Page 29 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

L EAVE IT TO Watts to have a place in one of the prettiest spots of the New Mexico mountains.

Nora could see it on a nearby ridge: a perfect little log cabin with a green corrugated roof, tucked in among ponderosa pines, looking out over a meadow of wildflowers.

The late afternoon light was turning everything from green to gold.

Nora crept along the road in her Jeep.

She wasn’t happy about interrupting their romantic weekend getaway—but, damn it, Corrie had dragged her into this, and she needed to learn of Nora’s discovery right away.

As she approached the cabin, a figure came out on the porch, followed by another—Corrie and Homer Watts had evidently seen the car approach.

Nora was relieved—at least she wasn’t intruding on them at, perhaps, a most inconvenient time.

Neither looked pleased as she drew closer, until Corrie recognized her car and waved.

“This is a surprise,” said Watts, standing on the porch.

“What brings you out here?”

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” said Nora, “but there’s something Corrie needs to know. It can’t wait.”

“Come on in,” said Watts, “and have a cup of coffee, glass of wine, or something.”

“Thank you.” Nora hauled her briefcase out of the passenger seat of the Jeep and followed them inside.

It was a genuine old-time hunting cabin, built of hand-adzed logs notched, fitted, and caulked with oakum.

A Franklin stove sat at one end, with a fire going—at nine thousand feet, the cool afternoon was turning into a chilly evening.

An elk trophy with antlers was mounted on one wall, and a crossed pair of old snowshoes made with bentwood and gut were nailed to another.

An old flintlock rifle hung over the door.

A cribbage board hung on a hook, and an untidy shelf contained stacks of games and cards and old, half-full bottles of whisky and bourbon.

A couple of battered leather chairs and a leather sofa stood in front of the stove, with a crude wooden table that looked like it had been made with a hatchet.

“Very authentic,” said Nora, laying her briefcase on the table and opening it.

“Thanks,” said Watts.

“The place belonged to my granddad and I’ve left it as is.”

“I wish this could have waited until tomorrow,” Nora said.

“But it couldn’t. Not after what I read in the missing final chapters of Driver’s dissertation you gave me.”

Corrie’s eyes widened as Nora pulled the chapters out of the briefcase, along with some maps, and spread them out on the table, laying her cell phone next to them.

“Before you begin, sun’s below the yardarm—I’m having a bourbon,” said Watts.

“Will anyone join me?”

Nora said, “If that’s coffee on the stove, I’ll have a hit of that.”

“Coffee for me, too,” said Corrie.

He poured her and Nora mugs of coffee and, for himself, two good fingers of bourbon.

“Okay,” he said, smiling as he put down the glass, “now that I’m properly fortified, let’s have it.”

“Before I get into the details, I need to give you a little background on what’s known as the Chaco Phenomenon.”

“Chaco Phenomenon?” Corrie echoed.

“That’s what archaeologists call the civilization that thrived, and then mysteriously collapsed, in the Four Corners region a thousand years ago. From 900 to 1200 CE. It was a remarkably sophisticated and complex culture. The many tribes—they used to call them the Anasazi, but no longer—came together and built a city of immense buildings in Chaco Canyon. These dozen or so gigantic stone structures were four to five stories high and totaled many thousands of rooms. The largest of these was Pueblo Bonito, the largest prehistoric structure in America.”

“I’ve been to Chaco,” said Watts.

“Amazing place.” He took another slug of bourbon.

“But there was something they built that was as impressive as Pueblo Bonito,” Nora went on.

“An elaborate system of so-called roads. These roads radiated out from Chaco like the spokes of a wheel, spreading across parts of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. But these weren’t ‘roads’ in our sense of the word—the Chacoans hadn’t discovered the wheel and didn’t have any beasts of burden. They had no need for straight, wide, surfaced roads. But they built them nevertheless—running in absolutely straight lines of precisely the same width: thirty feet. Instead of going around hills and zigzagging into canyons as normal roads do, they sliced through hills to stay straight. The longest of these roads, called the Great North Road, goes for over a hundred miles in a perfectly north-south direction, better aligned than even the surveying lines laid down by American engineers in the early twentieth century. And they did all this without compasses, using only the sun and stars to fix direction.” She paused for a sip of coffee.

“For these reasons, and more, scholars and historians believe these roads had some sort of ceremonial purpose beyond mere travel.”

“So the chapters were about these Chaco roads?” Corrie asked.

“Indirectly, yes. But not just the roads—the lighthouses that ran alongside them, as well.”

“Lighthouses?” Corrie asked in a slightly skeptical tone.

“In the desert?”

“On the tops of pinnacles and buttes, the Chacoans laid down massive stone hearths, where they lit gigantic fires that could be seen from afar. These lighthouses were aligned in such a way that, in a single night, messages could be sent, by fire, across the entirety of the vast Chaco domain: over a hundred thousand square miles. And the roads seemed to follow the longest paths of the light.”

“So what were they for?” Watts asked.

“Navigation?”

