The Burning

site and see if it, too, had been ^vandalized.

'Don't touch anything,' Healey warned, and Henry switched the radio off without answering. Asshole. Who in the fuck did he think he was talking to?

Putting the Jeep into gear, Henry drove away from the butte, then took a barely visible trail over the flat ground toward an adjacent confluence of mesas, speeding around a freestanding column of weathered sandstone into a wide box canyon. Halfway to the canyon's far side, he braked to a halt, sending up a cloud of dust that quickly overwhelmed the vehicle.

He jumped over the side and moved away from the Jeep, toward the canyon wall, waiting for the dust to clear.

He saw what he'd known he'd see.

The pictures on the rock had been transformed.

A sun with extended rays had been changed into what looked like a train track going into a tunnel. Two stylized humanoid figures were now posts on the porch of a Western building, a small forest of pine trees had been turned into a collection of sledgehammers, and a herd of wild horses were now railroad boxcars.

He caught movement out of the corner of his eye, something off to the left that darted quickly from north to south, but when he turned his head in that direction he saw nothing. Again there was movement in his peripheral vision, a furtive rush by something dark and vaguely formed, but once again when he looked directly at the spot where it should be, he saw only sand and rock. It was hot out, and sunny, but Henry suddenly felt as chilled as if it were a winter midnight.

It was impossible for a person or persons to have defaced the park's petroglyphs to this extent in one night.

But it might not be impossible for something else.

He whipped his head around quickly, hoping to glimpse one of those fleeing forms, catch it off guard, but there was only the canyon. He made his way back to the car, alert for any sign of movement. Leaning over the closed Jeep door, Henry turned on the two-way radio-and gibberish issued from the speaker, a harsh yet singsongy chatter that sounded like nothing he'd ever heard before and sent a rash of shivers down his body.

He pressed the talk button. 'Cote here.'

No answer, only that strange gibberish, clear above the static. He realized that the walls of the canyon were too high; the radio wouldn't work in this spot.

He was cut off.

Henry Cote had done a lot of brave things in his life, from facing down an armed Viet Cong to leaping off a cliff into Wolf Canyon Lake on a drunken dare. But he was not feeling brave now, and he quickly jumped in the Jeep, fired it up and hightailed it out of the canyon, heading for paved roads and other people and the rational world.

Healey was waiting for him in the administration building behind the visitors' center. The superintendent waved Henry into his office, then shut the door behind them.

'I found more vandalism at Little-' Henry began.

'There's more than that.'

The chill was back. So much for the rational world.

'Something's going on here,' the superintendent said quietly.

Henry looked at him.

'I want you to keep this under your hat. I know it's going to get out because the police are involved, but it isn't just the vandalism. For one thing, Laurie Chambers is missing. She's been gone nearly two days. I haven't told anyone, and I waited a day just to make sure myself-you know how she is; she could've just gone out on an overnight and forgot about the time- but she hasn't checked in and ... and no Jeeps have been checked out of the pool. Her truck's still at her cabin.'

'Jesus,' Henry said, sitting down. 'Laurie?'

'I know.'

'She knows this country like the back of her hand.'

'There's more.'

Henry steeled himself.

'This is the part I don't want to get out. You understand me? I wouldn't even be telling you if you hadn't found what you had out there.' He took a deep breath. 'There's a dead body. A woman. She's not Laurie, too small, but she's someone, and I found her here in the building, in the workroom. I haven't told Pedley or Jill or Raul or anyone. The police are on their way, but I told them to keep things quiet. I don't want to alarm anyone unnecessarily.'

'I understand why you don't want the public to know,' Henry said. A decade or so back, there'd been a serial killer on the loose near Yosemite, and attendance had fallen precipitously, jeopardizing several park projects. Canyonlands was much more primitive, much more remote and much less popular than Yosemite. 'But why not tell us? What's the point?'

'I need time to figure out what to say. I don't want | to get everyone all ... panicked.'

'No one's going to panic. Who do you think you're dealing with here?'

'Nevertheless, keep it to yourself until I say so, got | it? I'll decide when the time is right.'

From down the road leading into the park came the whine of sirens.

Henry stood, and despite the circumstances it was all he could do not to smile. 'Good luck with that,' he said.

The body had been beaten into unrecognizability. Along with the other rangers on duty, Henry peeked around the corner of the doorframe into the workroom. He'd imagined the dead woman's body lying naked on one of the long worktables next to the battered tools and artifacts like a corpse ready to be autopsied. So it was a surprise to see it slumped on the floor next to one of the bookcases in faded jeans and a torn bloodstained T-shirt, her head a pulpy red mess dripping on the dark bruised skin of her neck. A forensics team was examining the body, inspecting it with gloved fingers, touching it with metal calipers, photographing and videotaping it from various angles.

Her, he had to remind himself. She was a her, not an it.

The woman did not appear to be a park employee or anyone he recognized, and quick conversations with the other lookiloos confirmed that they were just as much in the dark as he was. Speculation was rife that one of their own had murdered the woman-who else could have gotten into the building at night?-but Henry did not believe it for a second, and he knew from their earlier conversation that the superintendent didn't either. No, this was of a piece with the vandalism out there, and he could easily imagine those naked twins beating the woman to death with the same primitive tools with which they defaced the rock art, then carrying her body back here.

He shifted his legs slightly, pressing them together, trying to keep down his erection.

Despite the day's heat, the night was chill, and, unable to sleep, Henry walked onto the small porch of his cabin, staring out at the desert, half expecting to see two female figures sauntering sexily toward him. He thought about the defaced cliffs. He wanted to believe that the vandalism was random, pointless, but he kept coming back to those twins. Somewhere deep down, he knew the two were connected, and he could not help wondering if the revised artwork was meant as a message, was a way for something to tell him ... tell him ... tell him what? He didn't know, had not even the faintest clue, and as much as anything else, it was the incomprehensibility of it all that gnawed at him, that kept his brain spinning and unable to sleep.

Henry glanced toward the other cabins, saw nothing but darkness. A porch light had been turned on at Laurie Chambers' place-Why? Was it supposed to act as some sort of homing beacon, drawing her back?-but other than that, the cabins appeared deserted. Ironic, he thought, that the one cabin that appeared to be occupied was the dead woman's.

Dead woman's?

She's only missing, he told himself, but he thought about the bloody pulpy face of the body in the workroom and knew in his gut that Laurie had been murdered, too.

A meteor streaked across the starry southern sky, visible for a fraction of a second in his peripheral vision, and he was reminded of those shadows in the box canyon, those brief glimpses of darting black forms that he'd been given and that even in broad daylight had scared the living hell out of him. Were they still there now? he wondered. If so, what were they doing? He had the sudden desire to drive out to the canyon and see for himself. It was stupid, he knew; it was wrong; it violated every rule and every scrap of common sense he had, but he wanted