Bolt: An Elena Vargas Archaeological Mystery

By Siena West

María Elena Vargas, Ph.D., is an archaeologist with a penchant for attracting trouble. Fortunately, she also has a sixth sense that helps get her out of sticky situations. While directing the archaeological field school at the Taylor Ranch, Elena discovers a mysterious circular feature filled with burned and splintered human bones. Inexplicable difficulties ensue when the bones are uncovered. The colorful scenery and unspoiled beauty of the Arizona mountains appear to hide something evil and vindictive underground.

One such difficulty is a spate of pot hunting at local sites. The Phoenix FBI recruits Elena as a consultant to help them understand a pot-hunting scheme that may be linked to the Sinaloa cartel and responsible for the local vandalism. Strong-willed Elena takes it upon herself to investigate. Romance and more trouble ensue, culminating in a standoff on a hilltop in a lightning storm.

Throughout the book, tales about the ancient Native Americans who lived at the pueblo on the Taylor Ranch are interwoven with the stories of the modern-day archaeologists. These stories explain the mystery of the huge circular feature and why it is filled with desecrated human remains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Sep 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781543946543

Book preview

Chapter 1

Old Bones

A fleshless face stared sightless from a mound of fresh earth. The eyes were blind because the red dirt of the Arizona mountain country filled the sockets. A young woman knelt beside the skull, which was almost a thousand years old. She ran her fingers across the cool, ivory dome. Long bones—a tibia, a fibula, a femur with the head broken off—lay nearby. Pot hunters had torn the ancient burial from the silence and darkness of a grave intended to serve for eternity.

Archaeologists from the Taylor Ranch field school surveyed that morning in rough country east of Ghost House Canyon. They found the small pueblo ruin and stopped to record it and eat lunch. Pot raiding was familiar to the archaeologists. Every field season, they found sites resembling mine fields, pockmarked with deep holes and piles of backdirt.

A gaunt, half-dead piñon pine spread blackened, twisted limbs over the fresh evidence of grave robbing. The survey leader, Cole Merrick, found Linda Benjamin beneath the tree, cradling the skull as if she could protect it from further desecration.

Look, Cole, it’s perfect—not a crack in it. It’s female—she has a smooth brow, small mastoid processes, and a delicate chin. Whoever had wrenched the skeleton from its resting place had no concern for the ancient dead. Nor did they have any consideration for their spirits long fled to the afterworld or their right to rest forever undisturbed.

I don’t understand why people disrespect the dead. It’s disgusting. Look at this. Linda kicked at an empty cigarette pack and a beer can the pot hunters had left.

Money, Linda. An isolated site is a gold mine. Skeletons are worthless to pot hunters because they’re only interested in the pots. There’s money in burial pots, especially the painted ones.

Aren’t there laws to stop this?

Only in theory, Cole admitted. Federal, Tribal, and State laws protect human remains, even on private land. But pot hunters make their own laws, and they’ve been digging since the 1800s. They assume it’s their right, and nobody has stopped them—so far, at least. The conservative Arizona ranching culture had fostered more than a century of pot hunting and was resentful of what they saw as government intrusion, whether legal or otherwise.

What should I do? Linda still held the skull, her fingers tracing the smooth arcs of bone above the eye sockets.

Map the pot hole and the bones—a sketch map will do, because of the disturbance—and take photos. Then rebury the bones in the pot hole to protect them. He checked his field log. The GPS readings put us on Forest land. That means NAGPRA applies. He was referring to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. Do you remember where you found the skull?

Linda nodded. Do you suppose the pot hunters took the pots that were buried with this woman?

You betcha. Because the bones are broken and tossed around, I bet she had one or more pots. They dug them out and left the bones in the backdirt.

The student shuddered, despite the heat that had bleached the cloudless Arizona sky.

You can’t cover up desecration, Cole. Somebody cared for this person—cared enough to bury her, maybe cried for her. She didn’t deserve this.

You don’t know that, Cole thought. Monsters lived among the ancients, too. The woman may have deserved what the pot hunters had done. The living could not know.

Something bad is here, Linda insisted. I can feel it—it’s supernatural. She pointed to the blasted tree that hung over them, its limbs stark against the stonewashed-denim sky.