“Definitely not, since the landscape already had many highly visible landmarks. Exactly what they were for is still a mystery. Was it to call the faithful to assemble, marching down the roads into Chaco for religious ceremonies? Or to communicate with the gods? Or to pass along vital information about weather systems, rain, and crops? Or did the system of roads and lighthouses have a military purpose? And if so, what? Who were they afraid of?”

“Aliens?”

“Very funny,” Corrie said, nudging him as he grinned and took another sip.

“The lighthouses are, in some ways, more mysterious than the roads themselves. Nobody knows their full extent, how many existed—there are so many spires of rock in the Four Corners area, it would take ages to inspect them all.”

“Sounds like an obvious task for archaeologists,” Watts said.

“You’re welcome to try. Anyway, here’s where we get to Driver’s last chapters. Once I read them, it became clear what the rest of her dissertation was leading up to. Take a look at this map of hers.” Nora pointed to one of the unfolded sheets.

“You see this line of dots, heading northwest? Those are known Chacoan lighthouses. Now, look here—farther along.” She pointed out several more spots, marked on the map in a rough arc.

“You see this arc? It represents seven lighthouse towers, extending the arc of known lighthouses. And each of those seven towers is a black volcanic plug. This one, and this one, are the badland pinnacles where the women’s bodies were found. There are five others.”

“No shit!” murmured Corrie, staring.

“Driver’s missing chapters speculated that the invaders the ancient Chacoans were so afraid of were none other than the Gallina tribe. And this arc of lighthouses—beyond any known before—was directly in line with the Chama River area, where the Gallina lived. Driver believed those seven lighthouses served as an early warning system, a kind of ancient DEW line, against a possible invasion from the Gallina.”

“How could she know that?” Watts asked.

“I’m not sure. It seems Driver never visited, or at least summited, the pinnacles she marked here across the badlands. It looks like her chapters were withdrawn before she could verify that the arc of volcanic plugs was, in fact, lighthouses.”

Corrie and Watts peered at the map.

“How weird,” said Corrie.

“It gets weirder,” Nora said.

“Driver’s dissertation advances a theory that she ascribes to Oskarbi. The origin of the Gallina has always been a mystery. Driver, quoting Oskarbi, says that the Gallina were a branch of the Totonteac Indians of Mexico. They somehow had a falling out, or split, and the Gallina people came north, up here, bringing with them their culture and religious practices. They ultimately came in conflict with the people of Chaco, who thought they were witches, or evil, or dangerous in some way—and wiped them out.” She paused.

“That last part, at least, is consistent with what is known: there was a devastating genocidal attack on the Gallina people around 1200 CE, which wiped them out in one hammer-like blow.”

“Jesus,” said Corrie, shaking her head.

“I’m a little confused,” said Watts.

“Who were the bad guys and who were the good guys here?”

“We archaeologists don’t make moral judgments like that. What seems evident is that the Chacoans lived peacefully until the Gallina arrived, who threatened them with violence and witchcraft. The Chacoans first built the lighthouses to protect themselves, but when the Gallina continued to menace and even kill them, the Chacoans finally retaliated—invading and successfully wiping them out.”

“Okay,” said Watts.

“I get it now. Being law enforcement, I like to know who’s right and who’s wrong.”

“In this case, as I’m about to show you, the Gallina were the aggressors. You see—” She hesitated.

“I drove up here to tell you what I found when I climbed the badland pinnacle above Molly’s corpse.”

“You did?” said Corrie.

“When?”

“Today.”

“By yourself? Alone?”

“Well, yes.”

Corrie laughed.

“That’s crazy. That’s like something I would do.”

“Maybe—if you knew how to free climb. But anyway, what I found at the top was a great hearth of flat stones scorched and cracked by fire, along with a sort of hut or storage chamber. Here’s what I found inside.” Nora picked up her phone and handed it to Corrie.

“Swipe through those photos.”

Corrie began swiping through them, her face turning pale.

“They weren’t just lighthouses,” Nora said.

“See all those bones? They’re a thousand years old, but you can still see the evidence of burning, the cut marks, bashed-in skulls—all signs of violent death.” She paused.

“Driver never explored the top of one of those seven black lighthouses. But I did get to the top of one. And I believe those bodies I found—the photos you’re looking at—are the remains of the lighthouse guardians.”

“You mean, Chacoans?” Watts asked.

“It makes perfect sense. The Chacoans hated and feared the Gallina—and the Gallina couldn’t have been pleased having these watchtowers on their border, keeping track of their movements. I’ll bet the Gallina did something about it. The fact those bodies were burned indicates they might have been sacrificed… by the Gallina. And, if you take that assumption to its logical conclusion, the killing of the keepers—seizing the DEW line, to follow my analogy—might in turn have been what precipitated the Chaco invasion of Gallina… and the subsequent genocide.”

She fell silent.

For a long time, there was no sound but the crackling of the fire.

“Human sacrifice,” breathed Corrie at last. “So these women who killed themselves, who went out to the pinnacles and died—they might have been part of some sort of resurrected sacrificial rite?”

“This thing runs very deep,” Nora said.

“And I don’t have a lot of the answers. But yes—the signs point to our dealing with human sacrifice. Today.”

“A cult,” said Corrie, a note of satisfaction in her voice.

“Yes,” said Nora after a moment. “Yes.”