King-size Butterfinger : Keyhole satellites : Outer space : #herosjourney : Useless to archeologists : Two old windmills : A breached contract : It’s no Hilton : “Ozymandias” : A low rumble : He could have gone around : It’s a Maslow thing
Scissors bolted the restroom door, then hung a plastic sack from the crank of a rusted paper towel dispenser. The blue fluorescent lightbulb chattered overhead as he unbuttoned his shirt and peeled it off. He examined his right shoulder in the dull mirror by turning his knuckles toward the floor. The skin was crusted in dark blood.
He moved the sack to the crook of his other arm, then took out a small brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, uncapped it, and peeled off the seal, placing his trash carefully back into the bag. He dispensed a length of paper towel and doused it with peroxide, swabbing the wound, which hissed and foamed. He turned his head to one side to deal with the pain, then he packed the towels into the bag with everything else. He repeated this process until the wounds were clean.
He pulled a cheap off-brand multi-tool from the bag, which he sterilized with disinfectant wipes. He stood in front of the sink and peered inside the wounds. With his teeth clenched, he dug out each of the three small 20-gauge balls and dropped them on the floor with a tac-tac-tac.
In this way he administered to himself, being careful to gather the dropped shot and store them with the other trash. He filled the ravaged holes with antibiotic ointment and covered each one with its own clear adhesive bandage. When that was done, he pulled a king-size Butterfinger from the bag and devoured it in five decisive bites, then he pulled a new shirt from the bag and switched it out.
He cleaned everything with more wipes, put the last of it into the one bag, and tied it shut. Outside, a man was filling his car with gas while checking his phone. Scissors closed the door and waited for the man to drive off.
When he heard the car pull away, Scissors waited another minute, then came out cautiously, stowed the plastic bag in his trunk, and drove to his motel.
___
They came to a stop in front of a dark house five miles from the state highway. They had driven the entire way from Short Creek without talking. The dawn sky was no longer black, and the stars were nearly gone. There were no neighbors and no lights shining in the valley. Euphrenia sat behind the wheel as they climbed out, dressed in simple clothes with their laundry tied up in grocery-sack hobo bindles, their backpacks slung loose across their shoulders.
“You have to understand,” Euphrenia said. “It’s not you. They’re thinking about the children.”
“It’s what I would have done,” Sophia said.
“This is more than we had any right to ask for,” Paul said.
Euphrenia nodded once and rolled up the window. Gravel spat behind her tires, her headlights wandering across the sagebrush as she drove away.
“Back into the frying pan,” Reinhardt said, staring into the sky.
Paul adjusted his arm in the new sling Reinhardt had made for him out of a flowered pillowcase, and they all watched the darkness to see if any lights might come up the hill. From this spot, they’d be able to see anyone who approached.
After a time, Sophia asked, “Does this guy know we’re coming?”
“Euphrenia said Kimball would be gone, but his truck is right there, so I don’t know,” Paul said.
They let themselves through the front gate and closed it behind them. Reinhardt and Sophia separated to let Paul go first. As he approached the house, they saw the curtains part, then close.
“I guess we don’t have to knock,” Paul said.
In a few seconds the door swung open and a man with long gray hair stepped forward with a pistol in his hands. He spoke through the screen. “Who the hell is out there?” His voice was low and cautious.
“It’s me, Paul.”
“Dreamweaver sent me a message and told me to hightail it home, which is not the kind of message I was hoping for. You upset that man something terrible.”
“We’re in a lot of trouble, Kimball.”
“Damn right you are.” He lowered the gun and re-engaged the safety. The screen door opened and he stepped out. He was wearing a plain white T-shirt and gym shorts. He gestured to Sophia and Reinhardt. “I guess this one is the graduate student, and he’s the lost German.” He beckoned for them to come in, but he didn’t look happy about it. “Quit standing out here in the open.” He gestured to the stars with the barrel of the gun. “Keyhole satellites don’t miss a thing.”
Kimball led them into his small home, set the pistol on the kitchen counter, turned on a single lamp, then thought better of it and switched it back off. He gestured for them to sit, pulled his hair into a ponytail, and dropped into his recliner.
“Kimball is Paiute. Kaibab Band,” Paul said. “He also works with me for the Park Service.”
“I’m undercover,” Kimball said. “And nobody works with you, Thrift. You’re way out there, and nobody can walk fast enough to keep up. I have a question for you, not rhetorical. Do you know why this guy is after you?” Kimball asked. “The way Dreamweaver tells it, he’s probably not a serial killer.”
“He thinks we have one of Cluff’s maps. The one Bruce was using to keep track of everything he had us putting back.”
“He knows?” Sophia said. “I thought this was some big secret project.” After a moment she said, “The initials—PT and KT.”
Paul shrugged. So did Kimball.
“Knowing about this project and thinking it’s a good idea is two different things,” Kimball said, his unblinking eyes focused on Paul. “Which map is it?”
“The one that covers Antelope Flats up to Swallow Valley.”
Kimball pulled the recliner lever so his feet rose up, then he scratched his chin and swore quietly to himself, drifting from English into Paiute.
“I know,” Paul said.
“That ground took the Inter-Tribal Coalition five years to get into the proposal. The only reason for anyone to chase after that map is if they’re trying to rework the deal so they can sell everything off.”
“I know,” Paul said.
“And the whole time we had to sit there and listen to them tell us that using the Antiquities Act to protect our land made us bandits seizing property in the night.” His voice hardened and rose in volume. “How are we bandits when it’s our home? We’re losing White Pocket, Ovatsi, and Wïiatsiweap again,” he said. “You don’t have to be a genius to know you can’t steal from yourself.” Kimball shook his index finger. “When Cluff blew up the canyon on the way to Wïiatsiweap, my father wanted to kill that son of a bitch for deciding to jump in himself and protect our land without asking anyone. As per usual, every time something happens out there, they shut Native people out, tell us to mind our own business. You know, like we’re not involved. They tell us these aren’t our ancestors and then take over the story. They bring us to the table, then turn it around on us. Every time we make some headway, all of a sudden it’s another table in another room in another building. And we are the bandits.”
