The Dead Priest of Sedona Read online

  The Dead Priest of Sedona

  Book One 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. Although the author has lived in Sedona, Arizona for more than twelve years, the actual locations around Sedona may have been adjusted or relocated to improve the action.

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

  This work is dedicated to my loving wife, Diana.

  PROLOGUE

  Vatican City, October 2014

  Monsignor Francisco de Navarro, superior general of the Society of Jesus, opened the encrypted e-mail. It was from his agent in Arizona, a state that is part of the society’s province of California. He quickly read the message and transferred the detailed report to the digital shredder. The Holy Father had insisted that this research remain absolutely confidential, and there must be no written reports. Each month, Father Francisco met privately with the pontiff to update him about the project in Arizona.

  The superior general sat back in his wooden chair to ponder the disturbing news from America. For over four hundred years, his order had worked to convert the pagans, to show them the light of Christ and the one true way to salvation. Sometimes the Jesuits had succeeded, and sometimes they had found that it was not yet in God’s plan.

  CHAPTER 1

  As I drove to work that glistening morning, a dozen ravens played, soaring on the thermals above the uptown shops and enjoying the morning sun. On that radiant November day, neither Margaret nor I suspected that Sedona’s dramatic landscape concealed an archaic evil; our new hometown was not as idyllic as we supposed.

  A phone rang in my windowless little cube of an office at the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department’s Sedona Substation. A husky-voiced man asked, “Is this Lieutenant Damson?”

  “Yes, I’m Mike Damson. How can I help you?”

  “My name’s Kevin Riker. The Sedona Police told me to call you because it wasn’t their jurisdiction.” There was a pause as he inhaled; then he spat out, “I found a body on the plateau above the West Fork Creek. Some guy was murdered up there in the wilderness.” I could hear the stress in his voice. He sounded credible, not just a crank.

  “You’re certain the man is dead?” I asked.

  “Hell yes. He was burned to a crisp.”

  After a pause to process that information, I said, “Where are you now Kevin?”

  “I ran down through the West Fork Canyon and hitched a ride to Don Hoel’s Tourist Cabins on Highway 89A.”

  I instructed him not to leave the cabin area because I wanted him to take us back up the West Fork Canyon to the body. There had been no wild fires reported in that part of the Secret Mountain Wilderness. My mind wandered to weird things like spontaneous human combustion and more mundane things like a lightning strike. Homicide by fire seemed improbable. This caller might be nuts, but we needed to check out his story.

  I changed into my hiking boots and grabbed the crime scene kit. The kit contains most of the things needed for an investigation in the wilderness in an easy to transport backpack. I walked over to my partner’s cube. Chad Archer is about thirty. He gets bored easily and keeps late hours with his latest girlfriend who works in a local nightclub.

  I shook Chad to rouse him from his catnap and said, “Partner, we’ve been called to a possible homicide up in the Secret Mountain Wilderness.”

  “A murder here? Hot damn, this would be the first real murder I’ve worded on.” Chad had been with the department since he graduated from Northern Arizona University eight years ago. The town’s only recent homicide, a double murder during a burglary, had fallen under the local police department’s jurisdiction rather than the sheriff’s department.

  Last year, my wife Margaret and I had moved to Sedona after my early retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department. We both got bored within six months of moving to the scenic northern Arizona town and got jobs. A few months earlier, I’d been hired to manage the small Sedona office of the Coconino County Sheriff’s Department; Margaret took a job as a teller at the local Chase Bank branch. I had worked over two hundred homicides in my twenty-eight years with the Los Angeles Police Department.

  My new hometown is about twenty-five miles south of 7,000-foot-high Flagstaff, the county seat. We’re down in a piñon pine and juniper forest with a much milder winter climate. Sedona is nestled below the 2,000-foot high escarpment called the Mogollon Rim, which marks the edge of the Colorado Plateau. The erosion of the escarpment’s edge created the extraordinary rock formations that surround Sedona with red rock cathedrals, stone clipper ships, enormous sandstone battlements, and imitations medieval castles.

