LITMIR.BIZ

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junction.

      A gust of sleet-laden wind whipped across the flat, carrying with it the piney scent of wet sage.

      “But your contract site is to the right.”

      “The more I think about it, the more it seems to me the sound came from one of the arches—and of all the arches in Devil’s Garden, Landscape makes the most sense.”

      Janelle moaned. “Please, no,” she said.

      “Something made that noise. Besides, the timing’s right.”

      “But it’s been there for thousands of years.”

      “It’s by far the longest and skinniest arch in the park—and it’s never had a seismic truck pounding away at the ground so close to it before.” Chuck hunched his shoulders against the lashing sleet. A gust of wind slapped a wet sage branch against his thigh, soaking his pant leg. “The freeze-thaw cycle is what causes most arches to collapse. The most recent one to fall in the park was Wall Arch, in 2008. It fell in late October, the time of year when temperatures drop below freezing at night and climb back above thirty-two degrees in the daytime.” He raised his hand, allowing the icy needles plunging from the sky to wet his palm. “This is the first real cold snap to hit the park this fall. The temperature dropped into the twenties last night, before the clouds came in. That was the freeze part of the cycle. Then came sunrise and the thaw part, with temperatures rising to freezing or a little above—just as the truck started thumping.”

      “You really think … ?”

      “Lots of people have been worried about it. That’s why they fought the seismic work so close to the park for so long. But the courts finally okayed it. O&G Seismic started pounding the ground outside the park a week ago, just in time for the storm to come along.”

      Chuck led Janelle down the left branch of the trail. The path angled across the flat and entered a gap between tall cliffs. The sandstone walls fell back after a hundred yards, giving way to a second opening, this one less than a quarter-mile across and dotted with sage, rabbitbrush, and Indian ricegrass. Sandstone bluffs surrounded the desert flat. Wind whistled off the bluffs and across the opening, making the sage and rabbitbrush branches shiver. Ice crystals clung to the bushes’ miniature gray-green leaves.

      Chuck peered ahead from the edge of the flat. His back muscles drew up tight at what he saw. He stepped aside and pointed. “There.”

      On the far side of the opening, a pair of sandstone stumps extended outward from rock bluffs a hundred yards apart. The stumps marked the two ends of the place where, until this morning, Landscape Arch had soared through space.

      Bile rose in Chuck’s stomach, fiery and burning. He’d hiked here from the campground with Janelle, Carmelita, and Rosie just two days ago, their first day in the park. When Carmelita had spied the span, she’d become a little kid again for a few welcome moments, oohing and aahing with Rosie at the spindly rock bridge arcing across the sky. But now the sky was empty, the arch reduced to a line of jagged rocks lying jumbled on the ground between the two sheared shoulders of stone.

      Janelle passed Chuck, leading him across the flat, her movements stiff and stilted, to a split-rail fence that kept onlookers from venturing closer. The sandstone stumps protruded from the opposing bluffs fifty feet above their heads. On the ground below, pieces of the shattered span lay amid smashed clumps of sage and ricegrass.

      Thump.

      The rolling vibration from the seismic truck caused a broken chunk of sandstone the size of a softball to break free from a waist-high block of the broken arch. The small piece of stone fell to the ground, coming to rest in the mud beside something blue extending upward from beneath the larger hunk of rock.

      Chuck gripped the top rail of the fence, his fingers cold and white. “See that?” he said to Janelle.

      He vaulted the fence and sprinted toward the fallen block of stone. The pungent smell of pulverized sagebrush filled the cold morning air. He drew close to the line of shattered rocks. Another scent mixed with the smell of crushed sage, something metallic.

      The scent of blood.

      2

      Chuck slid to a stop in front of the fallen block of sandstone. A forearm and hand protruded from beneath the edge of the boulder. A thin navy glove sheathed the hand and a sleeve of indigo fleece covered the forearm. The hand was small, that of a woman. The hunk of stone, ten feet long by six feet wide, rose out of the mud to Chuck’s beltline. Blood pooled in the wet earth around the forearm and along the base of the jagged segment of rock. In the pallid overcast light, the blood was dark red, almost black.

      Chuck shuddered as he stared at the woman’s arm and hand extending from beneath the rock. He had unearthed countless ancient skeletal remains without emotional distress while conducting his archaeological digs over the years. But the sight of the forearm, extending from the woman’s body crushed beneath the fallen rock just minutes ago, filled him with anguish.

      Janelle squatted next to the forearm. Steeled, Chuck supposed, by all she’d seen and experienced on her new job as a part-time paramedic for Durango Fire and Rescue over the last few months—victims of traffic accidents, domestic abuse, bar fights—Janelle took the petite upraised hand in both of hers without hesitation. She peeled off the glove. The hand was purple, its fingers folded inward. Turquoise polish adorned the nails. A gold band and matching jeweled ring encircled the ring finger.

      “The skin is cold,” she said over her shoulder to Chuck. “No pulse, of course.”

      “It can’t be more than thirty minutes since the collapse.”

      “Death clearly would have been instantaneous.” She fingered the sleeved forearm. “I recognize the fabric. She’s wearing a Top Peak Atomizer—the latest thing in cold-weather athletic wear these days. I was thinking of getting one for Carm for her birthday, to use on her after-school runs this winter.”

      Bending, Chuck put his shoulder to the stone block above the victim’s forearm and hand. He dug his boots into the mud for traction and put his full weight into shoving the jagged-edged boulder. The block didn’t budge.

      Janelle rose and put her shoulder to the stone next to his.

      “One, two, three,” Chuck counted.

      They shoved the rock together, huffing, until their boots lost their grip and slid in the wet earth, leaving long stripes in the viscous mud. Still no movement.

      They straightened. Up close, the bitter odor of blood rising from the base of the block enveloped them. Chuck turned his head, his forearm to his mouth.

      “Move away if you’re going to lose it,” Janelle said. “This is a crime scene. I know we’ve already contaminated it by being here, but there’s no need to add to what we’ve already done.”

      Her words instantly settled Chuck’s stomach. He lowered his arm. “Crime scene? You came to that conclusion awfully fast.” He scanned the sandstone promontories encircling the flat. The shadowy depressions in the surrounding rock ridges made for countless hiding places.

      Janelle’s mouth turned downward. “You don’t get it. I’m talking about the truck, the seismic pounding.” On cue, another thump rumbled across the flat. “That’s what brought down the arch, like you said.”

      “Or the victim brought it down herself.” Chuck pointed at the leaden sky overhead, where the span had soared. “She was up there for some reason. She was out on the arch when it collapsed. That’s completely against park rules.”

      “Just because something’s against the rules doesn’t keep people from doing it. Before we left home, Carmelita showed me videos on her phone of people climbing on arches all around southern Utah. There’s footage of people doing handstands on them, practicing yoga, even swinging off them on ropes.”

      “But Landscape Arch was so long, so narrow. You’d have to be crazy to go out on it.”

      “That’s

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