TWENTY YEARS AGO, WHEN COUNTERINTELligence agent David DeLuca was a rookie cop with the Yuma police department, his first thought, looking into a missing person and an abandoned vehicle on or near the reservation, would have been that the disappearance was alcohol related. It was simply, unfortunately, a fact of life. The girl he’d been sent to find had lost both parents to alcohol, had been raised by a grandmother, no longer living, and an uncle—it wasn’t unusual either to see the habits of substance abuse passed down from one generation to the next. Yet the girl had been a straight-A student at Goldwater High in Somerton, a lifelong teetotaler who’d worked in a shelter for Cocopah women from homes where alcohol abuse had led to other forms of abuse. Ben Yutahay, the tribal policeman who’d met him to assist in the investigation, ruled out alcohol. His son Marvin had known Cheryl in high school and said she didn’t drink, even then, when everybody did.
Ben, Marvin, and DeLuca stood in the desert, the light growing in the east and only the last few brightest stars still shining overhead.
“If that’s lightning,” said Ben Yutahay, squatting in the dust next to the abandoned Jeep, “it’s the funniest lightning strike I’ve ever seen. Not that it can’t do funny things. I saw a guy once who got his shoes blown off by a direct hit but other than that, he was fine. But this is strange.”
“How so?” DeLuca said. He’d worked with Yutahay twenty years ago and had considered him a friend, though they’d gone separate ways and not stayed in touch, DeLuca back east to the Boston P.D., Yutahay transferring over to the tribal authority, where he headed up a unit of “Shadow Wolves,” so dubbed by the media for the way they could track the immigrant-smuggling “coyotes” and narcotraficantes through the desert, preferring the early morning and twilight hours, when the low sun cast long shadows that made the tracks stand out against the desert floor. With F-16s from the 56th Fighter Wing in Gila Bend making practice bombing runs in the Goldwater Proving Grounds and Marines completing their desert training before heading off to the Middle East, it was a particularly dangerous place to be an illegal immigrant. DeLuca and Yutahay had left the motel at four in the morning. After a late flight to Phoenix and the puddle-jumper to Yuma, it had been after midnight when DeLuca checked in. He was exhausted, and yet the desert sunrise somehow revived him.
“Usually when lightning hits a car, it runs down the outer surface to the ground. Sometimes it melts the tires or the windshield wipers but it leaves what’s inside alone. That’s why people are safer in lightning storms staying in their cars. Sometimes you get a side flash where the electricity runs along the surface from the car to something more grounded, like a tree or a saguaro, maybe. These tires are fine and there’s no side flash. All the damage is inside. But like I said, you can’t always predict what lightning is going to do. If you could, it wouldn’t be lightning.”
His hair was going gray, and he’d put on about forty pounds since DeLuca had last seen him, but other than that he was the same, with the same dry sense of humor that DeLuca remembered. His son Marvin was a spitting image of his younger self, DeLuca thought. Marvin had come along because, Ben said, Marvin was finally thinking of learning a trade and making an honest living in law enforcement, instead of sneaking around digging up rocks to sell at the big gem shows in Los Angeles or Santa Fe. Marvin was crouched next to his father, who was pointing at something under the car.
“This is her uncle’s car,” Yutahay said over his shoulder. “I wonder how she got it.”
Ben stood and crossed to where DeLuca was scrutinizing the horizon. It was beautiful rough country, and though he was happy in Massachusetts, sometimes he still missed the desert.
“The car stopped before the rain came, anyway,” Yutahay said. “There aren’t any splatter marks under the car. The electrical system is a mess. I can’t tell you exactly but from the sloshing, I think she had plenty of gas.”
“Can you tell what time of day? Or night?”
“The weather report said the rain started falling around eleven, so it had to be before that, but probably not much before. The headlights were left in the on position, but she left these in the car,” he said, handing DeLuca the flashlight and the NVGs, both Army issue. “Why would she leave these in the car if it was dark out?”
The flashlight still worked. The batteries in the NVGs had drained.
“Full moon?”
Yutahay shook his head.
“Quarter moon,” he said. “Partly overcast that night, too.”
“Maybe she thought she didn’t need them?”
Yutahay smiled.
“Indians can’t see in the dark any better than you can, David,” Yutahay said. “Maybe she was in a hurry and forgot them. The tracks she left were of a person in a hurry. I wonder why, though? If she had car trouble, why not stay with the car?”