“We were just up there,” Sophia said. “We can use the archeological work and the courts to stop them.”
Kimball looked at Paul. “She’s new to this, isn’t she?”
Paul shrugged.
“Look at the Keystone Pipeline and Wounded Knee. Look at any of it, and you’ll see that the game is rigged. They told us, ‘Hey, don’t worry, everything up there is already gone. No sense saving land that’s already been ruined.’ That’s all anyone needs to know about white logic.” He swore another oath and tightened his fists. “Look, you want to save this place. We’re a little sick of saviors, but okay. I want to save it for different reasons. We’ve been trying to use white people’s tools to tear down white people’s walls. It works for a little while, then it stops. It always breaks down.” Kimball scratched his arm and sat for a moment. “It needs to be said—everything in those ruins belongs to the dead. You shouldn’t mess around with it.” He sat back in his chair and exhaled. “Once people start taking these things off the land, everything turns upside down. People start falling off. That’s what happened to us.”
Reinhardt reached down and felt the curve of his pilfered pottery shard with his fingertips, wishing he’d left it in the lava flow. He recalled the warning he’d been given at the gas station. What had the old man told him, that all of this desert was made by water. Now this place is shaped by other forces, he thought.
“You got us down to almost nothing. We’re not gone, but it’s pretty damn close,” Kimball said.
“I know, and I’m sorry,” Paul said.
“I know you know, which makes me ask why you brought this trouble to my door?”
“Dreamweaver thought—”
“I know what Dreamweaver thinks. I don’t want to talk about that lunatic right now. Why did you decide to come?”
Paul looked at Reinhardt and Sophia. “We had nowhere else to go. You know that.”
“I do know. And you should know I don’t have time for your white nonsense. I’ve got my own battles and I don’t bounce back from this kind of bullshit anymore.” He cranked the recliner forward and stared at Paul. “I’m going to regret this, but tell me what you need, then seriously, I’m done.”
“Can you give us a place to rest for a few hours?”
Kimball sighed. “Yes, but you can’t stay in the house. I don’t need it getting shot up. There’s a trailer on the corner of the property.”
“Whatever you’ve got,” Paul said.
“Thank you, so much,” Sophia said.
“Aho,” Reinhardt said.
“Aho?” Kimball turned to Paul. “Who is this guy?”
“He’s the German, remember?”
Kimball gripped his forehead for a second, then stood. “Is he saying hello or thank you? Does he even know?” When Reinhardt didn’t answer, Kimball walked them through the house, then led them out the back and across the open ground to a travel trailer parked behind a small cluster of juniper trees. Reinhardt looked to the sky for satellites. The eastern horizon was glowing.
“There’s blankets and sleeping bags in the cupboards up top. Don’t be seen.”
“We won’t,” Paul said.
“I’ve got to be at work in three hours.”
“I owe you one.”
“I don’t want that responsibility,” Kimball said as he turned back to the house. “Seriously. I’m going to catch hell for this.”
___
Sophia bolted awake at the sound of a rap-rap-rap on the trailer door. Kimball stood on the other side, dressed in a park ranger’s uniform, his hair in braids, the wide brim of his campaign hat shading his eyes. She looked around the trailer. Paul was staring at the ceiling. Reinhardt slept facedown on the upper bunk with one arm dangling over the edge.
“Hey, Paulie. You’re in a lot more trouble than maybe you’re aware of,” Kimball whispered.
“More than the Denver stuff?” Paul said.
“You told me you went out there and barged in on a meeting because of your reports.”
“Yeah.”
“What you did not say is that you broke in on a meeting with the secretary of the interior, and apparently that didn’t sit too well with the muckety-mucks.”
Paul looked over at Sophia, who lifted her eyebrows in resignation and shrugged.
“And apparently pictures of your gunfight at Antelope Flats have hit the internet, and some people are saying it’s you who did it.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“They’re saying you did it because apparently some BLM guys found Cluff’s missing map in your vehicle and your M16 at the scene with, like, three or four empty clips all over the place. Which seems believable because you’re obviously a loose cannon who is trying to set up a smoke screen because you altered reports that were going to Congress. Then you lost your mind in a meeting you weren’t even invited to. This is exactly the story they need to prove that this land needs to be in the hands of business guys.”
“Those reports were supposed to reset the record.” Paul said, then rolled over onto his back.
“Only the victors get to write reports,” Kimball said.
“They were the only weapon I had,” Paul said.
“Well, you burned all that down. To top it off, somebody on Twitter said you’re secretly working for Nancy Pelosi. When they saw your Jeep on the internet, dispatch sent someone down, and they found it all. “They say the truth will set you free, but these days once something hits the internet, it’s Katy bar the door,” Kimball said. “Truth has no shelf life anymore.”
“So, now we’re back into the fire again?” Reinhardt asked.
“If there’s something worse than fire, this might be it. I was on the computer since you got here. Eventually, I had to stop and get ready. Since it’s obvious that I can’t really do anything for you, I thought I’d at least bring coffee and fill you in.” He lifted a thermos into view, opened the door, and set it inside on the counter. The door piston hissed as it closed.
“Some people think Paul kidnapped you all, or something. You two can fix that part of the story, but I warn you. Don’t go out there online and look at anything. It’s a dumpster fire. You’ll lose heart. I already did,” Kimball said.
“We should call the police,” Sophia said.
“This is already on its way to the FBI,” Kimball said. “Paul might want to turn himself in, but it could be a good idea for you all to split up.”
“What do you think we should do?” Sophia asked.
“I don’t know. This is your thing. I got you staying out here because I don’t need my house getting teargassed.”
“Do you think Wïiatsiweap is lost?” Paul asked.
“We’ve been losing that place over and over again for a hundred years. They stole everything out of there and gave it back empty. They’re planning to steal it again. It was always gonna be that way. You all should move on, though. Anyone finds you here, my ass is grass. Who knows about this?”
“Euphrenia and Dreamweaver,” Paul said.
