True-Life Adventure

the least we can do,” I said. “I mean, I want you to know I really appreciate what you’re doing.”
    “But, Paul—” she looked bewildered. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it for Lindsay.”
    Of course she was. I’d forgotten that, and that’s yet another example of how self-important a reporter on a story gets.
    Next we went to work on the Lindsay-catching logistics. Here’s how it all shook down: We’d stay that night at the Grand Canyon Auto Cabins, auto or not, and the next day we’d take the mule train to Phantom Ranch.
    The Bright Angel Trail is eleven miles and the Kaibab Trail is eight miles, so you can hike down— the only problem is that you have to hike up again and who needed that?
    The next twenty-four hours were among the finest of my misspent life. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the place and feeling very close to Sardis.
    We wandered around hand in hand for a little while, but we’d been up all night the night before, so pretty soon we went back to the Auto Cabins for a nap. We made love before we went to sleep and again when we woke up and yet again when we came back from dinner. There was something very relaxing about being on the rim of the deepest chasm in the world.
    As I was drifting off to sleep, I thought happily that this night had certainly been different from the one before. My relationship with Sardis didn’t make me feel so pressured here; despite the seriousness of our mission, it felt rather like we were on vacation and I wished it could go on awhile. Recalling the ignominious night before, I remembered that the mind had worked about as well as the body— there had been something, something about the murders that I couldn’t get the hang of. I went back over it.
    It was something trivial; something someone had said. I could hear the words, but couldn’t see that they meant anything. It was like one of those puzzles in which you have to guess what’s wrong with this picture. You stare and stare at it and it looks fine. Then, in a split second, the thing that’s wrong sticks out like it’s three-dimensional, and you can never look at the picture again without seeing it. That’s what happened that night at the Auto Cabins. I remembered the incident and it looked fine. Until suddenly I saw what was wrong with it. I went to sleep knowing who the murderer was.
    If you haven’t ridden a mule to Phantom Ranch, do it. You start off very straight down a long plateau, where the rock is red and gold and very beautiful. Then you enter the eerie inner gorge and the weather changes. It’s sunless there, and surprisingly cool, with only a narrow slice of sky. For the first time, you can hear the sound of the river.
    Near Phantom Ranch, though, the river is quiet, and the ranch is tucked into a valley full of cottonwoods. I think that ride might be a great opportunity for a spiritual experience if it weren’t for the pain. It’s pretty hard to leave the physical plane with your ass throbbing.
    But a sore bottom is a small price to pay for the pleasure of the trip. It was easy to forget Jack and Brissette and Tillman and all the rest of the whole Koehler mess, and we did. We were happy together.
    That day and the next one, when we did nothing but sit on the bank of the river, are a rosy-gold blur to me. We sat there on our damaged fannies and watched raft after raft float by, and there seemed no higher purpose mankind could serve. And then, all of a sudden, Sardis was on her feet and yelling. She was wearing shorts and I was momentarily distracted by the sight of her legs.
    Then I saw Lindsay Hearne in a raft coming towards us. I got up and started yelling too. Lindsay looked panicked.
    Sardis was hollering something about an emergency, and I chimed in. I felt very sorry for Lindsay. The day she’d left the Lazy C Ranch, Jack Birnbaum was dying in my living room. Even if she were still in the Chronicle circulation area the next day, his obit would have meant nothing to her. She had no way to know his death was connected with her or that he was even looking for her. By the time her lover and her former lover died, she would have been too far away for the news to reach her. One death was supposed to be an accident and one a suicide, so they wouldn’t have been news outside of San Francisco.
    While Brissette and Tillman were dying, she was sightseeing with her daughter, maybe looking at oversized cacti and Indian artifacts, having a few last days of happiness