Black Sun Descending Read online

  Last August Silas had led the FBI to Darcy’s body, unceremoniously dumped in another industrial location along the banks of the Colorado River. Darcy had been knocked unconscious with a sharp blow to the head and then drowned. Her murder remained unsolved, and the discovery plagued Silas. What was the connection between these three Flagstaff women? How might the murders relate to Penelope’s disappearance?

  Silas paid for his gas, bought a six-pack of cheap beer, and continued toward Flagstaff. A knot developed in his stomach. During the last four years he had been living with the desperate hope that he might find Penelope one day, alive. But now her two closest allies in the environmental community were dead and he still hadn’t learned the truth about her disappearance. His hope of discovering his wife still among the living seemed to fade with each mile he put behind him.

  THE SUMMIT OF HUMPHREY’S PEAK was still encrusted with snow and ice as Silas neared the city of Flagstaff. From the highway into town he could see the stalwart San Francisco Peaks rising above the pine and aspen forests that ringed the mountains and stretched north toward the Grand Canyon. He traced the foothills of the mountains to the place among the trees where he and Penelope had lived for nearly a decade.

  As Silas drew nearer he saw that Flagstaff was just like every other town in the American West. The quaint historic downtown was surrounded by miles of hideous urban sprawl with big-box stores and industrial parks. He piloted his Outback downtown and made his way to the Hotel Monte Vista. This historic landmark had been a fixture in Flagstaff since 1927, and staying at it was Silas’s way of thumbing his nose at the cardboard hotels that lined the interstate. Parking, he stretched, feeling his back crack as he looked around at the familiar streetscape.

  Across the street was Babbitt’s, an all-purpose merchant that he used to frequent. A block away was Café Express. He opened the back of the car, took out his clothing bag, and, locking the Outback, checked into the hotel.

  “THIS IS SILAS Pearson calling.” He sat on the bed in his ornate room.

  “I’m sorry, but the family has suffered a terrible loss.” The woman on the phone sounded as if she might be Jane’s mother or mother-in-law.

  “I know. I’m very sorry. I was hoping that I might speak with Jane’s husband. It’s important.”

  “I don’t know …”

  “My name is Silas Pearson. My wife knew Jane well. They worked together. I was just hoping I might talk with Dallas a moment.”

  “Hold on please.” Silas looked around the room while he waited for Dallas Vaughn to pick up the phone. He could hear muffled voices in the background, as if the woman had her hand over the phone’s mouthpiece.

  “This is Dallas.” He sounded gruff but worn thin.

  “Mr. Vaughn, this is Silas Pearson calling.”

  “Alright. Listen, we’ve had a bit of a tough week here.”

  “I know, sir. That’s what I was hoping to talk with you about.”

  “Can this wait? I’m trying to arrange a funeral. Can you call back next week?”

  “Mr. Vaughn, I just arrived in town from Moab. I really think you and I should talk.”

  “Listen, Silas, was it? It’s just not a good time. The kids are traumatized. I really should go—”

  “Dallas, I was the one who found your wife. I found Jane.”

  SILAS SAT IN Macy’s, a funky café on the south side of the tracks a few blocks from the university. He had often met students and other professors here for coffee during his tenure at Northern Arizona University, and he felt a strange sense of comfort being back in the familiar surroundings. He found a table near the front of the café where he could see the doors and watched for Dallas Vaughn. When he arrived the man was not what he expected.

  Vaughn was taller than Silas—who was six-two—and easily weighed two hundred and twenty pounds. He was dressed in Carhartt work pants and jacket, and a Cat Diesel Power cap. His hands were callused and very large.

  “You Silas?”

  Silas stood and extended his own rough hand. They shook, then ordered coffee.

  Vaughn looked around. “Jane used to come here. Her office is just around the corner.”

  “I think Penelope used to meet her here.”

  “Not my sort of place, really,” said Vaughn, sipping his coffee. “I’m more of an Uptown Billiards kind of guy.”

