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Pioneer Museum, Flagstaff
IT WAS DARK as they pulled up the rental car a couple of hundred meters from the Pioneer Museum. Rose sat in the driver’s seat, left the engine running.
“You’re sure about this?”
Crowley was sure, and a bit excited to be doing something proactive again. “Piece of cake. I’ll be ten minutes tops.”
He slipped from the car, pulled the hood of his dark gray sweat top up, and hurried away in the night. Darkness fell as Rose killed the car’s headlights, but he heard the engine continue to purr. By the thin light of a sliver of moon, he made his way along to the Pioneer Museum. It was a small, two-story building of pale pumiceous dacite stone which, according to Rose, had been harvested from an explosive eruption of Mount Elden about half a million years before. The building had several tall narrow windows on each level, a high porch in the center of one long side and a steep tan A-frame roof. The building was used as a hospital until 1938, servicing the county that used to be called Poor Farm.
The place was far from impressive, and not well guarded, both of which worked in Crowley’s favor. But, though no one seemed to be about, he remained on high alert. Cameron’s reminder that dangerous people might be on the same trail as he and Rose was fresh in his mind, making him nervous. After the frightening events at Denver airport, he had not really thought too hard about where those people might be, but that could prove to be a fatal mistake. They had tracked him and Rose once and would almost certainly be attempting to do the same again. And Crowley wasn’t too arrogant to think that he and Rose had learned anything those people couldn’t. It wasn’t so much a case of if they caught up again, as when.
Not wanting to use a flashlight and draw attention to himself, he waited in the shadows, letting his night vision take over. He stared at the small, unassuming building, wondering where he might need to look. Once he felt that his vision was as good as it was going to get in the dark night, he crept around the back. He soon found a back door and spotted the simple alarm system. He moved along the wall, staying in deep shadow, to get a closer look at the tall, white-framed windows. He smiled. As he had suspected, none were alarmed. After all, this wasn’t the sort of museum that had a collection of valuable antiquities. It was a local interest place, the value in the history it recorded, not the items it held.
He pursed his lips, looked from the door to the windows. He could disable the alarm if necessary, but what if security was genuinely lax? He tried the back windows one after another and, after two disappointments, the third one rattled in its frame. It wasn’t latched. He pushed it, but though it shook, it didn’t budge. He spread his feet, braced himself, and got a better position with the heels of his hands against the top of the lower sash. He pushed again and this time it shifted up quickly, releasing a shrill squeal that shattered the silence. Crowley winced, ducked involuntarily against the sound. After a moment, he looked around, but still there was no one in sight, no other sounds but night birds.
He clambered in, leaving the sash up. No need to make added noise or slow himself down should he need to leave in a hurry. He stood in a dim room and looked around. As expected, no fancy security system, motion detectors, or even cameras. Security exit lights gave off a dull glow that allowed him to easily find his way without a flashlight.
He began a quick but thorough exploration of the first floor. Glass cases, glass-topped tables, bookshelves heaving with the small minutiae of life in the region for the past couple of hundred years. There were some period dressed manikins, each with small placards talking about life in the pioneer days. None of it was about Seth Tanner, so none of it held his attention.
He made his way upstairs to continue looking on the second floor, wincing at the creak of the wooden steps. His search of the web on the drive here hadn’t turned up a single mention of the journal, much less where in the museum it might be found. Not for the first time, Crowley was impressed by Cameron’s skills at turning up something most people didn’t know existed. He really needed to find a way to properly thank his old pal. Sure, Cameron enjoyed the distraction, but he deserved something more solid by way of recompense. Crowley decided that maybe when all this was over he would shell out for a fine bottle of single malt scotch and go to visit his friend, maybe treat him to a fancy Indian meal too. Cameron liked a good, hot curry.
Crowley looked around the second floor, which wasn’t much different to the first. What if the journal wasn’t on display at all? Perhaps it was stowed away with other sundry bits and pieces, waiting to be rotated out at some point in the future. Or maybe it wasn’t deemed interesting enough to be put out at all. It could be buried in some back office somewhere. Or worse. Did this museum have a basement? What if he’d come all this way only to fail?
