Coordinated Effort

Mike Weatherman was sweating mightily in the scorching hell of an Arizona afternoon. The steep climb up to the excavation site was adding another layer of pain to his ordeal. Although Mike had been doing his thing here in the Arizona desert since he had finished grad school, Arizona never failed to scorch his body and soul on one of these digs.

He would never have seen it, save the fact that the sweat in his eyes made Mike stop to wipe them dry. Mike released his hold on the ever present bandana he wore around his neck. That’s when he saw the little black book nestled in the shadow of a sizeable rock. After carefully checking the darker recesses of the overhanging rock for rattlers, he gently withdrew the little book.

Although curiosity gnawed at the periphery of his mind, Mike shoved his find into the cargo pocket of his khaki trousers and resumed his climb. He was too winded to swear out loud upon reaching the top of the mesa, but his mind was reeling off a litany of cuss words that would make a trucker blush.

Doctor Schwartz greeted him cautiously. “Hello Mike, you’re looking a bit frayed around the edges. Why don’t you go to the shelter canopy, relax and have a cold drink of water? You know how important hydration is out here.”

Mike just grunted in the general direction of Doctor Schwartz and headed for the only bit of shade for miles around. Schwartz was the director at the prestigious McKenzie Institute of Geological Studies. Schwartz was a small wiry man with scant white hair ringing his head in monk-like fashion. He wore the stereotypical Khaki uniform of an archeologist but also wore a pith helmet to add a touch of swagger to his outfit. Of course, everyone else on the dig thought it made him look ridiculous, but they kept their opinions to themselves…in his presence.

Mike’s curiosity got the better of him as he sat in the shade recovering from the strenuous climb. He withdrew the black book from his pocket and started turning pages. The first entry started with a date some ten years gone past. Next to the date were six numerals, then a curious symbol, followed by a slash mark. The other side of the slash mark mirrored the first side with six numbers followed by an enigmatic symbol, only slightly different than the first symbol.

Mike ended a tough day in the field the way he always did with a freezing cold shower, a quick towel off, and a pensive glance in the mirror to lament the fading six pack abs of his twenties and his thinning hair. Getting older was definitely not Mike Weatherman’s idea of a good time. Once he was wrapped up in his favorite flannel robe, he collapsed to the couch, adult beverage in hand.

Mike’s body and mind had a short disagreement over the urge to open the little leather book. His body knew that once the mind took over, it would be a protracted period until the body would get the sleep it so desperately craved. Mike had a brilliant mind and a work ethic to match. Becoming a geological anthropologist had been his dream job since he was a little boy. Despite his unexpressed complaints about the rigors of working in Arizona, he loved pinpointing the layers of earth where Native American artifacts would most likely be found.

The little book contained 30 inscriptions, each of those inscriptions were nearly carbon copies of the first one. Mike faded away into an intense examination of the book’s entries. He thought over and over to himself, what was the significance of six digits. His mind reeled off a litany of possibilities as the minutes turned to hours. He had at last formed a hypothesis for the numeric portion of the entries. He then turned his attention to the cyphers. Based on his belief of what the numbers meant, he soon had a good idea of what the symbols meant as well. He went to bed satisfied that there was nothing more to be done…until tomorrow when he would test his theory.

Saturdays were usually a workday, but the Fourth of July was being celebrated on Monday this year. Doctor Schwartz had generously given all of the institute’s staff a three day weekend off. Mike arose at the crack of dawn and loaded all of the gear that he thought they might need into his faded blue vintage Range Rover. He followed pavement until it turned off onto a dusty single lane dirt road. Juh Curley was waiting exactly where he said he was going to be. Juh and Mike had met six years earlier and had become fast friends. Juh was the McKenzie Institute’s Apache Tribal council contact person for any digs on the San Carlos tribal lands. Juh worked as a go-between for the institute, the Tribal Elders, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA as it is more commonly known. 

Mike’s old Range Rover would barely hit 50 miles per hour on the highway but out here in the scrub brush and scattered rocks of a disappearing old mining track, she was in her element. It took Mike and Juh half-an-hour to reach an area as close to their goal as possible by auto. They stepped out of the old Rover and made a quick visual scan of the area.

Most people would not have noticed the three stacked rocks and a stick stripped of all of its bark, pointing out a direction of travel. It was an old Native American method of marking trails that Juh was very familiar with. “Hey, Mike! Looks like we’ve got something here!”