  Oak Creek Canyon, where we were headed, is a deep cut into the Colorado Plateau. Highway 89A runs parallel to the small mountain stream through a canyon lined with both hardwood and evergreen trees. Since Oak Creek Canyon is one of the most scenic areas of northern Arizona, especially in autumn sightseers crowd the two-lane road. Visitors are always looking up at the thousand-foot-high red and tan canyon walls, which make for slow but beautiful driving. The first of November is the peak of the fall foliage season, and many of the three and a half million residents of the Phoenix area drive to the high country to see the fall foliage missing from their endless-summer desert.

  It took us fifteen minutes to reach the collection of tourist cabins across the road from the clear waters of Oak Creek. As we approached the small store that served as the office, I noticed a young bearded figure seated on the grass. He rose as we approached. The lean and sunburned hiker looked like a rugged individual who could backpack by himself in dangerous country. He had intelligent hazel eyes and sun bleached shaggy hair. He smelled of wood smoke and too few recent baths.

  In late October and early November, heavy snow is always possible up on the plateau where Kevin had started his backpack. Since the Red Rock Secret Mountain Wilderness through which he’d hiked is totally uninhabited, there is no easy bailout strategy if a solitary hiker gets into serious trouble. I assumed Kevin must be a little foolhardy to do this three-day backpack from October 30 through November 1 by himself.

  We introduced ourselves to the young man. Kevin’s eyes showed his distress at his discovery, and his shoulders slumped either from exhaustion or anxiety. He spoke with a Texas twang. “I ran into a grizzly once on a trail in Montana, but I can’t imagine a more horrible encounter in the wilderness than finding this body . I hope to God I can forget it someday.”

  On the five-minute ride to the trailhead, Kevin Riker told us about himself. He was from a small north Texas town, Honey Grove. He’d graduated the previous spring with a petroleum engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin. Kevin was spending a year exploring the United States before he settled down at a job with an oil company. He did not want to tell us more about the crime scene and continued to say we needed to see it for ourselves to believe it.

  The West Fork Trail parking lot was crowded for a weekday because the fall colors were at their peak. It was colder here at the 6,000 feet elevation trailhead because the narrow canyon walls had not let the morning sun warm the autumn air.

  Chad offered to pack in the crime scene kit. I agreed, knowing that Chad liked to show off his stamina. He runs five miles a day just for fun. I was pretty sure that I would have trouble keeping up with him anyway. Kevin was probably even a stronger hiker than my partner. He’d spent the past six months doing nothing else. At his age of twenty-two, I was hiking through the jungles of the central highlands of the Republic of Vietnam and serving as an MP guarding VC and NVA soldiers with my South Vietnamese partner. />
  In our crime scene kit, we carry a satellite phone. It’s the only way to keep in contact in this road less wilderness of deep canyons, pine forests, and broken rocks. I contacted the dispatcher in Flagstaff to tell her we might need the helicopter for body removal later that afternoon. With a global positioning receiver and the phone, we could tell the sheriff’s helicopter pilot exactly how to locate the crime scene. If this actually were a murder, the county’s only crime technician would fly to the site to process the scene and then transport the corpse to the medical examiner in Flagstaff.

  After crossing a footbridge over Oak Creek, we hiked through an abandoned fruit orchard towards the access to the side canyon called the West Fork. The early settlers in the canyon packed the fruit by mule up to Flagstaff where it could be shipped by rail to other states. Oak Creek Canyon was once famous for its apples rather than its tourists.

  We soon reached the West Fork Trail turn-off at the ruins of the old Mayhew Lodge. The stately sycamores in the lower canyon were sunny-yellow with bushes of scarlet sumac clustered at their feet. Dark green pines accented the hardwood colors. The first mile and a half of the hike is easy and flat. The trail crosses the narrow West Fork Creek a dozen times, but in most places the creek is less than a foot deep. The biggest danger in a normal West Fork hike is wet feet from slipping off a rock as you cross the stream.

