Black Sun Descending (24 page)

He considered the timing. He had found Darcy the previous August, and she had been killed within the few weeks before, according to Katie. Jane he had discovered just two weeks ago, but she had disappeared at the beginning of the previous November. Kiel had been discovered just five days ago, and he had been missing for ten days at that point. The killings, if related at all, were spaced out over the last year. Was there any significance to this time span?

Had whatever happened to Penelope set in motion these other murders?

He shook himself awake. Despite a few hours of fitful sleep he was still dead tired, sore, bruised, and blistered.

Silas thought about the emptiness that seemed to have consumed Dallas Vaughn in the week since Silas had seen him last. He wondered if he himself projected that same emptiness. Silas also realized that despite himself, he was thinking of Penelope more and more in terms of someone who wasn't lost, who hadn't fled a bad marriage, who hadn't fallen down a crack in the earth and perished; he was thinking of her as someone who had been murdered. It left him crestfallen and despondent.

He got back to the Monte Vista at seven, took another shower, and walked two blocks to Café Express for something to eat. Sitting at a table by the window, watching the sun fade from the streets of his former home, he felt a loneliness creep into his bones. He would leave Flagstaff in the morning and he would never, ever come back.

Silas went to the cocktail lounge in the hotel. The room was warm and a band was tuning up on the stage. He took a seat at the bar and ordered a pint of draft. He was on his second beer when he heard a voice behind him.

“Drinking alone tonight?” Katie Rain sat down next to him. She was dressed in a blazer and blue jeans.

“How'd you find me?”

“We put a transmitter on you when you were at the office this morning.”

“Really?”

“Silas, come on.”

He smiled. “I'm too tired to care.”

Katie motioned to the bartender. “Can you make me a Manhattan?” The bartender nodded. Katie turned to Silas again. “You alright?”

“I'm not going to find her alive.”

“I'm sorry, Silas.”

“It's been obvious to everybody but me. She's dead. And she was almost certainly murdered.”

“Did something happen this afternoon? I thought you were going to get some sleep.”

“Sheriff Cross called and told me Dallas Vaughn was missing. When I found him he told me he had something that would help me.”

“What did he find?” Katie sipped her drink.

“I don't know if it's really that significant.” Silas told her about his conversation with Vaughn and about the will.

Katie listened, watching him. When he was done she put a hand on his arm and smiled. “We're going to figure out what happened to Penelope, Silas. I promise.”

“Who, the
FBI
?”

“Well, maybe. But I mean
we're
going to figure it out. You and me.”

Silas finished his beer and ordered a third pint. He looked at Katie through the haze of fatigue and alcohol. “So, did you arrest Chas Hinkley and Paul Love?”

“Not yet. We're going to pick them up at Marble Canyon when they finish their trip. That's two days from now. Love hasn't called to request medical, and we're going to spend some time building our case. We've executed a search warrant for both men's offices. Someone has likely called them to tell them what's happening. If we find information to corroborate what you've told us, we'll be able to open an investigation into Hinkley's business dealings. We've got our white-collar crime division investigating that.

“I wanted to tell you about something else we've been working on. You understand, Silas, that this isn't my area of expertise. Remember, before I did bones, I was a field agent, but I never did much serial work.”

“Serial?”

“Serial killer.”

“You think that's what this is?”

“Hear me out—”

“Does Taylor know you're here?”

“Yes. I wouldn't be telling you this if he hadn't okayed it.”

“So you're really here as Agent Rain, not Katie Rain, friend of Silas Pearson . . .”

“Silas, I'm both. You're going to have to accept that. Now, do you want to hear about the profile we're working up?” Silas nodded. “After you found Kiel Pearce's body last week, we started to get curious about things. Three vics, all found by the same person. Lots of similarities between them. They all worked in the environmental movement or with outdoor guiding interests. Outdoorsy types, as Agent Nielsen put it. We fed all of this, along with the dates that these people were reported missing and when their bodies were discovered, back to the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime—our criminal profiling division—in Quantico and what we got back surprised us. The Behavioral Analysis Unit Four deals with actual or attempted homicides against adults, and they specialize in this sort of random-appearing crime. They weren't conclusive—they rarely are—but we thought that we'd get a profile of
someone
.”

“What
did
you get?”

“Two killers. One is a profile, and the other just random.”

“I don't get it.”

“Well, neither do we. Our profilers believe that the Darcy McFarland and Kiel Pearce murders are related. Both bodies were found shortly after they were reported missing. It appears by the
MO
that both knew their victim and trusted him or her. There was chloroform present in their lung tissue. Jane Vaughn, on the other hand, was missing for a long time before she was found, and the cause of her death leaves nothing to suggest she was familiar, or friendly, with her killer. Based on that we think we might be investigating two separate cases.

“Our approach will be different for these two separate cases. Two murders don't make a serial killer. It could still turn out that all
three
of our victims were killed by different people.”

“Do you think that points the finger back at Dallas Vaughn for his wife's murder?”

“I can't say. I'll tell Taylor what you've told me and see what he thinks.”

“What's next?”