“Cell phones work out here?”
Yutahay shook his head.
“Maybe she saw the lights of a house?” DeLuca said.
“Nobody’s lived around here for a thousand years,” Yutahay said.
“Why not?” DeLuca asked.
“Why would they want to?” Yutahay said. “There’s nothing here. It’s too far from anything. Sometimes the Cocopah would spend the summers up in the high country with the Pai Pai or the Kumeyaay after spring planting, near where Cheryl’s uncle keeps his trailer, but not here. The other thing I’m curious about is the mud on her tires.”
“What about it?”
“It’s red,” Yutahay said. “I don’t know of any dirt like that around these parts.”
Under the driver’s seat, DeLuca found a book in a brown paper bag. The book was a coffee-table sized hardcover entitled Lechugilla: Jewel of the Underground, and it had been signed on the title page by the photographer, a man named Josh Truitt who’d written: “Sometimes to expand your horizons, you have to dig beneath them. Happy birthday, love, Josh and Theresa.” DeLuca showed it to Yutahay. The photographs were of exotic cave chambers, crystal formations and that sort of thing.
“Does that seem like an odd thing to bring along on a trip?” DeLuca asked his old friend.
“Maybe it was in her car before she left and she didn’t want to leave it behind when she switched cars?” Yutahay speculated.
“But she left it behind here,” DeLuca said.
“She left here in more of a hurry,” Ben Yutahay said. He showed the book to his son. “You ever hear of this place?”
Marvin Yutahay looked at the book.
“Heard of it,” he said. “It’s off limits to gem hunters. You gotta get a permit to get in.”
“Why’s that?” DeLuca asked the younger man.
“Lotta good stuff inside,” Marvin said with a shrug. “That’s what I’ve heard.”
“I think I’m done here,” Ben said. “The trail leads this way. You good?”
“I’m good,” DeLuca said, throwing the book back in the car. “Hey—I could be home shoveling the driveway right now. This is a walk in the park.”
“Actually, the park is that way,” Yutahay said, pointing toward the sun.
It was only two days earlier that DeLuca had come home from the Burlington Mall with his wife, fighting the traffic on 128, to find a message on his answering machine: “Dave, Phil LeDoux. Listen, pack your duffle and get your ass down here ASAP. Sorry to break up your second honeymoon, but we’ve got something we want you to handle for us. Call the SATO office at Hanscom and have them book you on a flight to Washington tonight. Then call down to McNair and have them arrange a room for you at the BOQ. I’ll see you in my office tomorrow morning at 0800. Say hi to Bonnie for me. Out here.”
He’d been back from Iraq for less than a month, in theory recovering from the neck injury he’d sustained when he’d been thrown through the windshield of a Humvee. The truth was, his neck was fine, and he was bored. Bonnie had seen how eager he’d been to get another assignment, his first as the leader of “Team Red,” a special ops counterintelligence unit that came with a hospital bed promotion from staff sergeant to chief warrant officer 2 with a presidential waiver of warrant officer school thrown in. It had been a mistake to let his enthusiasm show, because she’d taken it personally, despite his protestations to the contrary.
The Army specialist driving the car that picked him up at the Fort McNair bachelor officers’ quarters was probably twenty or so but looked fifteen in his “pickle suit,” the Army dress-green or “Class A” uniform. On the advice of LeDoux’s aide, Captain Martin, DeLuca had worn a uniform as well, if only to avoid all the post-9/11 checkpoint hassles the Pentagon Force Protection Agency was subjecting civilians to. Inside the Pentagon, he got lost several times, looking for LeDoux’s office, where every hallway looked the same to him, and he hated to ask for directions unless he absolutely had to. Outside LeDoux’s office, he’d cooled his heels, thumbing through back issues of Army Logistician, Defense Weekly, Soldiers Magazine, and the Army Times. He’d allowed himself to become excited by the idea that he’d finally be doing the kind of interesting work he’d always dreamed of doing. Frankly, the Arizona desert was beautiful, and it was nice to get a little warm weather, but all the same, finding a missing person wasn’t exactly the kind of work he’d anticipated.
Yutahay must have sensed something.
“You seem a little down,” Yutahay said. “I’m happy to leave it alone if you’d prefer, but I just thought I’d ask, in case you wanted to talk.” Yutahay led the way, followed by DeLuca, with Marvin bringing up the rear in the procession.