  After two miles, the canyon narrows to steep-sided cliffs that force the hiker to wade in the spring fed creek. The Narrows section of the hike is fun in summer, but in autumn no one hikes past the Narrows. However, it is only past the Narrows that camping is permitted. This upper West Fork Canyon area of Coconino County is a true wilderness. There is no access except by foot after a long wade or by climbing down from the Rim.

  As we paused at a creek crossing to let other hikers jump from rock to rock, Kevin explained, “I left the main trail to find a camping spot. The next morning, I missed a cairn and wandered to the spot where there was a weird circle of pine trees. It didn’t look natural, and I smelled burnt meat. When I looked inside the circle, I found the roasted body.”

  I stumbled slightly when he used the word roasted. I had a difficult time not pressing him for more description of the crime scene, but he had insisted that we should see it ourselves. “Did you see anyone else during your hike, Kevin?” Because of the need to hike through a mile of cold water in the West Fork Creek, this was a summer backpack. Everyone from Flagstaff or Sedona avoided it this time of year.

  “Not a soul up on the plateau. I saw my first hiker on the trail down here in the West Fork Canyon.”

  We hurried along the West Fork Canyon Trail, passing thirty other hikers enjoying leisurely walks. We made good time, moving at slightly less than a jog. The maples along the West Fork Creek were in full color. The red, orange, and cinnamon-sprinkled leaves floated around us covering portions of the trail and drifting along like boats in the clear water of the creek. As a native of Southern California, I admit to a fascination in actually seeing the change of seasons here.

  As we rested a minute at the sunny spot, I asked Kevin how he had waded down the slot canyon through the mile of frigid creek water in early morning.

  “I had no idea how cold Arizona could be this time of year. When I got to the water, I stripped down to my boxers and carried my pants and boots. My feet went numb within a minute, and I had trouble with my footing in icy spots. After I got through the water, I ran the rest of the way . ”

  “Did you know this hike included wading for a mile?” I asked.

  “Yep. I read a hiking book about it. Believe me detective, I’d have waited until it warmed up this afternoon if that body hadn’t scared the piss out of me. I wanted out of that area quick.”

  When we reached the entry to the Narrows, the hardwood trees were bare and frost was visible in shady spots under the pines. We followed Kevin’s technique to traverse the narrow canyon through the cold creek. We took off our pants and shoes. Wearing only our boxers and wool socks below the waist, we hiked into the frigid water. The hike was uncomfortable, but the water was only about two and a half feet deep in the deepest hole we needed to cross. My right leg throbbed from the cold, but I forced myself not to limp. I would not ask the younger men to slow down for me.

  All three of us were shivering when we reached the cliff face that Kevin had descended to reach the slot canyon. A diagonal fracture in the canyon wall led up to the rim about six hundred feet above. We dressed and began the climb. In places, the fault left only enough room to put one foot in front of the other. I understood why Kevin had left his pack at the top. This was a dangerous climb over soft sandstone, and the pack would have made it much more difficult for him to keep his balance while coming down.

  There was only the one set of previous footprints; they were from Kevin’s boots.

  Margaret and I have hiked regularly since we moved to Sedona, but not on trails with footing this bad. I hoped for a helicopter ride back to town or a hike out to some other trailhead.

  When we reached the 7,000 feet level of the plateau, I was breathing hard, and my injured leg ached more than it had anytime in the past year. I was grateful that Chad had carried the crime scene backpack; my partner must have enormous lungs from all that running. He was not even breathing hard from the six-hundred-foot climb wearing the forty-pound pack. Kevin retrieved his own backpack from behind a boulder, and we all sat down on rocks to rest and change our wet socks.

  Chad took a drink from his canteen and asked, “It looks like you took a bullet in that right leg, Mike. How did that happen—on the job, or when you were in Nam?”

