Picnic in the Ruins Read online

  More Praise for Picnic in the Ruins

  “In this twenty-first-century fusion of Zane Grey, Tony Hillerman, and Craig Childs, Todd Robert Petersen gives us a page-turner of a murder mystery that tackles the ethics of archaeology. Along the way, he dispels a raft of traditional ‘exquisite misapprehensions’ about the American West.”

  —STEPHEN TRIMBLE, editor of Red Rock Stories: Three Generations of Writers Speak on Behalf of Utah’s Public Lands

  ALSO BY TODD ROBERT PETERSEN

  It Needs to Look Like We Tried

  For my parents

  Picnic in the Ruins

  Copyright © 2021 by Todd Robert Petersen

  First edition: 2021

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-64009-322-5

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Cover design by Donna Cheng

  Book design by Jordan Koluch

  COUNTERPOINT

  2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318

  Berkeley, CA 94710

  www.counterpointpress.com

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  but the end result was the same as everywhere else, a piece of emptiness left behind

  CRAIG CHILDS, Finders Keepers

  Contents

  Part I

  Day One

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Day Four

  Day Five

  Part II

  Day Six

  Day Seven

  Day Eight

  Day Nine

  Part III

  Day Ten

  Day Eleven

  Day Twenty-Four

  Day Seven Hundred Eighty-Four

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  PART I

  Day One

  A visit from nobody : Sunday stillness : Vicarious education

  Byron Ashdown was twirling the small plastic skull that hung from the rearview mirror of his turquoise Ford F-250 when the old woman shut the front door. He sat up and tried to slap his brother, who dozed with his cheek smeared against the opposite window. His hand wouldn’t reach, and Byron wasn’t the kind of person to lean, so his hand swiped the air.

  “Hey, Lonnie,” he said, “she’s leaving,” but Lonnie didn’t wake up. Byron watched her cross the covered porch of the old pioneer home and stop. She opened her handbag and rooted through it.

  “Okay, what now? What now?” Byron said.

  She walked back to the door, hesitated, looked through her bag again, then opened the door and went back inside the house. Byron cursed once and kicked the floor.

  Lonnie bolted awake and looked around, shouting, “What, what?” Then he said, “Come on, I was asleep.”

  “She came out, then went back inside.”

  “She still in the house?”

  “Do you see her anywhere?”

  Lonnie rubbed his eyes, then squinted. The old white house sat back from the street behind a wide strip of lawn with a cluster of tall spiraling dandelions on the north side.

  “That’s it. We’re hosed,” Byron said, pounding the steering wheel. “She saw us.”

  Lonnie turned and looked through the gun rack that covered the rear window. The street was empty. A few cars were parked on the wide gray pavement, but most were garaged. The sun was a thick yellow bead lying on the palisade of red rock that surrounded the town. He looked back through the windshield and saw more of the same. The sky was free of clouds. It was going to be a hot one. “What’s to see? Just two guys sitting in a truck. That’s pretty much the only thing that happens around here,” Lonnie said. “If the cops come, we can tell ’em we had to pull over to read our texts.”

  “And they’ll just think we’re a couple of Boy Scouts, right?” Byron checked the time on his banged-up flip phone. It was five to eight.

  “You should get a smartphone,” Lonnie said.

  “So they can find me? No thanks,” Byron said. “Look, I just want to get in there, get the stuff, get out, get paid.”

  “Getting worked up won’t do nothing,” Lonnie said, frowning at a fast food hash brown patty half-eaten in its crumpled wrapper.

  Byron started rocking anxiously in his seat, then unconsciously he took the tip of his thin ponytail and painted it in figure eights across his cheek. Lonnie watched him do it and tried not to comment.

  After a few minutes, the old woman reemerged, her handbag snug in the crook of one arm. Byron noticed the addition of a hat. She closed the door and slid her hand along the wrought-iron rail as she stepped carefully down each of the three steps.

  “Get down,” Byron said, hunching below the dashboard. Lonnie joined him. “What’s the hat for? Where’s she going? We’re screwed,” Byron said. Together, they listened to the car start, then to the squeal of the steering pump, then to the silence.

  “Man, she’s just going to church. Old ladies wear hats,” Lonnie said, sitting up first. “The coast is clear.”

  As Byron sat up, Lonnie unfolded the hash brown wrapper and ate the rest of the patty.

  “You eat like a dog,” Byron said. “That’s why your gut hurts all the time.”

  “That nurse said my flora was off.”

  “I’m not getting into a thing about your flora. Can you just stick to the plan so we can make a little money?”

  “There’s more of them than there is of us,” Lonnie said, “like ten times more.”

  “Of who?”

  “Bacteria.” Lonnie crumpled the paper and belched. “I should’ve had a yogurt.”

  They got out of their truck looking nervous. Byron’s head cleared the hood of their truck by a few inches. His body was thick and squared off, like a roast. Lonnie was almost a foot taller, thin and stoop shouldered. His strides were twice as long as his brother’s, and he crossed the street before Byron was halfway. When they got up to the house, they tried to look like they were supposed to be there.

  “Where’s the guy?” Lonnie asked.