“I’m swell,” DeLuca said. “I just thought I’d be doing something different. When I took the job, I’d been led to believe…”
“That you wouldn’t be shuffling around in the dust with an old Indian?” Yutahay said.
“I’m not complaining,” DeLuca said. “I might have thought this was something the MPs could have handled, that’s all.”
“Maybe the fact that they sent you makes it important,” Yutahay said. “They wanted the job done right. Personally, I always give missing person cases top priority. When I was in Vietnam, before I met you, my brother was MIA. I was artillery but he was infantry. I’d rather know somebody was dead than not know what happened to them. I think that’s why I became a tracker.”
“I guess I just sounded like an asshole,” DeLuca said. “I apologize.”
“I know what you mean, though,” Yutahay said. “You want a challenge.”
DeLuca felt guilty for complaining. The fact was, he’d been told he’d be leading a team on special assignments, and then, his first job out of the box, he’d been loaned to a joint command, briefed in LeDoux’s Deputy Commander, G-2 office by a Colonel Oswald from NRO who’d told him, in a tone of voice DeLuca found condescending, “One of our people from STRATCOM in Colorado, a 71 Lima buck sergeant in the archives section named Cheryl Escavedo, has turned up missing and the trail seems to lead to southern Arizona.” He’d handed DeLuca Escavedo’s Army 201 personnel file. “Before she disappeared, she apparently swiped some classified information from one of the databases at The Mountain. They’ll fill you in better when you get there, but first we want you to go to Arizona and have a look-see. Folks at STRATCOM are pretty worked up. Call your team in if you see the need but check with us first—we’d like you to handle it alone if you could.”
“I recommended you when Colonel Oswald came to us because I know you used to live there and you know the territory,” DeLuca’s friend General Phillip LeDoux had said. “Plus, we want to keep you busy. I actually thought we’d have something for you before this, but for now, this will give you a chance to do some good and work on your tan.”
“So you’re giving me busy work?” DeLuca had thought, though he held his tongue.
Every once in a while, Yutahay bent down to touch the earth, squinting at the dust or fingering a branch or twig.
“You went from here over to Boston P.D., right?” Ben said, breathing easily despite the rough terrain. “You do missing persons there?”
“Whenever it came up,” DeLuca said. “I was with homicide for a while. I was working elder and disabled abuse cases before I reenlisted, busting the shitheads who were abusing elderly and special needs people in shelter homes. That’ll throw a cloud over your sunny disposition toward your fellow man. Assuming you still have one. Lotta homes run by the low-life scums where half the caregivers were ex-cons.”
“Why’d you reenlist?” Yutahay said.
“I lost my sister in 9/11,” DeLuca told him. “They never found her either.”
“Aw geez,” Yutahay said. “I’m sorry if what I said before made you think I thought you didn’t understand.”
“I was the one being the asshole,” DeLuca said.
Yutahay paused at a turn in the trail.
“That’s interesting,” he said.
“What is?”
“Look at the spine on this saguaro,” Yutahay said. “Right there—this one. That’s blood.”
“It’s in an odd location for someone to bump into,” DeLuca said.
“I don’t think she bumped into it,” Yutahay said. “Not by accident, anyway. The blood is too deep on the needle. And the needle is bent. So’s the one next to it. Like she was using it to cut herself.”
“Why would she do that?”
“I don’t know,” Yutahay said, looking down. “There’s blood on the ground, too. She stood here for a few minutes, I think. I wish it hadn’t rained. Why do you think she cut herself?”
“Snake bite?” DeLuca said. “To drain the poison?”
“Plenty of ’em out here,” Yutahay said. “I haven’t seen any signs of them so far, but that doesn’t mean they’re not here. What are you looking at?” he asked his son.
“At what?” Marvin said.
“That’s what I asked you,” Ben said. “You keep staring at those cliffs.”
“Just looking,” Marvin said. “This is Spirit Mountain, right? There’s supposed to be some ruins up there. Cliff dwellings. A guy told me.”
“You wanna go up and look for bling bling?” Ben said.
“Bling bling means gems,” Marvin said. “Ruins don’t have gems. They have pots. I don’t do pots. Plus, what I heard was that the place had been cleaned out.”
“What was Cheryl Escavedo like in high school?” DeLuca asked the younger man.
