Читать книгу Arches Enemy - Scott Graham - Страница 18

7

Chuck and Janelle met the chief ranger at Devil’s Garden Trailhead, outside the entrance to the campground. Three hours had passed since Janelle’s phoned-in report that Landscape Arch had collapsed, taking a woman to her death along with it. Other than the national park and emergency vehicles, the Devil’s Garden parking lot was empty.

Sanford stamped mud from his black leather boots onto the wet pavement and eyed the quiet parking area. “I’ve closed the park, at least for the next few hours.”

He ran Chuck and Janelle through a series of chronological questions. In response, they described the sound they’d heard while in the trailer, and what they’d encountered when they tracked the source of the sound to the collapsed arch.

When the chief ranger completed his questioning, Chuck asked, “Did the loader manage to lift the rock?”

“Barely.”

“And?”

Sanford pushed his glasses up his nose. “The body was crushed beyond recognition. Her body, that is. Gender is clear enough, along with the fact that she is—or was—a runner. Caucasian. Slight build. Young. Brown hair, no gray. No identification on her, not even a phone. Out for a morning jog, apparently.”

Janelle’s brow furrowed. “In the middle of the storm?”

“You know Moabites. They have to get their workouts in no matter what.”

Chuck asked, “She’s a local, then?”

“She almost certainly is, or was. She didn’t drive into the park. She probably left her car along the highway, outside the park boundary to the west. She would have taken one of the unofficial trails leading into the park from there. I’ve got a couple of people retracing her route. Should be easy to follow in the mud.”

“Seems she knew where she was headed.”

“To the arch? I’d expect so.”

“She’d have been early enough to go out onto it before any tourists showed up on Devil’s Garden Trail and spotted her doing it.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a regular at it. More and more people are sneaking onto the arches these days. They claim they feel special energy or something when they’re prancing around on them.”

“She didn’t take the thumper truck into account, though.”

“Based on the location of her body, she was fifteen or twenty feet out on the arch from its north end, at the very narrowest part, when it collapsed.”

Janelle said, “She was looking for the right kind of energy, but the wrong kind took her down.” She noted to Sanford, “The truck stopped thumping after I called in what we found.”

“That was me,” the chief ranger responded. “Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened—the vibrations from the truck, the cold snap from the storm, the woman’s weight on the skinniest part of the arch. I called George Epson, regional operations manager for O&G Seismic, right away. He’s sick about it.”

Chuck muttered, “Sure he is.”

The corners of Sanford’s eyes constricted. “George is the guy you wanted to punch in the parking lot. The older one. He came out here with the front-end loader the instant I asked.”

“He doesn’t look much like a manager.”

“He was a heavy machinery operator for a lot of years before they moved him up. He still spends a lot of time in the field. He’s a good enough guy. He had his share of misgivings about the decision to move the truck to Yellow Cat Flat and pound so close to the arches.”

Chuck grunted. “But he did it anyway, didn’t he?”

“Easy for you to say. You work for yourself; you can decide which contracts to bid on and which to pass up. George is a lifelong local, one of the few left in Moab these days. He was raised here in the years after the uranium mines closed and before all the tourists showed up, when the town almost dried up and blew away. He’s made something of himself with O&G, keeping on with what put Moab on the map in the first place.”

“I don’t get it. The contract you hired me for is aimed at keeping southern Utah from being destroyed by oil and gas development, but you’re standing here defending the guy who’s doing the destroying.”

The chief ranger filled his cheeks with air and huffed. “I’m not going to get into this with you right now, Chuck. I came back here to get your story. I need to return to the site. I’ve still got a dead body to identify.”

“You mean,” Chuck said, holding Sanford’s gaze, “you’ve got a crime scene to investigate.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m merely stating the obvious. O&G Seismic killed that woman. In fact, your guy George Epson killed her. He’s the boss, you said so yourself.”

Sanford’s eyes flared, the red spots on his cheeks growing brighter. “When it comes to crimes, you have to have intent, as in criminal intent. From what I saw out there, if anyone had any criminal intent, it wasn’t O&G Seismic, it was the jogger herself. She’s the one who went out onto that arch, against every regulation in the book.”

“Try telling that to her family, or to the people of Moab.”

“She snuck into the park and went out onto the arch. She was a lawbreaker, willingly and with forethought.” Sanford stabbed the air with his finger for emphasis. “Now that’s what I call criminal intent.”

Janelle said, “The locals around here might consider her something else. They might consider her a martyr.”

Sanford stuck out his chest, looking like a stuffed penguin. “You honestly think she might have been out there on purpose, in the middle of the storm, waiting for the truck to start?”

“For all I know, she might’ve jumped up and down on the arch to try to make it break after the truck started thumping. You’re the one who said she was on the narrowest part when it fell.”

Sanford lifted his cap and ran his fingers through his gray hair. “I … I can’t believe …” he sputtered.

Chuck said, “If the O&G guy, George, was uncomfortable with the thumper truck’s work outside the park boundary, I have to figure pretty much everyone else in town has been concerned about it, too.”

“True,” Sanford admitted. He returned his cap to his head, pulling its bill down until it met his glasses.

“People react to stimuli in odd ways,” Chuck went on. “You just talked about people feeling special energy or whatever when they go out on the arches. For some of them, moving on from there to martyrdom might not be much of a stretch.”

Beneath the brim of his hat, a hard glint entered Sanford’s eyes. “Which brings us to one of the reasons you’re here.”

Chuck held his breath as the chief ranger continued.

“You told me you were interested in the contract because of a specific newcomer to Moab, someone who’s all about special energy—or, I should say, truly enlightened energy.”

Chuck grabbed the legs of his work jeans, his fingers digging into the thick cotton fabric. Sanford’s phone chimed. He pulled it from a Velcro-fastened holster at his waist and put it to his ear, raising a finger to Chuck and Janelle. As he listened, his hand, holding the phone, began to tremble.

“Okay, yes, thanks,” he said, ending the call. He lowered the phone, his hand still shaking, and looked up the trail toward the toppled arch.

“Bad news?” Chuck asked.

Sanford returned his phone to its holster and knotted his fingers in front of him. “Can’t say.”

“Can’t say or won’t say?”

“Either. Both.”

“Sounds like you got an ID on the woman.”

“A probable,” the chief ranger agreed.

“Who was she?”

“You know I can’t tell you that. But …”

“But what?”

“You’re going find out soon enough. She was a friend of you know who.”

Just before the call, Sanford had mentioned a specific newcomer to Moab, one who was all about truly enlightened energy. Chuck shivered. The chief ranger had been referring to Sheila.