arms tucked at the sides of a large stomach, feet pointing upward. He stopped at the edge of the road. He never should have left the shuttle.
He took a step backward, but before he could make his getaway, a ranger climbed from an idling patrol sedan parked at the head of the line of vehicles.
“Chuck? That you? Christ, how long’s it been?”
The ranger, tall and in his late forties, had a graying, bushy blond mustache. His wide stance supported a compact potbelly that pressed at the buttons of his shirt. He stood with his elbows cocked outward like the wings of a bird, his hands resting on the bulky sidearm belted to his right hip and extra magazine pouch strapped to his left. Purple splotches marked the ranger’s face, the result, Chuck knew, of years of heavy drinking.
“Donald,” Chuck answered. Ranger Donald Podalski had been assigned to oversee Chuck’s work in the park on several occasions. Chuck indicated the firefighters and rangers on the promontory. “What’s going on?”
“Guy took a tumble.” Donald gave a descending whistle and imitated with his hand someone falling off a cliff. “Girlfriend says it was an accident, buuuut . . .”
Cliff-jump suicides weren’t uncommon at the canyon, though it always amazed Chuck that such despondency could remain unaffected by the canyon’s beauty. Accidental cliff falls were a regular occurrence at the canyon as well, one or two a year. Reported as suicide or accident, however, there was always the question whether a push might have been involved.
Chuck tugged his sweat-dampened shirt away from his chest. “Witnesses?”
“A bunch of Jap tourists, but they hardly spoke any English, and their guide, she was too freaked to do much translating. Doesn’t sound like they saw much, anyway. The girlfriend was the only one close, taking his picture way out at the end of the point.”
Chuck put a hand to the scratches on his neck. So. The guy in the Isotopes sweatshirt was dead—and, thankfully, Chuck’s punch wasn’t the cause. But had the girlfriend reported the fight with Chuck that had preceded the fall?
“Where is she?”
“Begay let her go.” Donald pointed at one of the park staffers gathered around the litter: Grand Canyon National Park Chief Ranger Robert Begay.
Fiftyish, smoothly professional, always impeccably groomed, Robert had been handpicked by park-service honchos in D.C. for the chief ranger post. His first year as head ranger at the park had overlapped with Chuck’s most recent contract at the canyon, assessing and digging the site of a new solar latrine at Hermit Creek Backcountry Campground.
Like Donald and the other rangers, Robert wore park-service slacks and shirt and a wide-brimmed, Smokey Bear hat. The chief ranger was stout and broad-shouldered. His sleek sidearm barely protruded from his hip. The hard kick of Donald’s beefy .45 had surprised Chuck when he’d fired it with Donald at the park shooting range a few years ago, while Robert’s slender handgun looked as if it would deliver its shots with the same silky efficiency with which he performed every aspect of his job.
“She just left,” Donald continued. “Waited to make a visual when they got the body up to the rim, then took off. I went over to check it out.” He made a face. “Guy’s hamburger, but she didn’t even flinch. Tough bird. She’s supposed to stick around ‘til the body’s shipped.”
“Flagstaff?” Chuck asked.
“Yep. Tomorrow, probably, by the time all’s said and done. You know me though, always the last to know. They’ve got me on perimeter, like anybody’s gonna sneak up on ‘em. But hey,” he aimed a thumb at the idling sedan, “I’ve got A/C.”
“And 92.9,” Chuck added. He moved toward Donald even as he struggled to come up with a way to justify making his escape.
“KAFF-FM, Flagstaff Coun-try,” Donald crooned in agreement. He sat back against the hood of the patrol car. “What the hell are you doing here, anyway? What’s it been? A couple years, at least. Figured you were all done with park contracts now that you’re sucking on the tribe’s teat.”
Chuck ignored Donald’s good-natured jab. “I’m with my wife and kids.”
“Wife? Kids?”
Good. He’d managed to throw Donald. “Got myself one of those insta-families. All the rage these days.”
“She cute, your new wife?”
“’Course she is.” Chuck appreciated the opportunity to answer with complete conviction. “Knock-down, drop-dead gorgeous.”
“I’d expect nothing less of you.”
“There’s plenty out there for you, too,” Chuck said, covering territory he and Donald had gone over many times. “Get your butt out of your La-Z-Boy, throw away the bottle—”
“And run my ass off like you every day? Fat chance.”
“Fat’s what I’m talking about.” Chuck eyed Donald’s gut. The ranger had put on a few pounds since they’d last seen one another.
“Hey,” Donald said defensively, covering his stomach with his hand.
“I was wondering if maybe you could show us around tomorrow. I said I’d find out.”
“As if you knew I’d be here.”
“You or somebody else.”
“Like Rachel, maybe?”
Chuck shuddered. “I heard she transferred to the Everglades.”
“She only lasted there for, like, six months. She’s been back here quite a while now.” Donald smirked. “Guess she forgot to tell you.”
Chuck kept his tone even. “Guess so.”
The ranger moved on. “These insta-kids of yours, any daughters?”
“Two.”
“Teenagers?” Donald leered.
“Sorry.” Chuck held out a hand palm-down at his waist. “Five and seven.”
“Damn. How ‘bout this wife of yours, any sisters?”
“Nope.” Chuck couldn’t hold back his smile any longer. “You never change, do you?”
“A little,” Donald admitted, patting his belly.
Donald was divorced and likely to remain that way. The marriage rate for park rangers was near the lowest of all professions in the United States, and Donald was no exception. With its postings far from bright lights and big cities, the job attracted autonomous individuals set on their own paths through life. Fellow staffers in each national park served as a de facto family for most rangers, an ever-changing community gathered in the middle of nowhere by a shared love of the outdoors and by something else—the desire not to be sentenced to a life in suburbia “doing the deadly,” as rangers referred to the nine-to-five, Monday-through-Friday routine. But the tradeoffs of park-service life—working nights, weekends, and holidays far from hometowns, relatives, and lifelong friends—were significant, and they
