Читать книгу Anasazi Exile - Eric G. Swedin - Страница 13

CHAPTER EIGHT

Harry showed Chief Ranger Simon Ashbridge the first body. Already the blood had formed a crust and attracted flies. The ranger took pictures, moving around to cover different angles. Harry was struck by a sense of skewed déjà-vu: the ranger was acting as detective, just as yesterday he himself had been acting as an archaeologist. Hundreds of years, maybe over a thousand years, separated the dead.

Another ranger stepped closer, put on latex gloves, and went through the pockets of the deceased. He found a wallet, keys, a money clip holding seven hundred and twenty dollars, coins, and an extra magazine for the .22. Opening the wallet, he read the name on a New York driver’s license aloud: Edward Ashur, thirty-six years old. Everything went into a plastic bag.

Ashbridge had brought four rangers with him. One stayed with Harry all the time—not a form of arrest, since Brenda and Harry were the victims, but just to be sure. Another ranger went over the car the bad men had arrived in. The last investigated the second body and the camp. Eventually, Harry sat down at the table and just watched and listened. The other would-be murderer also had a New York driver’s license—Alfredo Travaglio, forty-one years old.

After posing for pictures, both men were rolled into body bags and taken away. The rangers carefully took apart Brenda’s tent, taking more pictures, finding the bullets, and taking samples of her dried blood. Harry allowed himself a small amused smile. This was probably the most exciting event that had ever happened in their professional lives, and the rangers were going to do everything by the numbers, as befitted their federal training.

The rangers who took the bodies away to be stored in a freezer at the Visitor’s Center returned with news of their computer searches. The car had been rented that morning at two a.m. in the Albuquerque airport—just enough time to drive to Chaco Canyon. A search of the car produced a map of the canyon, along with a map of the dig, apparently copied from Dr. Bancroft’s request for a digging permit. A GPS receiver made it easy to drive right to Casa Ángeles. Simon told the archaeologist that the digging request was a public document and available on the web.

A search of the federal and New York law enforcement databases showed that Edward Ashur and Alfredo Travaglio were not model citizens. Ashur had arrests for loan sharking, financial fraud, and possession of an illegal firearm on his record, along with a three-year stretch in prison for armed robbery. Alfredo Travaglio had served six years for manslaughter and also had arrests, without any convictions, for loan sharking and procuring prostitution.

“These guys sound like soldiers for organized crime,” the chief ranger said. “Especially the loan sharking.” Ashbridge was a short, stout man, with muscles that demonstrated many hours lifting weights. Harry didn’t know the chief ranger well, but had talked to him for a while once, and thought he was a pleasant enough fellow.

“You ever pissed anyone off in the mob, Harry?” one of the other rangers asked.

“Not that I know of. Any word on Brenda?”

“She’s in the operating room. They think she’ll be okay.”

“I want to go to her. And I’d like to take some of her stuff—clothes, her cell phone, you know, so I can call her parents. Toothbrush and stuff like that, too.”

The chief ranger scratched his head. His brown hair still stuck out in odd directions from being woken up, and he had not paid enough attention to himself to be embarrassed. “Everything here matches your story, Harry. We just have no motive or any reason for this. Why would mobsters come out here to kill you and that girl?”

“I don’t know, but maybe it has something to do with Dr. Bancroft. Have you found out more about that?”

No new information from Scotland.

“Did you find any plane tickets?” Harry asked.

“No.”

“What does that mean?”

“That they got to the airport by some other method?” Ashbridge said. “That they aren’t going to fly back? That they came on a private plane? Take your pick.”

“Are you going to find out?”

Ashbridge shook his head. “That’s for the FBI to follow up. They are sending someone later today, I hope. The feds used to have an office in Farmington, but budget cuts closed that, so now they have to come from Albuquerque.”

“None of this makes sense,” one of the rangers said. “These guys didn’t even try to hide their identity.”

Harry laughed bitterly. “Of course not. They never expected anything to go wrong.”