Read Online Rock with Wings by Anne Hillerman - Free Book Online

remember.”
    Chee gave her a card with his cell number. “If you see Melissa come though before I get back, could you ask her to call me?”
    â€œSure thing.”
    Chee turned north, crossing from the Arizona section of thepark into Utah on US 89. From here Monument Valley, foreboding and beautiful, spread to his right. Deep shadows accentuated the contours carved into the sandstone by wind, time, and water. The monuments looked muscular, supernaturally splendid, and eerie in the dying light. The movie people had the right idea, Chee thought. Why go to the trouble of building sets, or creating them with computers, when nature herself provided such a grand backdrop?
    Looking for the red Chevy, he checked turnouts and cruised down side roads that promised the grandest views. Back on the pavement, he discovered an RV with a portable barbecue grill outside, the occupants settled in for the night at their improvised and illegal campsite. He ignored them, focused on finding Melissa Goldfarb.
    Heading back toward the Arizona border and the park entrance, he drove faster now, rechecking turnouts and parking spots to make sure he hadn’t missed the little car.
    Back at the park entrance, the guard waved him through. “Nobody’s come in since you left.”
    Chee tried to think like a white woman from Los Angeles. What if she’d gone to one of the two hotels that served valley visitors? Maybe someone staying there invited her to a party. If that was the case, she probably wasn’t in as much danger as she would be if she’d wandered out into the dry, empty valley.
    He considered what Robinson had said about the woman needing to get away. He should have asked if she was depressed, but nothing in Robinson’s description hinted at that. Just stress, modern life’s most common malady. Seeking quiet and solitude, she might have driven down one of the local, private roads, thinking that she could get an unusual photograph. Perhaps her car had gotten stuck in the sand. What if she had decided to leave it and walk out? What if instead of following the road, she’d taken a shortcut? Lots of what-ifs.
    Chee cruised the seventeen-mile loop road again. All the vendors had packed their wares and headed home, leaving the park to the night creatures and movie stars. He drove more slowly, hoping his headlights would find the worst of the road’s ruts and obstacles. At all the obvious places a person would stop for a photo, he looked for a glint of chrome or window glass, finding nothing. The park encompassed more than 91,000 acres, according to Paul’s spiel for visitors. A good place to disappear.
    In his years as a policeman, Chee had spent more nights on patrol than he could count. His grandmother had been correct when she had warned of chindis , restless, troublemaking sprits that emerged after twilight. Most of the crimes Chee responded to went down in the black hours beyond midnight. The darkness outside seemed to summon the darkness inside people.
    Heading north past a shuttered crafts stand on a side road that looked as if it could lead to more views, Chee noticed a faint glow from the arroyo. Headlights? The illumination grew brighter as he approached. His unit’s lights flashed against the open tailgate of a truck parked off the road. Beyond it, he saw a tent lit from the inside. Past that, nothing but sand, a few shrubs, rocks. No red car.
    He parked but kept his headlights on, positioning them to shine on the tent. He had left the other campers alone, but they were outside the Navajo Nation’s jurisdiction, beyond the park proper. He walked toward this tent with his flashlight shining.
    â€œNavajo Police. Hello. Anyone in there?”
    He saw shadows in the tent, shapes rising from the floor. Chee’s experience made him wary when facing the unknown. “Come out,” he called. “I need to talk to you.”
    â€œWhat do you want?” The man spoke with an