Slickrock Paradox (7 page)

Silas read the passage three more times and nothing new emerged from the page, except that he, of course,
had
taken a swim on the previous day, though it wasn't the sort that Edward Abbey alluded to. He then read the entire chapter again.

There was nothing new there. Silas put the book down and remembered why he didn't like Edward Abbey: the tendency toward hyperbole. He and Penelope had fought about it often enough. She had loved Edward Abbey, had loved every word he had written. Silas had dismissed her argument as a schoolgirl crush. She had chided him for being jealous of her passion for the man's writing, citing Silas's failure to write anything more than academic texts condemned to mediocre journals.

In the end she had won the argument, taking the last word with her, it seemed, to the grave. It was fitting that the burial place was Courthouse Wash. He threw the book down on the table in despair. Taking his cane, he pushed himself up and went to the kitchen to get another beer—one last cold can behind a jug of pickles and a bottle of ketchup. While he heated a frozen dinner, he clomped down the hall to the utility room where he gingerly stripped naked. Hanging his cane on the bathroom door, he stood in front of the mirror to contemplate the damage done by his wild ride down Sleepy Hollow. There was almost no part of his body that wasn't covered in bruises and cuts. Two of them still had gauze pads taped to them, which he carefully peeled off to reveal two-inch-long abrasions sewn together with black surgical thread. He looked exactly like he felt: as if he'd been through the wringer. He swallowed three ibuprofen tablets with the last of his beer and turned the shower on.

After his shower Silas ate his dinner and then retreated to the hammock under the pergola. He lay down and listened to the end of the day: cars on the road leading further up the valley, poor-wills in the willows, and somewhere, a canyon wren's tremolo tripping down the harmonic scale.

And his Penelope, found at long last, seemingly, inexorably, by her own will. He jolted and twitched toward sleep, the hammock gently swaying, his last thoughts on his long-lost wife.

THE TELEPHONE WOKE
him. Silas struggled to free himself from the hammock. Around midnight he had woke, chilled, and found a thin blanket in the house and returned to the cooler out-of-doors. Wrestling to free himself now, he came down hard on his damaged foot and winced. He bent over to find his cane, but the phone stopped ringing. He rubbed his face and stood awkwardly, then made his way into the house. There was a cordless handset in the bedroom and he went to see who might be calling him at 6:00
AM
. As he picked it up it rang again.

“This is Pearson,” he said. His voice was raw and gravelly.

“Mr. Pearson, this is Agent Taylor. Would you please come to the Grand County Sheriff's Office this morning? As early as you are able?”

“Is this about my wife? Have you identified the . . . have you identified her?”

“It
is
about the body found in Courthouse Wash. I need you to come into the Sheriff's Office. You know where it is?”

“Yeah, East Center. Can't you tell me what you've found over the phone?”

“Will you be here by 7:00
AM
?”

Silas shook his head. “Yes, yes, I will,” he said, then hesitated. “Do I need a lawyer, Agent Taylor?”

“That's up to you,” said Taylor.

IT TOOK SILAS A SURPRISINGLY
long time to leave his Castle Valley home to make the drive to Moab. For some inexplicable reason he couldn't decide which shirt to wear. For the longest time he'd dressed in whatever T-shirt fell to hand, but this morning he kept thinking,
What would Penelope want me to wear?
When he was teaching at
NAU
she would dress him most mornings before he left for class; those mornings that she was away, in canyon country, his students would take note of his shabby attire. It had become a running joke between them.

As he drove down Hal Canyon the Colorado River was visible through the tangles of invasive tamarisk and native willow; it reflected the orange glow of the adjacent cliffs in near mirror-like perfection. It was a good morning, he thought, to put this business to rest. The thought that his manic search might have come to an end gave him some comfort. He almost allowed himself to feel relief.

Almost. Doubts plagued him as he neared the junction with 191 and the turnoff to Moab. If the body had in fact been that of his wife, why hadn't Agent Taylor simply said so? Was there some official Bureau procedure that had to be followed around notification? Maybe he had to be present to receive the news so it could be witnessed. Maybe they would be watching him for his reaction. He wondered if he should call Ken and ask him to join him at the sheriff's office. In his prime, Hollyoak had been a fire-brand defense attorney until a heart attack had sidelined him a decade ago. He decided that if it became necessary, he'd make the call. Silas parked in front of the red brick building housing the County offices and turned the car off, then just sat in it with the door open.

“You coming in, Silas?” a voice said and he looked up. Sheriff Willis was standing in front of him on the sidewalk. Silas realized that the sheriff had probably been waiting for him. He got out of the car and followed the man into the building.

“You like coffee?” asked Willis.

“No thanks,” said Silas, his mouth dry. “A glass of water maybe.”

“We can do that.” They stepped past the reception area and the sheriff used his pass to unlock a door marked “Authorized Personnel Only.” Silas had been in this area on several occasions, to file the missing person's report, and later, to be updated from time to time on the search for Penelope. It was unnerving to think that this was where the search would finally come to conclusion.

Silas drank the water Willis handed him and tossed the paper cup in the garbage. Silently, Willis led him through another set of doors and into a conference room full of people. Taylor stepped forward, towering over the rest of the crowd. He extended his hand.

“Thanks for coming in so early,” he said. They shook. “You know Special Agent Nielsen and Deputy Derek Penshaw, who is representing the Medical Examiner. And this is Special Agent Janet Unger. She's a member of our Evidence Recovery Team. You might remember her with the video camera. That's John Huston, also with
ERT
, and Stan Baton, with the Park Service.”

