Arches Enemy. Scott Graham

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      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 what scares me. I’ve been worried Carm might go out on one of the arches to click a selfie to send back to her climbing teammates, just for bragging rights.”

      “You didn’t say anything about that before we came.”

      “I convinced myself I was just being a freaked-out mom.” Janelle’s eyes ran along the line of jagged blocks lying in the mud. “Maybe I wasn’t.”

      “Carm’s not crazy.”

      “Given where her hormones are at these days …” She let the sentence dangle.

      “Speaking of whom, we need to call this in so we can get back to her and Rosie.”

      Janelle reached for her phone. “I’ll do it. I know the lingo.”

      Shortly after Janelle completed the call—a brief conversation with a 911 dispatcher in rat-a-tat first-responder patter—the thumps from the seismic truck outside the park ceased.

      By the time Chuck and Janelle reached Devil’s Garden Trailhead on their return hike, sirens wailed from emergency vehicles approaching on the park road. A dozen vehicles streamed into the parking lot. White ranger sedans and parkservice pickup trucks slid to a stop on the wet asphalt, along with a pair of local ambulances, a Grand County Sheriff’s Department sport utility vehicle, and a hulking short-wheelbase fire truck. The vehicles’ sirens died away as they parked.

      National Park Service personnel and first responders leapt from the vehicles, a handful of women among mostly men ranging in age from mid-twenties to well over fifty. They greeted one another, their voices grave and their demeanor reserved. A few of the staffers and responders glanced at Chuck and Janelle as they threw on winter jackets and gear packs and slammed the doors to their vehicles. Chuck and Janelle stepped aside, allowing the workers to stride past them and on up the trail.

      Another white park-service pickup truck arrived at the end of the road as the park staffers and responders departed on the muddy path. A pair of black bars stenciled on the truck’s front doors marked it as that of the park’s chief ranger. A large red work truck trailed the pickup into the parking lot. The words “O&G Seismic” and the company’s pump-jack logo emblazoned the doors of the work truck.

      Chuck glowered at the O&G truck. “Here come the murderers,” he muttered.

      “Nobody killed anybody,” Janelle responded. “I told you, that’s not the kind of criminal activity I was talking about.”

      Chuck spat on the ground. “The shock waves from O&G Seismic’s thumper truck caused the arch to fall, and the woman we found is dead as a result. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who works for O&G is an accomplice.”

      The work truck towed a flatbed trailer with a yellow front-end loader chained to its bed. The truck pulled to a stop, its air brakes hissing. The driver and a passenger, both men, hopped out. The workmen wore heavy leather boots and blue insulated mechanic overalls with O&G Seismic patches on the breast pockets.

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