I Am Called Shaman - Rebecca Reeves The Shaman Series

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into these mountains, layer upon layer, like a stack of books, tomes that tell of the passage of over 80 million years. The dark basalt layer speaks to the time of volcanic activity. The Fort Apache Limestone layer, a gray band, now fifty two hundred feet above sea level, was once the ocean floor. The creamy layer that tops our highest mountains was once a sand dune. Striations in the rocks show the direction the winds were traveling when the sand solidified into stone.

      Sedona is rich in geological history, but it is the oxidizing, iron- rich earth that draws travelers from all over the world, and causes them to do silly things like hold video recorders out of their sunroofs while they drive.

      The tourists wouldn’t see the full glory of our red rocks today though. The Forest Service had been clearing the woods at the top of Oak Creek Canyon in an effort to reduce the risk of catastrophic fires when summer came and rendered all of Arizona a tinderbox. They’d begun burning the slash piles yesterday and the air was thick with smoke. The sooty gray sky added to the heaviness in my heart.

      Two ravens rode the air currents, spiraling higher with each effortless turn. From their perspective, looking down upon Sedona and the vast wilderness that surrounds her, our roads form an idea of a “Y” that has fallen over to the east. The disproportionately long and serpentine forks bring travelers into the bowl from I-17 and onto Highway 89A — the stem of the “Y,” and our humble two mile stretch of Main Street known as West Sedona.

      I was on the right fork, Highway 179. Traffic here was usually backed up by now, slowed by hordes of tourists, but it all seemed deserted today and I made it to the center of town, where all the roads intersected, in record time.

      I entered the first roundabout; the circling traffic control device, in thematic keeping with the renowned vortex energy of Sedona. A Phoenix news van was parked illegally alongside the road. A woman in an ivory pantsuit paced alongside it with a cell phone pressed to her ear. They’d most likely been sent to alert day trippers to our smoky conditions. The woman had to be new in the business; she seemed awfully geared up for a public service announcement.

      In West Sedona, I parked in front of The Doggie Lama, a holistic pet supply store I’d started several years ago. Operating from the “Teach a Man to Fish” theorem, I’d gifted the business to the Buddhist church to run as a co-op. The proceeds funded their animal rescue work.

      When my Blazer came to a stop, Sundara stood up on the backseat, stretched, then hopped down between the front seats, waiting for me to get out.

      I stroked the soft fur behind her ears and laid a kiss on her long nose. “I just want to grab a couple things and get home. Would you mind waiting out here?”

      She placed a paw on my leg.

      “If your fan club sees you, we’ll be in there for an hour.”

      She sighed, and returned to her throne in back.

      “Thanks, baby,” I said. “In and out, I swear.”

      Inside the store, stacks of unopened boxes from this morning’s delivery littered the floor. They should have been unpacked and put up on the shelves by now.

      Ace, the store cat, sat on the counter, contemplating the vases on the top shelf that housed the colorful betta fish. His tail swished back and forth like a metronome as he formulated yet another diabolical plan to get himself up there for a fishy hors d’oeuvre.

      “Where is everybody?” I asked.

      Without breaking his concentration, Ace twitched his tail twice toward the back of the store.

      I made my way past racks of human-grade pet food, spring hiking gear, herbal remedies, and a thousand other products essential to holistic pet care. The smell of incense grew stronger, and, under the soothing strains of flute music, was the staccato beat of television chatter.

      In the backroom, clad in burgundy robes and saffron tee shirts, two nuns and one monk stood before the little TV.

      “What’s going on?” I asked.

      Ana Ellie turned her shaved head toward me, her gentle eyes full of sadness. “Abra, haven’t you heard? They found a girl out on Schnebly Hill this morning. She was murdered.”

      I stepped closer to the television to see the newscaster. It was the woman in the ivory pantsuit, talking now into a microphone. She spoke with an almost gleeful urgency, “Again, the body was discovered this morning, March 20th, and we have confirmed that it was a shooting.” The camera zoomed in. “This reporter can’t help but recall the terror of a decade ago, and wonder if this murder signals the reemergence of the notorious SK. We’ll keep you informed.”

      “What does SK stand for anyway?” Konchog, the monk, asked.

      “I think they spun it off of a police code,” Ana Ellie said.

      I might have corrected her, but I was already running for the front door.

      Chapter Two

      11:44 a.m.

      Between the forks of the “Y,” there is a primitive dirt road called Schnebly Hill. Unless you have a high clearance four wheel drive, it’s not a journey you want to make in your own car. The lower seven miles are treacherous. It snakes up Bear Wallow Canyon then climbs two thousand feet in elevation as it winds around Schnebly Hill to the official lookout point.

      The view from the lookout is worth the drive — though in these multiple gorges, formed by runoff from the Mogollon Rim, there is a spectacular view no matter where you stop.

      Travelers revel in the landscape then head back down to Sedona for a cappuccino. Few ever realize that the road continues up from the lookout and eventually leads to I-17. No tourist on I-17 would ever guess where the obscure off ramp would take them. It’s obscure by design. The lookout is a Sedona attraction.

      The entire road is closed in winter, but this time of year, the lower seven miles will host up to a hundred vehicles a day between the jeep tours and the more adventurous sightseers in rental cars and ATVs.

      I approached the area on foot from the northwest on the Casner Canyon trail. Sundara trotted beside me. We passed under the official lookout point, and stayed on the trail until it met up with Schnebly Hill Road. I jogged down the hill, following the sound of humans until I rounded the last bend that separated me from the activity. I stayed on the periphery and took in the scene.

      Had I stood in this spot millions of years ago, I would have gazed at the ocean. Red sand would have blown in my eyes. It would have been incredible, but not half as surreal as the scene before me.

      Yellow crime scene tape, tied around cypress trees, lined a section of the road. Beyond the tape, on the downside of the mountain, a rocky butte rose twenty feet higher than the road. People were up there, their heads bobbed in and out of view.

      This section of Schnebly Hill occasionally looked like a parking lot, during weddings or when they bring out film crews to shoot commercials for the latest, greatest pickup truck. Today the road was lined with law enforcement vehicles.

      I recognized some of the Sedona PD officers in their black uniforms, and most of the sheriff’s posse in tan. I knew none of the plain clothes men and women with badges that hung from their necks, but they were clearly FBI. One in particular stood out from the rest. He wore a tailored blue suit and Italian loafers. He alternated between glaring at his cell phone and pacing to and fro with his phone held high; looking for a steady signal he had no hope of getting in this deep gorge.

      I scanned the faces for David Devlin. He was easy to find. At six-four he stood out in any crowd. He kept to his own uniform of well worn jeans, beaten suede boots, and a snug black tee shirt. David was with his father, Herb, their cowboy hats almost touching as they studied a map spread across the hood of David’s white Hummer. Herb Devlin is an icon in these parts, reelected as sheriff time and again because of his old-fashioned wisdom and work ethic. David, his son and deputy sheriff, is the finest man I know.

      A

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