Black Sun Descending (16 page)

“I've spent the last two hours talking with Katie Rain and Sheriff Cross.”

“Two beautiful women, they've played you perfectly. I worry where this trail of bodies is going to end up. If you're not careful, you're going to find yourself behind bars. Your lady friend there, that beautiful girl with the Glock on her hip and the medical bag full of interesting tools?
She
might believe you, but . . .” Ken looked over Silas's shoulder to where Agent Dwight Taylor was looking at a map with the sheriff, “. . .that son of a bitch sure as hell doesn't.”

“What am I supposed to do? Just tell them to jump in Lake Powell and try to solve this myself? I'm in over my head, Ken. I have no idea what any of the connections are.”

As if on cue, Hayduke appeared at the door of what Silas took to be an interview room, Agents Nielsen and Ortiz behind him. Hayduke didn't look at Silas but walked straight to the door and left the building.

“Who was that?” asked Ken. “Someone picked up for vagrancy?”

“Maybe,” said Silas. “He was with me when I found Pearce. You remember the incident on Comb Ridge last year?”

“That's
him
? What does he call himself?”

“Hayduke—”

“That's right. Another Abbey disciple. Like your Penelope.”

“Not
quite
like Penelope.”

KEN INSISTED ON
sitting in on Silas's interviews. “I'm here. I may as well earn my generous fee.”

“Ken, you won't even let me pay for your flight,” protested Silas.

“Sometime I'll get around to billing you. In the meantime, don't say anything that will land us in court. I'm not sure Trish would allow me to endure the stress of facing a judge.” Silas looked at him with concern stitched across his brow. “I'm fine. Let's just worry about keeping you out of the clink.”

This time they met in a conference room that doubled as a storage space for the Patrol Office. Agents Taylor, Nielsen, and Ortiz sat with the sheriff on one side of the table, with Katie Rain at one end, and Ken and Silas on the far side.

Taylor spoke first. “We'd like to talk with you about any connection between last year's open, unsolved case of Darcy McFarland's murder and the more recent discovery of Jane Vaughn and Kiel Pearce. We hope you might be able to help us piece together what we already know. Our investigation last fall showed us that Darcy McFarland was a water rights activist based in Flagstaff, and that she was friends with your wife. She was working on issues related to the Colorado River, and that sometimes brought her into conflict with people who didn't share her world view. We know that she was murdered—most likely rendered unconscious with a blow to the head with a rock and then drowned in the settling ponds near the potash. You led us to her body.

“We also know that Jane Vaughn was found near Moab, along the banks of the Colorado, also in an industrial site. We are still trying to determine cause of death. Whatever the case, her body was dumped in the waste at the Atlas Mill location. She
also
knew your wife. She was working on a wide range of issues, all associated with the Grand Canyon.

“Finally, we have a body we assume will be confirmed as Mr. Pearce. From the preliminary information Dr. Rain and the Coconino County Medical Examiner have been able to provide, it appears as if he was also murdered, and much more recently. He too knew Penelope de Silva. Unlike Ms. McFarland and Ms. Vaughn, he wasn't known to participate in activism, other than writing the occasional letter to his congressman or signing an online petition.”

“So you're saying you didn't have a file on him.”

“No, Dr. Pearson, we didn't. As you can see, the threads that clearly link these three people are you and your wife.”

“And as you haven't found her yet, despite four and a half years having passed,
I'm
on the hot seat.”

“You know,” interrupted Agent Nielsen, “in other agency offices you'd likely be held as a suspect. There's lots of evidence—”

“Then put it on the table!” demanded Ken, pounding his palm on the wood in front of him.

“People!” said Taylor.

Silas put a hand on Ken's beefy forearm. The lawyer's face was red. Silas said, “I don't know how these three murders fit together,” he said. “Or even if they do. Kiel might not have been a card-carrying member of the Sierra Club, but he was involved in the fight to protect places like the Colorado River. So were Darcy, Jane, and my wife. I just don't know if they were all in it together. Jane's name wasn't in the register at the North Rim Fire Lookout.” Silas turned to Katie. “Is there anything about how Kiel was killed that might help?”

