Archangel of Sedona (16 page)

“How about you make the calls and I fix us some chow? We’ll eat, have a beer, and work through the afternoon?”

I agreed. We did have to eat.

I felt shaken by the conversation with Claire Weston-Ostergaard. I worried that a terrible fate awaited Eddie and me. I won’t deny that I was scared. I was glad that Eddie was around—I wouldn’t succumb to fear in the presence of another soldier.

After lunch, I made calls to the Coconino and Yavapai Sheriff’s Offices. I got nowhere. I had the same bad luck with the Sedona Police.

Internet queries provided me with the names of veterinarians practicing in the area. I called three that seemed promising. I got one call back from a female vet. She’d purchased her practice five years earlier from an old timer who’d worked the SR 89A corridor of Jerome, Cottonwood, Clarkdale, Page Springs, Sedona, and Oak Creek in the 1960s.

Though I’d made up a convincing lie about looking for the couple because they were heirs to a modest bequest from an aunt in Florida, she declined to give me more data about the retired veterinarian. She promised to reach out to him. I gave her my cell number and asked her to have him call it.

I got nowhere with Bishop McMannes at St. Luke’s. I figured that I’d drive over to the church and see if I could make some headway with a personal visit. I’d try later in the week.

Eddie had more luck looking into Don Hansen. Over the last decade Hansen had earned a reputation as a shady character. He had many fans and several serious detractors. Despite leaving several messages, he didn’t return our calls.

Later in the evening, Eddie prepared a gourmet grilled flounder. We polished it off with a superb bottle of Viogner from the Burning Tree Cellars in Cottonwood. After I cleaned up the mess, we held a status conference in his study.

“OK,” Eddie began. “The sculptor of the Christus is irrelevant. The veterinarian angle is on indefinite hold, right?”

“That’s about the size of it,” I said.

“No luck with the bishop?”

“Correct, we’ll have to drive over there in a day or so.”

“Don Hansen is ducking us,” Eddie said. “There’s no reason that he couldn’t have returned the calls. Nobody is that busy.”

“I agree.”

“Your buddy’s widow threw gasoline on this fire.”

“I’ll say. She scared the shit out of me.”

“You must leave immediately. Your soul is in jeopardy!” Eddie said, using a ghoulish accent and emphasizing the last five words.

“If I hadn’t heard the actual fear in her voice, I’d think the whole thing was pathetic and melodramatic,” I said. “My immortal soul.”

“Tony, her fear is based on the fact that her husband disappeared fifteen years ago. She might not be right about the soul in peril, but she’s not paranoid. Something bad is operating around here,” Eddie said.

“We should find out where Hansen lives and pay him a little visit,” I suggested.

“That’s not a bad idea, we …” Eddie began when my cell phone started to play the first 24 bars of the 82
^nd
Airborne
All American
Anthem.

I pulled the phone out of my pocket and saw the number. It was local.

“It might be Hansen,” I said. “Hello, Tony Giordano.”

“Tony, it’s Don Hansen.”

“Hey Don, thanks for calling.”

“No problem. Got your messages. Sorry, but I’m all booked up this week. I don’t have time to take you up to Schnebly Tank. It’s too far.”

“Look, Don. I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll pay you triple your normal fee.”

“Sorry, can’t. As a consolation, I have a colleague who’s a retired Coconino County detective. He’s been guiding people for a few years. He agreed to take you up there.”

“I’m disappointed. I’d hoped that you would take us.”

“Who’s the us? Is the beautiful Gretchen still here?”

“No, I have an Army buddy that I ran into. He’s up for a long hike.”

“Dave will have no problem guiding two old soldiers. He was in the Army too.”

“What’s his full name and number, I’ll reach out to him.”

“Dave Fleet. Don’t worry. He’ll call you tonight and arrange the trek. He’s very good. He’s lived around here for thirty years. He’ll take good care of you. Sorry, got to go. Bye.”

“What’s the deal?” Eddie asked, as I looked over at him.