“Dreamweaver talks, man. To everybody. Plus, he’s crazy. You gotta stay away from him. You know he thinks Indian people came from outer space? Outer. Space.” Kimball was close to shouting, but he backed off, said goodbye, and left.
When they could no longer hear his footsteps, Paul said, “I’m sorry.”
Reinhardt climbed out of his bunk and poured coffee into mugs he found in the galley kitchen. He handed one to Sophia and Paul, each of whom sat, facing in opposite directions.
“I have one question for you,” Sophia said after a long silence.
“Only one?”
“Is Wïiatsiweap the Paiute name for Swallow Valley?” She spelled out the word for him, then said she wanted to be sure they were talking about the same thing.
“It is.”
“Have you ever heard of the Wïiatsiweap Hoax?”
Paul shook his head.
Sophia sat up straight. “How about Tom MacNair? Have you heard anything about him? Impresario, con man, provocateur from Glasgow?” Paul shook his head to all of it. “Well, Tom MacNair came through Ellis Island in the 1870s and ended up obsessed with these articles he’d read in the New-York Tribune about the pueblos out here. He wanted to see them firsthand, but it took him a decade to save up and make the trip. He sold everything he had and didn’t plan on coming back to New York. When he got to Colorado, he found the sites had already been ransacked.”
“Oh no,” Reinhardt said.
“While he was moping around, he met a guy who said he was selling property that was full of Indian stuff. He must have told a good story, because MacNair bought the land for two hundred dollars, which was almost everything he had left. He got the deed and a map, and when he got there, he discovered he’d bought an abandoned mining claim fifty miles outside of Cortez. MacNair didn’t throw in the towel, though. He spent years building a fake pueblo of his own so he could give tours. He’d charge people a dollar for every arrowhead they found. He called the place—wait for it . . .”
“Wïiatsiweap!” Reinhardt shouted. “Ha, I know this one.”
“I said to wait for it,” Sophia glared at him. “Apparently MacNair got the name from some penny dreadful adventure—”
“Written by Krause, Sigmund F. Krause,” Reinhardt shouted. “I read it as a child. His stories of the Indian are very special in Germany. They are why I came.”
Sophia and Paul turned and watched Reinhardt do a small victory dance, then they looked at each other, shaking their heads, feeling that somehow, in this moment, they were sitting peacefully in the eye of the storm. Each of them drank in silence when a buzz-buzz-buzz came from Reinhardt’s bunk.
“What’s that?” Sophia asked.
“My phone,” Reinhardt said. “There is an outlet up there, so I charged it.”
“Shut it off,” Paul snapped. “But it’s probably too late.”
___
Dalton stopped at the front desk and set down his Diet Coke. LaRae handed him a stack of Post-its and said, “I’m just going to start by saying I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I didn’t put it on a note or anything, but someone from the FBI called and they want to assume control of the whole thing at Antelope Flats.”
LaRae watched a smile creep across Dalton’s face.
“So, you’re not mad?”
“Are you kidding? This is the happiest I’ve been in two weeks. Can I just send them everything?” he asked.
“I told them when you’d be in, and they said someone would call. They’re coming in from Phoenix.”
“Vegas is closer. That’s weird.”
LaRae shrugged. “That’s not how it works, I guess. Okay, I thought that was the bad news. You’ll see from those notes that maybe I was wrong. Okay, so the real bad news is Stan Forsythe has been calling, like, every ten minutes.”
Dalton read the notes. “So the German isn’t dead? He’s over at Pipe Spring?”
“Apparently.”
“Did you look up these Instagram pictures?”
She told him to come around, and she showed him a series of photos, all with the hashtag #herosjourney. As she clicked through them, Dalton said, “It just looks like somebody on vacation who crashed his rental car on the monument.”
“Probably feels different to him,” LaRae said. “So, we can put him on the not-murdered list, then. The German consulate would still like you to contact them.”
“Okay. It’s not like I have anything else to do. Call me when Chris gets in so we can close the loop.”
___
Paul and Sophia gathered away from the trailer to talk. They sat on a curve of sandstone that rose from the earth like the back of a whale. They faced to the south, where golden light filled the desert valley, and they looked at the distant escarpment that held the Swallow Valley in secret.
“Back there with Kimball, what was that? It felt like you two were talking on a different frequency than the rest of us.”
“It’s complicated.”
“No reason not to tell me. We’re all in this together now.”
“I’ve told you pretty much everything.”
“Pretty much is not everything. You barged in on the secretary of the interior?”
“I thought it was going to be someone else.”
“It doesn’t matter what you thought. Like how returning those artifacts destroys the sites,” she said.
“It’s the only way to save them. We can’t get into court any other way.”
“But the site is useless now.”
“To archeologists.”
“This isn’t a philosophical discussion anymore. People are getting killed over this, and I can’t figure out why. We will say we’ve found the real Wïiatsiweap—but you know what that actually means, right?”
“I do.”
“People will go up there and find a hoax just like MacNair’s DIY pueblo. It’s a forgery now because of your stunt with the bowl and the reports.”
“I prefer to think of it as repatriation.”
“You break a window, you can’t glue it back together. Everyone knows that. It’s Humpty Dumpty.” Paul didn’t follow, so she said, “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men?”
Paul nodded. “It’s also called impermanence. The world is in flux. I worry that my whole job is to keep things from changing so the monument matches the photographs. Nature isn’t static.”
“This conversation is cute, but we’re trying to come up with a plan that keeps you out of jail. Did Cluff have any human remains?” Sophia asked.
Paul got uncomfortable and fussed with his arm. “Some,” he said eventually.
“Did you repatriate any of them?”
“We got the remains and some ceremonial items to Kimball,” Paul said. “Cluff had one stipulation: keep government out of it.”
“Neither of you are non-government. You know that, right?”