Katie nodded. “There might be. We've been working on him a little more this afternoon. We've been looking at his neck and throat. The rope cut in very deeply right here,” she said, pointing to her own jawline. “It's impossible to tell for certain, given how much damage was done by carrion feeders after his death. There was a significant pool of blood below the body where he was hung, leading us to believe he wasn't dead when he was hung or, if he was, that he was hung within minutes. The hyoid bone
was
crushed, which is common with manual strangulation, but that's not necessarily the cause of death. We've seen this before in other cases, Silas.” Silas nodded, thinking of the insanity of the last year of his life.

“But the rope doesn't appear to have been on the hyoid. It was a good two inches above it. That means whoever killed Kiel knocked him unconscious with chloroform, strangled him, and then hung him from that log before cutting him open.”

“They must have been counting on the fact that in early April there isn't a lot of traffic in Paria. The water in the narrows is very cold, and so not many people are hiking there yet,” Sheriff Cross added. “We've checked with the
BLM
and only half a dozen parties would have passed that side canyon in the last ten days.”

“What about the . . . what about the wound to his belly?”

“I think,” said Katie, “that might have been a diversion. I think whoever killed Kiel wanted carrion feeders on his corpse as soon as possible, in order to dispose of his body quickly. The wound, however, was made with a very large blade. A hunting knife or something like it. We'll know more in a few days.”

“If I hadn't seen the birds, I wouldn't have looked there.”

“We're going to interview everybody who was registered to hike Paria and Buckskin to see if they noticed anything, but it's going to take some time. Some of these folks have already left the state,” said Taylor.

“Was he killed at the scene?” asked Silas.

“That's a good question,” Taylor acknowledged. “We think so. Kiel Pearce weighed about two hundred and five pounds. He was six feet, three inches. Not huge, but heavy enough. There were no drag marks in that side canyon, and nothing that we could find anywhere in the main stem of the Paria. We have agents on the scene still, but I don't think they will find anything.”

“So he was there under his own steam. That means he either went there with his killer, or the killer snuck up on him,” said Silas.

“The latter seems unlikely.” Taylor shook his head. “That part of the canyon is pretty wide, except for the constriction where that log was hanging.”

“I guess the third option is that he went there on his own, but met his killer there. Maybe it was someone he knew and just bumped into. The killer making it seem like a coincidence.”

“That's possible,” conceded Taylor. “What I don't understand, Dr. Pearson, is how it was you were already at Lee's Ferry when you had your dream.”

“I found him on Facebook,” Silas said. He saw Katie Rain raise her eyebrows. “I saw that he listed Lee's Ferry as home, and that he worked for a rafting company, and he was missing. I called Agent Nielsen and told him all this, then I drove straight here. That night I had another dream.”

Silas could feel the stillness in the room. He looked around at the faces staring at him. “Look, I know you think I'm crazy.
I
think I'm crazy. But the fact is, I found him. I had a dream about my wife, and I found him.”

“Let's talk about your friend, Josh Charleston,” said Taylor.

“He's not my friend.”

“How would you describe your relationship?”

“He's . . . he knew Penny. They had a common cause.”

“Protecting the environment,” said Taylor.

“Yes. Protecting the Southwest. Same with Jane Vaughn and Darcy McFarland. I don't know if Kiel shared their passion, but he likely did. Maybe Kiel was just quieter about the whole thing. Maybe he didn't want an
NSA
file.”

Taylor let the quip slide. “This is the second time you and Mr. Charleston have been involved in a
situation
together. There was the incident at Comb Ridge last fall.”

“The incident? You mean, when someone tried to kill me and he saved my life?”

“At the time, you told us he was just passing by, a good Samaritan. That's not entirely true, is it?”