  “Supposed to be out of town,” Byron said. They gathered at the door. “Tell me the plan one more time,” Byron ordered.

  “Go in, find where he keeps the maps. Grab anything that says Swallow Valley or has that Indian word on it.”

  “Almost,” Byron said. “If we only take one kind of thing, then they’ll know what we were after. We need to grab any cash, watches, whatever. Break some stuff. It needs to look like we had no idea what we were doing.”

  “But we don’t.”

  “Then we’re headed in the right direction.”

  Byron went in first and Lonnie followed, the door opening into a hallway that ran straight back into the house, past a set of stairs on the immediate right, which went up a half flight and turned just above an old color photograph showing a young couple sitting together in the red rock, the man holding up a whole and complete yucca sandal, the woman wearing sunglasses with a scarf tied around her neck, leaning back on her hands, taking it all in.

  “Where’s the stuff?” Lonnie whispered.

  “Shut up,” Byron said, creeping forward. He looked into each room as he went past. When they both got to the end of the hall, they saw a kitchen in one direction and more hall in the other. Byron turned and put a finger
to his lips.

  “But there’s nobody here,” Lonnie said.

  “What’s that?” somebody said from an open door at the end of the hall.

  Byron and Lonnie froze, then tiptoed toward the sound.

  “Did you forget where you were going again, my love?” the voice continued.

  Lonnie leaned and looked around the doorframe. He saw a man reading with a large magnifying glass. He was surrounded by pottery, baskets, books, stones, tools, coils of rope, apothecary jars, bundles of papers tied up with brown string, accordion files, and dusty terrariums filled with dirt, gravel, and a multitude of cacti. Many places on the shelves sat empty, though they were cataloged with tiny numbers on small slips of paper.

  It took a few seconds before the man thought to pause his reading. “You were on your way to church, dear. If you need me, I can take—” The man glanced up and saw Lonnie staring. “Who in the Sam Hill are you?”

  “We’re nobody,” Lonnie said, stepping into the open doorframe so he wasn’t leaning over. Byron squeezed past and into the room. “Leave the questions to us, old man.”

  Lonnie followed his brother into the room and became instantly distracted by the books. “I’ll bet a reader like you knows where that joke came from,” he said.

  “What joke?” the old man asked.

  “The nobody joke.”

  “It’s from the Odyssey, you moron,” the old man said.

  “That’s enough about minivans,” Byron said. “We’re here on business, and you were supposed to be at some Indian pot nerds meeting.”

  “How would you know that—” The old man’s face went red, then changed. “Frangos,” he said, huffing. “Frangos sent you. She needs to—you know what—I think you better leave.” He stood weakly, his robe open, exposing the scooped neck of his T-shirt and his white chest hair.

  “We never heard of anybody called Frangles,” Byron said. “So, maybe sit back down and listen.” Byron pulled a snub-nosed .38 from the back of his pants.

  “Why’d you bring that?” Lonnie asked.

  “You take anything,” the old man threatened, “and you won’t be able to sell it. Dealers know what’s mine. Frangos knows that. And she should have told you it’s all going back where it belongs.”

  “Shut it,” Byron said, brandishing the gun.

  “How is this gonna work, since he wasn’t, like, supposed to be here?” Lonnie asked, holding his hands against the sides of his head.

  Byron split his attention between the old man and his brother.

  “You said it needs to look like we don’t know what we’re doing, but with him here it will look like we do—you know—know what we’re doing. And that’s what he’ll say,” Lonnie said.

  The old man cleared his throat, yanking Byron’s manic attention back. “You two are obviously idiots,” the old man said, his eyes narrowing. “Get out of my house or I’m calling the police.” The old man reached for the phone.

  Byron jabbed his gun toward him. “Dial and you’re dead.” The muzzle wavered, then became motionless. His eyes locked with the old man’s for an instant, then he turned to Lonnie. “Make yourself useful. I need to think.”

  Lonnie browsed the study, picking things up and looking them over, which agitated the old man. Lonnie picked up a white pot the size of a cantaloupe. Inside was a red image of a face, something both alien and human, with round eyes and monstrous teeth.

  “Put that down,” the old man directed. “It’s over five hundred years old.” He turned back to Byron. “You can tell Frangos the answer is no. It’s always going to be no. She can’t build a collection with money. You have to earn it. It takes a lifetime.”

  Lonnie set down the pot and picked up an unbroken geode from the top of a filing cabinet. He tossed it in the air a couple of times to feel its weight. “How come you ain’t split it open?” he asked. “The good part is on the inside, like a Tootsie Pop.”

  “Please, just put it down.” The man reached for the phone and started dialing. He had only punched a single number, when Lonnie swung the geode hard against the man’s temple, slamming him instantly to the desk. Blood jetted in an arc, startling Lonnie so much that he pressed down on the man’s head with the flat of his hand. “Oh jeez,” Lonnie said.

  “What did you do?” Byron shouted. Lonnie put his other hand on top of the first. “What did you do?” Byron shouted again.

  “I was thinking about what would happen if he called the cops. You got two strikes already, Byron.” Lonnie leaned on his hands to increase the pressure. Blood seeped through his fingers, and the old man didn’t move. “Two strikes. I didn’t want you to go back.”