“The gang's all here,” Silas said dryly.

“This is Dr. Kathleen Rain,” continued Taylor, indicating a woman who rose from the conference table, notepad in hand, and came to shake Silas's hand.

“I'm with the
FBI
's Forensic Anthropology program. We're a new subgroup of the Trace Evidence Unit.”

“Silas Pearson. I own a bookstore.”

“You found these remains?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Well, the deceased does not match the description we have on file for your wife, Mr. Pearson.”

Silas felt his vision grow dim. He looked around and spotted a chair next to the wall, but his legs wouldn't respond. The sheriff moved the chair under him just as he started to sag against the wall. He sat down. Dr. Rain crouched down so that she was at eye level.

“I've only been able to do a preliminary examination here. Thanks to the morgue at Moab Regional, and with the tools I brought with me from Salt Lake City, I've been able to determine a few facts. When the remains are transported back to the Medical Examiner's lab in Salt Lake, we'll undertake a more thorough examination, but here's what I can tell you. The remains you discovered in Arches belong to a woman, but one who is no older than twenty-five. I'd say closer to twenty-two or twenty-three. She was five-foot-four, give or take an inch, and weighed maybe one hundred and ten pounds at time of death.”

Silas was focusing on Rain's face. He struggled to hear what she was saying. He blinked several times as she spoke. “How do you—”

“There are some relatively straightforward means for determining these things. First, we were able to exhume nearly a complete skeleton. We're still looking for other bones in Courthouse Wash. There were several smaller bones missing, but all of the larger bones were there. I can take measurements and determine height and approximate weight. We add a few inches to allow for soft-tissue loss. It's not that difficult a calculation.

“As for age, the last bone in the body to stop growing is the collarbone,” said Rain, indicating her own. “That usually happens in the late twenties. In the subject you found in Courthouse Wash, there was no indication that this bone had reached maturity. No fusing, no deterioration. There are also several fusion points in the skull,” she continued, touching the back of her skull, “where ossification occurs at different times. Finally, dental wear. This young woman had pretty good teeth. Very little wear. It all adds up to someone in her early twenties.

“Sex is easy to determine. Wide hips, an open pelvic bone, for childbirth. So what we have is a woman, say twenty-two to twenty-four years old, to be on the safe side, five-foot-four, and one hundred and ten pounds.”

“Penny was—”

“Older, taller, a little heavier. If the remains had been of your wife, we would certainly have seen early signs of calcium deterioration. By age thirty the bones start to lose density. By forty we see notable bone loss.”

Silas, who was in his mid fifties, thought of his own bones and the miles he'd put on them over the last few years. He closed his eyes and rubbed his hands across his face.

“There's a little more, if you're willing to hear it. This young woman was murdered. We have conclusive proof. We don't always get it from a set of remains this old, but in this case there is no doubt.”

“Mr. Pearson,” Agent Taylor interrupted. “You understand, you're being told this in some confidence. We need your help here.”

“How can
I
help?” Silas asked, looking away from Dr. Rain to the
FBI
agent.

“You found the body. I have a couple of questions,” said Rain. “When you discovered the remains did you get the impression that they had been there for some time, or that they had been washed down in the flood?”

Silas cleared his throat and looked around the room. “It was hard to tell. I'm not an expert—”

“I just want your impression. It may be important later on,” said Rain.

“I got the feeling that the flood uncovered them, that they had been in Courthouse Wash. The force of the flood had unearthed them, maybe from under the cottonwood log.”

“That's how I felt when I came on the scene. We have an agent working with the Park Service and the National Meterological Service to determine if there have been any additional floods in the area over the last two years.”

“You say two years?” asked Silas.

“Yes, two years. The condition of the remains suggest that this young woman was killed no more than two years ago. The loss of some of the small bones and the generally good condition of the larger bones suggests that time frame. We're obviously checking national missing person files and will be able to check dental records shortly. I believe we'll have a positive
ID
in another day or two.”

Rain continued, “Did you happen to notice anything else that might have been associated with the deceased, Mr. Pearson?”

“It's ‘Doctor,' by the way,” said Silas, looking down at his hands.

“I'm sorry?”

“It's
Doctor
Pearson. I have a
PhD
in Comparative English Literature from the University of British Columbia. I was a tenured professor at
NAU
until Penny disappeared . . .”

“Of course, I'm sorry, Dr. Pearson—anything?”

Silas shook his head. “I didn't see anything at all. No clothing, nothing.”

“It's
possible
in two years, especially if the body had been buried near the stream bed, for the clothing to rot away entirely,” said Rain, standing up and looking around the room. “Gentlemen, I don't have any further questions at this time for Dr. Pearson.”

Silas felt dizzy. He needed to get outside and out of the clinical room with all these faces glaring at him. He stood up and steadied himself with his cane. He turned to make his way to the door.

“Oh, Dr. Pearson,” said Rain, pushing her hands into the pockets of her white lab coat.

He turned to regard her. She had an intense, almost troubling gaze. “The deceased was Native American. You can tell by the teeth.”

The room was silent a moment. Then the sheriff said, “I'll show you out. We'd like a few more minutes of your time, Silas, but you look like you could use some air.”

“Don't be long,” said Agent Taylor. “
Doctor
Pearson and I need to have a chat.”