His concerns were allayed, however, when he spotted a simple exhibit devoted entirely to Seth Tanner. There were a few black and white photos, one showing Tanner in his middle years, the others as an old man. Even with the dim security lights, it was too gloomy to see any real detail. Crowley clicked on the small flashlight he had brought, cupping the light with one hand to shield its glow. In one photograph, the elderly Tanner stared back at the camera through milky orbs, clearly blind. Crowley was mesmerized by the image. The old man sat with his hands resting on his thighs, barely bent by age. He had a lined forehead, bald to the top of his head, but his hair thick and collar length from the top and down the back. He had a thick, white beard, and an intense expression despite the obvious blindness. He stared, unseeing, directly at the camera, his presence strongly disquieting for no particular reason Crowley could define. He winced at the thought of what the natives had done to the old man, and why. How had they blinded him?
When Cameron had told the story, Crowley had imagined something somehow brutal, like they had put his eyes out with knives or arrows. He chided himself for the unfair stereotype of barbarism. Those white, haunting eyes filled Crowley with a dread he didn’t care to dwell on, nor did he want to dwell on how the blindness had been effected.
He took a step back and shone his light across the exhibit. A brief bio of the explorer, a map of the Tanner trail, and a glass case containing some personal effects. He moved to the case to look more closely. A hand-held pickaxe, a compass, and a journal book. He grinned. That had to be it.
He cursed when he realized he’d left his lockpicking tools in his messenger bag in the car with Rose. He didn’t want to push his luck going back for them now. He looked around and found a small toolkit stashed in one corner, a half repaired chair upside down beside it. He rummaged in the toolkit and came up with a flat-ended screwdriver. It would have to do. He slipped on gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and began prying carefully at the display case just above the small lock. He worked at it for several seconds, wincing as the wood cracked and split, but managed to pop open the lid without leaving too much obvious damage on the outside of the cabinet.
He took the journal and gave it a quick scan. Lots of hand-written notes and drawings. He pocketed the small leather bound book, then looked down at the open display case. Inspiration dawned. He hurried down the hall to an office he had passed on the way along this level. Through the open door, he’d spotted a shelf sagging from the weight of too many books, some of them quite old. Hurriedly, he chose an old, leather volume roughly the size of Tanner’s journal and took it back, put it inside the glass case. He figured it wouldn’t stand up to close scrutiny, and the broken lock would be a dead giveaway if it was discovered, but it would pass casual observation. He pressed the lid back down and the wood sat quite neatly thanks to his careful work with the screwdriver earlier. It might go unnoticed for a little while, and that would be good enough.
He headed back to the stairs, then froze at the top of them. From below came the sound of someone moving around. Someone clearly trying to be quiet. The screwdriver was his only weapon. He drew it, held it in a downward grip, and retreated to the other side of the banister at the top of the stairs. He crouched and hid in velvet shadows.
After a moment the silhouette of the figure came into view through the balusters, carefully mounted the first step, and began to slowly ascend. Crowley tensed, ready to spring. And then relaxed.
“Rose, what are you doing here?”
She let out a soft “Oh!” of surprise and jumped, nearly fell back down the stairs. “I didn’t even see you. Or hear a thing.”
“I’ve got experience at not being seen or heard when I don’t want to be. But what are you doing here? I was just heading back.”
“You’ve got it?”
“Yes. Will you answer the question! Do I need to be concerned?”
Rose joined him at the top of the stairs and he stood to meet her eye.
“A car drove past where I was parked, one of those freelance security firms. The driver gave me a long look as he drove past, really slowly. So I thought I’d better move on.”
“Sounds reasonable,” Crowley admitted. “But why are you here?”
“Well, you needed to know where I parked. I didn’t want to risk calling or texting you. What if your phone vibrated at the wrong time?”
Crowley sighed. He supposed that was a good point. “Fair enough. Anyway, I’ve got the journal so let’s get out of here.”
They hurried back down the stairs and Rose headed for the window he had opened. He was pleased she’d had the foresight to look for that and follow him in. She might not have been moving quite as stealthily as he could, but she was smart and came at these things the right way. He had to give her credit, she could become a formidable operative with the right training. She was already super fit and could kick serious butt.
They gave each other a quick smile and Rose went ahead of him, climbing out of the window. As she dropped cat-like to the soft ground there was another sound outside and Crowley froze. A dark shape emerged from the shadow of a nearby tree.
“Stop right there.”