The Mauling at Kinnickinick Pueblo Read online

  The Mauling at Kinnickinick Pueblo

  Book Seven of the Mike Damson Mysteries

  By Charles deMontel Williamson

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities between its characters and any real people are a coincidence. Most of these Mike Damson mysteries take place in Coconino County, Arizona. This is the seventh book in the series. All of the books are available for the Kindle app for digital readers at https://www.amazon.com/author/c.d.williamson.

  The previous volumes in order were The Dead Priest of Sedona, The Dead Chef of Santa Fe, The Murders at El Tovar, The Victim at Vultee Arch, The Arson at Happy Jack, and The Dead Man at Doyle Saddle.

  Please respect the author by using this work only for your personal enjoyment.

  Kinnickinick Pueblo is a real location. It is the ruins of a Native American village abandoned over seven hundred years ago. It is almost inaccessible, and I don’t recommend attempting to reach it, which is only possible on foot after a long hike. You can see similar Sinagua ruins, built by ancestors of the Hopi Tribe, at Wupatki National Monument and Walnut Canyon National Monument, both near Flagstaff and accessible by paved road. I took the cover image at Wupatki National Monument.

  In the Verde Valley near Clarkdale, Arizona is Tuzigoot National Monument. It is also worth a visit if you’re interested in the pre history of the southwestern US. One of the most impressive Sinagua ruins in the area is Montezuma Castle National Monument near Camp Verde, Arizona. The actual ruin has nothing to do with the Aztec king. It was built centuries before he was born and before the Aztec came to power in what is now central Mexico. Early settlers gave it that name; no one knows what the Sinagua Native Americans called the beautiful site on Beaver Creek.

  It is a serious crime to take historical artifacts from a ruin or to deface any of the many ancient Native American ruins spread over northern Arizona.

  This work is dedicated to my home and favorite place, Sedona, Arizona and to my wife Diana. Without her help this and my other books would not be possible. It is also dedicated to my brother Steve who was a site steward with me for many years. We actually encountered a mountain lion at the Kinnickinick Pueblo location a few years ago.

  Prologue

  Paul McFarlane saw the three men digging near the ancient stone ruin. The impressive stone structure was made of uncut slabs of tan sandstone clinked with clay. It was part of a substantial group of ruins that eight hundred years earlier had been the home to perhaps two hundred Sinagua Native Americans, part of an extended family unit or small tribe. The inhabitants had been pre-Columbian native people that modern archeologists had given the name Sinagua, from the Spanish meaning without water because they had extraordinary skills at farming and living in this arid region of northern Arizona.

  Paul was curious to learn more about the ancient and long abandoned stone structures that he’d found at regular intervals along the rim of this remote canyon southeast of Flagstaff. He assumed the three men were archeologists as he approached through the juniper and piñon trees. Paul, a recently discharged Marine, had made camp near a spring about a mile north and decided to explore this canyon rim before returning to his camp.

  After his discharge from the Marine Corp, Paul had decided to spend two months alone to clear his mind and prepare for his future. He had too many bad memories of this time in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he wanted an untroubled mind before his marriage to Susan in a few months. The solitary hike was working; he was living in the moment and seldom thought of the friends he had lost to IEDs and the gunfire from unseen snipers.

  As Paul approached the three men, he said, “Hi guys. Can you tell me something about the people who built these stone structures?”

  It happened in an instant. A large bearded man with tattooed arms pulled a short combat-style shotgun from an ATV, rotated toward Paul, and fired it directly into Paul’s midsection. The pain was overwhelming, and Paul crumpled to the ground grabbing his devastated abdomen and shredded viscera. As Paul lay moaning on the stony ground, he heard the three ATVs start up and drive away.

  Paul was having a terrible time breathing where he lay face down on the stony ground. He slowly and agonizingly crawled over to the stacked stonewall of the ancient ruin and pulled himself to an upright sitting position to ease his breathing. It took him fifteen minutes to make that short excruciating journey, and the struggle consumed his failing will power. Once he was sitting up against the wall, he had a good look at his abdomen. Paul realized that he was a dead man. Even if it had been a war zone with a medevac nearby, he’d seen enough friends die to know that his wound was fatal. His intestines were shredded and his liver was a bloody mess. He said a prayer that he had learned as a child in Minnesota before he lost consciousness.

