Canyon Sacrifice (30 page)

Chuck lifted the necklace above his head. Marvin tracked its movement with his eyes but kept his gun centered on Chuck's chest.

“You've only got a few seconds,” Chuck insisted, trying to ignore Marvin's finger tightening on the trigger of his gun. “If you—”

Marvin's eyes grew large. His moccasined feet skittered on the bare floor of the stage as he shoved himself back against the unyielding metal railing, his gaze fixed on something beyond Chuck's shoulder. Marvin reached around Carmelita's waist, lifted her off the stage, and pressed the barrel of his gun against her temple as he pivoted with her toward the cliff.

Chuck ducked low and charged, dropping the necklace as he hurtled himself across the stage.

Only at the last second did Marvin see Chuck barreling toward him, too late to get off a shot before Chuck, holding his crouch, rammed Marvin hard in the side with his lowered shoulder.

Chuck enveloped Carmelita in his arms as he crushed Marvin against the metal railing, his shoulder ramming Marvin's midsection. Marvin's feet left the floor of the stage and his upper body leaned past the top bar of the railing at an impossible angle. He cartwheeled up and over the railing and out into space.

Carmelita spun over the top bar of the railing alongside Marvin. Chuck corralled her tiny body to him as he plowed hard into the railing himself. For an instant, as he and Carmelita leaned over the railing's top bar, she threatened to spin from his grasp. Then his feet settled on the floor of the stage and he
pulled her back over the railing to his chest, holding her close as Marvin plummeted, screaming, down the face of the cliff, his gun flying free from his grasp and his empty hands reaching for purchase in the cool morning air.

Chuck pressed Carmelita's face to his chest and watched over the top of her head as Marvin struck the boulder-strewn shelf at the base of the cliff. Marvin's scream ended abruptly as he crumpled headfirst among the rocks. His body spun a full turn and he came to rest on his back, one shattered arm flung outward, the other flopped across his chest. Marvin faced the sky amid the boulders, unmoving, his mouth open in mid-scream, his eyes closed. His gun clattered among the rocks, coming to rest in a patch of sand at his side.

Chuck knelt and hugged Carmelita to him. “Carm,” he whispered in her ear, stroking the back of her head. “Carmelita. You're safe now, okay? You're safe.”

Carmelita wrapped her arms around Chuck's neck and clung to him, sobbing. He stood, lifting her with him, and turned to find Robert Begay climbing the stairs to the stage. Robert's shoulders sagged beneath his wrinkled uniform. His face was lined with exhaustion. He came to a stop at the top of the steps.

“He asked me to meet him at my office,” Robert said, his voice hollow. “He had the girl.” He looked past Chuck and Carmelita to where Marvin had disappeared over the railing. “He wouldn't listen to me. He pulled a gun, took my keys.”

Sirens sounded in the distance.

“I expected he would come here,” Robert continued. “I made sure they were waved past Pipe Creek. I was afraid what might happen if they were stopped. I took another car, came in on foot. I thought I'd be able to talk some sense into him. I called dispatch as soon as I saw what happened back there—” he motioned toward the parking lot, “and Marvin up here with you.” Robert lowered his gaze in weary defeat. “He was convinced
this was where it would happen. But we have our own history, our own beliefs.”

Chuck thought of his morning runs these past weeks. “Some of us are always convinced we have to have more,” he said. “Whatever we have, we tell ourselves it isn't enough.”

Robert walked past Chuck and Carmelita to the railing. He stared down at Marvin's body. Then he straightened, looked out across the canyon, and murmured a few lines of prayer in the guttural
Diné
tongue. He turned away from the canyon and took in the necklace lying on the floor of the stage. His eyes rose questioningly to Chuck.

“The A. Dinaveri,” Chuck said. He pointed at his pack. “A whole bunch of them.”

Robert's eyebrows lifted in further question. But when Chuck glanced past Carmelita at the sound of the sirens drawing closer, Robert tilted his head toward Marvin's body at the base of the cliff behind him. “Thank you,” he said. “Hard as it is to say. You did the right thing.”

“He killed Donald.”

Robert looked away. “I thought you killed him, I really did. I'm sorry for that.”