Even the trees are dead, she said, pointing to the tree above them. The spirits won’t appreciate having their bones dug up and tossed around as if they were trash. They will make somebody pay.

Prickling touched the back of Cole’s neck because he hadn’t noticed that lightning had struck the tree. Their Apache laborers wouldn’t come near it. Lightning power was the most potent of the natural powers and caused frightening dreams and illness. The sickness often leapt from person to person just as lightning bolts jump from cloud to cloud.

If anybody pays, I sure hope it’s the assholes that did this, he said, his brisk tone brooking no further nonsense. This spooky stuff is a load of crap, Linda. Let’s get back to work. If we get off schedule, the director will make someone pay, and that someone will be me. I’ll send Phil to help you.

Cole, how can you tell it’s a load of crap?

But he was gone without a glance at the pale, scattered bones or the blackened tree above them. Everything was normal enough. Noon sunlight washed the land, and the rich scents of pine, earth, and roots filled the air. Despite the seeming normalcy, Linda was convinced something was amiss.

Time would prove her right. Just as a lock’s cylinders tumbled into place, events were set in motion, and the layered implications would not come to light until summer’s end.

* * *

At the Taylor Ranch, the day was collapsing under the weight of the afternoon’s dry heat. María Elena Vargas, Ph.D., sat at her desk in the ranch-house bedroom that served as her office. The director stared out the window, watching the lawn sprinkler swing from side to side in hypnotic swoops. She had been staring, unthinking, for the best part of fifteen minutes. Norman Taylor, owner of the century-old ranch, created the lawn and flower beds to make the place resemble a bed-and-breakfast inn. His efforts were valiant if incongruous in the wilds of east-central Arizona.

Elena had wrestled with the account books since lunch, and the books had won. She thought about stretching her legs and getting coffee when Tim Overton appeared in the doorway. The crew chief’s bright red hair stood upright in tufts. That meant he had been raking his fingers through the springy mop because he was nervous. It wasn’t a good sign.

Sorry to interrupt, Tía, but you’ll want to see what we found at the spaceship.

She gritted her teeth. The director couldn’t stop the kids from calling the great, round structure in the pasture the spaceship. It better be worth abandoning the accounts for, Tim. She grinned at him. Regardless of what Tim had discovered, it would be more interesting than grocery expenditures.

At the excavation, they found the student crew huddled in the meager shade of a nearby juniper. Tim climbed into the unit and pointed with his trowel to something pale standing out against the darker soil.

I assume this bone is human. Come down and see what you think, Tía. Most everyone called the director by a version of the pet Spanish nickname meaning aunt.

Elena joined him in the unit. An alien wave of cold nausea and fear swept over her the moment her feet touched the dirt. Her nerves shrieked that below lay something wicked. Elena forced herself to stay in the pit when it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do.

She borrowed Tim’s trowel and probed around what proved to be a piece of human bone. She troweled farther and stifled a scream when the trowel’s tip touched another bone. It felt like a jolt of electricity slicing through her hand.

¡Ave María Purísima! Elena muttered the old Mexican charm against witchcraft. She ignored the dread and nausea and continued to work. She discovered more bones—splintered pieces of long bones, crushed phalanges, and bits of flat bone that might be scapulae or pelvic bone. The bones told her what she needed to know. But when she stood up, she feared she would faint. Dim images floated in her peripheral vision—pictures of stone knives and dismembered bodies—and she heard distant screams and smelled a faint scent of blood.

Tim looked at her blanched face with concern. Are you okay? She took a deep breath, trying to pull herself together. When they climbed out of the unit, the sickness faded.

You were right, Tim. You found a human occipital-bone fragment. The other bones are human, too, and they’re all smashed to bits and mixed up.

Shit, Tim mumbled, raking at his hair. What did I do to deserve this?

Elena smiled at the poor kid with the rat’s nest of ravaged red hair. "You did just fine, chico. But you know excavation must stop."

Tim was familiar with the rules. When archaeologists encountered human remains, they quit excavating. Within 48 hours, they had to report the find to the State museum, which began the consultation process with Native Americans, who would tell the field school how to proceed.