  Some primal instinct woke Paul, some ancient knowledge that a predator approached. When he opened his eyes for the last time, he saw the cougar lunge at his bloody lower abdomen. He made a final agonizing scream before arterial blood loss turned his vision black and gave him permanent relief from the horrendous agony.

  Chapter 1

  The two brothers from Sedona were bouncing along the terrible jeep trail in a red Xterra. “Damn it, this road gets worse every visit. We need to park and walk the rest of the way,” Steve said.

  The younger brother, Arthur, answered, “You’re right. It’s best not to take the chance of trashing your tires on these volcanic rocks. You’ve already scratched the paint on junipers several times this trip. It’s only a mile or so, and I could use a nice walk through the forest on this magnificent spring morning.” They retrieved their daypacks from the back of the Xterra and began the hike to Kinnickinick Pueblo.

  Twenty minutes later, they heard a horrifying human scream. They ran toward the shriek until they reached the Kinnickinick Pueblo Ruin. As they cleared the trees, they both gasped as they saw the gruesome source of the death scream.

  Steve shouted an obscenity, picked up a fist-size rock and hurled it at the cougar that was eating the abdominal soft tissue from the body of a man lying against a stonewall of the eight-hundred-year-old pueblo’s collapsed remains. Arthur also threw stones until the cougar snarled and moved away from her meal.

  The entrails of the dead man as well as arterial sprays of still wet blood surrounded the remains. The gruesome sight was testament to nature’s cruel logic of prey and predator, but in this ghastly case, it was the human who was prey. Both brothers continued to throw rocks until the cougar retreated over the cliff and fled down into the Kinnickinick Canyon in a series of dramatic bounds from one boulder to another. She was sleek, beautiful, and deadly, a top predator of this remote area of Arizona.

  The brothers were retirees from Sedona who were at that remote Sinagua ruin for their quarterly examination of the remains of Kinnickinick Pueblo. In their volunteer role as site stewards, the brothers checked on a series of archeological ruins quarterly. Their assignment was to report any digging or other disturbances to these pre-Columbian stone structures.

  They had been trained by the Forest Service not to interfere, merely report the damage or illegal activity to the law enforcement officers of the Forest Service. In Arizona, there was a long history of illegal digging at these sites because the artifacts found in burials or among the stone ruins of these ancient villages could bring surprisingly high prices from collectors of pre-Columbian pots and artifacts. This particular site was among the most difficult to reach in northern Arizona, but even it had been looted sometime in the distant past long before the site steward program had been created. The brothers examined the poor soul whose suffering was over before Steve headed back to an area with cell phone service. Arthur stayed to guard the victim’s remain
s.

  Captain Mike Damson, the Chief of Criminal Investigations for the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department, answered his cell phone. The caller ID indicated that it was Neil Cooper, the chief law enforcement officer for the Forest Service in the 1.8 million acre Coconino National Forest.

  Mike was driving from his home in Sedona to his office in the Flagstaff, the headquarters of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department. It was early spring, but there were still patches of snow in shady areas along the rim of Oak Creek Canyon. “Hi Neil. What’s up?”

  “Mike, I’m glad I reached you. Two of our archeological site stewards have found the body of a man at the Kinnickinick Pueblo ruins. The deceased was being mauled by a mountain lion when they did their quarterly check on the site. He was already dead when they reached the body, but the remains were still warm. It took one of them about fifteen minutes to reach an area with cell phone service.”

  “Damn Neil, that’s a strange report. I’ve never heard of a cougar death in Arizona. Do you know of any other deaths from cougar attacks?”

  “No, at least not in the twenty-five years that I’ve lived here. I know of several deaths in California in the past decade. The victims have normally been people running or jogging through the cougar’s territory. Running seems to trigger a stealth attack reflex in the cougars. They normally attack from behind. Their instinct is to go for the neck, but in normal circumstances they will avoid human contact. Actual attacks are quite unusual.” Neil gave him the coordinates of the site.

