“None of us have been out here long enough to really know our way around. It’s easy to get lost in this desert. I feel like I’ve been dropped onto another planet. Perfect for the movie, but it’s starting to get on my nerves.”
Chee gave Robinson a card with his cell phone number. “Let me know if she comes back, or if you think of anything else that would help.” That is, he thought, if his phone worked out where he was headed. “If you can’t get me and it’s important, call the office.”
He turned off the air conditioner and lowered the windows as he drove out of the movie compound, listening for another vehicle or perhaps a woman calling out for help in the quiet desert. He savored the warm evening air that filled the SUV, dry as dust. No worry about mosquitoes here except after those rare, blessed days when the valley got some of its five inches of annual rainfall.
The view matched the dictionary description of spectacular—a brilliant sky packed from edge to edge with Technicolor pinks, magentas, and oranges that made the monuments look even more rugged, imposing, and otherworldly. Diné stories confirmed Chee’s observation that this place was special and blessed. The valley had been the interior of a giant hogan, with stone pinnacles tourists called Gray Whiskers and Sentinel as its doorposts. His people also considered the two soaring buttes known as the Mittens to be the hands of a Holy Person, left behind in stone to remind the Navajos that they weren’t alone.
The vivid colors gradually faded to soft pastel. Wispy clouds added ambience, like see-through scarves that make bare skin beneath more alluring. If he were a photographer, he’d be taking pictures.
Chee knew from past visits that the best sunset shots were on the Utah side of the valley, the vista points he wished he’d had the chance to show Bernie. He stopped at the Monument Valley Park security gate, explaining to the attendant who he was and describing the woman he was looking for. The guard seemed interested. “I started work at eight tonight,” she said. “I didn’t see any car like that leave, but she could have come through before my shift.”
“What about the person who had the earlier shift?”
The guard shrugged. “You can ask, but he has so many cars to keep track of. I doubt he would 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?”
“Sure thing.”
Chee turned north, crossing from the Arizona section of the park 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.
“Navajo 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.”
“What do you want?” The man spoke with an accent.
“I need to ask you some questions. Don’t you folks know it’s illegal to camp here?” Chee waited for the response.
“Sorry. Can we pay you the fee?” A female voice.
“Is that you, Melissa?” Chee said.
“No.”
“Come on out here and talk to me. Both of you.”
The tent rustled, and a gray-haired woman in shorts and a T-shirt emerged. “Heinrich is coming. He’s pulling on his shoes.” The woman took a few steps toward Chee. “My husband couldn’t find anywhere else to camp. We are doing no harm. We shall be gone by morning.”
An elderly man with a potbelly emerged from the opening and stood next to the woman.
“Heinrich Schwartz,” said the man after Chee introduced himself. “And this is Gisela.”
“I’m looking for a lost person. A blond woman driving a red car, or maybe walking around taking photographs. Have you seen her?”