The Vanishing Point (11 page)

“That you claimed you saw Jonathan Vail kill one of your cows two days before his disappearance was reported to the authorities.”

“That's the way it happened,” Sam replied. “Sorry to hear about your student. Next time you get out this way, you come back and see me.”

“I'd like that,” Claire replied.

******

She
left Sam with his memories and his dogs and drove south on Route 261 through the Moki Dugway, where the road dropped fifteen hundred feet by curving down the cliff like a coiled snake. There were no guardrails, and the dropoffs were precipitous. Negotiating the curves took all of Claire's attention, but right before she began the descent she looked out over the Valley of the Gods. The red rock spires of Monument Valley shimmered twenty miles away. The patterns of the cliffs in the near distance resembled a Navajo rug. Behind them, patches of river were visible in the gooseneck section of the San Juan. It was a landscape that inspired awe and doubt.

Once she reached the bottom of the Dugway and a flat stretch of road, Claire inserted her brother's apocalyptic sixties tape. She had often felt like a bystander in those days. She was a student at the University of Arizona and opposed to the war, but unlike Jonathan and Jennie, she had never participated in a demonstration. At the height of the conflict she'd spent six months in Europe, five of them traveling with her Italian boyfriend. She had been separated from the war more by reserve than distance, but she had always wondered if the demonstrators had experienced life more intensely than she did. There was no doubt the soldiers had. She knew men who had never recovered from the war, but she also knew men who had served in Vietnam, come back, and carried on normal lives as scholars, engineers, computer programmers. They might well have killed people, but she never heard them talk about it. It was impossible to tell from her brief encounter with Sam Ogelthorpe whether he was capable of murder. Her instinct said he wasn't, but that was also what she wanted to believe. If Sam was guilty of anything, it could be the same things she herself felt guilty of—an overactive imagination, a desire to get close to defining events, a bystander's regret.

When Claire got to Bluff, she didn't stop but kept on driving until the tape played out. By then she was in Farmington. She stopped and got a Lota Burger with green chile and seasoned fries, sat outside at a little table under a red umbrella, and thought about “The Eve of Destruction,” “Riders on the Storm,” and all the other turbulent music she had just heard. It was the music of close places, chaos, crowds, danger. Remote from the wide-open spaces of this area, but like them in the threat of danger. Jonathan Vail had chosen to retreat to a dangerous place. Tim Sansevera had followed. Curt Devereux and Ellen Frank were from different eras and, at the moment, in charge of different investigations. If there was a link between the two deaths, Claire wondered who would be the one to find it.

Chapter
Seven

C
LAIRE ALWAYS FOUND IT HARD TO RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS
to the city, from solitude to traffic congestion, from oceans of space to a tiny office, but the beauty of Zimmerman Library made the transition easier. The thick walls kept her feeling connected to the earth. The vigas and corbels in the high ceilings of the reading rooms seemed to stretch to infinity. When she opened the door to the center Monday morning, she felt glad to be back, although she wasn't looking forward to the job that lay ahead of her. She had returned from afar with a message of death, and the messenger is always subject to blame. When she got to her office, Claire checked her voice mail and heard Avery Dunstan ask her to call him ASAP. With Avery everything was ASAP, so she set the message aside and made a list of people she had to call, trying to limit it to those who absolutely needed to know about Tim's death, eliminating those she merely wanted to commiserate with. Ada Vail should be told. Jennie Dell had an interest and should also be notified. Tim's mother, Vivian Sansevera, already knew, of course, but Claire wanted to express her sympathy. She thought about calling Vivian, but decided to write a note instead. Harrison, who was last on her list, was the person who would need to be notified first. Claire walked down the hallway to his office.

He had just arrived and was hanging his hat and scarf on a rack as she knocked on the door. When he turned around to answer her summons, she noticed he hadn't put his library face on yet. He looked disheveled and windblown. His features didn't have their usual locked-jaw severity, reminding Claire that he had a life outside of the center—a wife, whom she had never met, and children—although he always gave the impression that he lived alone. He had trouble finding his voice, as if this were the first time he had spoken this morning.

