Free Black Sun Descending by Stephen Legault

think he might have been buying into a rafting outfit.”
    â€œIs that legal? Can a superintendent do that?”
    â€œHow should I know? But I bet if he was, and Vaughn was making the moves to shut down motorized rafting in the canyon, he would be plenty pissed off.”
    â€œWhat’s the name of the outfit?”
    â€œVaughn just says she thinks his relationship with Grand Canyon Adventures is too tight and accuses him of improper associations. There’s a letter here from Paul Love, the owner, telling Jane she should go jump in Lake Powell. We should go and brace these guys. They have a sales office here in Flag. Let’s go see what we can find.”
    â€œHold on! I’m not going to break into another business. It’s bad enough that we’re sitting in here, in the dark, riffling through Jane’s stuff. The FBI would have our asses if they caught us.”
    â€œI think Penny went up against these guys a few times. GCA , she called them. She mentioned this guy Paul Love a few times . . .”
    â€œBe that as it may, I’m not breaking into their offices.”
    â€œSuit yourself.” Hayduke shrugged. “What else you find?”
    â€œSomeone from the Page City Council was pretty riled at her. A woman named Terry Aldershot.”
    â€œTerry the Terror. That’s what we used to call her. She’s a soccer mom on steroids. Hundred and twenty-five pounds of hairspray and mascara who could rip the skin off a Gila monster with her pearly white teeth and look like a million fucking bucks doing it.”
    â€œWell, she didn’t seem to make Jane Vaughn welcome in Page. There’s a letter here, on the town’s letterhead, basically telling Vaughn to stay out of Page.”
    â€œLet me see that.” Hayduke laughed out loud. “Wow, this is really something else. I’ve never seen a municipal politician use such colorful language. But we are talking about Arizona here, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.” He kept reading. “If we had some kind of suspects list, we would have to put Terry the Terror on it. Her husband too.”
    â€œWhat’s her husband got to do with it?”
    â€œBalin is his name. Like bailing wire, but different, you know? He’s a businessman. He’s into trucking, highway contracts, that sort of thing. He had a gig with the Navajo Generating Station, and I think he’s got the contract to maintain some of the highways up around Page. Terry is on the town council to protect her husband’s business interests.”
    â€œI think they have a word for that: nepotism.”
    â€œIn Arizona—hell, in the whole fucking Southwest—we just call it good business.” Hayduke handed the letter back to Silas.
    Silas put it back on the pile. He patted another stack of paper. “This pile has angry letters from someone named Jim Zahn—”
    â€œSlim Jim! That bastard.”
    Silas shook his head. “Do you know this guy too?”
    â€œEverybody knows Slim Jim Zahn. Everybody who is an environmentalist, that is.”
    â€œSorry not to be in the club.”
    â€œWell, Pen sure knew this slippery fucker. When we were advocating for a ban on new uranium mines on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, through the Arizona Strip, this guy was the number one opponent.”
    â€œDoes he have mines there?”
    â€œA few, and he wanted more. But the Department of the Interior, and the Bureau of Land Management, shut him down. It was a big victory. Too bad Pen wasn’t around the see it. She would have been pretty happy.”
    â€œWhen did this happen?”
    â€œLike, a year ago?”
    â€œSo after Penny disappeared, but before Jane Vaughn was killed.”
    â€œYeah, I guess.”
    â€œWhat else can you tell me about Mr. Slim Jim?”
    â€œWell, he’s built like Ichabod Crane. The dude is like seven feet tall and weights a hundred pounds. What else