Chapter 21 #3
She was short, White, and in her late forties, with a smattering of freckles. The sweatshirt was neon pink. The sweatpants were lime green. Hazel eyes widened behind glasses. “Oh, I thought you were Zeb.”
“Sorry,” Jem said with one of those grins that came so easily to him. “Who’s Zeb?”
“He works here. He’s bringing back— It doesn’t matter. Who are you?”
“Jem Berger. And this is Tean. Sorry to bother you, but we’re looking into Brennon Lee’s death, and we were wondering if we could ask you a few questions.” Jem paused and asked, “You were the one who found him, correct?”
“Oh God, that poor man.” She pushed her hair back again, frowned, and said, “Whatever I can do to help.”
“Do you mind if we sit down?”
She gestured to the camp chairs, and they sat.
“I can start a fire if you give me two minutes,” she said. “It gets cold out here. I’d invite you in, but…”
“But we’re strangers?” Jem said. “Very smart. We won’t take a lot of your time. Could we start with your name?”
“Katie. Wait, aren’t you with the police?”
“No, we’ve been retained by friends of the family.”
“Like private investigators?”
“Something like that. Could you tell us about finding the body?”
“There’s not much to tell. I went out that night, and I wanted to try a few new spots. Sometimes the right angle makes all the difference.”
“For what?” Tean asked.
“Spotting UFOs,” she said cheerily. “I come out here every year. This is the best place—the entire basin is like a nexus for weird stuff. There’s a major ley line, and the electromagnetic fields are totally whack. A couple of years ago, I saw them for the first time!”
“Them?”
“UFOs! Well, I only saw one. But you can see all sorts of amazing stuff out here. There are skin walkers, and extradimensional wolves, even chupacabras when they come north.”
Tean opened his mouth, but Jem bumped his knee and said, “That’s amazing. You’ve seen all that?”
“Well, no. Just the lights. But Kai said a few people have seen the wolves. They cross over sometimes. And one time, one of them even got stuck here. They told everybody it was a regular wolf, and people believed it!”
Tean had an idea of who they were. He was probably lumped into that group.
“So,” Jem said, “you went out to see UFOs.”
“You never really know if you’re going to see them, but that’s what makes it fun. My cousin likes to play quiniela, and it’s the same kind of thing. You never know if you’re going to hit the jackpot.”
“And what happened that night?”
“I…found him.”
“Could you walk us through that?” Jem asked.
“Well, I got out of the side-by-side—”
“What’s a side-by-side?”
“It’s like an ATV,” Tean said. “Two people can ride side by side, hence the name.”
“They let you rent them here,” Katie said. “It makes it a lot easier to get around. Plus, if you go on the ranch—” She cut herself off. “Not that we do. Go on the ranch, I mean. Because it’s trespassing.”
“What ranch?”
“A lot of the land next to the campground is privately owned. And they don’t want anybody on their property.” Frustration laced her voice as she blurted, “But some of the best landing sites are on that property! It’s not fair!”
“Were you on the ranch when you found Brennon’s body?”
She blinked as though the question had surprised her. “No. I was on public land.”
“And how exactly did you find him?”
“I had to get out of the side-by-side, and I was trying to find my way up the side of the mesa.” She thrust her chin at the sloping ground.
“This same one, but farther north. And I saw a coyote. I freaked out.” She laughed.
“I screamed, actually. Embarrassing, I know, but it made the coyote run away. I probably would have turned around right then except my flashlight—I mean, I could tell it was a person.” She paled and dug her fingers into her cheek, and with a trembling laugh, she said, “I threw up.”
Jem nodded sympathetically. “I don’t suppose you noticed anything distinctive about the body.”
“I couldn’t really look at him, not after that first time. I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be rude. He was just—it’s not like you think it’d be.”
“Of course. What about how the body was placed? Or where it had been left?”
“Nope. Just one of the caves.” Brightening, she added, “Did you know they used to do rituals in those caves? They’re sacred. And they still have power.”
“Who?” Jem asked.
“Native Americans. Nobody will say it, but I think that’s where the skin walkers live.”
