Canyon Sacrifice. Scott Graham
This is a work of fiction set in a real place. All characters in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
First Torrey House Press Edition, June 2014
Copyright © 2014 by Scott Graham
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or retransmitted in any form or by any means without the written consent of the publisher.
Published by Torrey House Press, LLC
Salt Lake City, Utah
eBook ISBN: 978-1-937226-31-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930120
Cover design by Jeff Fuller, Shelfish • Shelfish.weebly.com
Interior design by Rick Whipple, Sky Island Studio
Cover painting “The Chasm of the Colorado” by Thomas Moran, c. 1873, used by permission of the Interior Museum, U.S. Department of the Interior
For Sue, Taylor, and Logan, without whom…
CANYON SACRIFICE
Contents
Thursday
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Friday
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgments
About Scott Graham
“To stand upon the edge of this stupendous gorge, as it receives its earliest greeting from the god of day, is to enjoy in a moment compensation for long years of ordinary uneventful life.”
— John Stoddard
John L. Stoddard’s Lectures, Vol. 10, 1898
7 a.m.
A group of middle-aged Japanese tourists gathered in a tight knot twenty feet from the edge of the Grand Canyon, focused on something Chuck Bender could not see. The tourists should have been soaking in the dazzling dawn view from the South Rim of the canyon while spread along the waist-high railing around the Maricopa Point overlook. Instead, they stood huddled together in their matching navy windbreakers, tense and vigilant, cameras forgotten in their hands.
Chuck slowed his jog and peered around the group. The tourists were staring at a couple standing together at the metal railing. The couple—a heavyset Latino man in his late twenties wearing a hooded sweatshirt and baggy jeans, and a woman about the same age, heavier still, in a tent-like sweater and tightly stretched nylon slacks—leaned against the railing at the edge of the canyon, their backs to the tourists. The two were the sort Chuck would have placed far from the park—in a suburban strip mall, maybe, or at least among the hordes of late-rising tourists who would pack the overlook later in the morning. But here they were, among the few who knew to get up early and catch a shuttle out along Rim Drive to take in the enchanting view of the canyon at sunrise.
Intrigued by the transfixed tourists and out-of-place pair, Chuck came to a stop. He stood, catching his breath, in his running sweats and T-shirt, hands on hips, as the man picked up a stray piece of gravel from a depression in the rough sandstone surface of the viewpoint and launched the rock, underhanded, out and over the railing. The woman sniggered as the stone disappeared where the leading edge of the canyon gave way in a series of narrow ledges. The tourists leaned forward as one, intent on the couple.
“Just missed,” the woman said. “Try again.”
The man turned and shot a smug look at the group of tourists. The breeze, coursing up and out of the canyon with the start of the day, swept a strand of black hair across one eye. He threw back his head, returning the strand to its place and revealing a scythe-shaped scar across the left side of his face. The long, ragged slash was pink as a slice of watermelon against his brown skin.
Chuck moved closer as the man retrieved another piece of gravel from the ground and lobbed it over the railing. Chuck halted between the tourists and couple, close enough to see that the man was targeting a chubby ground squirrel perched on a rock ledge a few feet below the edge of the promontory. The squirrel, easily as fat as the couple, was the obvious recipient of chips and candies thrown its way by scores of park visitors. The stone struck the squirrel a glancing blow on its shoulder.
“Got him,” the man proclaimed.
The squirrel jerked at the strike from the small stone. Rather than run off, however, it rose on its hind legs and sniffed at the cool morning air, forelegs aloft, awaiting the food it was accustomed to receiving.
“Check it out, pendejo,” the woman said, smacking the man on his shoulder. “Ain’t goin’ nowhere.” She stepped back and raised her phone, ready to take a picture. “Again,” she demanded.
The man picked up another stone, bigger this time. Behind him, Chuck stooped and picked up a walnut-sized stone of his own.
No longer content to target the ground squirrel with underhanded tosses, the man reared back and let go with a hard, overhand throw. Chuck