It should be okay to keep working until you’ve exposed the entire bottom of the unit. We need more information—is it a disturbed burial or something else? The condition of the bones and her own physical reactions told Elena the bones were not from a typical burial. But there was no need to tell Tim.

Okay. I’ll just trowel around the bones and brush the dirt off.

Perfect. Then cover up well.

But the situation was far from perfect. It wasn’t the slowdown to the work but the malevolence rising like vapor from belowground that troubled the director. A terrible act must have taken place long ago to have engendered the dread and cold she experienced. Elena feared that the dead in the pasture wished them harm.

* * *

It began with an irrigation system. Norm planned to run water lines out to a stock tank and dig up an old, caved-in cistern because his cattle kept falling into it. Elena had trained him well—Norm wouldn’t dig unless an archaeologist monitored the work. In point of fact, it was funny. The Taylor family had dug in ruins forever. When Elena finagled an arrangement for Norm to host the field school, he was forced to abandon his hobby.

It was ironic that Norm’s attempt to do the right thing had brought him trouble. He’d started the project with a water-line trench near the cistern. Tim, who monitored the trenching, saw a curious feature in the trench wall—a dipping line of black and a rim of red, burned clay. They stopped to investigate, and then Tim told Norm to scrape off the first layer of topsoil with the backhoe to show the top of the feature in plan. A curving line of burned clay encased a charcoal-black interior—part of what looked to be a circular feature. The bright red and dense black colors stood out against the light brown soil of the pasture. Whatever the thing was, it had burned.

After Elena inspected the discovery, she instructed Norm to follow the curving edge as far as possible and scrape off the topsoil. When he finished, it was clear the feature was circular—and large.

Elena gathered the students to measure it as in one of her favorite old black-and-white movies. They spread out, arms extended and fingertips touching, shifting around until they stood on the edge of the feature. Just as the scientists in the movie had done, the archaeologists stood several feet apart in a large circle. But instead of an alien spaceship buried in the Arctic ice, the archaeologists marked what appeared to be an enormous pit dipping below the cistern. Elena was not the only one who shivered when the size of the feature was apparent. The kids called it the spaceship because of its size and shape. They, too, remembered the old science-fiction movie.

The discovery was unexpected because the pasture was far from the ruins being excavated, and no tell-tale pot sherds and bits of flaked stone on the surface showed that below was something human-made. The feature wasn’t a pit house or a kiva—the ceremonial chamber of the ancient and modern Pueblo peoples. It was far too big to be a hearth or roasting pit.

Having to stop work annoyed Norm, but it was necessary to excavate the feature, at least the part that the irrigation system would disturb. The crew started with two excavation units near the cistern. At first, the work was straightforward. Below the humus was a jumbled layer of charcoal and burned wood. The archaeologists sampled the burned wood for tree-ring dating, and it took forever to complete the tiresome job. When the crew removed the burned wood, they discovered a layer of stones. The big blocks of sandstone and limestone were jammed close together with only a little dirt packed between them. It took tremendous effort to wedge in a pick, pry up a stone, and haul it out of the pit.

And then today, Tim’s crew removed the last of the stones, and under them, he found the bones.

As her senses told her on the dry, bright afternoon, whatever the human bones represented, it was malevolent. It wasn’t possible to let the bones lie, allowing the evil to sink back into the ground and then covering it up once more. They would have to remove and analyze the bones, if the Native Americans allowed, so that Norm could complete the irrigation project. Elena feared that the malignancy would spread. It would cast a pall over them, like the shadow of a great horned owl before it swoops to pierce its prey with long, curved talons.

Chapter 2

Warning

Long ago, the director’s cabin belonged to the ranch’s foreman. Today, its sagging porch of weathered wood was the camp’s central gathering place. Across the dirt road that fronted the cabin was the main ranch house where Norm lived and the women staff bunked. The breeze stirring the pines and the leaves of the cottonwood trees brought the good smells of dinner cooking and voices from the kitchen. Soon, the crews would return from the field, lured by the prospect of cold beer like horses to water.