A shout burst through the trees, followed by a single short yelp that sounded like Reinhardt. Before Sophia could respond, Paul was already running south toward the trailer. “Get to Kimball’s house and call 911.” She took off east, watching Paul over her shoulder as he disappeared into the trees. Her pulse shot up, and she hoped she was running in the right direction. When she brought her head back to the front, she saw a clear space between two juniper trees and headed through it. The gunman appeared from behind one of trunks, his arms to each side. She tried to stop, but she crashed into him. His arms snapped around her, and he clinched her like a bear. She struggled to break free and he grappled her, spun her quickly, and clamped a hand over her mouth as they both dropped to the ground. She felt a prick in her neck, then a burning. She fought back, bit his hand, kicked. But in a few seconds, everything went black.
___
Dalton and Tanner got out of the Bronco in front of Kimball Tillohash’s house. The sun was white-hot and the air brittle.
“What’s he doing here?” Tanner asked. “Some German tourist can’t be friends with Tillohash, can he?”
Dalton shrugged.
They stood at the fence and panned from side to side, slowly, like old windmills. The air around them buzzed with insects. The gossamer filaments of a dozen spider webs lifted on the breeze and blew across the road.
“We gonna sniff him out or set and wait?” Tanner asked.
“A little of both.”
They stood for a few seconds, then Tanner pointed at the webs. “That’s baby spiders.”
Dalton shivered and shook his head. “Don’t talk about it.”
“Think about what it takes to live like that, just letting the wind take you wherever it wants to.”
Dalton sniffed twice, then said, “Karen wants me to sell the house.”
“I heard.”
“I was going to, since it’s just me living there. But watching those things blow around makes me think I’m going to buy her out. Eventually the kids are going to want some place to come back to.”
Tanner cleaned his sunglasses. “We came back.”
“Yes, we did.” Dalton pointed to a duck-shaped sandstone formation. “Last photo this guy posted was of Duck Rock through what looks like a trailer window. It’s got to be on Tillohash’s land somewhere. Then there were shots of his wrecked car out by Dutch John’s Butte, then some coyotes at night. Seems like he was at Entrada Wash for that. Then vacation photos. Bryce Canyon. A chuckwagon dinner. Vegas Airport. Selfies on the plane. Before that, some pictures of him dressed up like an Indian. He had a whole headdress and everything.”
“That’s weird.”
“Well, it’s different. The dress-up pictures were from back in Germany.”
They heard voices through the bushes. Tanner unsnapped his holster and kept his hand on the grip of his sidearm. They moved together toward the south side of the house so they could see around the trees. They saw two men in plaid work shirts and Carhartts, one with his arm in a sling and the other sitting in a lawn chair holding a bag of frozen peas against his head. They were in the middle of a frantic conversation.
“We’re looking for Reinhardt Kupfer,” Dalton said.
Paul turned slowly. Reinhardt’s hands shot up, and the bag of peas fell to the ground.
“Two for one,” Tanner said.
Paul said, “My name is Paul Thrift. I’m ready to go with you, but our friend has been kidnapped. Could you please get this out on the radio?”
___
Sophia woke, trying to gasp. Her mouth was taped shut, her wrists and ankles also bound. She panicked until her brain sensed the trickle of oxygen making it through, which gave her a fragmented sense of the space enveloping her: some steel point digging into her back, her face against a coarse mat, everywhere the smell of fuel. She kicked, and when her feet met the enclosure, the counterthrust bashed her head against a box.
After a minute, an explosion of whiteness. The reaching arms of a tattered black silhouette. A failed scream. Everything black. Then a duration. The smell of onions. A headache. She was no longer in the car. Beneath her was the softness of a bed, strange pillows, and a blanket around her. Two voices: male, female. The female had questions. The male gave short answers.
“You were referred to me as a cleaner, one of the best, but your performance does not measure up to your fee. Everything you’re doing now is not work I hired you for, it’s you cleaning up your own vomit.”
“You wanted me to hire some locals to shake down Cluff—well, it’s their vomit. If you would have started with me, we’d be done by now.”
“I needed more degrees of separation. And your contract was very specific. I paid you on your terms, and when the situation changed, we renegotiated. You’re asking to be paid in full for failing to deliver the maps. That is—what would you call it?—a shakedown. It’s beneath you, Nicholas.”
“I was afraid you were going to say something like that.”
“And yet you still asked.”
Sophia strained to listen, which sent a hot arc of pain through her neck. The conversation halted. She heard them approach and felt them hovering over her. She blacked out again.
A second duration, then the blanket came off and the man sat her up. Orange light slanted through the west windows. The red digits on the alarm clock swam out of focus, then sharpened to read 7:32 p.m. One of them was wearing a Batman ski mask that was too small, the eyeholes stretched out of shape. She was handed a bottle of orange Gatorade with the cap off.
“Scream, and it’s lights-out again,” the man said.
She nodded, and he pulled the tape off in one clean jerk. The pain of this distracted her from the throbbing in her head and spine. In the silence that followed, he let her drink. It was room temperature but she couldn’t stop.
“A little at a time,” the woman’s voice said.
He took the bottle away, and she fell back to sleep.
After the third duration, she awoke to an argument at full pitch. She lay still, feigning sleep.
“I will not pay you for something you did not produce,” the woman said. “You are the one who has breached this contract.”
“Breach?” he shouted. “Breach? What are you going to do, call your lawyer?”
“You need to keep it down.”
“Silence is the only protection you’ve got.”
“You’d be surprised at the resources I have at my disposal.”
“Disposal is alright with me,” he said. Sophia heard the click of a gun’s hammer, then nothing. She clenched her eyes.
“Go ahead and put a bullet into everyone. We won’t bleed money.”
“It’ll give me some satisfaction.”
“You’re on a losing streak, Nicholas. Which means it’s time to walk away. From what I understand, if you had learned not to double down when your luck turns, you’d still be in a cape and sequins, with a show of your own at the Luxor.”
There was another long silence, then the sound of a door opening and slamming shut. After a few seconds, Sophia opened her eyes. The boiling in her head was no longer rolling. The room had stopped colliding with itself. She raised herself on one elbow and looked at the dull, custardy walls and the strange green foliage climbing out of the blue curtains. She rolled over, saw a woman sitting in the upholstered motel chair, her legs crossed at the knees. She wore caramel-colored sling-back kitten heels, and she covered her face with a fox mask made of felt and fur, which she held on a thin, elegant baton. The fine whiskers caught the last of the sunlight.
