Tyrannosaur Canyon

with a crucifix at the far end. The other room contained nothing but a crude wooden desk, a lamp, a laptop, and printer.

The monk turned on a light and they sat on the hard benches. Wilier shifted his ass, trying to get comfortable, taking out his notebook and pen. He was getting more annoyed by the minute, thinking of the absence of Ford and Broad-bent and the time they'd wasted driving up there. Why the hell couldn't the monks have a damn phone?

'Abbot, I have to tell you, I have reason to believe this Wyman Ford might be involved.'

The abbot had removed his hood and now his eyebrows arched in surprise. 'Involved in what?'

'We aren't sure yet-something connected to the murder up in the Maze last week. Something possibly of an illegal nature.'

'I find it utterly impossible to believe that Brother Wyman would be involved in anything illegal, let alone murder. He is a man of sterling character.'

'Has Ford been out in the mesas a lot lately?'

'No more than usual.'

'But he spends a lot of time out there?'

'He always has, ever since he came here, three years ago.'

'You aware he was CIA?'

'Lieutenant, I am 'aware' of a lot of things, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. We do not inquire into the past lives of our brothers, beyond what needs to be addressed in the confessional.'

'You noticed any differences in Ford's behavior lately, any changes in routine?'

The abbot hesitated. 'He was working on the computer quite a lot recently. It seemed to involve numbers. But as I said, I am sure he would never be involved-'

Wilier interrupted. 'That computer?' He nodded toward the other room.

'It's our only one.'

Wilier jotted some more notes.

'Brother Ford is a man of God, and I can assure you-'

Wilier cut him off with an impatient gesture. 'You have any idea where Ford went on this 'spiritual retreat'?'

'No.'

'And he's late coming back?'

'I expect he'll be back at any moment. He promised to be here yesterday. He usually keeps his promises.'

Wilier swore inwardly.

'Is there anything else?'

'Not at the moment.'

'Then I'd like to retire. We rise at four.'

Fine.

The monk left.

Wilier nodded to Hernandez. 'Let's go out for air.'

Once outside, he lit up again.

'What do you think?' Hernandez asked.

'The whole thing stinks. I'm going to sweat that monk Ford if it's the last thing I do. 'Spiritual retreat'-give me a break.' Wilier glanced at his watch. Almost two o'clock. He felt a growing sense of futility and wastage of time. 'Go down to the car and call back to Santa Fe for a chopper, and while you're at it, ask for a warrant to seize that laptop back up there.'

'A chopper?'

'Yeah. I want it here at first light. We're going in to find those mothers. It's federal land so make sure the SFPD liaises with the BLM and anyone else who might piss and moan about not being in the loop.'

'Sure thing, Lieutenant.'

Wilier watched Hernandez's flashlight bobbing down the trail toward the parking lot. A moment later the police cruiser leapt to life, and he heard the crackle and hiss of the radio. An unintelligible exchange went on for a long time.

He had already finished one cigarette and started another by the time Hernandez rejoined him at the door.

Hernandez paused, his plump sides heaving from the walk up the hill.

'Yeah?'

'They just closed the airspace from Espanola to the Colorado border.'

'Who's 'they'?'

'The FAA. Nobody knows why, the order came from on high. No commercial aviation, no private, nothing.'

'For how long?'

'Open-ended.'

'Beautiful. What about the warrant?'

'No dice. They woke up the judge; he's pissed, he's Catholic, and he wants a lot more probable cause before seizing a monastery's computer.'

'I'm Catholic too, what the hell's that got to do with it?' Wilier furiously sucked the last ounce of smoke from the cigarette, dropped it on the ground, stomped on it with his heel, and ground it back and forth, back and forth, until nothing was left but a shredded tuft of filter. Then he nodded toward the dark mass of canyons and bluffs rising behind the monastery. 'Something big's going down in the high mesas. And we don't have the slightest frigging idea what it is.'

PART FOUR

DEVIL'S GRAVEYARD

The T. Rex was highly intelligent. She had one of the highest brain-to-body ratios of any reptile, living or dead, and in absolute terms her brain was one of the largest ever to evolve on a terrestrial animal, being almost the size of a human being's. But her cerebrum, the reasoning part, was virtually nonexistent. Her mind was a biological input-output machine that processed instinctual behavior. Its programming was exquisite. She didn 't think about what she was doing. She just did it.

She had no long-term memory. Memory was for the weak. There were no predators she had to recognize, no dangers to avoid, nothing that had to be learned. Instinct took care of her needs, which were simple. She needed meat. Lots of it.

To be a creature without memory is to be free. The sand hills where she was born, her mother and siblings, the blazing sunsets of her childhood, the torrential rains that ran the rivers red and sent flash floods careening through the lowlands, the baking droughts that cracked the land-of these she had no memory. She