Arches Enemy
Praise for the National Park Mystery Series
“Graham’s winning fourth National Park mystery uses Yosemite as a backdrop for a host of shady dealings and dangerous power struggles. This zippy tale uses lush descriptions of natural beauty and twisted false leads to create an exciting, rewarding puzzle.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“As always, the highlight of Graham’s National Park Mystery Series is his extensive knowledge of the parks system, its lands, and its people.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
“Intriguing … Graham has a true talent for describing the Rockies’ flora and fauna, allowing his readers to feel almost as if they were trekking the park themselves.”
—MYSTERY SCENE MAGAZINE
“Graham has crafted a multilevel mystery that plumbs the emotions of greed and jealousy.”
—DURANGO HERALD
“Graham has created a beautifully balanced book, incorporating intense action scenes, depth of characterization, realistic landscapes, and historical perspective.”
—REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE
“Masterfully plotted in confident prose, Arches Enemy is not only an adventurous and fascinating mystery you can’t put down, it delivers important insight on ancestral cultures and their sacred lands. Scott Graham proves yet again that he is one of the finest.”
—CHRISTINE CARBO, author of
A Sharp Solitude: A Glacier Mystery
“A winning blend of archaeology and intrigue, Graham’s series turns our national parks into places of equal parts beauty, mystery, and danger.”
—EMILY LITTLEJOHN, author of
Lost Lake: A Detective Gemma Monroe Mystery
“One part mystery, one part mysticism, one part mayhem—and all parts thrilling.”
—CRAIG JOHNSON, New York Times bestselling author of
Depth of Winter: A Longmire Mystery
“Filled with murder and mayhem, jealousy and good detective work—an exciting, nonstop read.”
—ANNE HILLERMAN, New York Times bestselling author of
The Tale Teller: A Leaphorn, Chee & Manuelito Novel
“Only the best novelists have the gift of propelling readers into the middle of artfully crafted adventures, and with Yosemite Fall, Scott Graham once again proves he belongs in the very first rank.”
—JEFF GUINN, New York Times bestselling author of Manson
“Engrossing … a glorious portrait of one of the most compelling landscapes on Earth. Graham clearly knows the territory. A topnotch read.”
—WILLIAM KENT KRUEGER, New York Times bestselling
author of Desolation Mountain: A Cork O’Connor Mystery
“What an extraordinary ride! You know when a reader says they couldn’t put the book down? Yellowstone Standoff is one of those rare books … a tour de force.”
—WIN BLEVINS, New York Times bestselling author of Stealing Fire
“Yellowstone Standoff takes man versus nature—and man tangled up with nature—right to the brink of wild suspense.”
—MARK STEVENS, Colorado Book Award-winning
author of The Melancholy Howl: An Allison Coil Mystery
“One of the most engaging mysteries I’ve read in a long while … delivers it all and then some.”
—MARGARET COEL, New York Times bestselling
author of Winter’s Child: A Wind River Mystery
“Get ready for leave-you-breathless high country southwestern adventure.”
—MICHAEL MCGARRITY, New York Times bestselling
author of Residue: A Kevin Kerney Mystery
ARCHES ENEMY
Also by Scott Graham
in the National Park Mystery Series
Canyon Sacrifice
Mountain Rampage
Yellowstone Standoff
Yosemite Fall
ARCHES ENEMY
A National Park Mystery
by Scott Graham
TORREY HOUSE PRESS
SALT LAKE CITY • TORREY
This is a work of fiction set in a real place. All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Torrey House Press Edition, June 2019
Copyright © 2019 by Scott Graham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.
Published by Torrey House Press
Salt Lake City, Utah
www.torreyhouse.org
International Standard Book Number: 978-1-948814-05-8
E-book ISBN: 978-1-948814-06-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952023
Cover design by Kathleen Metcalf
Cover illustration “Delicate Arch” by David Jonason
Interior design by Rachel Davis
Distributed to the trade by Consortium Book Sales and Distribution
ABOUT THE COVER
Acclaimed Southwest landscape artist David Jonason painted “Delicate Arch,” a portion of which appears on the cover of Arches Enemy.
Combining a keenly observant eye and inspiration drawn from a number of twentieth-century art movements, including Cubism, Futurism, Precisionism, and Art Deco, Jonason achieves a uniquely personal vision through his vivid, dreamlike oil paintings of the American Southwest. Jonason connects on canvas the traditional arts and crafts of the Southwest’s native tribes with the intricate patterns in nature known as fractals. “For me as a painter,” he says, “it’s a reductive and simplifying process of finding the natural geometries in nature, just as Navajo weavers and Pueblo potters portray the natural world through geometric series of zigzags, curves, and other patterns.”