“I must apologize for the theater,” the woman said. “We are finished with that brute.”
“Was he planning to kill us?”
“All brutality is, at its core, cowardice. And cowards often bluff.”
Sophia tried to sit up all the way, but her head was pounding too much. She fought to get there anyway. Once she was upright, she said, “I’ve seen him in action.”
“Violence lacks nuance. It is a shell game. The noise before the defeat.”
“It seems like he’s the hands, but you’re the brain.”
The woman smiled.
“What do you want from us?”
“Us? No, I am only interested in you, Sophia Shepard.”
“I’m nobody.”
“A clever literary allusion, but I don’t buy it. You have a BA in linguistics from Duke, an MA in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago, and soon you’ll have a PhD from Princeton with a dissertation on the mechanics of site degradation occurring on NPS- and BLM-managed cultural sites. I’ve read your current draft. You’re a disruptor.”
“You have my dissertation? Who are you?”
“Ms. Shepard, your work is promising. You are arguing for archeology to take a stand against a hundred years of government intervention. You have a reputation as a firebrand, calling out a certain distinguished male scholar last year during a symposium. It’s not easy to speak truth to power. We’re not even dealing with power here, just quaint, clumsy, ham-fisted ideologies. It’s nonsense, isn’t it, that we should try to preserve anything unimpaired for the enjoyment, education, and inspiration of the unwashed masses. It’s all one great curio shop for them.” She bobbed the toe of her shoe and stared at Sophia. The woman’s eyes darted around from behind the calmness of the mask. “I would hate for this to seem like some kind of oral defense, but I am intrigued. What do you think our government would have done with your work once you put it out into the world?”
Sophia was too groggy to respond coherently, but she was seething.
“I used to work for the Department of the Interior. Let me help you with that. I can say with absolute certainty that they would have redacted everything, gagged you. Your academic career would have been over before it started. They’d have offered you some G6-level position and stuck you in the basement. And the worst part about it is, when you took the grant money, you agreed to it. This administration has no compunction. They will bury you. It’s that simple.”
“But I have only been hunted down by you and your pit bull, not the government.”
“This is all sleight of hand. The government only cares about what the argument of energy independence will allow them to get away with. It is the latest incarnation of the military-industrial complex. But let’s get back to you. I assume you didn’t get into this work to serve men in a bureaucracy. When I read your ideas, I see that you still believe in truth.”
The woman tilted her head slightly, cocking the mask’s ears to one side. Sophia became self-conscious of her clothes, the prairie dress and low-cut hiking boots. Her vision was collecting and solidifying, and she looked at the windows, the locked door, the bolt and chain. During the silence, the air conditioning unit shuddered on.
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
“Fancy,” Sophia said.
“That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. My recently departed operative doesn’t believe in truth. He is a failed illusionist, sawing ladies in half, freeing himself from strait jackets, guessing the correct card. He has told me that people only believe in what they have paid for. I have learned through sad experience that it is impossible to make this equation work in reverse.”
Sophia sat a little taller. “This is monologging, right?”
The woman paused, the stillness of her mask amplifying the tension. “I am working on a possible future for you and me, and a way for the two of us to be free of these men and their noise.”
Sophia raised her bound wrists. “All this duct tape doesn’t feel much like freedom.”
“You are a flight risk.”
“Abduction is a trigger for me.”
The woman laughed, then she rose from the chair. “Let me make you comfortable,” she said. With the mask in one hand, she helped Sophia hobble from the bed to the other chair. She opened a leather briefcase, removed a photo album, set it in Sophia’s lap, and opened the cover. The first image was a marble relief of a woman’s face set atop a frieze of repeating smaller faces. She could see that the work was in the living room of a vast, open, modern home.
Sophia’s face froze. “This is the Woman of Wakara. How do you have this picture? Where is it?”
“I own it,” the woman said, sitting again.
“Nobody owns it. It was destroyed in 1990 during Desert Storm.”
“That is the cover story.”
“Explain that.”
“Why don’t I free your hands so you can continue reviewing these photographs,” the woman said.
___
Reinhardt sat in an office chair in the sheriff’s department, a paramedic shining a penlight into each eye.
“I’m okay,” Reinhardt said. “No need to continue doing that.”
“Once an hour,” the paramedic said. “Sheriff says you’re safer in custody or you’d be in the hospital after getting knocked cold like that.”
Dalton came in and spoke with the paramedic, who said Reinhardt had a pretty good lump and probably a mild concussion to go with it. “Don’t let him sleep for a while.”
Dalton sat in the chair across from Reinhardt. “You’re lucky to be alive, Dr. Kupfer. That guy mostly leaves behind bodies. You hear what he said about sleeping?”
Reinhardt nodded.
“Okay. If you need anything let me know. The FBI is working this case now, but just for my own edification, how did you end up in the middle of all this?”
“It’s silly to say out loud.”
“Try me.”
“I was on a quest.”
“Who sent you?”
“Me. I sent myself. I was trying to follow my bliss.”
Dalton sighed. “Okay. And you don’t have any idea why this guy would take Sophia other than she had a map he wanted?”
“That is correct. It’s a map of a place called Wïiatsiweap, a city hidden in the cliffs. I knew about it from a book called The Rifle and the Tomahawk, by Sigmund F. Krause.”
“But the FBI has that map now,” Dalton said.
“Tell them to be careful. Apparently, there are some politics involved.”
“There’s a little politics in everything.”
“I am German, so that makes sense to me, but we should try to focus on Sophia. When this man finds out she does not have the map, we could lose her.”
“Can you describe the guy who was after you?”
“He was plain with unfashionable clothes, like a golfer.”
“Anything else?”
Reinhardt shook his head. Dalton led him back to the holding cell uncuffed. Paul was inside sitting in a half lotus, meditating. As Dalton unlocked the cell door, Paul opened his eyes.
“It’s no Hilton, but the security is good,” Dalton said.
“Any word on Sophia?” Paul asked.
