Cindi Myers - Murder In Black Canyon

“Where is the body?” Simon asked.

“I ordered the men who brought him here to take him back where they found him,” Metwater said. “They never should have defiled our home with such violence.”

“We’ll need to talk to these men.”

“They are undergoing a purification ritual at the moment.”

“Bring them out here.” Simon wasn’t a big man, but he could put a lot of menace and command in his voice. “Now.”

Metwater said something over his shoulder to someone inside the RV. A woman with long dark hair slipped past him and hurried away. “She’ll bring the men to you,” Metwater said, and turned as if to go back inside.

“Wait,” Dylan said. “Who was the man?”

“I don’t know. I’d never seen him before in my life. But I believe he’s one of yours.”

“What do you mean, one of ours?” Dylan asked.

Metwater’s lips quirked up in a smirk. “I checked his pockets for identification. He’s a cop.”

Chapter Three

Kayla watched Dylan as Metwater dropped his bombshell. His was a face full of strong lines and planes, not classically handsome, but honest—the face of a man who didn’t have any patience with lies or weakness. Anger quickly replaced the brief flash of confusion in his eyes as he absorbed this new wrinkle in the case. The dead man wasn’t a stranger anymore—he was a fellow lawman. “Take me to him,” he ordered.

“The men who found him will—” Metwater began.

“No. You take me.” Dylan’s fists clenched at his sides, and Kayla tensed, expecting him to punch the smirk off the Prophet’s face. But he remained still, only one muscle in his jaw twitching.

Instead of answering, Metwater looked away, toward a flurry of movement to their right. Kiram and another burly man escorted two other men to them. “These are the two who found the body,” Metwater said. “They can answer your questions.”

Dylan pulled a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket and shifted his focus to the new arrivals. Kayla thought they looked young, scarcely out of their teens, with wispy beards and thin bodies. Dylan pointed to the taller of the two, who stared back from behind black-framed glasses. “What’s your name?”

“Abelard,” the young man whispered.

“Your real name,” Dylan said.

Abelard blinked. “That is my real name. Abelard Phillips.”

“His mom was a literature professor,” the other young man said. “You know, Abelard and Heloise—supposed to be a classic love story or something.”

Abelard nodded. “Most people call me Abe.”

Dylan wrote down the name, then turned to the second man. “Who are you?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Zach. Zach Crenshaw.”

“I want the two of you to show me this body you found this morning.”

Their heads moved in unison, like bobblehead dolls. Metwater started to turn back to his trailer, but Simon took his arm. “You’re coming, too.”

Kayla trailed along after them, sure that if Dylan remembered she was here he would order her to wait at the camp. But curiosity won out over her squeamishness about seeing the body again—that, and a reluctance to spend any time alone with the rest of the “family.”

Single file, the six of them followed a narrow path out of camp, out of the canyon and into the open scrubland beyond, following drag marks in the dirt Kayla was sure had been made by the makeshift travois Abe and Zach had used to transport the body. She estimated they had walked about a mile when Abe halted and gestured toward a grouping of large boulders. “He’s behind those rocks over there,” he said. “We put him back just like the Prophet told us to.”

“And you’re sure that’s where you found him?” Simon asked.

Zach nodded. “You can tell because of all the blood.”

“Show me,” Dylan said.

The two young men led the way around the boulders. Kayla hung back, but she still had a view of the dead man’s feet, wearing new-looking hiking boots, the soles barely scuffed. Had he bought them especially for his visit to the Black Canyon area?

Dylan and Simon stood back, surveying the scene, the wind stirring the branches of the piñons nearby the only sound. The sour-sweet stench of death stung her nostrils, but she forced herself to remain still, to wait for whatever came next. “Was he lying like this when you found him?” Dylan asked. “On his back?”

“Yeah,” Zach said.

“Why did you move him?” Simon asked. “Were you trying to hide something? Did you realize you were tampering with evidence?”

“We weren’t trying to hide anything!” Abe protested. “We just came around the rocks and almost stepped on him. There was blood everywhere and it was awful. Like something out of a movie or something. Too horrible to be real.”

“Once we realized it was a man, we couldn’t just leave him there,” Zach said. “There were already buzzards circling. And I thought I heard him groan, like maybe he was still alive. We thought if we got him back to camp, someone could go for help, or take him to the hospital or something.”

“We couldn’t just leave him,” Abe echoed.

“All right.” Dylan put a hand on Abe’s arm. “Tell me exactly what happened. Start at the beginning. What were you doing out here?”

“We were hunting rabbits,” Abe said. “We thought we saw one run over here so we headed this way to check it out.”

“What were you hunting with?” Simon asked. “Where is your weapon now?”

The two young men exchanged glances, then Zach walked over to the grouping of piñons. He reached into the tangle of branches and pulled out a couple crude bows and a handful of homemade arrows. “The Prophet only allows us to buy meat for one meal a week, so we thought if we could catch some rabbits the women could make them into stew or something,” he said.

“And maybe they’d be impressed that we were providing for the Family,” Abe added. He looked even more forlorn. “We weren’t having any luck, though.”

“Why were you hunting with bows and arrows?” Simon asked. “Why not guns?”

“The Prophet doesn’t allow firearms,” Zach said.

“We’re a nonviolent people.” Metwater spoke for the first time since they had left camp. “Guns only cause trouble.”

“They certainly caused trouble for this man.” Dylan looked at Metwater. “You said you checked his identification?”

“The wallet is inside his jacket,” Metwater said. “Front left side.”

Dylan knelt, out of Kayla’s view. When he stood again, he held a slim brown wallet. He read from the ID. “Special Agent Frank Asher, FBI.” He fixed Metwater with an icy glare. “What was the FBI doing snooping around your camp, Mr. Metwater? And what did he do that got him killed?”

* * *

AS EXPECTED, THE Family’s Prophet claimed to have no knowledge of Agent Frank Asher or what had happened to him. None of the three men had heard any gunshots or vehicles or seen anything unusual in the hour leading up to the discovery of the body. They were like the three bronze monkeys Dylan’s dad had on a shelf in his home office—see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Dylan and Simon would bring them all in for questioning, but he doubted the interviews would yield anything useful.

With no cell phone coverage in the area, Dylan was forced to leave Simon with the body and the Family members while he drove to an area with coverage.

“I’m coming with you,” Kayla said, falling into step beside him as he strode back toward the camp.

He’d been so intent on his job that for a while he had forgotten about her. She was one more complication he didn’t need right now. “Why didn’t you stay in the car like I told you?” he asked.