I easily recognized the fortress-rock from miles away and found the turnaround at the base of the field of cholla without much difficulty. The small dirt lot, if it indeed qualified as such, was littered with tire treads and footprints and trash. Identifying any new tracks would be a hopeless proposition. I could only pray the crime scene response team had taken more care higher up.

I killed the bottle I was drinking, tossed it to the floor on the passenger side, and grabbed another from the tiny cooler. I shoved it into the pocket of my windbreaker and stepped out into the afternoon sun. It felt as though there was no distance between the sun and me at all. I had my Beretta in my hand and was sprinting up the winding path, heedless of the needles raking my jacket and the rattling sounds coming from seemingly all around me, before I even formulated a plan.

How much time had elapsed since I triggered the alarm beacon? An hour maybe? Ninety minutes? What could he have accomplished in that amount of time and what agenda had I unwittingly set into motion? I had no backup and no one I could fully trust, and I knew with complete certainty that more blood was going to flow. Soon. I could feel it in my bones.

And I still didn’t have the slightest idea of how to stop it.

I burst from the path, scrambled up the slope, rounded the fortress, and dropped down into the canyon. The smiley face was still exactly how I remembered it. The blood was still clumped in the sand on the trail. A length of police tape hung listlessly between the stone walls. I figured after the CRST finished gathering evidence, all caution would be thrown to the wind. I wasn’t disappointed. There were footprints everywhere. I few Styrofoam coffee cups and plastic water bottles. Cigarette butts. It didn’t matter. I had the advantage of knowing what I was looking for this time, assuming he hadn’t dramatically altered his MO. And I sensed that he hadn’t. With as much time and effort as he had invested into the first, I saw no reason to suspect he hadn’t put even more planning into this one.

If I was right, he had chosen these locations because of whatever underground features already existed or he’d been able to excavate while hidden from view by the canyon walls. After all, each of the murders had taken place in a mountainous location despite the countless miles of open desert, rolling hills, cactus fields, and dry washes with ample hiding places in between. No, the location was every bit as important as the message, and I needed to figure out why.

I stomped straight down the trail through the narrow canyon. I stomped all the way down into the trees. I stomped right up to the point where I had found Sykora laughing himself to tears while holding a handful of piss-dirt. I could still faintly smell the lingering ammonia odor of the coyote urine as I stomped around the spiral pattern and continued upward toward the crest of the same hill upon which I had stood last night until I heard a muffled thump.

I took a step backward and stomped on that point again.

Thump.

The dirt that had blown over the wooden square shivered. I needed to be even more careful this time. A smart man anticipating his impending capture might try to booby trap the lid of the hatch. A brilliant man would play his game right up until the final hand was dealt. I was about to find out what kind of man I was up against.

I brushed the sand away from the edges until I revealed all four sides. Rocks and gravel and even a small cactus had been affixed to the lid of the hatch with some sort of clear epoxy. So much care had been taken in its construction that I could barely discern it from the surrounding ground, even on my hands and knees. I cleared the sand and pebbles from around it, searching for wires or electronic devices of any kind, but found nothing.

For a full minute, I just knelt there staring at it. Finally, I opened the bottle of water, took a long swig, then poured the remainder around the seams of the hatch. No electrical hissing or sparks. Just the sound of water trickling down into the earth.

“No time like the present,” I said out loud.

I hoped no one had heard. That would have made a lousy epitaph.

I lifted the slab slowly and carefully in an effort to detect even the slightest resistance from underneath. Once I had it high enough to peer below the hatch, I was able to confirm that there was nothing attached to it and set it off to my right.

The stench that erupted from the hole in front of me struck me like an uppercut, obliterating the generalization of the previous odor. I guess I should have considered myself fortunate to have found the other one first so I wouldn’t have had to relive this gut-wrenching smell twice. I barely had time to cover my mouth and nose before I lost my lunch. I had greatly enjoyed that burger the first time, but figured I probably wouldn’t so much the second.

The tunnel into which I now stared had originally been dug by an animal of some kind. The burrow was rounded and angled down under the rock formation that covered it. It was roughly the size of the previous one, but curved deeper into the hillside mere feet down. I shined my light inside. Shadowed forms scuttled away from the beam. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember if a scorpion’s sting was lethal and really didn’t want to find out, but I was running out of time. I took a deep breath of the relatively clean air, then dove down into the vile darkness and the mud of my own creation, following my light and my pistol past the bend and into a warren approximately the size and shape of the interior of a Volkswagen Beetle.

Above me was the coarse underside of the massive red rock. Several strands of roots trailed from the cracks around it. The walls had been scraped by what appeared to be generations of coyote claws. At least I thought they were coyotes. They could have been medium-size dogs. I mean, without their heads and legs, the half-dozen carcasses could have belonged to just about any sandy-furred canine species. Their remains had been in the process of consumption and decomposition for quite some time. The bones had been picked clean, save for the greasy yellow adipose layer that still clung to the fur draped over the skeletons, which rippled with unseen critters scurrying around beneath. They made clicking and crunching sounds, and I could have sworn I even heard the muffled buzz of a rattle, but I was in no hurry to find out what inhabited the carcasses. At least now I knew where the Coyote had gotten his paintbrush-paws. I had no idea what he had planned for their heads, though. At least, not yet.

I didn’t initially see the opposite egress from the den behind the heap of carcasses. I imagined the Coyote chuckling at the idea of me crawling over the infested remains. I was going to take a little extra pleasure in taking him down for making me.

Crawling over the remains without sticking any of my body parts into the mess or disturbing the creatures inside of them was an almost superhuman feat, but I somehow managed to do it and slithered into the hole behind them. This one featured the same makeshift cribbing as the last, built from scraps and remnants. I assumed the killer had stolen them from various building sites, but I couldn’t prematurely rule out the possibility that he actually worked in construction. The wood here was newer than the last instance, for whatever that was worth. I hadn’t gone twenty feet before the tunnel suddenly ended in a natural rock formation reminiscent of a wide chimney. The faintest hint of light arched down from high above, glittering with motes of dust, while only darkness waited below.

I couldn’t believe I was even thinking about attempting this.

I holstered my pistol, bit the penlight between my teeth, and pulled myself out over the nothingness. Sand and pebbles slid over the rim and clattered to the ground seconds later. I braced my forearms against the smooth rocks to either side, arched my back, and pressed my knees and toes against the far side. Progress was maddeningly slow as I inched downward, turning my head from side to side and up and down in an effort to visualize my surroundings. Ancient petroglyphs shaped like palm prints had been scored into the walls, along with various animals and stylized hybrids I couldn’t see clearly enough to identify. The recurrent native symbology wasn’t lost on me. It could be significant, yet, at the same time, it could also be meant to deliberately mislead.