The Coyote

Don’t let anyone tell you I’ve lost touch with the common man.

I changed the batteries in the car, switched on the jammer, and listened to the chaos on the sca

Like I said, I have a hard time trusting the notion of coincidence. I found it strange now, in retrospect, that Chief Antone had told me that legend on our way to the site. Stranger still his initial reaction to my arrival at the station. It’s about time. We’ve been expecting you. Like he hadn’t just been awaiting the arrival of a federal agent…

He’d been waiting for me.

I had a harder time finding my way to this crime scene than either of the previous two, which gave me the opportunity to test my recognition of rattling sounds in the dark and introduced me to both a gila monster and a banded kingsnake. Or was it a coral snake? At least it was cooling off rapidly enough that both reptiles were sluggishly working their way back to their burrows. I couldn’t remember if it was the kingsnake or the coral snake that was venomous, but it had been a long enough day already without having to find out.

When I finally identified the right canyon and followed the correct fork, I just sat there on a rock across from the design, staring up at the faded smiley face for the longest time. The blood was flaking off in some spots, already completely gone in others. There was something about it that just wasn’t right. I couldn’t pin down what any more than I could explain why. The lines were too carefully formed. Their incompleteness somehow seemed complete, for lack of a better way to describe it. Everything about it seemed precise, and yet the design itself appeared as though it wasn’t meant to. The eyes could have been depicted in any number of ways. Why slanted lines? Why one longer than the other? Why did the nose look like it did: an angled straight line and a curved underside? There had to be some significance to it, to its precise lack of precision. Why was it painted onto the stone rather than on the ground? Why was it so large when it was on a stone face you couldn’t see from a distance, only when you were standing directly before it? Was it meant to imitate a primitive petroglyph? Was that why the lines themselves were seemingly so stylized? Did the Coyote intend to use a native motif to help purvey his message or in order to point the investigation in the wrong direction?

It was obvious that Chief Antone and Roman and Ban Walker all knew more than they were telling me and it was starting to really get under my skin. It was high time we all put our cards on the table, but I needed to gather more information before I was in a position to confront them. If I was right about my plans for the morning, I would be in a position to do so tomorrow.

It was already shaping up to be a ba

I stomped around for a while, but that proved u

The hole itself was halfway up a steep slope covered with wild grasses, cacti, and irregularly-shaped red rocks that appeared to have been arrested in a perpetual state of avalanche readiness. Despite first impressions, they were deeply lodged in the mountainside and allowed me to climb over them so as not to have to do battle with the omnipresent cholla and prickly pears. It didn’t take long to make my way to the hole, which appeared to be a coyote burrow, just like the last. At least it had the appearance of being excavated by claws rather than any manmade implement. From where I was now, I could see where the canyon opened onto the desert, and a slice of the flatlands that stretched away into the infinite darkness. This had to be his back door. It would have been too visible by the standards he’d already set forth to be the main entrance. If I hadn’t lost all sense of direction, the crime scene itself was maybe twenty-five feet uphill and a hundred feet to the northwest. His primary point of egress couldn’t be too far from there; I just hadn’t been able to identify it in the dark.

Of course, there was always still a chance I was wrong and I was about to disturb a pack of starving mongrels by sticking my head right into their midst. At least that would make for a better smell than I anticipated in any of the other scenarios that played out in my head.

The stench that wafted from inside the hole removed any doubt as to what was or what might once have been inside. I was going to have to remember to pick up some Vicks at the very next opportunity. Or maybe I’d be better off just lopping off my own blasted nose.

I gave the rim a cursory inspection, then lowered myself to my belly, held my penlight and my gun in front of me like before, and squirmed into the earth. I advanced slowly. Cautiously. If I were going to set a trap for someone, this is where I would do it. I couldn’t think of any other reason he would have left his back door standing wide open, assuming that was indeed what had happened. The scratches from the branches he had dragged through here were nearly indistinguishable from the marks made by the claws that carved this tu

My entire body wasn’t even all the way into the horizontal shaft when it bent sharply to the right and out of sight.

I paused and listened.

A blind corner was the perfect place for some sort of booby trap. It was an opportunity that was almost too good to pass up. Based on the narrowness of the tube and the sharpness of the turn, I would essentially have to wiggle the majority of my torso around the bend before I would be able to raise my head far enough to clearly see the way ahead of me.

The only sound was the harsh echo of my breathing.