when you get your paperwork in order, we'll issue the permit. Not before. If someone else submits a permit for the same fossil-well, that's not our problem. First come first served.'
'Bloody hell, man, how many complete T. Rex's could there be out there?' Corvus exploded.
'Hold your horses, Professor.'
Corvus made a huge effort to control himself. This was the last man in the world he could afford to alienate. He was the bureaucrat who had the power to grant him permission to collect the fossil on federal land. The man could just as easily give it to that bloody bawbag Murchison at the Smithsonian.
'My apologies for speaking precipitously, Mr. Warmus. I'll get you the required information just as soon as I can.'
'Next time,' the man intoned, 'when you're applying for a fossil collecting permit on federal land, take the time to get the application right. Makes our job easier. Just because you're a big New York City museum doesn't mean you don't have to play by the rules.'
'Again, my sincerest apologies.'
'Have a nice day.'
Corvus placed the phone back in its cradle with elaborate care. He took a long breath, smoothed back his hair with a trembling hand. The arrogant little prick. He glanced up: it was just five o'clock, which made it three o'clock in New Mexico. Maddox hadn't called in forty-eight hours, damn him. The last time they talked he seemed to have everything under control, but a lot could happen in two days.
He paced his office, turned at the window, and paused to look out. The evening rowboats were just venturing out into the pond, and he found himself looking for the father and son. But of course they weren't back, why would they?-once was enough.
5
SIX O'CLOCK, THE sun had fallen below the canyon rim and the heat of the day was going down, but it was still stuffy and dead between the sandstone walls. Wilier, trudging up yet another endless canyon, suddenly heard an eruption of baying from the dogs from just around the bend, followed by Wheatley's high-pitched shouting. He glanced at Hernandez, met his partner's eye.
'Looks like they found something.'
'Yeah.'
'Lieutenant!' he heard Wheatley's panicked voice. 'Lieutenant!'
The hysterical baying of the dogs and Wheatley's yelling echoed down to him distorted by the narrow canyon walls, as if they were trapped in a giant trombone. Even though he was fed up with searching, Wilier had dreaded this moment.
'About time,' said Hernandez, his short legs churning him forward.
'I hope to hell Wheatley's got those dogs under control.'
'Remember last year when they ate that geezer's left-'
'Right, right,' said Wilier hastily. When he rounded the last bend, he saw that Wheatley did not have the dogs under control. He'd lost the leash of one and was unsuccessfully trying to haul back the other, both dogs frantically trying to dig into a patch of sand at the base of a tight curve in the canyon wall. Hernandez and Wilier rushed forward and snatched up the leashes, hauling the dogs back and tying them up to a boulder.
Huffing and red-faced, Wilier examined the scene. The bed of sand had been disturbed by the dogs, but it was no great loss, considering that the hard rain of the past week had already swept it clean of any traces. As he examined the area he could see nothing that indicated anything lay under the sand-beyond a faint,
unpleasant odor that the breeze wafted past his nostrils. Behind him, the dogs whined.
'Let's dig.'
'Dig?' Hernandez asked, his round face showing alarm. 'Shouldn't we wait for the SOC team and the M.E.?'
'We don't know we've got a body yet. Could be a dead deer. We can't chopper a whole SOC team out here until we know.'
'I see your point.'
Wilier heaved off his backpack and slipped out the two trowels he had brought, tossing one to Hernandez. 'I doubt it's very deep. Our killer didn't have a hell of a lot of time.'
He knelt and began scraping the trowel across the loose sand, removing one layer at a time. Hernandez did the same at the opposite end of the area, making two careful piles that the forensic team would later sift through. As he swept the sand aside he kept an eye out for clues-clothing or personal articles-but nothing came to light. The hole deepened, moving from dry sand into wet. There was something down there, for sure, Wilier thought, as the smell intensified.
At three feet his trowel scraped against something hairy and yielding. A sudden wave of stench, thick as soup, hit his nostrils. He scraped a bit more, breathing through his mouth. It had been buried five days in wet sand in ninety-eight-degree heat and it smelled the part.
'It's not human,' said Hernandez.
'I can see that.'
'Maybe it is a deer.'
Wilier scraped some more. The fur was too coarse and matted to be a deer, and as he tried to clear more sand off it to see clearly the fur and skin began coming away in patches, exposing slimy, brownish-pink flesh underneath. This was no deer: it was a burro. The prospector's burro, the one that Broadbent mentioned.
He stood up. 'If there's a stiff it'll be next to it. You take that side, I'll take the other.'
Once again they began scraping away the sand, piling it carefully to one side. Wilier lit a cigarette and held it between his lips, smoking it that way, hoping to chase off some of the stench.
'Got something.'
Wilier abandoned his side and went over to where Hernandez was crouching. He troweled some more sand away, exposing something as long and swollen as a boiled kielbasa. It took Wilier a moment to realize it was a forearm. A second foul
wave of odor seemed to strike him bodily, a different and far worse smell. He inhaled a lungful of smoke, but it did no good: he could taste the dead body. He stood up, gagging, and backed off. 'Okay. That's good enough. It's a stiff- that's all we need to know.'
Hernandez beat a hasty retreat, only too eager to get away from the makeshift grave. Wilier moved upwind, smoking furiously, inhaling a. lungful of smoke with each breath as if to scour his lungs free of the odor of death. He looked around. The dogs were at their rock, whining and eager. For what? A meal?
'Where's Wheatley?' asked Hernandez, looking around.
'Hell if I know.' He saw Wheatley's fresh footprints going farther up-canyon. 'Find out what he's doing, will you?'
Hernandez hiked up the canyon and soon disappeared around the corner. He returned a moment later, a smirk on his face. 'He's puking.'
6
FRIDAY MORNING DAWNED a flawless blue, with flocks of jays squawking and
fighting in the pinons, the cottonwoods casting long cool shadows across the meadow. Tom had fed the horses that morning, given them an hour to eat, and now he led his favorite horse, Knock, over to the rail to be saddled. Sally joined him with her buckskin gelding, Sierra, and together they worked in silence, brushing out their coats, picking the hooves, saddling and tacking up.
By the time they set off, there was only a memory of coolness in the green cot-tonwood shadows along the creek. The flanks of PedernalPeak rose on their right, the steep slopes ending in the chopped-off summit made so famous by the paintings of Georgia O'Keeffe. They rode in their usual silence, preferring not to talk when on horseback-the pleasure of being together was enough. They reached the ford, the horses splashing across the shallow stream, still icy from melting snow in the mountains.
'Where to, cowboy?' Sally asked.
'Barrancones Spring.'
'Perfect.'
'Shane's got everything under control,' Tom said. 'I don't have to get back at all this afternoon.'
He felt a twinge of guilt. He'd been relying on Shane far too much this past week.
