I stared down at the boulder I had rolled away from the orifice. This tunnel hadn’t been burrowed by a coyote. This one bore all the telltale chop marks of a spade or a shovel. I could see the wooden cribbing from where I stood. He had known where he was going when he started to dig, which justified my earlier assumption that he had extensive knowledge of the area’s geology. I looked around the edge for wires or a transmitter. Nothing. I listened for the sound of anything inside. Silence. Of course, just because I didn’t hear a rattle didn’t mean I was safe in that regard.

I was stalling and I knew it.

We were nearing the endgame. I could feel it. There was no more time to waste.

Leading with the Beretta and the Maglite as I was now accustomed, I squirmed into the darkness. I flipped on the light the moment I was able and saw that the tunnel ended only a short distance ahead of me. The edges of the opening were jagged where he’d been forced to chisel through solid rock to reach the surprisingly large cave. The lower rim was scarred in straight lines where ropes had bitten into the stone. It didn’t matter if he had used the rope to haul himself or heavy equipment up and down since I didn’t have one, nor did I have the ability to track one down.

I wiggled my torso out over the nothingness and shined my light downward. The smooth stone floor had to be fifteen feet down. Two and a half times my height. Definitely feasible. But I was going to have to holster my sidearm, pocket the flashlight, and drop down into the pitch black. If there was a better option, I couldn’t see it. I shined the beam throughout the cave, but accomplished little more than moving the darkness around. I rolled over onto my back, shoved my pistol into the holster under my left arm and the Maglight into the right pocket of my jacket, and maneuvered myself toward the hole. It took some doing, but I twisted and turned in such a way that I ended up hanging from the lip by my hands, my feet dangling roughly seven feet above the ground. Dropping from this height wouldn’t kill me, nor would I probably break any bones. A sprained ankle would seriously hamper my style, though, so the moment I let go and felt the earth strike the soles of my feet, I was already flexing my knees and hips to absorb the impact and rolling to dispel the momentum. In one motion I really wished there had been people around to witness, I rolled to my feet, crossed my arms over my chest, and simultaneously drew both the Beretta and the flashlight.

I turned slowly in a circle, evaluating my surroundings.

The cave itself was nearly the size of a single-car garage, with an irregular roof to one side, domed to the other. The petroglyphs on the walls were remarkably well preserved, despite the thick layer of dust adhering to them. There were no shadowed forms crouching against the walls, strange burlap sacks on the ground, or slithering forms composed of darkness and fangs. Besides the pile of scrap wood from the cribbing in the corner and the smear of blood across the rock floor, there wasn’t a damn thing—

I froze when I saw it.

A quick reflection from the deep shadows up and to my right.

My heartbeat thundered in my ears. A million potentially shiny objects, all of which were easily capable of doing serious bodily harm, raced through my mind in the time it took me to raise the beam to the small alcove about eight feet up, where I saw just about the only object in the world I didn’t imagine.

It was a digital audio recorder.

Small. Handheld. Spatters of blood had dried to black blotches and smears. I stared at it for several moments before I finally decided “screw it,” tucked my hand into my sleeve, reached up and brought it down. I pressed the largest button, which I assumed would be the one to make it play. The recorder started to hiss. From beneath the hissing came a scraping sound. It grew louder and more distinct until it defined itself as footsteps. The tread was heavy and natural. Maybe a little hesitant, but not overly so. A clattering sound; the recorder shifting location, perhaps into a pocket. Rustling. Static. The footsteps again. Closer. Slower.

Whoever was walking toward the recorder sensed something was amiss.

Another footstep. Another.

Stop.

More clattering.

“Hola, amigos. Estan arrestados.” Hello, friends. You’re under arrest. After days in the brutal heat, that was often enough to get the undocumenteds out of their hiding places with their hands on their heads.

There was a note of concern in the agent’s voice. Concern, but not fear.

A muffled footstep. Another.

The crackling sound of gravel trickling across stone.

The rush of wind.

A thud.

A scrabbling, scraping sound.

A grunt.

A clatter.

A high-pitched gasp.

A wet splatter.

A gurgle.

Another thump.

Thrashing.

A footstep. Strong, confident. Another.

Heavy breathing. Exertion of some kind.

A tearing sound.

Fabric.

More tearing sounds.

Flesh.

The difference between them was distinct. It was a sound I knew I’d never be able to forget as long as I lived.

I stood there in the darkness listening to the killer dip the coyote paw into the sopping wound, take a step toward the canyon wall, and slap it onto the rock. Over and over. Listened to the faint scratching sounds of the dead animal’s nails on the rock. I listened to it beyond the point where he tore away more clothing and slashed open the gut. Then I listened to the damp slapping sounds some more. There will always be a part of me standing in that dark cave listening to the gruesome scene, as life was transformed into death, and death into a meaningless message meant only for me. To think that a boy had been born and raised, had lived and loved, had walked the earth for however many years, only to meet his fate in a slot canyon in the form of a winking face.

If that’s not proof of the frailty of the human condition, then I don’t know what is.

I listened until all was said and done and I was alone in the silent darkness, hardly even able to make myself breathe. Then, with a muffled crumpling sound and a click, it was all over. Mercifully. I felt the warmth of tears on my cheeks. The dispassionate nature of the deed was almost a posthumous insult to the victim, a violation even more repugnant than dipping a coyote's paw into the wounds, as though the man’s physical vessel were no more than a mere paint can. I looked at the readout to confirm that I had listened to the only file, then put the recorder back up on the ledge.

I think I would have preferred the rattle-less diamondbacks.

It didn’t take long to find the tunnel he must have used to drag the body in here after ending the recording. I wasn’t looking forward to crawling through another tunnel covered with the victim’s blood and dripping with copious amounts of coyote urine, but right now, I just really needed to get the hell out of here. I felt dirty and sick to my stomach, as though the very air inside the cave had absorbed the Coyote’s evil and it was leeching into my pores.

It was time to end this nightmare.

Permanently.

TWENTY-FOUR

I was waiting in the parking lot of the Tohono O’odham Community College when the first cars started to trickle in. I had managed to change clothes and wash my hands and face, but I still felt tainted by the night’s adventures. I could only imagine how I must have looked. Or smelled. Not that I really cared, mind you. At this point I was of singular focus and I’d be damned if I wasn’t going to find exactly what I was looking for inside.

It struck me at the second crime scene, before I even set off for the casino, that no man, no matter how long he had lived here or how long he had spent exploring the desert, would have the kind of precise geological knowledge that the Coyote possessed without some form of outside assistance. The kind of assistance that the United States Geological Survey supplied to anyone who had the gumption to get off his ass and look for it. The kind of assistance that was readily available to every federal agency, or for an agent trying to fly under the radar, or any private individual at just about any library on the face of the planet. Which was why the moment I saw the elderly woman approaching the doors to the college library with a set of keys in her hand, I was jogging straight up the walkway toward her.