Dawn
Shaking with dread, Chuck took the first step up the stairs to the stage. Carmelita was thirty feet away from him, teetering against Marvin, her elbow still trapped in Marvin’s grip, her eyes closed. Chuck risked a second step up the stairs. How devoted was Marvin to Dinaveri’s sacrifice theory? Would he kill Carmelita even if he got his hands on the A. Dinaveri necklace?
Marvin dragged Carmelita backward until the pair came to a stop facing the amphitheater, their backs against the cliff-top railing at the rear of the open stage. Like a light turning off, the tribal official’s eyes went flat, just as they’d been when he’d shot Miguel. “Today, today, today,” Marvin said, his words disjointed, his face slackening. “Sunup, sunup, today, today, today.”
The first rays of the rising sun struck the cliffs at the top of the North Rim. Soon sunlight would flood the festival stage here at the South Rim as well, the instant Marvin’s bewildered mind must be telling him he had to sacrifice Carmelita in order to summon the long-disappeared Anasazi back to the Earth’s surface.
Chuck stared at the young Navajo official in horror. Marvin had come across as sane when they’d met in Tuba City three days ago. He had spoken coherently about the conference of tribal elders he was to have been attending in Page this very moment, and he’d discussed the upcoming deadline for the transmission-line report lucidly. But Francesca had described Marvin as crazy and getting crazier when he’d taken Carmelita from the room in Maswik Lodge a few hours ago.
Was it possible for someone to go from sane to insane in less than three days? Or did Marvin somehow see his bizarre, return-of-the-Anasazi plan as entirely logical?
“Why’d you kill Miguel and Donald?” Chuck asked, hoping the bluntness of his question would pull Marvin back from wherever he’d gone.
Light returned to Marvin’s eyes. “Your friend Donald blew it,” Marvin said, sounding for all the world like the intelligible tribal official Chuck had come to know over the past two years. “All he had to do was keep you moving in the right direction.”
“Donald was in on this?” Chuck asked in disbelief.
“He thought he was going to have all the money he needed.”
“You told him you were meeting me at the wye?”
“I let him know what you were in for, yes. He got sentimental on me. Thought he was going to put a stop to this.” Marvin waved his gun vaguely in the direction of the canyon before putting it back to Carmelita’s head.
“You murdered him, Marvin. You tried to kill me, but you killed him instead.”
Marvin’s nostrils flared. “That’s what Miguel said.”
“You murdered him, too.”
“He kept telling me I’d ruined everything. Thought he was going to jail. Wouldn’t let it go. He wanted to take the girl from me.”
“You killed Miguel and you killed Donald.”
“I did what I had to do. For my people.”
“You’re wrong, Marvin,” Chuck said. “The Diné way is the path of peace. The Diné way has nothing to do with murder.”
Marvin recoiled. “This is not about murder,” he hissed. “It’s about rebirth.” His eyes slipped from Chuck’s face and began to dim.
“No,” Chuck said quickly, fighting to keep Marvin tethered to reality—or whatever version of reality he now inhabited. “It’s about kidnapping. You stole this little girl from her mother. You kidnapped her. You and whoever else.”
Marvin’s eyes brightened in recollection. “Clarence told me about the shrine one night in Gallup, the one you found in the canyon. He was drunk, hardly knew what he was talking about. He said he didn’t know what was in it. But I knew. I’ve always known.” Marvin’s face lit up. “He kept talking. Talk, talk, talk, like always. He mentioned these people he knew in Albuquerque, Ronnie and Francesca. Lowlifes, he said. So I contacted them. Sure enough, they were willing to do what I needed done, and for a reasonable price.” Marvin’s eyes actually sparkled. “They were tracking you in Durango for me. Then you came here. It was perfect. Perfectly perfect.”
“But you said Miguel took her.”
“Sure. It was Ronnie’s idea to bring Miguel in on the deal. The girl was happy to go along with her dad, do whatever he said.” Marvin glanced down at Carmelita. He gave her a shake. Her eyes fluttered open. “Weren’t you?”
“Miguel took her from the camper?” Chuck asked.
“She went to the bathroom,” Marvin said, looking back at Chuck. “Miguel followed her. I snuck into the camper, left the note. You were snoring away.” He nearly smiled.
“You’re a murderer,” Chuck said, wanting to wipe the smug look from Marvin’s face. “A killer two times over.”