  “What do you do?”

  “I’m a heavy equipment operator. I work for the state highway department.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you at such a traumatic time, but I thought you might be able to help me with something. I think our wives were working on something together and if I could just find out what, it might help me find Penelope.” Silas was careful not to mention that it might also help find Jane’s killer.

  “I remember Jane telling me that Penelope had gone missing and you were trying to find her.”

  “It’s been four and a half years.”

  “That’s a long time. I’ve been looking for Jane for five months—at least the local cops and the feds have been. How the hell did you find my wife anyway?”

  Silas watched the man. He tried to read his face, but couldn’t. “I was looking for my own wife,” Silas lied. “I had some evidence, a suggestion really, that maybe Penelope might have been nosing around the Atlas Mill site. Do you know it?”

  “No, what is it?”

  “It’s a huge uranium waste site near Moab. It’s being cleaned up now. Penny hated stuff like that, right on the Colorado and all. That’s when I found Jane—”

  “I don’t know how you did it. The FBI and the local sheriff’s office had been looking for months. There was nothing, not until you showed up.”

  Silas changed the subject. “I wonder if you might have any idea what Jane was working on before she went missing?”

  “What wasn’t she sticking her nose into? I mean, Jane was a one-woman wrecking ball.”

  “You don’t sound like you approved of her work.”

  “Look, everybody’s got a right to their opinion. Jane certainly had her share of them. But I wouldn’t call what she did work. She mostly volunteered. I don’t recall much of a paycheck. We mostly did with my salary. I think Jane’s work cost us more than it brought in. Plus, the stuff that she was into didn’t really hold with the work I do. I build roads. She was trying to tear them up. In the last five or six years Jane got more and more single-minded. In the end, we didn’t really talk about what she was working on. Every time we did we got into a fight. I know this sounds pretty low, but it was sort of a relief when she disappeared. We didn’t have to fight anymore.”

  Silas regarded the man, who was still looking out the window. What he said did sound crass, but this was a man who had just learned that his wife had been murdered. He didn’t expect Dallas Vaughn to be thinking clearly.

  “What’s going to happen now with your family?”

  “We’re going to move on. The kids will have to adjust. So will I. My folks live in town. My mom will come by and sit with the kids. And we’ll have a little extra now to cover the bills.”

  Silas wanted to ask about that, but instead got to what was most on his mind. “Mr. Vaughn, I don’t suppose you’d let me have a look around Jane’s office, would you?”

  Vaughn looked at him for the first time since they’d sat down.

  “I understand she had a little space she rented near the university. I’d like to have a look at it. It might help me make a connection with Penelope.”

  “The local cops and the FBI have already been there. They wanted to look at the same stuff you want to see. I don’t know what you expect to find.”

  “It may be nothing. Maybe the FBI will have taken everything of importance. But I’d like to look just the same.”

  “You get in trouble with the feds, don’t come crying to me.” He reached into his pocket and took out a ring of keys. He started to thread one off.

  “I won’t. Here’s my cell number.” Silas pulled a scrap of paper from his shirt pock
et, wrote on it, and handed it to Vaughn. “I’ve also written the name of my hotel on it. Call me if you think of anything else that might help.”

  Vaughn took the paper, stood up, and handed Silas the key. Silas scribbled Vaughn’s address on a receipt so he could return the key when he was done. “Thanks for the coffee.”

  Silas stood and offered his hand. They shook. “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “I’m just glad we can get on with business as usual now,” said Vaughn, and he turned and left. It was the strangest thing Silas had heard anybody say about the death of their partner, and it made him wonder just how bad Dallas Vaughn’s relationship had been with his wife.