“Nothing yet. We’ve got roadblocks at the state line in both directions. I’m going to guess he didn’t take off with her across the Grand Canyon.”
“He might not have taken her anywhere,” Paul said.
“Your friend said he was after Cluff’s map. How’d she get hold of it?”
“Should I be talking without a lawyer?” Paul asked.
“You want your girlfriend back?”
“She’s not—never mind. She got the map off those Ashdown brothers, right before they got shot.”
“With your weapon?”
“Apparently. But I didn’t—”
Dalton’s radio came alive. “Dalton, this is Tanner. I just picked up a guy on Main Street. He’s got a bandage on his shoulder. He’s in a pair of boxer shorts and that’s it. No ID. Won’t talk. I’m just about there.”
“He match the description of our guy?”
“Not really. He looks like one of those dudes who had a peyote thing go south on him.”
“Not tweaking or anything?”
“Nope. Just sitting there.”
Dalton ended the radio conversation and turned back to Paul and Reinhardt. He explained how everything had turned federal and what that meant for him. He explained that the FBI was using the state police and marshals, but leaving the peacekeeping to him. He asked Reinhardt again if he saw the guy who hit him.
“I did not see him, but it had to be the crazy person who was pursuing us,” Reinhardt said. “It is difficult to knock someone unconscious with one blow. He got me right in the carotid. I must have hit my head when I fell. I do not think it was luck.”
Dalton left them, and Reinhardt lowered his head into his hands. Paul stretched his arm and rotated it. His face was grim. He stood and took hold of one bar and used it to stretch his shoulder. Reinhardt watched him make each movement. “They asked me about you. The story they tell is like the one you have told us, but with more to it. They thought you were the one who did this until Sophia was kidnapped. So, that is lucky.”
Paul laughed. “Oh, good.”
“But did you help bring these calamities upon us?”
“I don’t know, Reinhardt. Maybe. I was just trying to save what’s left out here. I thought the end justified the means.”
“The world does not change to suit us. You know Sophia saved me, then you saved us, then I put your arm back in its socket, then Dreamweaver, then Euphrenia, then Kimball. Problems will always be with us, but so will the helpers.”
“Do you think he’s going to call and try to negotiate a trade with us?”
“I don’t know, Paul.”
They sat in silence for a time, then stood and sat again on different benches. This cycling went on for a while until a door opened and a sheriff’s deputy brought in a man who was naked but for a pair of plaid boxer shorts. He entered the room like a disgraced fighter, his head bowed and hands cuffed behind his back. After the deputy pushed him into the cell, the man crossed to the opposite side, where he stood, facing away from Reinhardt and Paul until the deputy left.
The moment the hallway door closed, the man began to hunch and gag, and before the two of them knew what to do, the man spat something heavy onto the floor of the cell. Then he rose, adjusted his posture, and turned theatrically to present himself.
Reinhardt recognized him as the man he’d met on the road.
“It’s you,” Reinhardt said, looking at Paul for confirmation. “How?”
Scissors tilted his head and smiled. “How, indeed. Paul Thrift, who used up one of his nine lives. How many do you have left?”
Paul stood and took a defensive posture, which he dropped when the pain in his ribs and shoulder flared. Paul pointed to the bandage on the man’s shoulder. “So that old woman took a chunk out of you,” he said.
“A shoulder for a shoulder,” Scissors said, gesturing to the way Paul favored his bad arm.
“I meant how did you know we were here?” Reinhardt asked.
Scissors lifted his eyebrows and said, “You can thank the loudmouth newspaperman at the diner for giving you up. But hush for now. Let’s not scuttle our reunion before I get the chance to tell you where Sophia is.”
He crossed to the bench and sat and twisted his body to one side and shoved his rear end through the loop of his arms. Once his arms were in front, he picked up the packet he’d spit out. It looked like a condom, which he tore open to reveal a package of small tools and a handcuff key. He quickly released himself and set the cuffs on the bench. He checked the bandage on his shoulder, then turned to Reinhardt and said, “Give me your clothes, and I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
“My clothes?”
“I can’t take his,” he said, pointing to Paul’s legs. “He’s a stork.”
“Now, wait a minute,” Paul said. “We’re supposed to just let you—”
“You have your agency, but if you rat me out, I swear . . . your friend will be lost.”
Once the clothing trade was complete, Scissors said, “She is nearby, in a place called the Blue Motel.”
“Don’t you want the map in return?” Paul asked.
Reinhardt hugged himself and tried not to shiver.
“No,” he said. “That is no longer of interest to me. Sophia is with a woman named Kristine Frangos, who is, at the moment, propositioning her. If you hurry, you’ll catch them both there. Frangos won’t dare try to move her for another few hours.”
“Why are you here?” Paul asked.
“Frangos is behind all of this. She has ties that go all the way up. If you hurry, you’ll be able to expose her. I can’t be the one who does it. Beyond that, I have my own plans to mop things up. The artifacts Cluff had were penny ante compared to what this woman has locked up in her house.”
“Why would you help us, after everything you did?”
“Frangos made a lot of mistakes, and she left me exposed. So, I’ve decided she doesn’t get what she wants. Not this time.”
“That just leaves more questions,” Paul said.
“Too bad. I’m done.” Scissors stood and adjusted his ill-fitting new clothes. He pocketed the key and picked up the tools, which he used to open the lock on the cell door. “Give me fifteen minutes before you start yelling or I’ll go straight to the Blue Motel and end it.” He shut the cell door, picked the lock to the hallway door, and was gone.
Paul and Reinhardt both looked at the clock. It said 8:17.
“What do we do?” Reinhardt asked. “Wait until 8:32?”
“I say give him three minutes to get out of the building, then we start shouting.”
“Good,” Reinhardt said. “I’m freezing.”
___
Sophia came back from the bathroom and sat in the chair. She reopened the photo album and turned the pages backward and forward while the woman looked on. There were Chinese ritual bronzes, Olmec calendars, sarcophagi, funerary urns, jade masks, a nearly intact Mesopotamian astronomical calculator, Vietnamese copper gongs, and Syrian mosaics. “None of this is possible. One person couldn’t—” Sophia said.