“Delicate Arch” (36×36 inches, oil on canvas, 2015) is used by permission of The Jonason Studio, davidjonason.com.
To all those fighting to preserve southern Utah’s
magnificent Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante
National Monuments
CONTENTS
About the Cover
Prologue
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part Three
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Acknowledgments
Terms and Further Reading
About Scott Graham
Torrey House Press
PROLOGUE
Her death was her own damn fault.
He’d done everything right—research, surveillance, charge level, timing. His planning and execution had been perfect, his actions beyond reproach, which was why not a single question would come his way.
He was sure of it.
The notion had come to him when the vibrations first coursed through his body two months ago. He’d been out for a late-summer hike on Behind the Rocks Trail, following its serpentine path through the maze of red sandstone fins jutting skyward south of town, where the tall slabs of rock sliced the landscape into linear strips of windswept dunes separated by shadowed slot canyons.
He knew Utah’s politicians had long fed voters the same tired line—that the citizens of the state could sell their souls to the petrochemical industry while still attracting millions of tourists to southern Utah’s incomparable canyon country. In recent years, however, young environmentalists from the Wasatch Front had disputed the politicians’ claim. Hoisting the torch of Edward Abbey above their heads, the conservation warriors declared that if the oil and gas giants were allowed to continue mauling the land with their bulldozers and excavators, soon nothing would be left of Utah’s stunning red rock country but savaged earth.
The tremors from the thumper truck surged along the ground every few seconds during his hike, pulsing upward through his legs and reverberating in his torso. With each mini earthquake came the same question, over and over again. Could he really send a seismic wake-up call to every citizen of Utah? Thump. Could he? Thump.
In the ensuing weeks, the truck’s pulses became a living thing inside him, a thrumming reminder of what he was prepared to do, and why.
He purchased a used laptop from the classifieds, wiped its hard drive clean, and conducted research only through his secret online portal. He made his purchases in cash at gun shops and farm and ranch stores in nearby towns, collecting everything his research told him he needed.
By early November, the cottonwoods along the Colorado River through Moab glowed with late autumn gold, the trees resplendent in the slanted fall sunlight. On the crisp, clear morning the massive thumper truck trundled
through town, its passage noted by a handful of sign-waving activists, the brilliant yellow cottonwood leaves snapped free of their branches by the thousands, fluttering to earth in shimmering cascades. The truck turned off the highway twenty miles north of Moab and crawled across public land on a winding two track to Yellow Cat Flat, hard against the northern border of Arches National Park.
A few final leaves clung to the skeletal limbs of the cottonwoods in town when the year’s first winter storm drew a bead on southern Utah a week later. He checked the truck’s timetable on the O&G Seismic website as the storm bore down, set to bring decreasing temperatures, whipping winds, and icy sleet to canyon country. According to the schedule, the truck would be thumping its way across the broad desert flat just outside the park throughout the storm.
* * *
He checked his drill and tested the detonator and timer batteries. He apportioned the blasting powder with care, making sure his measurements were exact.
The storm crossed into Utah late in the afternoon. Dense clouds gathered over the state as darkness fell, bringing heavy snow to the northern mountains and sleet to the high desert lands in the south. He deleted his secret online account and drove over the Colorado River bridge after nightfall, slowing to toss the laptop into the roiling waters below.
Biting gusts of wind and frigid blasts of sleet struck him when he shouldered his pack and set out on foot, clicking on his headlamp and hiking into the empty desert. He wended his way through sage and rabbitbrush, the bluffs and promontories at the heart of Arches National Park looming above him, black against the overcast sky in the midnight darkness.
He finished hand-drilling the hole in the sandstone arch as the sky lightened with dawn. The arch soared across the desert, connecting humped ridges of slickrock. He tamped the blasting powder into the drill hole, sank the parallel detonation prongs into the charge mixture, and backed away, unspooling the thin detonator cord as he went. He crouched in a shallow pothole two hundred feet from the rock span, plunger in hand.
The first thump of the day pulsed through him in his hiding place at 7:30, right on schedule. A second thump coursed through him from the north seconds later, then another, and another. Needles of wind-driven sleet gathered on his shoulders as the inexorable beat of the pulses continued. Trembling with anticipation, he wrapped his fingers around the plastic plunger handle, preparing to press it downward.
A light tap-tap-tapping noise reached him—the sound of running steps, propelled by the squalling wind. He stiffened and checked his watch: 7:35. He leaned forward, eyes wide and heart pounding.
She appeared a hundred yards beyond the arch, her blue jacket and black tights stark against the gray clouds. She ran through the swirling sleet with the easy gait of a gazelle, crossing the spine of rock high above the desert floor, headed straight for the stone span.
