to fry at the present moment. We'll have to come back to this.”