  Mike plugged the coordinates of the ancient pueblo ruin into his Explorer’s navigation system. “Neil, I’m on my way. I’ll contact the county’s crime scene tech. He’ll probably come in the department’s helicopter if it’s available.”

  “Mike, as a personal favor to me, please don’t bring in a helicopter unless there is no alternative. Kinnickinick Pueblo is located in a sensitive area near Anderson Mesa where the pronghorn antelope breed. This early in the spring, there is a lot of risk to their young offspring.”

  “OK Neil. I’ll have deputies carry the remains on a stretcher to wherever the morgue’s truck can safely meet them.”

  “You’ll need to have your men carry the remains at least a mile, maybe a mile and a half. The jeep road is virtually impassable to normal vehicles.”

  That gave Mike a thought. The previous autumn, he and a team of deputies had retrieved the remains of a hunter from high up on the San Francisco Peaks. The deputies had dropped the body down the side of the highest mountain in Arizona, thereby compromising the medical examiner’s job and earning the wrath of Doctor Kay Sumter. He called his office and asked the same four deputies who had damaged the body the previous spring to join him. He wanted to give them a second chance to help remove their embarrassment. He also asked Sean Mark to come to the crime scene. He was the newest member of the criminal investigation team. Sean had grown up in Coconino County and hunted in the area since he was a kid. Mike had moved to Sedona five years earlier after retiring as a homicide detective with the LA Police Department, and he wanted the perspective of an experienced local hunter.

  Coconino County Arizona is huge. It’s the second largest county in the United States, but it has only 135,000 permanent residents. Mike had never heard the name Kinnickinick before the call, but his navigator showed a lake and a canyon with that name. The ruins were not marked on his navigation map. He knew that most remote ruins had been removed from both topographical maps and navigation devices decades ago to make it more difficult for them to be looted.

  A half an hour later, Mike was at Kinnickinick Lake. There were forests nearby, but a substantial area of grassland not yet green from the recent spring weather surrounded the lake. There were four campers parked near the lake and eight people fishing for trout along the shore. The road was always closed because of snow in the winter, and the lake and campground had only recently reopened. He saw Sean Mark walking between the campers taking notes. He was getting the identities of everyone present. Mike smiled. It was good to have a young man on his team with the initiative to take action without being told to. He pulled up next to Mark’s battered motor pool Explorer.

  “Did you learn anything from the campers and anglers?” Mike asked after Sean walked over to his Explorer.

  “I have everyone’s name, address, and phone number. Several people saw a red Xterra about two hours ago. It was headed toward the canyon. I assume it belongs to one of the brothers who discovered the body. No one has seen a cougar around since they arrived. The earliest campers arrived soon after the road opened last week. The pronghorn are among the cougar’s normal prey, and you can see a large herd on the north side of the lake.” Sean pointed.

  Mike looked and nodded. “Good initiative Sean. Have you ever been to this ruin? It’s not on my maps, but I have the coordinates.”

  “I can help find it, but I’ve never actually seen the ruins. I understand that it’s right on the edge of Kinnickinick Canyon. I know the general direction through this maze of jeep roads and junipers, and we should find the vehicle of the men who discovered the body about a mile from the ruin. We’ll need to walk along the canyon from there.” As they talked, three more vehicles arrived. One had the four deputies who would carry the remains, one was the van of Jimmy Hendrix the crime scene tech, and the third was the van from the morgue. They formed a caravan and followed Sean through the maze of jeep roads.

  Half an hour later they arrived at the clearing where a red Xterra was parked. A fit-looking man in his early sixties with rather long gray hair was waiting beside the vehicle to lead them to the human remains. He wore hiking pants, hiking boots, and had a maroon daypack on his back. His face was shaded by a straw cowboy hat, and he carried a hiking pole. His expression was grim.

  After introductions, Steve offered to guide them the remaining mile to the Kinnickinick Pueblo. Mike walked on one side of Steve, and Neil walked on the other. They wanted to hear his story.