“He killed Miguel, too,” Chuck said, holding Carmelita and aiming his chin at the rear of the amphitheater.

Robert clenched his square jaw. “Insanity, that'll have to be it.”

“That's what it was.”

“I know.”

“You got here just in time.”

Tears filled Robert's eyes. “He was a good boy. You know that, don't you? Smart. Such a hard worker. But we watched him change, my brother and I. He hid it for the most part, but we saw it. Last year, this year, it kept getting worse. There didn't seem to be anything we could do.”

“He was always fine with me,” Chuck said. “Fair. Good to
work with.” He paused. “We get lost every now and then, Robert. All of us. Sometimes we can't find our way home.”

At the word “home,” Carmelita lifted her head from Chuck's shoulder. She looked at him with clearing eyes. “
Mamá
,” she said.

Robert turned again to the canyon and gripped the top bar of the railing with both hands. His chin fell to his chest and his shoulders heaved. Beyond him, the North Rim shone in the morning light.

Chuck settled Carmelita on his hip and crossed the floor to the head of the stage. The first ray of sun to reach the amphitheater broke through the trees and shone full on Carmelita's face as they came to the top of the stairs. Chuck stopped and looked at Carmelita in the beam of sunlight. The tracks of her tears, nearly dry now, glittered on her cheeks. She studied him gravely in return.

“
M'hija
,” Chuck said to her. He slipped a stray strand of hair, dark as Janelle's, behind her ear.

She dropped her head to his shoulder and nestled her forehead against his neck.

“Let's get you to your mother,” Chuck said, heading down the stairs from the stage with his oldest daughter safely in his arms.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks go to my earliest and toughest reader—my wife Sue—and to equally astute early readers Mary Engel, Anne Markward, John Peel, Kevin Graham, and Roslyn Bullas.

I cannot thank the dedicated folks at Torrey House Press enough for their belief in this book and its potential to share the Torrey House message of appreciation for the West with a new and wider audience, namely fun-loving mystery readers. Mark Bailey first selected this book for the Torrey House lineup, Kirsten Johanna Allen's keen insight improved the manuscript immensely, and Anne Terashima tightened my prose with a ruthlessly precise red pen. I am fortunate to now have all three championing my book out there in the bookselling world.

Which reminds me, my appreciation extends to booksellers everywhere, including my good friends at Maria's Bookshop in Durango, Colorado, whose belief in the power of story enables us writers to keep telling ours.

My respect goes to the rangers, staff, and employees of Grand Canyon National Park. I have loved and visited the Grand Canyon since I was a kid, and I look forward to exploring the canyon for the rest of my life thanks to those dedicating their professional lives to preserving and protecting the greatest hole on Earth.

Finally, my thanks go to the master, Tony Hillerman, in memoriam, for the advice he so willingly gave me years ago when, as a clueless young writer with my first book contract in hand, I picked up the phone and gave him a call.

A
BOUT
S
COTT
G
RAHAM

Scott Graham was raised in the heart of the Southwest, where America's Native, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures co-exist—often uneasily—and where echoes of the ancient Anasazi Indians featured in
Canyon Sacrifice
resonate to this day. His home in Durango, Colorado, stands next to a thousand-year-old ruin once home to more than a dozen Anasazi families.

An avid outdoorsman and amateur archaeologist, Graham has explored the Grand Canyon all his life. He has backpacked deep into the canyon's farthest reaches, and twice has rowed his own eighteen-foot raft down the canyon's notorious Colorado River rapids. The author of several books about backcountry adventures, Graham won the National Outdoor Book Award for
Extreme Kids
. He enjoys hunting, rock climbing, skiing, backpacking, mountaineering, river rafting, and whitewater kayaking with his wife, an emergency physician, and their two sons.

A
BOUT
T
ORREY
H
OUSE
P
RESS

The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.

—Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day

Love of the land inspires Torrey House Press and the books we publish. From literature and the environment and Western Lit to topical nonfiction about land-related issues and ideas, we strive to increase appreciation for the importance of natural landscape through the power of pen and story. Through our
2% to the West
program, Torrey House Press donates two percent of sales to not-for-profit environmental organizations and funds a scholarship for up-and-coming writers at colleges throughout the West.

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www.torreyhouse.com
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