  ON THE WALK FROM MACY’S to Jane Vaughn’s office, Silas had time to think about Dallas Vaughn’s response to his wife’s death. He knew from experience that the waiting was hell, but he hadn’t expected the husband to show quite so much contempt so soon after learning of his wife’s murder. What had he said? It had been a relief when she had disappeared? It occurred to Silas that if he was looking for a suspect in Jane Vaughn’s murder, and not merely a connection between this woman and his own wife, Dallas Vaughn would be at the top of the list. He was lost in these thoughts as he walked onto the campus of the university, near the Drury Hotel. The university was in the final days of the spring semester before exams started. Walking through the sounds and sights of the campus, Silas was drawn to an empty bench near the museum. He sat down heavily. He didn’t like the way he was thinking: if Dallas Vaughn had been responsible in some way for his wife’s death, then the chance that Jane’s murder was related to Penelope’s disappearance was faint. That meant that this trip down memory lane was for nothing; there would be nothing to find. It also meant that Penelope might still be found alive; if Vaughn had killed his wife as a result of a domestic quarrel, there would be no reason Penelope would be involved. Maybe the deaths of the three friends from Flagstaff were unrelated.

  What had Vaughn meant by having “a little extra now to cover the bills?” It dawned on Silas that there might be a life insurance policy that would now pay out a handsome sum to her widower. He’d have to ask Katie if the FBI had looked into that angle.

  Silas was lost in these thoughts when he heard his name spoken as if it was a question. He turned and looked.

  “My God, it is you. Silas Pearson.”

  Silas stood up. “Hi, Sarah.”

  Sarah Jamison was around forty years old; she wore a light fleece jacket and had her long red hair tied up in a bun on the back of her head. She smiled and when Silas reached out a hand, she laughed and pulled him into an awkward embrace. Then she stood back.

  “That bad?” Silas asked.

  “Well, you don’t look much like a professor of English anymore, that’s for sure.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I know. I’m on faculty now. I’m teaching in the MS program in the School of Earth Sciences.”

  “Let me guess.” Silas put a finger to the side of his head and closed his eyes. “Environmental Sciences and Policy.”

  She hit him on the arm. Silas smiled. “That’s good to hear. You always were my best student. I thought maybe they’d give you my old job.”

  “Who says they didn’t offer it?”

  “I should have banned you from volunteering for those fish-kissers at the Wilderness Society when you were in my program.”

  “I would have liked to see you try.”

  “You probably would have arranged a protest.”

  Sarah pointed to the bench and Silas sat. She sat next to him and they regarded the quad a moment. “So, what are you doing here? You look like you’re dressed to climb Humphrey’s Peak, not stroll around campus.”

  He looked down at this boots and canvas pants and his rough and knotted hands. He seemed unaware of how he had dressed that morning. “I’ve been spending a lot of time outside,” he said by way of explanation.

  “I know, Silas. I’ve been following what’s going on up in Moab.”

  “Following?”

  “Well, you were in the papers a lot last year. When was that, July?”

  “August and September.”

  “It was in the papers. The bodies you found and the fact that you were searching for Penelope.” Silas nodded and Sarah continued. “You still haven’t found anything?”

  “I’ve found a lot, but I haven’t found Penny.”

  “Has that search brought you back to Flag? Can I help?”

  Silas exhaled. “In a way. I don’t know. I found … I found another body. A woman. She lived here in Flag. Worked just off campus. Did you know Jane Vaughn?”

  “You found her? God, Silas, it was front-page news. The paper said some workers at the Atlas Mill site found her.”

  “It was me. The cops and FBI kept my name out of it. Did you know her?”

  “Not very well, but I do read the papers. She was in them a lot.”

  “I hear that. She was an activist. Worked on Grand Canyon stuff.”

  “She was a firebrand. I saw her speak on campus last fall at the start of the semester. She was very passionate about the Grand Canyon and the surrounding area. She called it the Greater Grand Canyon ecosystem. Said that we couldn’t just protect the canyon and leave the rest of it open to mining, drilling, and dirty energy. If we did, the Grand Canyon would become an island. Plants and animals would suffer from isolation. It’s a common principle: island biogeography.”