“Great find, Mike said, let me see if it lines up with the GPS.” Mike’s heart pounded fast in his chest, certain that he was onto something, maybe something big! “Juh, it matches the GPS azimuth perfectly. Let’s get our survival gear and head in that direction. It looks like a 15-minute hike but you know how it goes in this country.”

Juh responded, “Yeah let’s plan for at least triple that for the way out and the same for the way back. Do you think we can get any further with the truck?”

Mike shook his head and replied, “No can do, it gets steep real fast on the map.”

After they got their gear on and decided that Juh would lead by following the sign, and Mike would confirm with GPS, they set out into the hostile backcountry. Mike was right on the money, the hike got steep and clearly impassible for a vehicle after the first 15 minutes of hiking. Mike didn’t know how he did it, but Juh followed a track that was impossible for him to discern. It was also spot-on as he followed along with the handheld tracker.

Neither man spoke as they climbed over the rough terrain. It was far better to save your breath and energy for the climb. After another 15 or 20 minutes the land leveled off and the going got easier. Juh had to do concentric circles to find the track after they passed through a dry wash where the trail disappeared. Mike was tempted to just follow the GPS but knew that would be a grave insult to Juh.

After an hour and ten minutes, Mike and Juh zeroed in on the three rocks at just about the same time. The two men turned and looked at one another but neither one spoke. When Mike showed Juh the little black book and gave his theory, Juh had formed his own opinion about what it all meant. The men shifted out of their packs and had a sip of water to slake their thirst.

Mike inquired, “Are you sure we don’t need a permit? I sure as hell don’t want to get on the wrong side of the Tribal Police.”

Juh laughed and said, “Relax white man, you have me here with you. You know I would never do anything to get you into trouble, right?” Mike shook his head, his lips clamped shut, as he visualized some of their past escapades that had gone sideways.

“Might as well get started,” Mike said, as he unstrapped his shovel, “I think right under the rocks is where we’re going to find whatever it is we’re looking for. Agreed?”

“Should we one-man it or two-man it?” Juh shot back.

“I vote for one, Juh. It’s just too damned hot to hit it that hard; especially when we have no idea how much digging we’re in for. I’ll do the first shift.”

After two hours of digging in the sandy soil, they had unearthed what looked like the corner of a blue tarp. The men continued digging with grim looks on their faces, both convinced that this was going to be bad. Just how grisly it was, got answered when they unwrapped what was left of a female body. The hands were missing; the feet had also been unceremoniously chopped off. Although all of her teeth were still wrapped up in the tarp, they had been brutally smashed out of her mouth by whatever monster had committed the crime.

Juh and Mike wrapped the remains and weighted the tarp down with some nearby rocks. They hiked back to the Rover both of the men buried in his own thoughts. Mike got the vehicle turned around and headed back toward Tribal Police headquarters.

Mike handed the little black book over to the tribal authorities. He explained his initial hunch that the inscriptions gave latitude/longitude coordinates. He told them how he and Juh had followed both sign and GPS headings to get to the body. Mike prayed that the other inscriptions would not lead to 29 more bodies, unfortunately, his prayers went unanswered.

Every one of the 30 bodies would eventually be found. Every victim was a female between the ages of 14 and 36. The vast majority of the kills were Native American but some of the bodies were later determined to be Caucasian women. The most challenging part of the ongoing investigation was identifying the victims. All 30 bodies had been dumped along the dividing line between the White Mountain and San Carlos Apache tribal lands, casting suspicions on various Native Americans. It would be eight long years until the authorities had enough information to track down the perpetrator, Rex Churchfield who had no ties to the Apache community. Churchfield stated that he had dumped the bodies where he did because it was remote and also to turn suspicion in another direction.

Mike and Juh sat on the couch in Mike’s tiny apartment sipping on some cold ones. The men stared in disbelief at two $10,000.00 checks which had been sent to them along with a thank you letter from the Dorrance family. Tribal authorities had determined that one of the bodies from the investigation belonged to Melissa Dorrance; the young woman had disappeared while visiting the Apache reservation ten years earlier. The checks were the proceeds from a reward the wealthy family had offered for the return of their daughter.

Juh kidded Mike saying, “I’ll bet you already have plans to get rid of that death trap that you call a truck, Mike!” Mike shook his head and stared solemnly at the floor.

The room got so quiet that the only sound heard was from a fly caught between the screen and the kitchen window. Mike said, “That’s one hell of a way to earn a buck, isn’t it?”

Juh nodded in agreement as both men took another sip from their longneck bottles, each man re-living the horrors contained in the little black book…