“She was cool,” Marvin said. “Too cool for me. She never even gave me the time of day.”
“She was the valedictorian, right?” Ben asked. Marvin nodded. “Really pretty girl. People thought she could be Miss Arizona. But she wasn’t into her own looks. She was a nice girl, right?”
“She was pretty nice,” Marvin agreed. “Not stuck up at all.”
“I don’t know,” Ben said. “In my experience, for every beautiful woman you see, somewhere, there’s a guy who’s sick of her shit. Your mother could be the sole exception.”
DeLuca had to smile, but he noticed that Marvin didn’t.
“You know what the secret is to a happy marriage, David?” Ben said. “The man makes all the big decisions, and the woman makes all the little decisions. I’ve been married for twenty-eight years, and so far, there hasn’t been a big decision.”
They’d come about a mile from the car. Suddenly, Yutahay stopped, staring at the ground and rotating in a full circle. He walked a few paces in one direction, then a few in the other, scrutinizing the surrounding vegetation.
“That’s odd,” he said, noting a ridge nearby.
“What is?” DeLuca asked.
“The trail stops here,” Yutahay said.
“You lost it?”
“I didn’t lose it,” Yutahay said. “She was wearing a boot with a pretty distinct heel signature. It doesn’t go past here.”
“She took her boots off?”
“Then we’d see the marks of her bare feet.”
“Even if it rained?”
“Especially because it rained,” Yutahay said. “We passed the point, a while back, where she was standing when it started raining.”
“Then the rain washed the trail away.”
“No,” Yutahay said. “It stops suddenly. Why would it wash it away in that direction but not in the one we came in? There’s no arroyo here or anything that might explain it. It just stops.”
“Maybe,” DeLuca said, thinking, “a helicopter came along and lowered her a rope.”
“Ya think?”
“No,” he said. “I just don’t know what else could explain it.”
“Maybe a dirigible,” Yutahay said. “Maybe she shape-shifted into an eagle and flew away.” DeLuca frowned at him. “I’m not being serious,” Yutahay said. “You can’t throw down a good shape-shift without years of study. I’m going to climb that ridge and have a look around. I’ll be right back.”
DeLuca scanned the Sonora Desert sprawling before him. Marvin Yutahay was crouched in the sand, pushing through it with his fingers until he stood and held up, for DeLuca to see, a piece of what looked like ice, although the temperature was in the high seventies and sure to rise to the eighties by midafternoon.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“We call it Sky Glass, in my business,” he said. “Mostly annealed silicates, maybe a little lime here, a little ash. You can find it where lightning hits the desert sand and turns the surface molten, but usually it spikes into the ground. This stuff is pretty even. If we hadn’t been walking all over it, we could have been able to tell the shape. It looks huge.”
He handed the thin piece of glass to DeLuca, who held it up to the light where the sun was climbing above the Growler Mountains.
“You mind if I keep this and have it analyzed?” he asked.
“Be my guest,” Marvin Yutahay said as his father returned to them, a white garbage bag in his hand.
“There’s a fire pit up there,” he said. “All kinds of footprints. I think there must have been some kind of party. And a child’s prints. A girl, I’d bet. Barefoot, but she wandered off this way. They left their garbage. We ought to be able to figure out who they were from that.”
“You think our missing person had come to join the party?” DeLuca said.
“I don’t think that’s why she came, but maybe you were right—maybe she saw a light and headed for it. If it happened the same night, it’s possible. I think we need to find out who was camping on that ridge. I’ll call the uncle, too, and ask him how Cheryl was driving his Jeep.”
When DeLuca called Cheryl Escavedo’s number in Albuquerque, her roommate answered, a woman with a thick Russian accent who said her name was Theresa Davidova. Theresa said she didn’t have anything to add to what she’d already told CID, whose report DeLuca had read. Cheryl had said she was going to be gone for a few days, but she didn’t say where she was going. She’d packed a suitcase. Davidova didn’t know what she’d put into it. She thought Cheryl had been seeing somebody, but she didn’t know who. She thought it was an older man, but she couldn’t be sure. DeLuca gave her the number of his satellite phone and told her to call him if she thought of anything else. She said she would. He told her he wanted to talk to her in person when he was in Albuquerque. She said she wasn’t going anywhere.
First, he had to go to Colorado to see a man about a mountain.