He nearly leapt to his feet and screamed at her to stop. But he had a job to do. He knelt in place, his head ducked, convinced she wouldn’t dare venture onto the arch itself.
She slowed and edged down the sloping ridge of stone—and stepped from the solid rock onto the narrow span.
The digital numbers on his watch flicked from 7:35 to 7:36. Timing was critical if his alibi was to hold up. He tightened his fingers around the plunger handle, his breaths coming in strangled gasps.
She extended her arms from her sides and placed one foot directly in front of the other, her pace slow and deliberate. She was fifteen feet out on the arch when, finally, he could contain himself no longer.
He rose from the depression and revealed himself to her, convinced the mist and sleet between them would make it impossible for her to see his face clearly. Surely, having been spotted, she would retreat.
The plunger, forgotten in his hand, slipped from his fingers. Its handle struck his shoe. It depressed little, if any—but a sharp, concussive crack sounded from the arch.
The woman dropped her arms, her gaze fixed on the bridge of stone extending through the air in front of her.
The middle of the span cleaved in two. Dark lines shot like black lightning down its entire length. For an instant, the arch maintained its shape, suspended in the sky. Then it fractured into dozens of jagged chunks of stone.
“No!” he cried out.
Too late.
The woman screamed and grabbed at the air with outstretched fingers as she fell with the pieces of the shattered arch to the desert floor five stories below.
PART ONE
“League on league of red cliff and arid tablelands,
extending through purple haze over the bulging curve of
the planet to the ranges of Colorado—a sea of desert.”
—Edward Abbey, describing Arches National
Monument, soon to become Arches National Park,
in Desert Solitaire, 1968
1
Thump.
Chuck Bender quivered from head to toe as the pulsing vibration passed through his body.
He lay awake beside his wife, Janelle Ortega, in their camp trailer. His stepdaughters, Carmelita and Rosie, slept in narrow bunk beds opposite the galley kitchen halfway down the camper’s center aisle, their breaths soft and steady.
He didn’t need to check his watch to know the time. The O&G Seismic truck had begun its work promptly at 7:30 the previous two mornings. No doubt the crew was on schedule at the start of this day as well.
Chuck pulled back the curtain over the window abutting the double bed at the back of the trailer. Sleet pelted the glass. Dark clouds hung low over the campground. He dropped the curtain back into place. Another thump sounded, followed by another rolling vibration, as the seismic truck pounded the earth outside Arches National Park to the north, trolling for underground deposits of oil and natural gas.
He rolled to face Janelle. Her eyes were closed, but her breathing was uneven, wakeful. He drew a line down her smooth olive cheek, tracing the gentle arc of her skin with his fingertip. Her eyes remained shut, but the corner of her mouth twitched.
“Hey, there, belleza,” he murmured, lifting a lock of her silky black hair away from her face.
She opened her eyes and turned to him, tucking her hands beneath her pointed chin. “Belleza nadie. Nobody’s beautiful this early in the morning.”
“You are. Besides, it’s not that early. We slept in.”
A powerful gust roared through the campground, tearing at the trailer’s aluminum shell.
She raised her eyebrows. “That’s some storm.”
“As predicted.” He gathered her in his arms and pressed his body to hers.
Sheets rustled in the lower bunk. Janelle raised her head to peer down the walkway over Chuck’s shoulder. “Look who’s awake,” she said. “Buen día, m’hija.”
“Hola, Mamá,” eleven-year-old Rosie responded from the bottom bunk in her deep, raspy voice. “You two woke me up with all your lovey-dovey talking. Are you having sex?”
Chuck released Janelle, who slid away from him to her side of the bed. A snort of laughter sounded from behind the drawn curtain that hid thirteen-year-old Carmelita in the top bunk.
Janelle grinned at Chuck as they lay facing each other. She said to Rosie, “No, honey, we’re not … we’re not …”
“… having sex? But you said that’s what people do when they love each other.”
“There’s a time and place for everything, m’hija. I can’t say this is exactly the right time and place to be asking about that sort of thing, but I guess it’s good you’re remembering all the stuff we’ve been talking about.”
“The birds and the bees,” Rosie confirmed from her bed. “Sex, sex, sex.”
Janelle pulled her pillow from beneath her head, pressed it over her face, and issued a heavy sigh from beneath it.
Chuck folded his pillow in half beside her. Settling the back of his head on it, he looked down the center aisle of the trailer as Carmelita drew back the upper-bunk curtain and leaned over the side of her bed. Her long hair, dark and silky like her mother’s, hung past her head, hiding her face. Rosie lifted herself on her elbows, looking up at Carmelita. Rosie’s hair, also black, was short and kinky and smashed against the side of her skull from her night’s sleep.
Carmelita scolded her younger sister. “You’re never gonna learn the right time and place for anything.”