  “Come here,” Byron beckoned, his voice softening.

  “I can’t,” Lonnie said, nodding toward his hands. Byron slipped the gun into his pants and walked toward his brother with his arms opened wide. Lonnie thought it was for a hug, but Byron grabbed him by the hair and pointed his head at the growing pool of blood on the desk. Lonnie flapped and fought against his brother, covering Byron’s shirt with red handprints.

  “You reach in there and find out if he’s still alive,” Byron growled.

  “How do I do that?”

  “You check his pulse.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’ve seen it on TV. We all have. Just do it.”

  Lonnie reached under the man’s neck and felt around. “I can’t find it,” he said.

  Byron tightened his grip on his brother’s hair. “Keep trying.”

  “He ain’t cold or anything.”

  “Well, brother. Why would he be cold?” Byron let go of Lonnie, took the old man’s wrist, and looked at the ceiling while he tried to find a pulse. After a minute, he tossed the hand away. “Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Ain’t gonna be any money in this situation if it stays this way.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “Headed that direction.” Byron paced around the room while Lonnie stood dumbfounded, hands dangling at his sides, staring at the old man. Byron took out his phone and flipped it open.

  “You’re gonna call him?”

  “Of course I’m calling him.” He dialed the number and looked at the phone while it rang. When the line connected, he put the phone to his ear. “I know you said not to call, but the situation got away from us. Yeah . . . Lonnie put him down . . . That’s correct . . . All the way down,” he said, then he listened for a while. “It happened before we could . . .” he said. “No, we did not get to the list. Not yet.”

  “Is he saying what to do?” Lonnie asked. “Ask him who this Frangles lady is.”

  Byron dragged a finger across his neck. “Okay,” he said, “we can do that. It should help us cover our tracks. We’re on it. Thank you, sir.” He flipped the phone shut.

  Lonnie looked at him and waited. “‘Sir’?”

  “Shut up.” Byron thought for a second, then said, “Check to see if this guy has a shotgun somewhere.”

  ___

  Sheriff Patrick Dalton opened his eyes and saw two people through the windshield of his cruiser staring back at him. One was an EMT he didn’t recognize, and the other was Chris Tanner, one of his deputies. The engine was off, but Dalton grabbed the steering wheel, which gave him the fleeting sensation that he was about to run them all down.

  Tanner said something to the EMT, then tilted his head and pressed the button on his shoulder mic. “You want us to come back later?” came crackling through the radio. Dalton pulled the key from the ignition but didn’t get out. He looked around at the old pioneer home, the crisscrossed police tape, the ambulance, traffic cones, strip of brown lawn, dandelions, wrought-iron handrail, blue sky. Sunday stillness.

  An hour ago, he was sitting in church, head bowed, when his phone buzzed. He turned it over and read the text banner. It was from Tanner: SORRY ABOUT THIS, BUT YOU NEED GET DOWN TO THE CLUFF HOME. WE’VE GOT A SITUATION WITH BRUCE. He turned the phone back over and looked around the chapel. The Sacrament was going around. If he left now, p
eople would wonder. So he waited. In a few minutes, the phone buzzed again. All it said was 10-56.

  This meant it was a suicide. He thumbed open the lock screen and typed: ON MY WAY.

  Bruce Cluff was one of his dad’s oldest friends, and he was his mother’s prom date. When Dalton’s dad passed, Bruce shouldered the coffin. Bruce’s wife, Raylene, pulled his mother out of a depression that lasted most of a year. All of this went down while he was on his second tour in Afghanistan. Thinking about Bruce taking his own life yanked the breath out of him.

  There was a knock on the cruiser’s hood. Tanner shrugged and lifted his eyebrows. Dalton unbuckled his seat belt and got out. As he stood he realized he wasn’t in uniform. His dark suit and white shirt stood out against Tanner’s khaki and the EMT’s white. He pulled his tie off and opened the trunk, taking out the sheriff’s department windbreaker he kept in back.

  “You gonna be all right?” Tanner asked.

  “I’ll have to be,” he said. “What happened?”

  “We’ve got Dr. Cluff in the study with a shotgun,” the EMT said.

  Dalton walked past Tanner. “Tell the new guy he can’t make it sound like we’re playing Clue.” Dalton ducked under the yellow tape. “How long until the medical examiner gets here?”

  “An hour or so,” Tanner said.

  “Did Bruce leave a note?”

  Tanner shrugged. “Maybe. There’s a lot of things on that desk we can’t read anymore.”

  Dalton stopped outside the front door and turned back to look down at the scene. The quiet old street was filled with vehicles now. He looked at his watch. In another hour the neighbors would get back from church, and this would all change from a concern to a calamity.

  From where he stood, he could see across the rooftops south toward the red plateau, all the way to the national monument. The blue desert sky was brushed with abstract white clouds gathering at the horizon. He tried to keep ahead of the panic attack, let it hit him head-on like his therapist taught him. It’s the only way to know none of it is real. Don’t resist change. That just brings sorrow. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Breathe. Follow your outbreath.