  “A guy named Jimmy Cookson put that round into my leg as I was putting one through his forehead. We’d used DNA evidence to identify Cookson as the perp who mugged and slit the throat of the Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. I’d gone to his girlfriend’s apartment when the murderer came to the front door gun in hand. I was lucky; Cookson wasn’t.”

  He nodded and asked, “Does it bother you much?”

  “It’s completely healed now,” I lied. I’d only been on the job in Sedona a few months, but I was surprised that Chad hadn’t heard why I was forced to retire early from the LAPD. The sheriff had to intervene to get me past the sheriff’s department physical.

  The three of us sat resting for a few minutes, eating power bars, and drinking from our canteens. I asked Kevin how far we were from the body.

  “It’s only half a mile from here, but I’m not going anywhere near that corpse again. I can still smell it. Maybe I’ll never get the smell and the sight of it out of my head. I’ll lead you guys to the edge of the grove. There’s a dense stand of ponderosa pine. Once you enter the clearing, you’ll see the body.”

  Kevin led the way, backtracking his route of the early morning. We crossed the treeless edge of the plateau in single file looking down to watch our footing on the broken volcanic basalt. We walked without talking through the unspoiled wilderness toward the crime scene. Several ravens squawked and circled overhead.

  CHAPTER 2

  Chad and I followed Kevin to a dense stand of ponderosa pine. These were not the old growth giants that are sometimes found this far from the nearest logging road. These younger ponderosa were probably the result of re-growth after a fire many decades earlier. In mature form, ponderosa produce a rather open forest at ground level with a shaded mat of fallen needles and cones covering and softening the rocky ground. This thicket was too dense to see what lay within.

  On the sunny ground at the edge of the grove, Kevin dropped his pack and sat down. He declared, “I’m damn sure not going to look at him again.”

  I nodded. Kevin had gone out of his way to report the crime, even putting himself in some danger to get quickly to a phone. We’d let him stay here if he wanted. It was best if there was no further disruption of the crime scene anyway. Chad and I said we’d soon be back for him.

  We walked into the gloom of the ponderosa grove, moving the lower branches aside to open our path.
In the deep shade of the small trees, there were traces of last night’s snow on the needle-covered ground. At over seven thousand feet, snow wasn’t unusual on the first of November. In another month, portions of the plateau might be covered until spring. This high country sometimes had four feet of snow covering the ground by mid winter, which would last until April or May. We crunched through the light snow and pine needles almost holding our breaths. Kevin had convinced us that the crime scene would be horrible.

  As we neared the inner grassy clearing, we saw it was dominated by an ancient and twisted alligator juniper, Chad said, “Mike, I’ve never even been to a murder scene. I’ve seen a couple of suicides and a dozen auto accidents but never a murder.”

  I said something intended to be reassuring as we entered the light of the clearing, but my reassurance was interrupted by my own gasp. Before us was a hundred-foot cleared circle around the largest alligator juniper I had ever seen. Hanging from one of the tree’s stout branches was a large logging chain that suspended a black metal cage. The body in the cage left me speechless. My stomach knotted and my heart raced. The smell of burnt flesh was overpowering.

  Below the gnarled juniper, the enigmatic light revealed a charred body locked within the metal cage. The smoked-blackened arms were reaching up through the bars as if in benediction. The coal-black face was looking skyward as if for salvation. The lower half of the body was almost cinders. A fire had been built below the steel cage and its occupant burned alive.

  I could hear the sound of my own blood pulsing through my ears. I could hear the sound of Chad gagging and vomiting in the grass. The wind shifted the pine boughs, and a woodpecker tapped in the distance. A squawking raven took flight from the juniper, night black against the indigo sky.

  I shifted my mind into my murder detective mode, forcing both compassion and abhorrence to retreat to the deeper place. It would take Chad some time to regain his composure; I’d been to my first murder scene before he entered grade school. Taking the crime scene pack from him, I retrieved both the 35 mm and digital cameras. “Stay put partner, there’s no need for both of us to disturb the crime scene.”