Exotic #02 - The Hieroglyphic Staircase (7 page)

He parked and slid down a grassy slope to the creek that flowed in fits and starts around islands of mud and debris. The early morning breeze carried the odor of garbage and stale urine. Under the bridge close to the cement supports lay pieces of cardboard carton that the boys slept on. Bits of broken toys dotted the ground. A solitary boy lay on a piece of cardboard, clutching his stomach, eyes mere slits as he watched Dominic approach.

“
Hola
,
muchacho,
” said Dominic, “have you seen Flaco?”

“
No, señor
,” said the boy in a weak voice. He was about six or seven, maybe older. “I haven’t seen him. He did not sleep here last night.”

“Does he usually?”

“
Sí, señor
.”

“Are you sick?”

“Just a tummy upset,” said the boy.

Dominic crouched beside him and felt his head. He was hot with fever. These children ate anything they could find and drank water from the stream.

“What is your name?” asked Dominic.

“They call me Gordo,” said the boy whose face and body were anything but fat.

“Will you come with me to the clinic so we can help you with your tummy upset?”

The child shook his head. “I will be all right. I just rest when this happens. The others will bring me food later. Right now I don’t feel like eating.”

Dominic knew these boys distrusted people in general. They had little schooling, and their world was limited to what blew into their young lives.

“Tell you what,” said Dominic. “If you come with me, I’ll take you to see our new medical clinic. The nice lady there can give you a teeny, tiny pill for your tummy upset, and a little hot tea that will settle it. Then maybe you can help me look for Flaco. I am concerned no one has seen him.”

The child looked at Dominic, the whites of his eyes were yellow and the lids drooped. He was in worse shape than he let on. He seemed to be weighing the pros and cons of trusting a big, white man who spoke Spanish with an Anglo accent.

“Okay,” he said. “But I can’t walk so good.”

“No problem,” said Dominic. He lifted him from the dirty cardboard before the child could change his mind and almost choked on the smell. The boy had been laying in his own filth. Dominic placed Gordo on the back seat of the Jeep on a sheet of canvas he kept there.

Lord God Almighty, why children? They are the innocents. What had this child done to deserve a life like this? The Catholic parish helped these youngsters. The Evangelists, who were relatively new on the scene, had an outreach center, the Episcopalians had a mission. But in a country as poor as Honduras, there were so many children like Gordo, it was hard to keep up. They appeared out of nowhere and disappeared into the same place. Maybe that had happened to Flaco, maybe he had just disappeared. But the disturbing fact was he had disappeared the same day a murder had occurred at Copan.

* * * * *

Elena sat behind a clump of bushes and watched the guard standing by the Hieroglyphic Staircase. He had told her no one was allowed in. She’d wait till he left. Even though he knew her and knew who she was and what she did, it had not moved him. The director had said to admit no one. He had been emphatic about the order.

She considered bribing the slender man whose eyes would not meet hers, but that went against her principles. She might have to bend her principles later, but for now she didn’t offer him any incentive.

The entire area around the Staircase, Ball Court and Temple of Inscriptions had been roped off, closed to everyone including tourists, workers and archaeologists. Behind the Temple was the West Court where she had found the man with the staring eyes. That too was roped off and guarded.

Elena had climbed through the brush to the East Court and sat with her binoculars, screened by bushes and a grouping of perfectly fitted stones. She couldn’t be seen by the guards, but from her high vantage point, she could see everything in the courtyard. She took off the canvas hat and fanned her face.
Madre mia
, it was hot and close. She wondered how long the guards would stay. Maybe all night. That would be unfortunate.

She had searched for the missing boy, combing the wooded nature trail adjacent to the main ruins in the Park, where ceiba, strangler fig and the chichicaste thorn shrub grew. She was careful not to touch the thorns because they produced a nasty sting. She searched along a dry stream bed and as far as the river bed that used to cut close to the East Court before it was rerouted so it could do no further damage to the stonework of the ancient temples.

She had found no trace of the boy. He must have gone into hiding. A growing feeling of apprehension crept through her insides like a sneaky jungle vine. The theft of the stones was bad, murder worse, the director was acting funny, and the little kid was gone. What was going on? Why had he disappeared?

The police inspector saw her as an easy solution to his problem. News of the murder was on national television. He needed to keep a cap on bad news, and if she were the culprit, case closed. He’d be the hero. She had seen lines at the bus station and a special charter bus to take away tourists, unnerved by the murder. Until the murder was solved, people would live in fear. The only recourse was to solve the murder herself and clear her name. In the process, she’d probably find out who took the stone hieroglyphs.