“Hansen can’t go. We have a replacement. He’s a former detective, named Fleet.”

“Are you sure that he said Fleet?” Eddie asked.

“Yes. What’s wrong with Dave Fleet?”

“The papers say that Fleet was one step ahead of termination from the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office. Last few of years he’s stood accused of using excessive force on two drug dealers in a bust that he made in Flagstaff. It was a very big deal.”

“Eddie, I hear that shit all of the time. I have cases pending in Tampa. The claimant’s story often breaks down with experienced cross-examination.”

“Might be hard to cross-examine these drug dealers,” Eddie said.

“Why?”

“Cause Fleet shot them both in the head. The Coconino Sheriff’s Internal Affairs folks exonerated him. The County never filed criminal charges. There’s speculation that the families of the dealers might initiate one of those suits that you were talking about.”

“Colonel, a man who can shoot that well might come in handy if we have to defend our immortal fucking souls,” I joked.

“Unless he venerates evil, inter-dimensional demons,” Eddie said.

Chapter Ten

August 28, 2013, 10:00 a.m.

Paleo-Indian Ruins at Schnebly Tank

Coconino National Forest, Arizona

The Paleo-Indian ruins at Schnebly Tank didn’t resemble any of the other impressive Native American sites on the Mogollon Rim or in the Verde Valley. They were ancient—ten times as old as Palatki, Tuzigoot, and Montezuma’s Castle. The inhabitants of this site hunted and gathered along the rim for more than 3,000 years before the Egyptians designed the Pyramids at Giza.

The Paleo-Indians didn’t engage in recognizable agriculture. They didn’t leave remnants of their dwellings, other than shallow trenches dug out of the limestone that they used as foundations for tents made from animal skins, tree bark, or brush. They did provide posterity with a rich tapestry of complex and detailed petroglyphs.

As I walked alongside the rock wall that served as their primitive canvas, I marveled at the effort that the Paleo-Indians had invested in the intricate work. The glyphs depicted all manner of predators, game animals, human beings, geometric designs, and strange figures that I couldn’t recognize. A huge sandstone overhang, at least 25 feet in depth, had protected the ancient etchings over the last ten millennia.

I tried to imagine what it must have been like to live up here 10,000 years ago in an area swarming with deadly predators, never knowing what threat or bounty the hunt would bring. They
must have been a hardy band, surviving on guts, wits, and limited natural resources in this small box canyon. The Paleo-Indians propagated and prospered in a difficult environment, and still had time for artistic expression.

The prehistoric artists found a bountiful source of water at the site. In the desert, high plains, and arid scrub forests of central and northern Arizona, a tank is anything natural or manmade that catches rainwater. In the limestone and sandstone formations that form the Mogollon Rim and its foothills, natural bowls, depressions, and tanks are common. Due to the paucity of rain, they’re dry most of the time.

Schnebly Tank is the exception that proves the rule. It’s large for a tank, with a water surface area roughly two-thirds of an acre. After a heavy rain it can double in surface size and depth. It’s never dry because a small, cold, and reliable spring feeds it year-round. The tank sits in a narrow draw off the main canyon at 6,600 feet above sea level, along one of the tree-lined promontories on the Mogollon Rim.

Other springs feed a little creek that local wags have named the Conaqua
—Spanish for “with water.” The presence of the tank, the other natural springs, and the small creek made it possible for the ancient rock artists to survive for several generations before they disappeared.

I felt giddy from my major discovery, now an hour old. After arriving at the site, we located the etchings that Hansen claimed resembled the Christus
.

These petroglyphs depicted a spot-on reproduction of the Christ figure from the chapel. After close examination, the Christus etchings seemed more detailed, proportional, and life-like than any of the other glyphs at Schnebly Tank.