“
You
get some sleep. Check with us in the morning. I'll be here for one more day before I fly back to Salt Lake. There are a dozen cases waiting for me there. Hang in there, Silas. We'll get this sorted out, and we'll find out what happened to Penny.”

SILAS WOKE FEELING ENERGIZED, DESPITE
a mild hangover. When he was ready to check out, he called the
FBI
's Flagstaff Field Office. Special Agent Ortiz responded to his call.

“I'm heading out.”

“If the Coconino County Sheriff's Department wishes to arrest Mr. Love and Mr. Hinkley for unlawful imprisonment, they will need you to file a charge.”

“I'll call in at the sheriff's office on the way out of town. Are you still investigating the allegations of fraud?”

“Yes, we are. We've seized the papers you referred us to at Jane Vaughn's office. You know, Dr. Pearson, you might have saved us all some trouble if you'd alerted us to these findings a week ago.”

“I didn't know what I had found until I started having conversations.”

“We appreciate that you have a special relationship with these disappearances, Dr. Pearson. Don't get me wrong. But please, sir, leave the investigation to us. We have concerns that you may unwittingly sully evidence that could be used to convict a killer.”

Silas sighed deeply. “Agent Ortiz, all I want is to find my wife. I have no intention of stopping my efforts there. Tell Special Agent Taylor that he really should look into the relationship between Paul Love, Chas Hinkley, and Jane Vaughn's advocacy for Wilderness along the Colorado. I think that's what this is all about.”

“We're already doing that, Dr. Pearson. Thank you for your call.”

HE STOPPED AT
the Flagstaff office of the Coconino County Sheriff's Department. Hilary Cross was still in Page supervising the investigation into Kiel Pearce's murder, so Silas gave a statement about the events at Phantom Ranch. When asked about the whereabouts of Josh Charleston,
AKA
Hayduke, he told the sheriff's deputy that he wasn't sure and didn't really care, which elicited a raised eyebrow from the young officer.

SILAS SAT IN
his car on the outskirts of Flagstaff for the second time in as many weeks. He had just gotten gas, bought two six-packs, and filled his twenty-gallon water jug. Now he was watching traffic pass on the highway. It would be a long drive around the Grand Canyon to the North Rim. He looked east along the highway. If he turned left and headed in that direction, he could be back in the Castle Valley in seven hours. If he turned right, in the same amount of time he could resume his search for Penelope along the North Rim.

All the lines of logic were converging on the Colorado River. Jane Vaughn's dying wish to scatter her ashes; Penelope's own notes in her journal; Edward Abbey's writing focus on the forested branch canyons of the Colorado. She was somewhere along the winding route of the Colorado, thought Silas, but where? The river ran for fourteen hundred miles, more than half of which was through the canyon country of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. If his task hadn't seemed impossible when he started it four and a half years ago, it seemed utterly futile now.

Silas remembered that while he and Hayduke were down in the canyon they had agreed to sit down and review Penelope's journal together and make a list of all the people that she had crossed in her time advocating for protection of Abbey's favorite places. The business with Paul Love and Chas Hinkley had sidetracked them. If he knew Hayduke, it wouldn't be long before they had another opportunity.

He thought about Dallas Vaughn and Jane's burial instructions. Were Silas and Dallas Vaughn “the boys” she was referring too? If so, two less likely compatriots would be hard to find. Or was Hayduke one of “the boys?” Was there another man out there that Silas didn't know about who had played a role in his wife's work?

Silas flicked on the left turn indicator. If he headed back to Moab and to his home nearby, he could start over. He could begin his search fresh, focusing on the Colorado, working his way down from where it first cut into its namesake plateau. He could map out a route of investigation that took him down through Hal Canyon, past where Jane Vaughn was discovered at the Atlas Mill site, and then beyond where he found Darcy McFarland the previous summer, just a few miles downriver. He would search Stillwater and Labyrinth Canyons on the Green River too. He'd accessed the Green's many remote creeks and canyons by hiking down from the Island in the Sky, but he'd never undertaken a concentrated search of the lower reaches of the river. Maybe he would call and ask if his sons wanted to paddle the river with him in the fall, when the temperature fell once more.

But these were the thoughts of a man who still believed that if his wife was to be found, she might have injured herself on a backpacking trip, succumbed to heat and dehydration, and died in some remote corner of this godforsaken wilderness. Silas angrily flicked off the turn indicator. That wasn't really what he expected anymore. He had all but given up on finding Penelope alive, and now he was abandoning hope that she would be discovered having died peacefully, in the wilderness she had fought to defend.

Now he believed that someone, maybe Paul Love, maybe Chas Hinkley, or even Balin Aldershot, had killed her for what she represented: a threat.

He turned and drove toward Page.

THE LAST FEW HUNDRED YARDS
Silas drove with his headlights off, following the glow of a roaring fire. He and Hayduke had camped here before. Hayduke's Jeep was parked nearby but the young man wasn't obvious. It was only after Silas got out of the car that he appeared from behind a nearby juniper, his .357 Magnum in his right hand, a can of beer in the other. “Had to make sure it was you” was all he said before sitting back down.