  “When was this?”

  “I’d have to check my calendar. It was sometime in late September, maybe early October. Why?”

  “Jane Vaughn disappeared in November.”

  “You think it was related?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah. It could be. What I’m trying to figure out is if her … death … had anything to do with Penelope’s disappearance. What else did she say in this talk?”

  “She talked about air pollution from the Navajo Generating Station in Page creating smog that was making it hard to see the canyon on a summer day, the new uranium mining ban north of the canyon, how we had to fight to keep that in place, and about Wilderness designation for the river corridor. I think there were other things, but it was a while ago. You might be able to find the talk on YouTube. I know someone from the university’s Environmental Club filmed it.”

  Silas had never watched a video on YouTube in his life. Sarah watched him as he mulled this information over. “Silas, do you know what you’re doing?”

  He slowly shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  SILAS LEFT CAMPUS. There weren’t many proponents of industry or motorized tourism that Jane Vaughn hadn’t managed to piss off in her work to protect the Grand Canyon. This too reminded him of Penelope’s activism; both of these women seemed hell-bent on making as many enemies as they could, and for what? Silas soon arrived at the small two-story building where Jane Vaughn had her office. He stopped across the street from the building and surveyed the scene. There was a sign advertising the Grand Canyon Preservation Society; the curtains of the second-floor offices were drawn. The sun was slipping down on the horizon and the streetlights were flickering to life; soon darkness would fall. Silas scanned the quiet road, wondering if anybody else was watching the office, but all he could see were parked cars. He felt a peculiar—and strangely familiar—sense of paranoia as he stood observing the quiet street. His hands were sweating as he fumbled for the key in his pocket, nearly dropping it as he unlocked the door. He turned on the office lights.

  There were three desks in the room. One was positioned by the door like a reception counter. The others were pushed against the far wall. Two filing cabinets separated them. The reception desk and one of the other desks were bare; the third desk was cluttered with papers, a telephone, newspapers, and a lamp. There was an empty place where Silas guessed a laptop computer would normally reside. He figured that the FBI had been here and taken it to examine its hard drive, likely after Jane had gone missing. He went to that desk and slowly sifted through the papers. Ther
e were piles of correspondence between Vaughn and various elected officials, mining executives, local land owners, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, and Chas Hinkley from Glen Canyon. There were bills and affidavits, and a wide range of clippings from various magazines.

  Silas sat down at the desk and started to read through the papers. There was such a mass of material, and any of it could have led Vaughn into a conflict with one interest or another. Silas simply didn’t know what to make of it. He heard a noise outside the door. His breath caught like a chock stone in a narrow slot. Someone was walking up the back steps. He quickly looked around to find a place to hide. If this was the FBI returning to search the room again, he was going to have a lot of explaining to do.

  He stood, flipped off the lights, felt his way through the dark to the washroom, and stepped inside. He heard a key slip easily into the lock and the door to the outside stairwell opened. Silas stepped back farther into the lavatory. He smelled something strong and familiar when the outside door opened. It was musty, like a campfire. Silas inched forward to try to see who was at the door to the office.

  The door to the washroom swung open and a rough hand flipped on the switch. Silas shouted and the bull of a man in the doorway paused and then did the same. A heavy hand quickly reached out for Silas, who stumbled back and tripped over the toilet, crashing against the wall. Several rolls of toilet paper fell from an overhead shelf and landed on his head.

  “Holy sweet Jesus!” It was Hayduke. “What the fuck are you doing hiding in the shitter?”

  “What are you doing here?” Silas demanded, straightening himself.

  “Likely the same thing you are.”

  Silas, angry now at being startled, pushed past the young man. Hayduke smelled like body odor and campfire; the familiar scent. “Dallas Vaughn gave me a key. How did you get in?”

  “There was a key under the mat.”