Elena tossed her cap on the bed, filled a plastic cup with wine, and sank into a camp chair on the porch. Dios, what a day it had been. She loosened the elastic binding her hair and shook out a glorious cloud of burnished mahogany. As she unlaced her boots, she considered what the day brought. Since she was a little girl, Elena had experienced second sight. Although she wasn’t able to see the past or the future with clarity, she could sense traces of events and emotions, especially if they were strong. Her physical body mirrored what she sensed, explaining what happened that afternoon in the excavation unit. Elena’s antepasados were Andalusian Spanish, and magical realism touched her otherwise practical and scientific nature. Most of the time, she felt grateful for her gift. Today, she did not. She could have done without the fleeting images of death and dismemberment.

A truck pulled past the cabin and into the makeshift parking lot, moving too fast to keep the dust from boiling up around the tires. She sighed—how many times had she warned the staff about driving too fast? Fine, red dust would settle on everything, including dinner.

A diminutive redhead packed into blue jeans as dusty as the truck out of which she climbed strolled over to the cabin, a bottle in hand.

"Hola, Tía María. I’ve got a surprise for you. They air-kissed cheeks. Elena had carried the Latin social tradition with her to Arizona. I made a little detour to Show Low after work."

"The surprise would be a bottle of very nice añejo, ¿no?" Elena said, assessing the label. Maggie’s taste for tequila was legendary.

The young woman grinned. "You got it, professora. Dump that fancy-pants wine and let’s drink a man’s drink."

Elena obliged, pouring the tequila over ice. She liked her graduate students, with their grand ideas and tender sensibilities, but Margaret Denny was special. She reminded Elena of herself at a younger age when the world was ready to fall at her feet. In spite of Maggie’s awesome propensity for tequila, research was serious business to her, and that was important.

Want a lime? Elena said.

Nope. I’ll take it naked.

The silence was companionable; if they were cats, the women would have purred. The view spreading before them might have been in a John Ford western or an old Bonanza episode. Ancient cottonwoods dwarfed the ranch house, their fuzzy snow drifting down and piling up against the fence. In the distance, the range sloped away to purple mountains. Any minute, it seemed, Little Joe or Hoss would come careening around the house, spurring a horse and waving a hat.

Maggie smiled into the golden liquid in her cup, shimmering as if it captured the afternoon light. I’ve got a proposition for you, Boss.

Elena grimaced. I don’t like the sound of that, Maggie.

Don’t worry, Doc. Here’s the deal—I’ve found, recorded, and photographed most of the Apache sites I can reach by vehicle. I want to finish the survey on horseback, so I can ride into the canyons and higher elevations where the special-use sites and storage cists might be. Maggie held a dissertation-improvement grant to survey the area for historic Apache sites, and she used the Taylor Ranch as her base of operations.

Elena played with the petals of a rose poking through the porch rails. The ancient bush’s gnarled and twisted vines covered one side of the porch and ran up the cabin wall. The rose dripped with pink, scentless blossoms.

Before Maggie could continue, Melissa Harvey, the crew chief in charge of the pueblo excavations, joined them. She accepted a beer and folded her lanky body into the camp chair nearest Maggie.

Elena continued the conversation. "Mi’ja, I’m not crazy about this idea. Although you’re not part of the field school, I’m responsible for you, regardless. If you’re out there alone, no one would know if you fell off your horse and broke an arm or leg—until you didn’t come home on time. We’d have to send a search party to find you."

The director lectured often about the obvious and unseen dangers of wild Arizona. Angry bulls, bucking cow ponies, scorpions, black bears, rattlesnakes—critters most urban kids of college age had never even seen, much less encountered face to face.

Melissa, whom everyone called Mel, wore a puzzled look. What are you guys talking about?

Tía Elena is trying to stop me from surveying on horseback. Maggie said, complaining.

"I’m not trying to stop you, chica. But I’m certain you shouldn’t go by yourself. Remember the Columbia University anthropology student? She worked alone, and look what happened to her." While doing ethnographic research on the San Carlos Reservation in the 1930s, the woman became friendly with an Apache man who misunderstood her intentions. A polite refusal resulted in a tragic, senseless murder.

Come on, Tía. I seem to recall you were in the field alone for your dissertation research.

