Beautiful Sacrifice (8 page)

“You thought you saw a scorpion run across your shoe, stomped, and crouched down to make sure you nailed it,” Jase said instantly.

“Oh, right. Huh, the bug got away. But lookee here.”

Hunter hauled out a dark blue duffel bag.

“He can’t have had it long,” Jase said. “It’s clean.”

Manufactured by some company called Élite, the duffel was crisply cut from a thick, woven nylon that looked like it could stop a bullet. A cardboard sales tag still hung on one of the handles, fastened by thin nylon line. Academy Sports.

“About a mile from here,” Jase said. “Big place. Sells cheap. Open the damn thing.”

“The artifacts won’t be inside. Not heavy enough,” Hunter said, turning the top flap over.

Jase kneeled down and rooted around in the bag. He pulled out wadded-up paper towels. All of it came in three-sheet segments.

“Spread it out,” Hunter said. He took a double handful of the stuff and smoothed it over the dirty floor. “We’re not going to have the time or money to CSI this stuff, are we?”

“That’s only for big murder cases, not my-ass-is-in-traction moments.”

Hunter looked over the towels. There wasn’t much to see. “Even if the artifacts were wrapped up in these, there wouldn’t be much evidence of it. The obsidian wouldn’t shed and…”

“What?” Jase demanded when Hunter’s voice died.

“Most worked obsidian is sharp. It would tear the paper towels. See? This bunch of towels has little slits, like maybe they were wrapped around something sharp and it cut through.”

“Hey, there’s some dirt or something on this one!” Jase said, pouncing.

“Dial it down,” Hunter said. “The walls are listening. What do you have?”

“Looks like a piece of…pottery?”

“Wrap it up. I know an expert who can tell us.”

While Jase took care of the find, Hunter undid all seven zipper compartments in the duffel and ran his hands around the slick interior of the nylon. He found nothing but an inspection card and tissue paper put in by the original manufacturer to make the duffel look solid.

“This bag is really new,” Hunter said.

Jase scooped up everything but the tissue paper, pulled clean plastic bags from his wind jacket, and folded all the paper towels away. Everything disappeared into his pockets.

“I’d really like to talk to LeRoy Landry,” Jase said.

“I’d like to help.”

Hunter stuffed the tissue paper back in the seven compartments, zipped everything, and shoved the bag back under the bed. Together he and Jase did a fast, discreet search of the apartment. No cell phone, no regular phone. Nothing in plain sight, and no place to hide anything in the empty cupboards. The refrigerator held two beers and a few moldy lumps of something organic. There was a piece of paper halfway under the trash can. The top of the paper had an ICE logo. The rest was blank.

“Short of pulling up the floor, tearing apart the mattress, and axing the walls, we’re done,” Jase said. “Let’s haul—”

Squeaky brakes came to an ear-ringing stop in front of the apartment.

Hunter eased over to the side of the window in the main room, looked out carefully at the street, and held up two fingers.

“We’re outta here,” Jase said. “I don’t like jail food.”

Hunter followed Jase out the apartment door, pulling it almost closed, just the way they had found it. They shucked the exam gloves and crossed the concrete balcony to the top of the stairs just before company appeared.

Two well-dressed men, relaxed and hard-eyed, stepped through the useless security door and headed up to the second floor. In the sun, their long black hair was shiny, straight, their features more Maya than Mexican, and their cowboy boots blindingly expensive. Though neither man was above medium height, they carried themselves like they were ten feet tall.

One of the men showed a flash of recognition when he saw Hunter. Then the man’s face became expressionless again. Silently the two men climbed the stairs and stepped past Jase and Hunter, going single file.

Jase started down the stairs in a hurry.

Hunter swore loudly in Tex-Mex Spanish and grabbed the rail. “Damn cramp is back,” he said in the same dialect. He clung to the railing and flexed his left leg violently. His face was a grimace of pain.

Jase started to say something, then thought better of it.

The two strangers hesitated outside Landry’s door. They spoke in a language that sounded like one of the many native dialects that pocked Mexico, words from a time before Spanish sails had ever been seen in the New World.