  Jimmy Hendrix, the crime scene tech, got the four deputies to help him carry his load of equipment. Hendrix was twenty-five years younger than Mike, but not a regular hiker like Mike and Mike’s wife Margaret. Jimmy was really not into exercise, and he was still annoyed that they couldn’t take the department’s helicopter directly to the crime scene. The four deputies also brought the stretcher and body bag. They walked at a brisk pace, and Mike smiled at Jimmy’s heavy breathing.

  “Where’s your brother, Steve?” Mike asked the site steward.

  “He stayed with the body to keep the cougar away from the remains. We come to Kinnickinick Pueblo to check the site three or four times a year. The road is closed in winter so the last time the site was investigated was October 17th of last year. We’ve seen the cougar three times in recent years. She has a den not far from the ruins. It’s about halfway down into the canyon. Last year we could hear her cubs from the rim of the canyon, so we know she’s a female. She always runs away when we arrive so we were shocked to see her with the body.”

  “Your brother is not armed?” Sean Mark asked.

  “Only with rocks. If the cougar seems determined to reach the body, he’ll slowly retreat without turning his back on her.”

  Sean’s expression indicated he thought interfering with a mountain lion and her prey was a bit of a risk, but he said nothing else.

  Jimmy Hendrix, walking behind, had overheard. “I’m glad I’m with six armed men. If the guy is dead already, why fight with a cougar over the remains?”

  Steve explained, “We doubt the cougar took down the man she was mauling. I’ll let you be the judge once you see the remains, but there were no bite marks on the neck and there is a long blood trail. There has been recent digging at this ruin. My brother found three shovels and a pick at the site of a deep excavation into what was probably a burial area. It looks like an ancient burial site was disturbed and the artifacts removed. The bones were tossed aside in the dirt pile; there is no way a professional archeologist would behave that way. Why would ther
e be three shovels and a pick if the dead man acted alone? It seems unlikely that a cougar would have attacked three or four men carrying tools. Maybe the victim was already wounded when the cougar got to him. We heard his final horrifying scream, so the poor bastard was still alive a few minute before we reached him. It looks like he bled out in a very short time once the cougar got to him.”

  A man in a forest service uniform jogged up next to them. He tipped his ranger hat and nodded in greeting. Mike introduced Neil Cooper of the Forest Service to Sean, Jimmy, Steve and the four deputies who came along to carry the remains.

  “Actual cougar kills of adult men are extremely rare,” Neil, the chief law enforcement officer for the Forest Service of the Coconino National Forest explained. “The attacks have almost always been children without an adult present or men or women running, biking, or hiking along trails through the cougar’s territory. Almost every fatal attack was an ambush from behind. The Canadians even had a fatality of a woman skiing along a road in Banff National Park. In the Southwest, we’ve had only one fatality ever reported that didn’t fit the ambush from behind pattern. That death occurred in rural New Mexico in 1980. The victim was an adult male of fifty-five who was killed outside his mobile home. He wasn’t found for many days, so the investigators couldn’t determine the exact circumstances.”

  Following their brief conversation, they walked quickly toward the canyon edge and followed the canyon north toward the ruin. After a twenty-minute walk, they reached the remains of a pre-Columbian Native American pueblo constructed mostly of uncut sandstone slabs mortared together with clay. It had once been roofed with juniper beams, but in seven hundred years, the juniper had deteriorated and the roofs had collapsed and disappeared.

  This village had been built and occupied between 1200 and 1350 AD and consisted of about seventy-five separate rooms, probably one for each family. In places, it had once been three stories high, but now the higher floors were simply taller piles of tan stones or, in a few places, taller sections of walls. The higher stories had collapsed as the wooden supports deteriorated over the centuries. Some of the one-story sections were intact except for the missing roofs. Trees and bushes had taken over in places near the edge of the ancient pueblo. The main building was surrounded by the scattered remains of smaller stone rooms, granaries, and terraced fields. Other ruins were spread along the same canyon a few miles apart.