Star Gift

Prologue

Blake Henderson was a sophomore at the University of California, Santa Cruz, when he got a call from his mother that his estranged father had been found dead in Arizona. His body had been found just outside the remote town where he had lived most his life. It was, of course, a shock to the young man, who was living his second year in the UC's dormitory. Though the serious of this news was not completely devastating to the tall, handsome twenty-year-old. Blake had lived virtually his whole life not really knowing the man whom his mother spoke of only rarely as "your father." Fortunately for Blake, growing up in a suburb of Los Angeles, his mother had managed to pick up the pieces of her failed marriage and provide for herself and young boisterous son, working for years as a copy editor for the Los Angeles Times.

The details surrounding William Henderson's death were sketchy, and the shooting had still, after several months, not been determined to be an accident, a murder or suicide. This was the state of affairs when Blake was asked by his mom to attend to the business of driving from California on his Spring Break, east across the desert to the little town Kayenta, Arizona. There he was allowed to claim what little there was materially of a father whom the young man, unfortunately, had never really known.

Yet, it wasn't what scant belongings the mysterious man had amassed, living humbly in his dilapidated mobile home—parked permanently on Native American land belonging to the Navajo Nation. It was a small item, found quite by accident while Blake rifled through his absent father's other, mostly useless items, that was noteworthy. As Blake reluctantly evaluated worthless articles of clothing, magazines and books, along with scorched accoutrements for cooking, a small object fell out of a worn boot. It happened as Blake was simply throwing such articles into trash bags to discard as rubbish.

He noted with some interest that it was a simple key with a circular paper address tag wired to it. Farmington, NM, the small label revealed in erratic handwriting, along with a barely readable street address. Blake put the key almost absentmindedly into his pocket, assuming its fate might be decided later that night, when he and his friend, Russel—enlisted faithfully for the expedition, would drive exhaustedly to the nearest town to find a suitable hotel to spend the night.

Little did either of the young men know what revelation the small key in Blake's pocket would eventually reveal to the world.

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