Hunter couldn’t figure out a damn word.

“You okay, man?” Jase asked clearly in the same kind of border Spanish Hunter had used.

“Yeah, I’ll live,” Hunter answered in the same language, kneading his left calf and knee. “I’m too old to get beaten up in soccer scrums.”

Jase understood Hunter’s game immediately. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to dump you on your ass.”

“Yeah, yeah. Help me down. If we’re late to pick up your sister, she’ll kick my other leg.”

Both he and Jase were careful to keep their back to Landry’s door, but Hunter had unusually good peripheral vision.

One of the men knocked hard on Landry’s broken door.

“You want to lean on me?” Jase asked.

“I’ll walk. You get ready to catch me.” Hunter took a tentative first step and then hobbled very slowly down the steps, toward the busted street door.

Behind them Landry’s apartment door scraped open.

As soon as Hunter and Jase got out of sight of the building, they walked quickly to his Jeep.

“Let’s keep an eye on this place,” Hunter said softly in English. “The liquor-store parking lot down and across the way should work.”

“You like those dudes for something? They sure were too expensive for around here.”

“No crime to be a dude. But if their business is with Landry, then hell yeah, I like them.”

Hunter waited in the parking lot while Jase went inside. He came back out with a box of incredibly greasy burritos and something in two brown paper bags. Jase climbed in, handed over half the grease and one paper bag. They sat swigging water from the anonymous brown bags, wolfing down lousy food, and waiting.

Half an hour.

No one reappeared.

An hour.

Nothing but locals.

Another twenty minutes.

“I’m going in,” Jase said.

“What’s your excuse?”

Jase touched his shoulder holster under his wind jacket. “It’s called a nine-millimeter warrant.”

Hunter started to argue, but got out instead. It was Jase’s butt on the line, so it was Jase’s call.

They walked back slow and quiet. The afternoon was settling into heat with a slanting promise of evening. Eventually. The river birches that had been planted along with the buildings were the only break in the concrete and dirt.

The car with the squeaky brakes was still parked in front of the apartment building. The steps leading from the street to the apartment were still dirty, the security door was still broken, and the staircase to the second floor still complained. The only thing that had changed was the opening in Landry’s door. Now a small pony could walk through without sucking in its breath.

Beyond the door was chaos. Overturned table, chairs, TV knocked down, bedroom door wide open, ripped sheets, and trashed mattress.

“This was a message, not a search,” Jase said.

He drew his pistol, holding it parallel to his leg in case any civilians opened an apartment door. He and Hunter stepped into the destroyed apartment. Hunter went straight to the bedroom.

The blue duffel was gone.

Jase began swearing in the kind of gutter Spanglish his mother wouldn’t have allowed. Hunter joined him.

“Can’t believe they walked out right past us,” Jase said.

“Bet there’s a fire escape at the back. Or they just walked into a ground-floor apartment, threatened the occupants, and went through the window,” Hunter said. “Either way, they’re gone and we’re standing here with refried beans on our face.”

“What now?” Jase asked.

Hunter didn’t point out that it was the other man’s case. “Give me the paper towels and piece of pottery. I’ll drop you at your apartment. Or use mine if it’s too soon for you to be home. Can you run the plates on their vehicle from there?”

“Ten to one it’s stolen.”

“No bet. It’s a piece of junk. The two men were expensive.”

“I’ll do it anyway,” Jase said. “And I’ll see what I can shake out about LeRoy Landry. What are you going to do?”

“Find out what Dr. Taylor can tell me about the pottery.”

“A hot Latina and all you can think about is a broken pot. My man, I taught you better.”

Shaking his head, Hunter stalked out, leaving the apartment as he had found it.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

L
INA SAT IN HER OFFICE, STARING AT THE LINES SHE HAD SO
hastily entered into her electronic notepad. She printed them out and stared some more, hoping to see something other than Hunter’s slow grin and long body.

Nothing new or old spoke to her.

The artifacts have to be fake,
she thought.

Unfortunately, Hunter didn’t really care. Fake or straight from the ground on a sponsored dig, he wanted them.