“Claire,” he said, clearing his throat. “How was Utah?” Someone else might have smiled at this point, but Harrison's face settled into its typically remote expression.

“I have bad news,” Claire said.

“Oh?” Harrison scowled, remembering perhaps the last time Claire had returned to the center with bad news.

“Tim Sansevera died in Sin Nombre Canyon.”

“Good grief! How did that happen?”

“It appears he fell from a ledge.”

“Was he alone?”

“Apparently.
He spent the night in the canyon. When he didn't show up to meet Curt and me, we hiked in and found the body near his campsite.”

“Were you able to recover any of Jonathan Vail's effects?”

“No. We had directions to the cave, but when we got there, it was empty.”

“How disappointing,” Harrison said.

Considering that a promising graduate student had lost his life, “disappointing” struck Claire as the wrong choice of words.

“So now all we have to verify Tim's story is the journal?”

“True.”

“It's still possible the journal is a hoax.”

“Ada Vail believed the writing was authentic,” Claire reminded him, “and so did I.”

“I'll give Ada a call about this.”

Claire made a mental note to cross that name off her list.

“I think it's past time to have the manuscript authenticated. I'll call August Stevenson.” He was a handwriting expert who had retired to Santa Fe.

“All right.”

Harrison sat down at his desk. He collected folk art, and there was a papier-mâché skeleton of death pulling a cart on the shelf behind his head. Claire had the sensation that death was grinning at her over Harrison's shoulder. He waved a long white hand and dismissed her.

Claire turned to leave, noticing that the windows up near the ceiling of Harrison's office were deep blue rectangles, as if the walls were framing the sky in a series of abstractions. In Utah she felt she could reach out and touch the sky. In Harrison's office it seemed impossibly remote.

******

When she got back to her own office, she crossed Ada Vail off her list. She was looking for Jennie Dell's number when she sensed someone at her window and looked up to see Avery Dunstan standing there, although even when standing still he appeared to be in motion. He waved at Claire, then opened her door and let himself in.

“Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner,” Claire said. “I just returned from Utah and I had to talk to Harrison.”

Avery was so intent on what he had to say that her comments made no impression. He stood in front of her desk, cocked his head, and looked down at his nose.

“I had to come over here to look something up. I wanted to tell you about a strange meeting I had with Tim Sansevera.”

“When?”

“Late Thursday, just before I went home.”

“Avery, there's something I . . .”

Claire hesitated just long enough for Avery to catch his breath and rush on. “He was very insistent that we publish the journal word for word, and furious at Ada Vail for intervening. He wants his name on the book. Why is he so intense about this? Since we don't even have a contract to publish the journal, it strikes me as premature to be discussing how we are going to edit it and whose name goes where.”

It seemed insignificant to Claire as she explained to Avery what had happened.

“That's awful!” Avery shivered. “How old was he?”

“Thirty.”

“Obviously the journal was something he cared about very much, far beyond the usual graduate student obsession. You don't suppose there is any possibility that…?”

Claire, who was expecting Avery to suggest forgery, was startled when he said, “Tim is Jonathan Vail's son.”

Actually the idea
had
occurred to Claire. She saw a resemblance between them in appearance and in temperament, but she had dismissed the father/son connection as too far-fetched. “I have no reason to believe that,” she said.

“He's the right age, isn't he?”

“Yes.”

“Anglo looks, Spanish surname. Could be his mother was Indian or Hispanic. He took the mother's name, but his father was Vail. You've heard all the rumors, I'm sure.”

“I've heard a lot of them. I don't know that I've heard
all
of them,” Claire said.

“It would explain the obsession,” Avery replied. “Wouldn't it? Maybe he didn't find the journal in the cave. Maybe he found it in a family closet or garage.”

“Then why invent a story about finding it in Sin Nombre Canyon?”

“Far more romantic than finding it in a garage, isn't it?”

“Why lure us up there?”

“Once he told the lie, he'd have to follow through, wouldn't he?” Avery said.