“You’re right. Not with the resources and restrictions normally available to a museum or university, certainly not a national park. That said, capital is easy to come by. Interesting ideas are not.”
“So, let me get this right. You remove artifacts from sites before you—”
“Rescue,” she interrupted. “I rescue these things.”
“But what you do to rescue the artifacts destroys the integrity of the sites.”
“Their destruction is assured, but I am able to make use of magnetometry, ground-penetrating radar, and 3-D modeling. We digitize everything, put time in a bottle.”
“Why do the maps matter to you?” Sophia asked.
“I need for there to be only my maps, my reports. Anything else would undermine the reality I am trying to establish. This way I can keep what matters and sell the rest.”
“Without provenance.”
“Which is what the market prefers.”
“Once it’s gone, it’s unrecoverable.”
“The other option is to squirrel it all away in drawers until everything is lost through neglect. This mad dash to save disappearing people didn’t begin with the virtuous Victorian elite. Phrenologists wanted skulls. It was the science of racism. The better angels of the age wanted to save whatever they could before it was gone, by any means necessary. What I’m offering you is the chance to do more than futz around with history, Sophia. Look at those photos, what I have been able to save will stand the test of time. I can throw the land to the jackals, which is all they want anyway. Do you know the poem ‘Ozymandias’ by Shelley?”
Sophia nodded. She thought of her professor’s obsession with it.
“Then you’ll know that Ozymandias was the king of kings. How often a man believes he is the alpha and the omega. Sophia, you have seen this a million times. Men build monuments to themselves, and when they have gone, the ruins shout, ‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’ How ironic, really. I want to give you the chance to preserve history, and it won’t require a vow of poverty or the subjugation of yourself to the venalities of bureaucrats. We will be Amazons.”
How strange, Sophia thought. Yes and no to everything. Point by point, she was right about men and bureaucracy. Add it all up, and this woman was some combination of a supervillain and a CEO, the kind of crazy that needs to be locked up. She was as ludicrous as she was terrifying, well dressed, but in the end just banal evil.
Sophia wanted to give this woman a monologue of her own. Instead, to buy herself time, she leaned forward and said, “I’m listening.”
___
The exact moment the minute hand clicked from 8:19 to 8:20, Paul and Reinhardt both shouted simultaneously as loud as they could. No one came right away. A minute later, Paul crossed to the door and pushed it open. “Hmm,” he said.
“Be careful. They might think we’re escaping,” Reinhardt said.
Paul crossed to the phone on the wall and dialed 0. “Hello, this is Paul Thrift. I’m back here in holding—”
“How did you reach the phone?” the woman asked.
“That’s part of why I’m calling. The guy they brought in just released himself. Bad news is he’s the guy the FBI is looking for. We’ll be back here, waiting.” He hung up and joined Reinhardt on the bench.
Reinhardt’s face fell. He placed his hand on Paul’s shoulder, and they sat together saying nothing until the sheriff and deputy burst into the room, their guns drawn, their eyes scanning the cell. “Where’s the guy?” Dalton asked.
“Like Paul said, he released himself,” Reinhardt said.
“He what—how?”
“I’m not sure I can explain what happened. He brought some tools,” Paul said.
“But he was nearly naked,” Dalton said.
“I think that might have been a distraction,” Paul said.
“He regurgitated the tools,” Reinhardt said, pantomiming how they came out of his mouth.
“We can keep telling you what happened, but it won’t clear anything up,” Paul added. “It was for sure the guy who’s been after us. He came in here to tell us Sophia is in the Blue Motel. Apparently, he’s got a bone to pick with the woman who has her.”
“The Blue Motel in Fredonia?” Dalton asked.
“I’m pretty sure that’s the one.”
“Chris, can you get this to dispatch?” Dalton addressed Reinhardt, “Did he steal your clothes?”
Reinhardt nodded.
“You got that, Chris? He’s wearing the German’s work clothes.”
Tanner nodded and left. Dalton came up to the cell. “Thrift, I don’t know what’s going on, but you’ve got a lot of heat on you. I’m going to take your friend so he can help with the description. We’ll get this figured out.”
“I get it,” Paul said, leaning back against the wall.
A low rumble came through the floor.
“What’s that?” Reinhardt asked.
A voice came across Dalton’s radio. “This is just crazy—there’s been a huge accident on the highway, right outside in front of the office. I can see it from my desk. It looks like a tour bus.”
“I’m an EMT, I could help you out,” Paul said.
“You know they’d string me up if I did that.”
“Then take him. He’s a good doctor.”
___
The tour bus was on its side. They were looking at the wheels and drive train; the roof was facing the other side of the road. Cars were backed up on either side, tourists with their doors open, standing in the summer heat, shielding their eyes, snapping photos, their vacations ruined.
People emerged from the windows that were now facing skyward. They stood atop the wreckage, silhouettes with the sun behind them.
A voice on Dalton’s radio told him the volunteer fire department was ten minutes out. He turned to Reinhardt, who was now wearing a pair of running shoes with no socks, shorts, and a Kane County Sheriff’s Department T-shirt, and told him to run back to the station and ask LaRae to get the ladder. Dalton cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted to the people on top. “It’s higher than you think. Stay put, and we’ll get you down.”
LaRae was on the radio when Reinhardt got there. “Get the German to the ladder out back.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“People said some guy tore out of here in a Buick, cut off the bus, and that tipped it over. And I’m sorry, LaRae,” Dalton said, “it looks like he took your Regal.”
LaRae stood motionless for a few seconds, with the microphone next to her mouth, then she came around the front of the desk and looked out the front window. When she didn’t see what she was hoping to see, she steadied herself on the desk. “Well, shit,” she said. “I had that paid off.” She took another second to feel the loss, then she gave Reinhardt a key and told him the ladder was locked up out back.
Reinhardt followed her instructions, and with some difficulty, came back through the building with the ladder.
“Oh, honey, you could have gone around,” she said.
