THREE
Chuck struggled to make sense of the previous night’s events as he trailed his field school students around the east flank of Mount Landen. Kirina led the way, fifty yards ahead. Clarence walked in front of Chuck, just behind the dozen students spread along the footpath.
The white, fifteen-passenger field school van was parked out of sight behind them, around the mountain at the side of Trail Ridge Road, five miles shy of the winding, two-lane highway’s 12,183-foot high point. The road bisected Rocky Mountain National Park, connecting Estes Park on the east side of the Mummy Mountain Range with the town of Grand Lake on the west.
The morning breeze coursed over the summit of Mount Landen and swept down the rock-studded slope. The skein of clouds and spatter of rain that had descended from the Mummies and blown through Estes Park overnight were gone. In the wake of the clouds’ departure, the clear morning sky heralded another in the string of cloudless days that had beset central Colorado since the last substantial snowstorm had rolled through the high country in March.
Now, a week and a half into August, the leaves and needles on the trees that made up the aspen and pine groves around Estes Park had a desiccated, pale green hue, and the park’s famously rugged alpine landscape was so parched that lichen peeled from rocks like scabs. Clumps of bunch grass, brown and brittle, crumbled at the slightest touch.
The hint of rain the night before hadn’t even been enough to wet the ground. The students’ work boots kicked up small clouds of dust with each step along the path leading around the mountain to the mine three-quarters of a mile ahead, as they had every weekday morning for the last two months.
The breeze was cool this early in the morning. Chuck buried his hands in his jacket pockets and burrowed his chin in his collar. He wanted only to reach the mine site, set the students to work, and put last night behind him.
Clarence fell back from the last of the students and spoke so only Chuck could hear. “You really think we should be here, jefe?” He glanced at Chuck over his shoulder, displaying a wan face and bloodshot eyes.
“Three days to go,” Chuck said.
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
Chuck rubbed an eye with a knuckle.
Clarence continued. “Rosie was so sick you took her to the emergency room, the cops spent the whole night climbing all over each other outside the dorm, nobody got a bit of sleep, and you make us come up here like nothing happened?”
“Because nothing did happen.”
“You were there. You saw what I saw, what we all saw.”
“The cops thought it was a homicide. I get that. But they were wrong.”
“It was a pretty big puddle.”
“And that’s all it was: a puddle of blood. No dead body, no nothing. As for Rosie, she’s back at the cabin with Janelle, doing great.”
Clarence huffed in exasperation. The wind whipped his long, raven-black hair around his neck. He gathered it in his hand and shoved it into the collar of his heavy cotton work jacket. His baggy jeans dragged at his heels, a mark of his urban upbringing with Janelle in Albuquerque’s gang-ridden South Valley.
Clarence was big-boned and round-bellied. Thick silver studs pierced his ears. His nose was pressed like putty above his thick lips, which were encircled by a black goatee. Different as he was from his lithe older sister, Clarence shared Janelle’s natural magnetism—she with her eye-popping looks, he with his big laugh, dancing eyes, and devilish grin.
An hour ago, in the dining hall behind the two dormitory buildings, the students’ thumbs had been a blur of motion over their phones. They hadn’t stopped texting until the van left cell-phone range on the drive into the mountains. “You know as well as I do,” Chuck told Clarence, “the kids would’ve spent the day tweeting and texting like mad.” He shoved his hand back in his jacket pocket. “No telling what Sartore’s going to make of it all.”
“As if he doesn’t already know.”
“I texted him.” Chuck hadn’t received a response from the professor before they’d left phone range. “I’ll call him as soon as we’re back this afternoon.”
Clarence clambered over a waist-high boulder protruding from the middle of the unimproved trail. “Sartore’s not the only one you’re avoiding today. What about Janelle?”
“Rosie was fine this morning, like last night never happened.”
“Except it did happen.” Clarence spun from the boulder and headed on down the trail. “You know Jan’s not at all okay with your coming up here today.”
Chuck threw his leg over the boulder. “She’s got the truck. The doctor said she could bring Rosie back for another look, no charge, if she needed to. But he was pretty clear that everything was okay. Said it was just a virus.” Chuck continued despite himself: “Young guy. Tall, blond hair, blue eyes. Very accommodating.”
“Ready to swoop in, was he?”
“I’m still not used to it.”
“Digame, hombre. Every dude lays eyes on her, it’s like they want to swallow her whole. Even now, with the ring on her finger. Objectification, isn’t that what they call it?”
“Ooo. Big word.” Chuck pushed himself off the boulder and followed Clarence along the trail. “You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you? What with all your pretty little objects.”
“Hey,” Clarence retorted. “We’re talking about my sister here.” He toed a loose piece of granite off the trail. “That’s how you won her over, you know. She was a person to you from day one.”
Chuck spun the gold band on his finger. “Still is. A fire-breathing one. And yes, I know full well I’m risking my life coming up here this morning.”
“Then why are we here?”
Chuck sighed. How could he admit to Clarence his real reason for adhering to schedule today? How could he confess to being that self-centered?
For the past two decades, as founder, CEO, and sole fulltime employee of Bender Archaeological, Inc., Chuck had bid for and worked archaeological assessment contracts on his own or, on occasion, with the temporary help of recent anthropology school graduates such as Clarence. Chuck’s contracts involved surveying and excavating sites of potential archaeological significance destined for development on federal, state, and Indian reservation lands. He left Durango for weeks at a time to complete the field portion of his work before returning home to prepare his final reports, cataloging the thousands of ancient artifacts he dug up and preserved on behalf of his clients before the bulldozers moved in.
Chuck’s work had provided him a decent living—and no small amount of notoriety within archaeological circles for his many significant discoveries over the years—straight through to the day a year and a half ago when his then-temp worker, Clarence, had introduced him to Janelle. Four months later, after a whirlwind courtship and Albuquerque City Hall marriage, Chuck discovered upon heading back out on the road that the satisfaction he’d once found in working alone in the field had disappeared. Instead, he ached
