Murder In Black Canyon

“Stay in the vehicle.” With one hand hovering near his weapon, Dylan eased open his door, ready to dive for cover if anyone fired on them. But the camp remained silent and still.

“Daniel Metwater!” he called. “We need to ask you a few questions.”

No answer came but the echo of his own words. Simon joined Dylan beside his car. “What do you think?” Dylan asked.

“They could have all headed for the hills, or they could be lying low inside these tents and trailers,” Simon said.

“Come out by the time I count to ten or we’ll start taking this place apart,” Dylan shouted. “One!”

At the count of five, the door to the largest RV, a thirty-foot bus with solar panels on the roof, eased open. A slim but muscular man, naked except for a pair of white loose trousers, moved onto the steps. “I wasn’t aware we had company,” he said. “We adhere to the custom of an afternoon siesta.”

“Are you Daniel Metwater?” Dylan asked.

Sharp eyes scrutinized the three of them. “Yes,” he said at last.

“Call your people out here,” Simon said. “We have some questions about an incident that happened here this afternoon.”

Metwater shifted his gaze past the two cops. Dylan turned to see Kayla standing beside the car. “You had no cause to bring these people here,” Metwater said to her.

“We’re here because we understand you found a dead body this morning,” Dylan said. “Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

“We don’t have cell phones, and since nothing we could do or say could bring the man back to life, I made the decision to report the incident the next time I was in town.” Metwater spoke as if he was talking about a minor mechanical problem, not a dead man.

“Where is the body?” Simon asked.

“I ordered the men who brought him here to take him back where they found him,” Metwater said. “They never should have defiled our home with such violence.”

“We’ll need to talk to these men.”

“They are undergoing a purification ritual at the moment.”

“Bring them out here.” Simon wasn’t a big man, but he could put a lot of menace and command in his voice. “Now.”

Metwater said something over his shoulder to someone inside the RV. A woman with long dark hair slipped past him and hurried away. “She’ll bring the men to you,” Metwater said, and turned as if to go back inside.

“Wait,” Dylan said. “Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before in my life. But I believe he’s one of yours.”

“What do you mean, one of ours?” Dylan asked.

Metwater’s lips quirked up in a smirk. “I checked his pockets for identification. He’s a cop.”

Chapter Three (#u7a19028b-0337-5afb-b52e-b6359dd5f709)

Kayla watched Dylan as Metwater dropped his bombshell. His was a face full of strong lines and planes, not classically handsome, but honest—the face of a man who didn’t have any patience with lies or weakness. Anger quickly replaced the brief flash of confusion in his eyes as he absorbed this new wrinkle in the case. The dead man wasn’t a stranger anymore—he was a fellow lawman. “Take me to him,” he ordered.

“The men who found him will—” Metwater began.

“No. You take me.” Dylan’s fists clenched at his sides, and Kayla tensed, expecting him to punch the smirk off the Prophet’s face. But he remained still, only one muscle in his jaw twitching.

Instead of answering, Metwater looked away, toward a flurry of movement to their right. Kiram and another burly man escorted two other men to them. “These are the two who found the body,” Metwater said. “They can answer your questions.”

Dylan pulled a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket and shifted his focus to the new arrivals. Kayla thought they looked young, scarcely out of their teens, with wispy beards and thin bodies. Dylan pointed to the taller of the two, who stared back from behind black-framed glasses. “What’s your name?”

“Abelard,” the young man whispered.

“Your real name,” Dylan said.

Abelard blinked. “That is my real name. Abelard Phillips.”

“His mom was a literature professor,” the other young man said. “You know, Abelard and Heloise—supposed to be a classic love story or something.”

Abelard nodded. “Most people call me Abe.”

Dylan wrote down the name, then turned to the second man. “Who are you?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Zach. Zach Crenshaw.”

“I want the two of you to show me this body you found this morning.”

Their heads moved in unison, like bobblehead dolls. Metwater started to turn back to his trailer, but Simon took his arm. “You’re coming, too.”

Kayla trailed along after them, sure that if Dylan remembered she was here he would order her to wait at the camp. But curiosity won out over her squeamishness about seeing the body again—that, and a reluctance to spend any time alone with the rest of the “family.”

Single file, the six of them followed a narrow path out of camp, out of the canyon and into the open scrubland beyond, following drag marks in the dirt Kayla was sure had been made by the makeshift travois Abe and Zach had used to transport the body. She estimated they had walked about a mile when Abe halted and gestured toward a grouping of large boulders. “He’s behind those rocks over there,” he said. “We put him back just like the Prophet told us to.”

“And you’re sure that’s where you found him?” Simon asked.

Zach nodded. “You can tell because of all the blood.”

“Show me,” Dylan said.

The two young men led the way around the boulders. Kayla hung back, but she still had a view of the dead man’s feet, wearing new-looking hiking boots, the soles barely scuffed. Had he bought them especially for his visit to the Black Canyon area?

Dylan and Simon stood back, surveying the scene, the wind stirring the branches of the piñons nearby the only sound. The sour-sweet stench of death stung her nostrils, but she forced herself to remain still, to wait for whatever came next. “Was he lying like this when you found him?” Dylan asked. “On his back?”

“Yeah,” Zach said.

“Why did you move him?” Simon asked. “Were you trying to hide something? Did you realize you were tampering with evidence?”

“We weren’t trying to hide anything!” Abe protested. “We just came around the rocks and almost stepped on him. There was blood everywhere and it was awful. Like something out of a movie or something. Too horrible to be real.”

“Once we realized it was a man, we couldn’t just leave him there,” Zach said. “There were already buzzards circling. And I thought I heard him groan, like maybe he was still alive. We thought if we got him back to camp, someone could go for help, or take him to the hospital or something.”

“We couldn’t just leave him,” Abe echoed.

“All right.” Dylan put a hand on Abe’s arm. “Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning. What were you doing out here?”