Present tense, Tean noted. But all he said was “A cave in the mesa?”
She nodded. “It’s not like you’re thinking, though—not like a big opening you can walk into. These are down low, like cracks in the ground. There’s lots of them around here.”
“I don’t suppose you went inside the cave?” Tean asked.
She stared at him. “No. I called the police.”
“Right. Of course.”
“Is it possible you could show us where you found him?” Jem asked, pulling out his phone.
Katie waved the words away. “I can take you to him.” And then the growl of an engine broke the night’s stillness. “And there’s Zeb, right on cue.”
Headlights—smaller than a car’s, but still bright enough to break the darkness—spun out of the night.
A vehicle drove up to the RV with gravel hissing under its tires.
The side-by-side was black, with some sort of decorative trim, and it had a roof and windshield—clearly of a different order than the one Tean had ridden in a few days earlier.
At an optimistic guess, he put it as more expensive than some cars.
A man got out. He was dressed like Kai—long-sleeved shirt, jeans, boots. But he was built taller and bigger than the other man. His dark hair spilled over his collar, and a scar marked his cheekbone. He came toward them, and his gaze flicked toward Tean and Jem before returning to Katie.
“All fueled up,” he said, holding out a hand. Keys jingled from one finger. “You sure you don’t want someone to go with you tonight? Kai says it’s on the house.”
“I’m fine,” Katie said with a laugh. And then to Tean and Jem, “I’ve been a little spooked since…you know, but I’m fine.”
“I’ve got to grab a few things out of the back,” Zeb said. But he waited, as though he’d asked a question. Now that he was closer, Tean could make out text in flowing black script tattooed onto his neck: Old things are done away, and all things have become new.
“I promise I’m fine,” Katie said. “Go home and get some rest.”
“You can get me on the radio if you need anything,” Zeb said. He moved back to the side-by-side without another glance for Tean and Jem. As he rummaged around in the side-by-side’s bed, he was nothing more than a shadow.
“Want to go?” Katie said. “I was about to head out anyway.”
“That would be great,” Tean said. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”
“I just need to grab my coat.”
Katie disappeared into the trailer. Her words had reminded Tean of the plummeting temperature, and even inside his second-favorite jacket, he shivered.
Jem held the same relaxed pose, at ease in Katie’s camp chair, but his eyes were intent on something in the middle distance.
The only sounds were Zeb collecting whatever he needed from the back of the side-by-side.
The process seemed to be taking forever—longer, in any case, than it should have—but finally Zeb trudged toward the front of the campground.
When he rounded the side of the mesa, the sounds of his steps died away.
“What’s wrong?” Tean asked. “Is that him?”
Jem shook his head. “Too big.”
“You’re sure?”
Jem nodded, but he was staring in the direction Zeb had gone.
“What about the other one, Kai?”
The blond man gave another quick shake of his head, but before Tean could press the question, Katie emerged from the trailer.
“Sorry about that,” she said. “I couldn’t find my flashlight. Ready?”
As they made their way toward the side-by-side, Tean said, “This is going to be a strange question, but by any chance have you seen a man with a scar on his arm?” He traced a crescent on his arm, the way Jem had shown him. “He wouldn’t be a big man.”
Katie shook her head. “No. Why? Oh my God! Does the killer have a scar like that?”
“No,” Jem said with a laugh. “I wish it were that easy. It’s someone we want to talk to, that’s all.”
Disappointment crossed Katie’s face. “Sorry. I haven’t seen anybody like that.”
“What about—” Tean began.
But Jem cut him off with a tight shake of his head.
“You know what?” Tean said. “I’m jumping the gun. Let’s see this place first.”
Katie took them out of the lot and into the dark. For the first quarter mile, they followed the two-lane road. Then she pulled off onto a flat stretch of ground and said, “Hold on,” before starting up a hill.
Loose stones pinged off the side-by-side’s undercarriage, and the ATV rocked from side to side as they climbed.
The grade was steep, and occasionally a tire whined as it sought purchase and found only air.
Through the windshield, the night sky tilted, dropped down, rose up again.