If they’re fake, it doesn’t matter where or how they were “found,”
she reminded herself.

The relief was intense.

But she couldn’t afford to assume the artifacts were fake. If they were real, and her family was involved…

“Damn it, Philip. Return my call.”

But her cell phone remained quiet. So did her desk phone. Not that she was surprised. Out on a salvage dig in Belize, Philip couldn’t care less about the rest of the world. Even her use of the word “scandal” hadn’t piqued his interest.

It will take dynamite to get through that limestone block he calls his head.

Lina breathed out a few choice words and nerved herself to do what she didn’t really want to do—call Mercurio ak Chan de la Poole. During the looted artifacts scandal that had shaken her family, Mercurio had logically decided that being mentored by Philip was no longer a fast road to academic recognition. It hadn’t been a difficult decision. Not only was Philip an exacting master on dig sites, he wasn’t going to make room for anyone other than himself at the top of the pyramid. The scandal made a hat trick on the side of Mercurio working alone.

Lina had been there on the hot, steamy night when Mercurio and Philip had unloaded years of mutual tension. Mercurio had left at dawn and had never come back. He had kept in touch with Lina, though.

Sometimes too much touch. Especially after the scandal had died down. Lina never had been sexually drawn to the handsome young Mexican, no matter how delicate or deliberate his pursuit. Yet they had retained an odd kind of remember-when friendship rooted in past digs and present interest in Yucatec Maya artifacts.

Reluctantly she punched in the number Mercurio always made sure she had. The phone rang several times before a male voice answered in Spanish. Around his words she heard the sound of a sea breeze through open windows and the cry of birds. A cross between homesickness and nostalgia swept over her. There was no place on the earth like the Yucatan.

“
Hola,
Mercurio. It’s Lina Taylor,” she said, mouth dry.

“Lina! It’s so good to hear your voice again,” he said. “It has been much too long.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I just don’t get down to Tulum as often as I used to. And when I do it’s to see family or digs.”

“Ah, but you never find time to see
my
digs,” he said, his voice teasing. “You know that you’re more than welcome anytime.”

“Of course. You’re very gracious, Mercurio. You always have been.”

Somehow Lina managed the long minutes of polite small talk—family and digs and weather, new friends and old—while she waited for the right moment to introduce the reason for her call.

“Though truth to tell, I won’t be on the digs as much as I used to,” Mercurio said. “I’m in line for director of the department. Funny, no?”

“A desk instead of a dig? You never seemed the type. Always happier out in the dirt, like me.”

“Ah well, things change. Except for your father. His only change is to get more…”

“Difficult?” Lina suggested dryly.

She could almost hear Mercurio’s stifled laughter.

“I should thank King Philip for teaching me the importance of being politic,” Mercurio said after a moment.

“Are you kidding?” Lina asked. “Philip hates anything that doesn’t have him measuring a dig level, marking and mapping artifacts in situ, or gently brushing dirt away. He’s the least political academic I know.”

“Exactly,” Mercurio said. “Which is why he’ll be out in the rough instead of on the fairway.”

“When did you take up golf?”

Mercurio laughed. She found herself smiling. Laughter was one of the reasons they had remained friends despite the professional and personal tensions.

“But really, if not for Philip’s example of how
not
to do things,” Mercurio said, “I probably would have made a mess of my career.”

Like Philip did.

But neither of them said it aloud.

“Philip is the best technical archaeologist I’ve ever known,” Mercurio continued. “Sites he’s named are referred to constantly. Yet he, himself, is almost never cited directly. It is excellent that he enjoys his digs. He will be working them until he dies, and then all he will have to show for his life is dirty fingernails.”

Part of Lina wanted to disagree. The adult part told her to shut up and listen. Mercurio was her best sounding board for what was happening in the Maya artifact community outside the Reyes Balam family.

“But I’m sure that you didn’t call to hear what I think of your father,” Mercurio said smoothly. “We’re adults, and that is behind us. So tell me the reason for this delightful break in my boring day.”

Lina reminded herself that Mercurio was only being polite in the Mexican way, not actually flirting with her.