Shame appeared in Marvin’s eyes for an instant before he buried any hint of remorse away inside himself. His entire body shuddered and his eyes burned with zealous intensity. “This is about life, rebirth, reemergence,” he said, choking on the last word.
His arms twitched and he took a stumbling step forward, nearly toppling to the stage floor. He regained his balance and pressed his pistol so hard against Carmelita’s temple her head bent all the way to her shoulder. Carmelita’s eyes were wide open, her body rigid. Marvin curled his finger around the trigger and stepped back with her to the railing, the canyon behind them.
Chuck thought of how simple it had been for Francesca to push Ronnie off Maricopa Point. It would be just as easy for Marvin to send Carmelita to her death over the railing at the open rear of the stage when the first rays of morning sun struck the amphitheater.
The pink glow of dawn was disappearing from the cliffs along the North Rim, giving way to the bright light of day. Chuck glanced to the east. The tops of the piñons and junipers at the edge of the festival site were outlined by the first rays of the rising sun on this side of the canyon. Direct sunlight would reach the stage in no more than a few minutes.
Chuck climbed the last of the steps to the stage. “The shrine,” he told Marvin, holding his pack out before him from the top of the stairs. “The offering. You must have this in your hand before the sun gets here. Chirsáuha demands it.”
Marvin leaned away from Chuck, his upper body canted backward out and over the top bar of the railing, his pistol still pressed to Carmelita’s head. “What, what, what?”
“The A. Dinaveri,” Chuck urged. “If you’re not holding it up to the east so the first ray of sun strikes it, the reemergence won’t happen. Of course you know that. That’s why you had me meet you here, remember? The offering from the shrine and the girl. You have to have both.”
“The offering. The girl. Have to,” Marvin repeated, breathing hard. He appeared lost and haunted, guilt-ridden, seemingly intent only on sacrificing Carmelita, and on killing no one else.
That, at least, was the instantaneous determination Chuck made as he turned Donald’s gun so its muzzle faced the sky. He intended to show Marvin he meant no harm, but the movement startled the tribal official nonetheless. Marvin’s body spasmed. He pulled Carmelita to him and leaned even farther back over the railing.
“Marvin,” Chuck said. “You have to listen to me. I’m going to put my gun down and show you what I’ve got for you.” Without waiting for acknowledgement, Chuck squatted and laid Donald’s gun on the stage floor.
Now was Marvin’s chance. All he had to do was turn his pistol on Chuck and fire. With Chuck out of the way, Marvin could rummage through the pack for one of the necklaces, and have everything his crazed mind was telling him he needed to bring forth the Anasazi from beneath the river. Instead, however, Marvin kept his gun pressed to Carmelita’s head as he leaned back over the railing and regarded Chuck with confused eyes.
Chuck set his pack on the stage floor beside Donald’s .45. He showed his opened palms, still stained with Donald’s blood, to Marvin. He reached inside the pack, loosened the neck of the sack containing the necklaces, and slipped one of them free from its plastic bag.
“You were right about my find,” Chuck said, lifting the necklace. Marvin gasped as Chuck straightened, the piece of jewelry draped over the fingers of his hand. “This is what you want.” He held out the necklace and stepped past his gun and pack. “This is what you have to have, for Chirsáuha. Now.”
Marvin turned his face to the east. He looked down, taking in the precipice behind him. From there his eyes rose to the sunlit North Rim. He wagged his head from side to side.
Chuck took two more steps, still proffering the turquoise necklace. He was no more than fifteen feet from Marvin and Carmelita now. Marvin turned to Chuck and beheld the necklace before looking at Carmelita trembling in his grip.
“The girl,” Marvin said. He looked again to the east.
Chuck jiggled the necklace, counting on the thousand-year-old braided yucca cord not to break. “There’s a sun inscribed on the pendant,” Chuck said with a quick glance at the large chunk of burnished turquoise. “It’s just as Dinaveri wrote: ‘The sun must face the sun when the first ray hits.’ You know that, don’t you? Everybody knows that.”
Marvin nodded, though Arturo Dinaveri never wrote any such thing. As if for the first time, Marvin seemed to realize Chuck was unarmed. He pointed his gun at Chuck’s torso.
Chuck raised his free hand in surrender. “Marvin,” he said. “Enough.”
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.