contract to assess and dig the route of a proposed connector road out of the village to meet up with the park’s South Entrance Road. That was twelve years ago. At the time, Donald was freshly split from his high-school sweetheart; she wanted kids, Donald did not. Fed up with Donald’s refusal to embrace parenthood by the time they’d reached their thirties, Donald’s now ex-wife had decamped for their hometown of San Diego.
Donald was hard on the prowl when he and Chuck first met, trolling among female rangers and the unattached women who made up the bulk of the retail workforce in the village. Donald’s playboy ways cooled as Scotch took over as his mistress of choice. For a time, Chuck considered confronting Donald about his drinking. But it never reached the point where it affected his on-the-job performance, at least not overtly so. If and when it rose to that level, Chuck told himself, he would act. In the meantime, he did what came naturally and kept his mouth shut.
Chuck glanced down at his own flat stomach. “You don’t have to run your butt clear off, you know.”
“A life of denial’s not for me. Never has been.” Donald returned his hand to the butt of his .45. “There are certain finer things in life that call my name. Far be it for me to reject them.”
“You count French fries and pizza as ‘finer things in life’?”
“Like I’m gonna gorge myself on caviar on what they pay me around here.”
“Still on the ‘oh, poor me’ jag, are you?” Chuck had listened to Donald complain of living paycheck to paycheck for as long as he’d known him. “You’ve got benefits far as you can see. Health insurance, free housing, paid vacations, overtime. You name it, the government’s throwing it at you. And still you’re bitching about how broke you are?”
“You try getting by on what I make each month.”
“There’s nothing to spend your big bucks on out here. Look around. You see a Ferrari dealer anywhere? You should be drowning in money.”
Donald studied the ground at his feet, causing Chuck to wonder what his friend might have added to his off-duty routine over the last two years—not that he was going to ask. How many evenings had the two of them hung out together in Donald’s park-service duplex while, night after night, Donald sipped himself into whisky-fueled oblivion? And never once had Chuck said a word. He wasn’t about to start now, having run into Donald for the first time in more than two years, and with the full body bag waiting fifty yards beyond Donald’s shoulder.
The rangers on the promontory were lining up on either side of the litter. “Looks like they could use your help,” Chuck said.
Donald glanced back. “Right-o.” He reached inside the patrol car and shut off the engine, then stepped to the sidewalk. “Gimme a call in the morning, I’ll see what I can do. Where you staying?”
“Mather.”
“Still the cheap bastard, huh? A hotel room’s too nice for the new missus?”
“It’s her idea. She wants to try camping.”
“Sure she does,” Donald said with a roll of his eyes. “By the way, this guy’s girlfriend—” he gestured at the body bag behind him “—she’s staying at Mather, too.” He paused. “And Rachel’s assigned to keep tabs on her.”
“I’m taken, Donald.”
“Never stopped you before.”
“I’m married.”
“Never stopped you either, near as I can remember.” Donald turned and headed for the point. “Call me,” he said cheerily over his shoulder.
Chuck looked past Donald to the park staffers bent double at the sides of the litter, readying their lift—all but one, that is. Robert Begay stood unmoving, his dark eyes fixed on Chuck.
Chuck gave the chief ranger a tentative wave. Robert did not lift his hand in return. Though Chuck didn’t know Robert well, their few interactions over the course of Chuck’s work at the Hermit Creek latrine site had been amicable. Now, however, Robert’s coal-black eyes burned with deep and unyielding suspicion.
1 p.m.
Chuck held his position, his hand arrested in midair. When Robert neither moved nor broke his gaze, Chuck dropped his hand, spun on his heel, and headed away from the promontory, wholly unnerved.
Chuck made his living drawing the line between archaeological finds that were significant and those that weren’t. In the field, truth was revealed through the gradual accumulation of many pieces of evidence, clues in the form of pressure flakes and hunting points, potsherds and bone fragments. Each discovered artifact, collapsed wall, or uncovered fire ring might disclose something critical to understanding the truths of the ancients. Or it might mean nothing at all. It was his responsibility to know the difference, and over the years he’d proven himself good at it.
When it came to the death of the guy on Maricopa Point, however, Chuck was left not with an accumulation of evidence, but only with Robert Begay’s menacing gaze on the promontory.
Upon retreating from the point, Chuck caught up with Janelle, Carmelita, and Rosie at Hermit’s Rest. Janelle greeted him with gritty silence. Carmelita glowered at Chuck, following her mother’s lead.
They took refuge on a covered bench at the shuttle-bus stop, the glare of the midday sun assaulting their patch of shade from all sides. No one spoke. Rosie swung her legs beneath the bench and shot surreptitious glances at Chuck while she nibbled on her sandwich. Chuck knew he could draw her into conversation with a single comment. He knew just as well what Janelle’s reaction would be if he did that. He stayed quiet.
When they returned to the village, they walked straight to the South Rim Museum. The girls turned slow circles on the varnished flagstone floor in the air-conditioned coolness of the museum’s grand entry hall while Chuck worked through the questions arising from Robert’s menacing look on Maricopa Point.
If the chief ranger suspected something, why hadn’t he spoken with Chuck at the promontory? Why the silent stare-down? Perhaps, Chuck reasoned, it was actually good news Robert hadn’t said anything to him. Maybe he was reading more into the chief ranger’s look than was deserved.
Chuck led Janelle and the girls to a humidity-controlled glass case containing one of his discoveries selected for display in the museum’s grand entry hall. He’d unearthed this one, a wide-bodied olla basket woven of long ponderosa needles, prior to construction of the new road connecting Grand Canyon Village to the South Entrance Road. A card next to the basket referred to its origin as Ancestral Puebloan, a new term gaining favor in the Southwest archaeological community—though Chuck still used the term Anasazi; most of the Navajos he’d worked with disliked the fact that the word Puebloan derived from the language of the Spaniards who’d invaded their lands five centuries ago.
Chuck aimed Janelle and the girls toward the glass case containing the second of his displayed Grand Canyon finds. Before they reached it, however, a bespectacled man in baggy khakis and a long-sleeved white shirt, head bent over a sheath of papers held in both hands, nearly ran Rosie over as he scurried through the hall. The man, and a gray-haired woman whispering into his ear as she hurried alongside him, had entered the hall from a side passage that connected the museum’s display area with
