enough above the creek to avoid floods. No prospector's cabin, certainly. Not a shack or a hut, but a real house, boasting stone walls, glass windows, and a real shingled roof.
Camilla was standing right beside Jake, looking at him as if judging his reaction.
He asked her: 'You live here?'
Camilla said: 'I do.'
'With Edgar.'
'Yes.' She cast a nervous look around, and lowered her voice. 'But I don't want to live with him any longer.'
'Leave.'
She shook her head. 'It's not that easy. You'll see.'
'He hasn't got you locked up.'
Camilla said nothing.
Jake squinted at the layout before him. All was quiet, not even a dog barking. 'Where is he now?'
'Resting. He usually works at night. Digging out the kind of rocks he likes, carving them…'
'Can't blame him for resting, in this heat.'
The path leading to the cottage brought them closer to the grotto. Jake, getting a better look as he passed, saw that it was really a cave, considerably deeper than it had first appeared. The hole was too dark inside for him to see much more.
Camilla observed his interest. 'Want to go in and take a look? We can, Edgar won't mind.'
'I don't care,' said Jake. But he followed Camilla when she went in.
The relative coolness was welcome. Once Jake's eyes were out of the glare of sunlight he could see the interior fairly well. A ghost of the glow of sunset was reflecting in from the light limestone wall on the other side of the amphitheater.
'It's sunset now,' said Camilla. 'Now's the time when—'
Then she fell abruptly silent.
It took Jake another minute to realize that the two of them were no longer alone. The figure of a man was now standing at the dark mouth of the lightless inner regions of the cave. Just standing there and looking out at Jake.
Jake peeked as best he could into the zone of greater dimness. The spare figure might have been almost as tall as Jake if it hadn't been hunched over. The man was dressed in overalls, some kind of boots, and a work shirt, and his hair and skin and clothing were all gray with what looked like rock-dust. He was holding an inhumanly motionless pose; he might almost have been a statue.
In the gnarled fingers of one evidently powerful hand, the man was clutching a sizable chunk of rock. After a moment he opened his hand and let the chunk fall, to strike the rock floor with a dull sound.
In the next moment the same hand reached out to a large switch bolted to the rocky wall, and a battery of electric lights sprang into life. The half-dozen fixtures, mounted on tall metal stands around the cave, were streamlined, looking very modern. In fact they looked somehow more than modern, they looked like no lights that Jake had ever seen before.
Under their radiance the whole inner cave, which had been deeply shadowed, burst into full visibility. The lights were positioned on every side, some high, some low, and they almost abolished shadow. The glowing, peculiar bulbs revealed that the floor and walls of the cave were pockmarked with holes, places where sizable blocks might have been dug out. A long workbench, crudely built but sturdy, littered with tools and chunks of pale stone, ran along one wall. The walls and floor and overhead of the cave were mostly dark, formed of a material Jake had heard the rock-and-blasting experts call Vishnu schist. It was commonly found in the lowest layer of the Canyon's walls just below the mysterious Great Unconformity. The whitish intrusions here and there in the cave's walls were new to Jake.
But none of this, interesting as it was, could hold Jake's attention for more than a moment or two. Not in the presence of the man who now stood before him.
The dust-covered figure suddenly turned his gaze on Camilla, and rasped a comment. 'So, you've caught another one.'
She answered timidly. 'Don't say that, Edgar. He's a friend of mine.'
'Oh, I don't doubt that. Most men would be delighted to be your friend. But have you told him yet?'
Camilla, looking from one man to the other, seemed to be afraid to say anything more.
'Told me what?' Jake demanded.
Suddenly Edgar caught sight of the lunch box, which Camilla had put down on a ledge of rock. With some muttering that sounded vaguely like a curse, he snatched up the little container at the same time raising his other hand as if he were about to strike the girl.
Jake, starting to shout something angry, took a step forward. But Camilla, cowering back from the blow that never fell, yelled at Jake to stop. It was a scream of such sudden heartfelt terror that he unthinkingly obeyed.
Then he looked back at Edgar. 'Told me what?' he repeated, harshly.
'Nothing of real importance.' Wicked eyes gleamed at him out of the old man's dusty face. 'Just that, today, the silly business that you have called your life is over.'
Chapter 2
1991
Bill Burdon and Maria Torres, who both worked for a big agency in Phoenix, had driven up to the Grand Canyon together. Neither of the two young people had ever been to the Canyon before, so they had both initially welcomed the assignment as offering the chance of doing a little sightseeing.
Recreational possibilities faded from their thoughts as they learned a little more about the case. The problem, as Bill's and Maria's boss in Phoenix had explained to them before they left, was a missing girl. Seventeen-year-old Cathy Brainard had vanished into the Canyon almost a month ago. No ransom demand had ever been presented, kidnapping was no longer regarded as a good possibility, and the feds had retired from the investigation. A wealthy relative of the girl was taking a strong interest, and private investigators were now on the job.
Missing teenagers were common enough, but there seemed to be something about this case that had caused the wealthy relative to bring in a specialist from out of state. Either the boss in Phoenix didn't know what the exotic details were, or he had chosen to be reticent about them. He had told Torres and Burdon they would be given all the details they needed by Mr. Joseph Keogh, who ran his own investigative agency out of Chicago and had been hired to take charge of the case. They were to report to Keogh as soon as they reached El Tovar hotel, which was situated just a few yards from the South Rim, inside Grand Canyon National Park.
Someone high up in the administration of the big Phoenix agency evidently owed Keogh a favor. Anyway, Bill's and Maria's boss was ready to loan out a couple of his best young people.
The job specs called for a man and a woman, both athletic as well as intelligent, able to deal diplomatically with clients, and also capable of functioning at a high level in a non-urban environment, as the boss had put it.
The week between Christmas and the New Year was a time of high tourist activity at the Canyon. Getting the two newly assigned operatives a room, let alone two rooms, in any of the park lodges presented a problem, so Bill and Maria had been instructed to bring their sleeping bags. Most likely they would be able to sack out, when either of them had time to sleep, in Keogh's room or suite in El Tovar, a lodging presumably also shared by anyone else who might have come out from Chicago. Well, Bill had graduated from the marines and Maria from the army, where among her other duties she had taught survival for a while. Sacking out on a couch or floor inside a luxury hotel did not seem likely to give either one of them a problem.
Maria and Bill had yet to work together, and were no more than vaguely acquainted colleagues when they began the five-hour drive up from Phoenix. But by the time they turned off Interstate 40 at Flagstaff, and were heading straight north on a smaller highway, they had begun to be on good terms, at least professionally. On a number of subjects they thought alike.
Morning sunlight and springlike warmth had been left behind hours ago, in the low-altitude desert of southern Arizona. Passing Flagstaff in Bill Burdon's car, they were at seven thousand feet above sea level, on a dull, cloudy,