Tean grabbed the door handle. Jem, he was unsurprised to see, wore a huge grin—and when they came down unexpectedly hard enough to jar Tean’s teeth, Jem’s grin got bigger.
The ride became smoother when they reached the top of the hill, although only marginally, and they rode for close to fifteen minutes with nothing but the ping of stones, the crunch of crushed sage, and the groan of the suspension for company.
The headlights made paper cut-outs of the night ahead of them: blank except for lichenous rocks, the brittle ball of an uprooted thistle, the fluttering leaves of sage.
And then red rock rose again, and Tean realized he was seeing another side of the mesa.
Katie slowed the side-by-side in front of a break in the rock. She put her hand on the keys, but she didn’t turn off the engine. “Up there,” she said. “Just past a big deadfall. You can’t miss it.”
“Do you mind showing us?”
Shivering, Katie said, “You’ll see it right away.” Then she said, “I’m sorry. I know I said I would, but it—it’s weird, you know.”
“No problem,” Jem said.
“Do you want the radio so you can call back if you need anything?”
“We’re all right.”
“Do you want me to wait?”
Jem glanced at Tean.
“We can walk back,” Tean said. “It’s less than a mile.”
They got out of the side-by-side, and Katie gave them a miserable wave before starting off into the night again.
Tean turned on his phone’s flashlight. The wind was up, carrying the smell of the dust from the steppes and the sweet earthiness of the sage.
It raked Jem’s hair out of its neat part and across his forehead, and he put a hand up, caught himself, and the corner of his mouth turned when he saw Tean looking at him.
The dark fissure in the rock turned out to be the mouth of a gully.
A trickle of water that could barely be called a creek ran down the center of a mostly dry bed, but it was enough moisture in this part of the world that the gully was green by comparison with the land they’d just crossed.
Bushes grew on the slopes, and higher, slender pines rippled like smoke as the wind tore at them.
It even smelled different—like green things, like damp soil, like pine sap and the crisp edge of juniper.
From a long way off, the rumble of an engine came across the mesa.
Not a car or a truck, which meant Katie on the side-by-side.
A band of bright pink, sprayed onto the bole of a struggling cottonwood, caught Tean’s eye. “This must be part of the ranch’s property. I bet that’s why Katie was so nervous about coming back here—she said she wasn’t trespassing, but…”
Not long after that they reached the deadfall she’d mentioned, a gnarled tree that had fallen across the bed of the creek.
The bark was silvery and coarse and crackled under the flashlight’s beam.
Mountain mahogany. The twisted trunk wasn’t huge, but the way it had fallen made it difficult to get past—a little too big to climb over easily, but too low to go under either.
Tean stepped up onto a nearby rock, slung a leg over the branch, and slid across to the other side.
“This is going to tear up my jeans,” Jem muttered.
“You’re being very brave.”
“I know I’m being very brave. These are my nice jeans, Tean.”
Tean landed on the far side of the fallen tree. A moment later, swearing, Jem dropped down next to him.
“I scraped my hands,” Jem said, showing him raw palms.
“I’m sorry,” Tean said. “We’ll put something on them when we get back to the car.”
“No, I’m fine. I just want you to know how brave I’m being. Also, I’d like to point out that this shit does not happen if you stick to, you know, civilization.”
“Noted.”
The beam of the flashlight picked out a depression in the ground that Tean realized, when he got a better look at it, was actually a short, rocky slope that ended at the mouth of a cave.
The opening was only about eighteen inches high, but it was long, running horizontally for maybe ten or twelve feet before the seam in the rock closed again.
The flashlight was too weak to penetrate the darkness beyond it, so it was nothing more than a jagged cut in the red stone.
“Nope,” Jem said.
Tean decided this was one of those times it was better not to engage. He squatted to get a better look at the cave.
“So, what?” Jem said. “He tried to hide the body in the cave, and instead, a coyote found it?”
“That seems likely. They are scavengers. And they follow water corridors. I want to—”
A high-pitched whine was followed almost immediately by a loud crack. Something sparked against the gully’s wall.
Then Jem tackled him, and they fell toward the cave.