Reinhardt handed her back the key, she opened the front doors, and Reinhardt made his way to the street. An ambulance had arrived, but no other help was there. Dalton waved him over to a spot near the rear of the bus. They pulled the ladder into place, and people began to clamber down. Reinhardt recognized some of the faces and circled around to the front, where he saw the Ranches, Relics, and Ruins card taped to the glass.
___
“Here’s the thing,” Sophia said, her voice elevating. “I am still a little bit whacked out by whatever it was your imp stuck into my neck, but I don’t think I’m making my point. The artifacts on their own are meaningless. They need a story.”
“You’re coming across fine—why does an artifact have to mean anything?”
“Because then it’s just a thing,” Sophia said. “The point is to know more about the people who made it and used it.”
“I know you know this, but let’s be clear. We favor our own stories over the ones Indigenous people tell. I am interested in beauty for its own sake. Meaning is uninteresting, and our ridiculous need for it has caused us to dismiss many things as unimportant because their meaning does not manifest itself easily: poems, trees, abstract expressionism. How many times have people tried to ascribe meaning to pictographs? They just are, and that’s enough.”
“Beauty is a construct,” Sophia said, aware that she was taking the bait. “We should save all of it, even if it is ordinary, maybe because it is ordinary.”
“Which brings us back to the eye of the beholder—”
“And the tragedy is that most people have no idea what they are looking at, and so entire cultures have become decorations, fetishes, trinkets to be bought and sold. They love the artifacts, but it stops there. I don’t see these people supporting clean water projects or advocating for the thousands of Indigenous women who have gone missing.” Sophia interjected. “Call it what you want to, but what you’re doing is a textbook case of cultural appropriation.”
The woman stopped her with a raised palm, then she moved the mask’s stick to her other hand. “Before you say anything else, I want to remind you that we have been talking for thirty minutes, which means we are now playing a different set of roles. I have put an offer on the table and you are arguing theoretical positions.”
Sophia quickly considered the situation. She’d been kidnapped so a woman behind a mask could offer her a chance to help rescue invaluable artifacts with what appeared to be unlimited resources. Saying this to herself amplified the ridiculousness of it. “Look,” she said, “I’m still getting over being chased, shot at, and drugged. And there’s no way I’m going to say anything until I know how you do what you’re doing.”
“The details are tedious.”
“God is in the details, I’m afraid,” Sophia said.
“So is the devil.” The woman laughed softly. “But let’s stop talking about men, could we? Just for a moment, let us talk about what you and I might be able to accomplish together if we could work unimpeded. They would be happy to go on rattling their sabers, issuing sanctions and tariffs. Let them be our misdirection. For them there is only drill, baby, drill. As I have told you—we let them drill, then take what we want out the side door.”
“It makes sense, but I need to pee again,” Sophia said. “I drank that whole thing of gross Gatorade.”
“Right now?” the woman said.
“It’s a Maslow thing. I don’t follow arguments when I’m in this state.”
The woman sighed and gestured to the bathroom. Sophia went inside, pulled the door closed, and locked it.
“Don’t lock it,” Frangos called out.
“Too late. You have boundary issues,” Sophia said, sitting on the toilet.
As she tried to piece everything together, she found herself visited instead by a memory of her mother, sitting at the kitchen table watching CNN on a small white television mounted on the underside of the kitchen cabinets. The correspondent stood in front of a museum in Baghdad, talking about the looting of artifacts from the National Museum. Her mother wept as she watched, and she brought Sophia close and wrapped her in her arms. “My beautiful,” she said. “This thing they are doing can never be repaired. They know it, and that is why it is happening.” Sophia remembered saying, “But Mama, this stuff isn’t from Iran like us.” And her mother said, “Borders won’t stop them. This way of thinking will destroy everything beautiful in the world, piece by piece.” This was the kind of thing the woman out there thought she could use her power and influence to stop.
Sophia finished and sat with the toilet paper wadded in one hand. The woman out there was crazy, but if those photographs were accurate, she was in possession of some of the great lost treasures of the world. She knew she couldn’t work for such a person, and she’d never be allowed to work with her. She was a megalomaniac, and megalomaniacs don’t share. And what would her mother say when she told her that she’d quit her PhD to become this woman’s minion? She would fall silent and shake her head.
Sophia stood and flushed and examined herself in the mirror. She looked exhausted. In the high, escape-proof window above the sink she saw a glint and heard footsteps. She stepped onto the toilet so she could see, and outside there were police officers with bulletproof vests and visored helmets, moving in silence, directing each other with hand signals. One of them saw her peering down and stopped. She lifted a finger to her lips and motioned for Sophia to step down. She then put two fingers to her eyes and held them for a second, then nodded, making the “okay” sign.
“You’re not trying to escape through one of those windows, are you?” the woman in the other room called out.
“No,” Sophia said. “Whatever your guy put into me has destroyed my insides,” she said.
“He’s a blunt instrument, which is why he is gone,” the woman said.
Sophia flushed the toilet again to cover her story, then washed her hands and came back into the main room. The woman had the scrapbook open to another page. “I am particularly fond of this rescue,” she said, and she motioned for Sophia to come look.
She checked for hints of police movement outside, wondering how she might be able to stay clear of a firefight. Her pulse was racing, and she knew it was showing.
“We were given access to important cultural sites in Syria during the ceasefire in 2012. We removed key artifacts, which we swapped for fakes. The originals are now in my collection, and the fakes were scattered on the black market, which has—”
The motel door exploded inward and three police officers followed. Two of them tackled the woman to the ground, sending her fox mask spinning in the air, and a third swept Sophia toward the far corner of the room, sheltering her. The woman’s plain face was flushed red, her eyes raging. Her face looked strangely expressionless, frozen, ruined.
“Get that binder,” Sophia said. “It’s all in the binder.”
The woman began shrieking and kicking. “You have no idea who I am,” she screamed over and over.
“You have the right to remain silent,” the officer said. The woman thrashed and kicked, until one of them said, “You need to stay down, ma’am. I’m not going to warn you again.” The woman kicked one of the officers in the jaw, and Sophia saw a flash, heard the ticking of electricity, then it was quiet.