The detail of the rock carvings alone might have swayed the most committed skeptic, but the background—or more precisely the context—in which the ancient artist had placed his figures, ended all rational debate. Above and to the left of the largest Christus-like figure, a pre-historic scribe had etched an accurate replication of the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper star systems, complete with the Big Dipper ladle edge and the Little Dipper handle pointing at the North Star. Looking at these petroglyphs made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

When I embarked on the trip to see the rock art, I had no idea what advantage I would gain. I felt that if the Stone Age Indians had recorded the presence of inter-dimensional beings in rock carvings, I might not be as daft as Gretchen feared. Now I knew that I wasn’t crazy. I had made a connection of galactic proportions. As I stared at our find, I thought back to how the trek had started.

True to Hansen’s promise, Dave Fleet called later on Tuesday evening to set up our trip. We’d leave Wednesday morning at five. Fleet was brusque and all business.

“So, it’s you and your Army buddy?” Fleet asked, after we’d dispensed with 30 seconds of preliminaries.

“Yep. We have our own equipment. Hansen said it was a five hour hike each way, but we could do it in a day if we got motivated.”

“He did, did he? I’ve never heard of anyone getting in and out of Schnebly Tank in ten hours travel time, especially in August. It’s closer to sixteen hours, added to the dicking around that most tourists do once they get in there. In the heat, it’s a two day hike from the trail head that Hansen uses.”

“We didn’t count on an overnighter,” I said.

“Been awhile since you’ve been in the field, Colonel?”

“No, I hiked West Fork and Broken Arrow last week. We’ll have to pack more gear.”

“Nope, ’cause we ain’t going the way Hansen would. Look, Colonel…”

“Call me, Tony,” I interrupted.

“Tony, I don’t want to spend two days guiding you up that trail. I use another approach. I come in from the north and east. I have an ATV to negotiate logging roads and fire breaks along the Rim west from 89A. I can get close to the canyon that Schnebly Tank sits inside. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour ride from Sedona. We’ll have to climb down a steep escarpment for about two hundred feet. It’s a piece of cake, if you’ve done any rappelling in your Army career. The hike from our descent is half a mile to the Tank. It’s easy.”

“I assume that you have enough equipment for Eddie and me,” I said.

“I do. It’s state of the art. Swiss seats, back harnesses, links, carabineers, descenders
, ascenders, ropes, lines, gloves, helmets: the works. You’ve got to bring your own personal equipment and a change of underwear, if you’re scared of heights.”

“I’m Airborne.”

“I know. After Hansen called, I looked you up. You’ve got all that Airborne shit on the website for your novel.”

“Are you Airborne?” I asked.

“No, but I’m Air Assault,” he said.

“Great,” I lied.

Army Air Assault units are the heirs to the airmobile concept. After Vietnam, some dickhead in Washington decided to turn the fabled 101
^st
Airborne into an Air Assault Division. These guys ride around in helicopters. They’re trained to rappel or rope down to the ground from airframes hovering at 200 feet, if the mission requires.

“No airplanes to jump from, Tony,” Fleet teased. “It’s too mountainous. You’ll love the ride. I carry water, food, a medical kit, and SATCOM in the ATV. It’s safer than Hansen’s route for my senior clients.”

“What was the highest rank you held, Dave?” I asked, using his first name and ignoring the age-related insult.

“Captain; artillery. Why?”

“I’m a curious sort. OK, where do we meet you?”

“I’ll pick you up. I tow the ATV with my GMC SUV. We’ll shoot up 89A, unload on a logging road in the Coconino National Forest on top of Mogollon Rim, and head west. If we do this right, I can get us to the rappel point by mid-morning. You can take an hour or two at the site to get your pictures. The four of us can be home for dinner.”

“Four of us? You bringing a friend?”

“No, another customer wants to tag along. Hansen arranged it.”

“Who is the other customer?” I asked, feeling a little trepidation.

“He’s an Irish kid, visiting priest in the local parish. Hansen says that you know him. Father Patty O’Malley,” Fleet said.

“What’s the deal?” Eddie asked, when I got off the phone with Fleet.

“He’s picking us up at five a.m. We’re going to air assault into Schnebly Tank.”

“Huh? Are you as crazy as you look?”