Ken held up a hand. “Don't answer that.” He turned to Taylor. “Agent Taylor, you're crossing a line between cooperation and interrogation.”

Taylor shook his head. “Alright, have it your way, Counselor. Dr. Pearson,” Taylor turned his attention back to Silas, “how did it come to pass that Mr. Charleston was with you when you found Kiel?”

“We've kept in touch. I ran into him in Flagstaff. He came to Lee's Ferry after I told him about Kiel Pearce.” The truth was, Silas wasn't really sure how Hayduke ended up in the same place as he had. As he always did, Hayduke just showed up.

“Did you know that Mr. Charleston has a criminal record?”

“Sure. He told me.”

“Did you know that he was arrested three years ago for assault?”

“I didn't.”

“What's the point, Mr. Taylor?” Ken interrupted.

“The point is, Counselor, that your client has a relationship with a man who has a record of questionable behavior. Dr. Pearson has involved Mr. Charleston on two separate occasions in situations involving a violent crime. The
FBI
considered this . . . interesting, to say the least.”

“Duly noted, Agent Taylor.”

Silas was quiet. The air in the room seemed heavy. The space felt oppressive to him and he wanted to get out of the sheriff's office and draw a deep breath, even if it was tainted by the Navajo Generating Station.

“Dr. Pearson,” said Sheriff Cross. “What really happened to your face?”

“I hit it on a—”

“We got two separate 9-1-1 calls about an assault in progress from the trailer court where Dallas Vaughn lives on the day you were in Flagstaff.” Cross folded her arms across her chest.

Silas looked around the room. He felt a sudden loss of testosterone.

“Did Mr. Vaughn assault you?”

“I went to his house to talk with him about Jane. I think he took offense to my line of questioning. He hit me. I was out of line. I didn't bother to report it.”

“Two of Mr. Vaughn's neighbors did. By the time we got a car to the scene you had left. Mr. Vaughn's neighbors tell us that he has quite the temper.” Cross tapped a pencil on the legal pad in front of her. “What did you ask him, Dr. Pearson?”

“He told me the first time we met that with the discovery of Jane's body he could get back to business as usual. He seemed cavalier about the whole thing. I asked him if he was collecting a life insurance policy on his wife.”

Ken smiled beside Silas. “You sure have a way with people.”

“Do you think that Dallas Vaughn killed Jane?” Silas asked.

“It's too early in the investigation to say,” said Agent Taylor.

“I think we're done for the—” started Ken.

Silas stopped him by saying, “Was chloroform used on Darcy McFarland or Jane Vaughn before they were killed?”

Agent Taylor looked at Katie Rain. She said, “We don't know with Ms. Vaughn. Decomposition didn't follow any predictable pattern due to the extremely unusual circumstances surrounding her remains. While there are other tissues intact for us to test, most of her major organs have decomposed. Her liver and lungs were badly affected by the radioactive waste, and that's where we would normally look for trace elements of something like chloroform. Ms. McFarland drowned, but the salt in the potash actually preserved her lung tissue. We were able to run a full toxicology report and we have found trace amounts of chloroform.”

Silas opened his mouth to say something but shut it, closing his eyes.

Taylor watched him and then continued. “She had been hit on the head, or had hit her head on sandstone before being submerged. The blow was sufficient to have rendered her unconscious. The toxicology reports conducted by the
ME
suggest that she may have already been unconscious when this blow was delivered. That would suggest a high degree of anger in our suspect. Whoever killed Ms. McFarland by drowning her took the time to vent his or her frustration before she was dumped in the pond.”

“So there is a connection?”

“Between Kiel, who was knocked out with chloroform before he was killed, and these other two unsolved crimes,” Katie picked up his thought.

“That's right. There is a connection, isn't there?”

Taylor tapped his pen on his notepad. “We don't know that for certain, Dr. Pearson. While the presence of chloroform in McFarland and Pearce's lung tissue is certainly a link, the strongest connection still seems to be you.”