Claire knew that in his spare time he was writing a novel. With his imagination, perhaps he should be writing fiction instead of editing fact.

“Are you sure the death was accidental?” he asked.

“No, but the rangers are investigating.”

Avery picked up the glass paperweight that lay on Claire's desk and tossed it from one hand to
the
other. “It could change things in terms of publishing the journal,” he said. “If Tim was Jonathan's son and someone else was Tim's heir, maybe we wouldn't have to deal with Ada Vail.”

“That's a very remote possibility,” Claire said, feeling a duty to pull Avery back to earth.

“Worth checking out, though, isn't it?”

“I have the address of Tim's mother,” Claire said. “I plan to get in touch with her.”

“Good!” said Avery.

“How did Tim seem when you talked to him? Was he anxious or fearful?”

“He seemed determined,” Avery said. “Gotta run.” He put the paperweight back on the desk and rushed out of the room.

Claire composed a handwritten letter to Vivian Sansevera, explaining who she was and expressing her deepest sympathy. She closed by asking Vivian to give her a call.

She dialed Jennie Dell's number and wasn't terribly surprised to learn that Curt Devereux had already told her about Tim's death. “Ironic, isn't it,” Jennie said, “that a person so devoted to Jonathan's work should lose his life in the same place Jonathan lost his?”

“Did Curt tell you how Tim died?” Claire asked.

“He said that he fell from a ledge. That canyon is a very treacherous place to climb, and not a good place to be alone. Once I realized Jonathan wasn't coming back, I got out of there as soon as I could.”

“How did you get out?”

“I hiked over the mesa. The canyon was flooded. When I got to the road, I hitched a ride to the ranger station. That's when I met Curt.”

“It's hard to find your way across the mesa, isn't it?” Claire asked.

“It was easier back then. The Hopi still went into the canyon to leave offerings, and I followed one of their trails.”

“I stopped to see Sam Ogelthorpe on my way home.”

“Is that old coot still alive?” Jennie asked.

“Still alive and still insisting that he saw Jonathan killing one of his cows two days before you reported him missing.”

“He was half blind then. He's probably totally blind now. If he saw anything it was a mountain lion. He keeps telling this story because he loves the attention. Trust me, Jonathan Vail did not get out of Sin Nombre Canyon. Jonathan died there.”

“Curt and I went to the cave where Tim said he found the journal, but we didn't find the duffel bag Tim had mentioned.”

“As I said, there wasn't any duffel bag.”

“Since
Tim wasn't there to show us, I wasn't sure we went to the right cave, although Jonathan's initials were carved in the wall.”

“Jonathan's initials were carved in walls all over the canyons, occasionally by him, more often by other people. I know that he was more likely to go into caves that didn't look like they'd been used by Indians. He considered the Indian caves sacred ground. Listen, Claire,” she said, changing the subject, “Lou Bastiann is coming for Veterans Day this year. He's very devoted to Jonathan's work, and I'm going to show him the journal and see what he thinks about publication.”

It wasn't what Ada would want, but since Curt had given Jennie a copy of the journal, Claire didn't see how she could prevent it.

“I'll call you after he's seen it,” Jennie said.

“All right,” Claire replied and hung up. Now that she had done her job and worked her way through her list, she felt she could allow herself some respite, and she decided to stop by and see John Harlan after work. He was an old friend and an antiquarian bookseller. His wife had died the year before Claire got divorced. They had dinner together occasionally, and though sometimes Claire sensed that John would like to go beyond friendship, he hadn't made any definite moves in that direction. When her husband left her for a graduate student named Melissa, she built a shell around her heart. She didn't expect to have it forever, but she didn't know how to get rid of it either. A shell could dissolve, flake off, or shatter. Crisis was one way to crack it open, and she had just been through one. She knew John cared enough to listen with sympathy, and he also had a good bullshit detector. There were many elements about the disappearance of Jonathan Vail and the death of Tim Sansevera that took those events out of the black-and-white realm of reality and into the shadowy world of fiction. Maybe John could make them real again.