That was different. I was doing historical archaeology in the middle of town.

Maggie laughed. Yeah, sure—an abandoned, falling-down town with what, ten people living in it? In New Mexico. With nests of rattlesnakes living in the ruined adobes.

Elena ignored Maggie. Not to mention bears—I understand that horses hate bears.

It was odd that Mel wore a look of concern that verged on fear. I’m with Dr. V, she said. It’s not a good idea, Maggie. I wouldn’t go out there alone. Mel feared nothing, and her exploits in the field and on the volleyball court were as legendary as Maggie’s taste for tequila. Elena was sure that Maggie would be wise to take Mel’s concern into consideration.

Maggie chuckled. Ladies, I appreciate that you’re worried, but I don’t plan to ride alone. My honey will go with me on the weekends. Cole’s survey crew did not go out on Saturdays, which were only half-days in the field.

The director snorted her disbelief. The pair of you won’t get a thing done. Kissy-face on horseback, I’m sure. But that’s your chairman’s problem, not mine. She poured herself another shot of tequila and held out the bottle to Maggie. Do you plan to borrow Norm’s horses?

I already talked to Norm. He thinks I’m too fat to ride his precious quarter horses or something. Maggie’s big, infectious laugh echoed in the afternoon quiet. The grumpy ranch owner valued his prize-winning roping horses above almost everything else, and Elena should have known he would never let a novice ride one.

So, I must find a rancher willing to rent out a couple of trail horses. There’s no shortage of corrals and falling-down barns around here to stable the nags. I’ll pay for their feed out of my grant money.

Elena stretched, tequila having relaxed her after the day’s challenges. Okay, you’ve persuaded me. If you can find horses. If you can pay for their feed. And if Cole goes with you every single time you ride.

Maggie touched her cup to Elena’s. Deal. Mel’s scowl made it clear she did not approve.

Well, speak of it, Elena drawled. There’s the dear boy now.

A white university van drove past the cabin. Elena noted with approval that the vehicle raised only a little dust. Driving was one of Cole’s many skills. The young man had common sense and uncommon field ability. She relied on her assistant director more than a feminist would like to confess.

After the dusty, sunburned crew members stumbled out of the truck, Cole ambled over to the cabin and tossed his battered pack on the porch.

Hey, you guys got started early, didn’t you?

It’s never too early for me, Maggie said, her voice lazy.

It was a rough day, Elena explained. At least for me. And the tequila is because Maggie has been bribing me to let you guys ride horseback into the wilderness.

Cole ruffled Maggie’s gleaming hair. I’m sure. She’s a little manipulator.

I assume she’s discussed this harebrained scheme with you?

At great length, Dr. V, as you might imagine. Maggie made an ugly face at him. He helped himself to a beer from the cooler that Elena kept stocked with cold drinks and ice for her guests and visitors. Hey, Mel, he said in greeting. He settled on the sagging step below Maggie and leaned against a porch post.

Well, I’m about to make your day worse. We found very recent pot hunting up in Ghost House Canyon. He told them about the ruin they found, Linda’s discovery, and what they did to document the find and bury it again for safety.

Me cago en todo o que se menea! The dead were everywhere, surrounding Elena and binding her as surely as if they had wrapped their cold limbs around her own warm ones. She would have to go into town to notify the Forest archaeologist, assuming the cell-phone magic wasn’t working. At the same time, she would report the human remains in the pasture.

As if on cue, Tim joined them, carrying a beer. He had showered and combed his fiery hair.

Why did you have a hard day, Tía? Cole said.

I can tell you, Tim said, sinking into a chair and taking a big swig of beer. He related what had transpired in the pasture.

No shit, Cole said.

Tim had finished exploring the bottom of the excavation unit as he and Elena discussed. The bones extended across the entire unit. And the really bizarre thing is that I found several duplicate bones, meaning more than one person is there. Although it’s hard to tell because the bones are so smashed up. He tossed back the last of the beer and lowered his voice. The bones look like somebody cut them apart. Elena saw it for herself when she crouched in the pit sick with nausea and fear.

Gross, Maggie said. Cut-up dead people?

It’s worse than that, Maggie, Elena said. The breaks and cuts showed no healing. That means the damage was perimortem—when the people were still alive or soon after they died. Maggie paled a little, highlighting the freckles sprinkled across her nose.

And you won’t like this at all, Tía, Tim said, but it looks like the bones continue under the unit wall. I am so screwed.

It’s full of bones, isn’t it? Mel said, echoing Elena’s own concern.

Maggie poured a couple fingers of tequila into a cup and offered it to Tim. Drink up, bud. You need this. Tim tossed it down in one gulp. None of them had ever seen him do that. Geez, Tim, Mel said, you must really be spooked.

Without a word, he held out his cup to Maggie for a refill and then took a deep breath. I’m afraid to say it.

Say what? Cole said.

The C-word. You know archaeologists have been finding bodies cut up and smashed like the ones in the pasture in other places. The Cowboy Wash site, I guess it’s called, and that project in Colorado by a contract group? They found a bunch of shattered bones at one of their sites. Archaeologists think human remains from those places represent cannibalism. The bones in the spaceship appear to be similar. Are they cannibalism, too? he asked, his voice lowered almost to a whisper.

His question dropped into a pool of silence. It was so quiet, the breeze might have ceased blowing, and the birds may as well have stopped their noisy business in the trees. Nothing in Southwest archaeology created more controversy than cannibalism. Native Americans and most archaeologists reviled the scientists who proposed it. Only a few scholars conceded this horrifying act of violence took place in the past.

Cole and Elena remembered their own premonitions—the lightning-struck tree, the sickness in the excavation unit—

Elena spoke into the silence, her words falling like stones into a well. It’s too early to say, Tim. There are other possibilities.

Isn’t Dr. Thomas coming to lecture soon? Mel said. The bioarchaeologist who specializes in identifying cannibalism from bones?

Elena nodded. When she scheduled him, she hadn’t foreseen they would need his particular specialty at the field school.

Can he tell us if it’s cannibalism? Tim said. His fingers strayed toward his hair, undoing the careful combing.

"¿Quien sabe? We’ll find out in good time."

Jesus. Thank God there’s no dead people at my Apache sites, Maggie said.

Cole’s grin was evil. Maggie, that’s not your problem. It’s finding Apache sites. Seems like they’re mighty scarce on the ground.

She replied with a soft kick to his ribs. Shut up, dickhead. I bet I’ll find something big, like Dr. V’s never seen. Then she will have to buy me a bottle of tequila to celebrate.

In your dreams, Red.

"Stop squabbling, niños, Elena commanded. And shoo, all of you. I want a shower before dinner. Smells like Norm fixed lasagna tonight."

Tim had brought up a horrifying possibility she herself feared. Despite the bureaucratic baggage that human remains carried, she prayed the bones in the pasture would prove to be burials. Formal burials of the dead, laid to rest with care. That would be better than the deliberate butchering, cooking, and consumption of human flesh.

* * *

The camp’s inhabitants scattered after dinner, which did prove to be lasagna, as the day melted into evening and the light faded from gold to blue. Some campers planned to walk in the meadows rich with wildflowers and grass. Others headed up an impromptu volleyball game. Elena needed the free time as much as everyone else. The university hired her to run the field school after her predecessor quit to become head of the anthropology department. Because she wasn’t tenured, Elena experienced considerable pressure. Unlike the previous director, she had never made a grad student cry, but that virtue carried no weight with the promotion-and-tenure committee.

I should go work on the annual report. If she did her homework well, she might turn three years of annual reports into the framework for a publishable monograph. That would impress the committee. But tonight, her thoughts were elsewhere.

Norm turned off the generator early on week nights, and soon, only a few soft lights marked where the campers had lit lanterns or candles. The night was soothing, silent, and still. Elena fell asleep in bed with the report files on her chest, still dressed.

* * *

The screams woke the entire camp. What the hell? ¿¡Qué chingados es eso?! Fuzzy-minded with sleep, Elena grabbed her boots and stumbled out of the cabin. The sound filled the night. The screams were female and seemed to come from the old ranch bunkhouse converted into the women students’ dorm. In the darkness, she almost collided with Maggie and Cole coming from their tent.

As they hurried toward the dorm, they could