The guards were talking, the ones by the Staircase. Two more guarded the area where the body had been found. They started walking away. What luck. They stopped to examine something. Move, move along. She hardly dared believe they were leaving. Maybe they were taking a dinner break.

She wanted to examine the site. She wanted to look for what the inspector had missed, because she was sure he had missed something. Maybe something that the child had seen and that’s why he had disappeared.

The guards lit cigarettes.

Move on, move on.

They resumed walking, as if hearing Elena’s command, and they soon disappeared around the bend that led to the main path. Good. Now she could look. It would have to be fast because the sun was low on the horizon, and she didn’t know when the guards would return. Careful as a cat stalking a bird, she stood and peered about, using binoculars. After a thorough sweep of the stones of the pyramids, steps, courtyard, overhang of trees, bushes, even out to the river bank, she was satisfied that she was the only one left standing. Out into the open she stepped, hurrying to the place on the pathway where she had found the man. The inspector had not mentioned having found any identification. Had this man been walking in the Park without any?

She circled the site, calling up the mental image of how she had found the man, lying with his head in that odd, twisted position, staring at nothing. Where had he been going? Up the path to the top of the pyramid, it would seem. But why? What motivated him? Was he trying to steal the hieroglyphs? Why come this way when the Staircase was on the other side of the Temple? Surely, he wasn’t going to the top of the pyramid to enjoy the view.

The crowd of people who had gathered round the body had trampled the grass and small shrubs. A dark circle still remained on the path. Someone had tried to erase the stain with fine gravel but a faint outline persisted. Elena gazed in circles, not sure what she was searching for. She was operating on a hunch that the place hadn’t given up all its secrets. It was like searching for clues in the hieroglyphs that would give meaning to the text. What piece of the images would provide a link to the next? Why were certain flowers, heads juxtaposed? The expression on the face, the shape of the bulbous eyes, the wide, prominent noses, the. …

The bulbous eyes. She came back to the eyes. Was the man staring at something, instead of nothing as she had thought? She stood where the body had lain. Looking around first to make sure the guards hadn’t returned, she lay down as she remembered he had, trying to see, to look in the direction he had stared. A chill breeze brushed her neck. She jerked around. There was nothing there. Through sheer force of will she remained in prone position, gazing in the direction he had. Had someone been standing up there, had he seen something? Had another person come from behind and swung an axe? She couldn’t be sure but he may have been looking toward the top of the Temple.

She sprang up and brushed off, shivering in spite of the warm evening. The sun was setting. Dark shadows gathered. She rubbed her arms to quell the gooseflesh. She heard sounds that weren’t there during the day when she was working – odd rustles, shuffling noises in the foliage. The sudden screech of a bird made her jump. She searched in her vest for a flashlight.

Of course, she didn’t believe in ghosts, but if there ever were a time and place, this was it. Millennia of ancient souls, angry that their sacred site was disturbed, seemed to hover in the air. She was doing a good job of scaring herself. She was a scientist, after all. She had to pull herself together.

She switched on the flashlight and searched further down the path, looking for anything that didn’t fit the landscape. Something the police might have overlooked. At the bottom of the path, perhaps too far from the sight to be significant, the beam of the flashlight picked up something shiny. Probably just a silver candy wrapper from a careless tourist, but Elena stooped to look.

It wasn’t a wrapper. It was a medal, a religious medal, the kind Roman Catholics wore. She drew a tissue from her vest pocket and picked it up. The figure was worn, but she recognized St. Jude, patron saint of lost souls. Her grandmother used to wear one. This one had no chain, the hole worn through from many years of wear. Probably nothing. It might be from a tourist and had nothing to do with the murder. Elena carefully wrapped it in the tissue and put it in a vest pocket, intending to examine it better when she got back to her room.

A lone bird whistled in the gloom of the evening. She debated whether to camp out in the ruins. She had a few snacks with her and a water bottle. The night was warm. She could find a comfortable niche somewhere.

The snap of a twig changed her mind.

She switched off the light, shrank back into the brush and crouched, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark of the night. Minutes passed. Leaves rustled, this time closer. Maybe it was a small night creature foraging for food. She shrank against the rough bark of a tree.

Then she saw it. The outline of a figure, gray, luminous. It was so short, she thought it must be a small animal. But the outline was human, a man, muscular with some sort of a headdress.

No, she thought, I’m not seeing a ghost and a Mayan warrior ghost at that. It walked, more like floated up the path. But if it were a ghost, why had the leaves rustled and twigs snapped? She watched the mirage, some trick of her imagination. She blinked fast, trying to clear her vision. He was still there, short, almost a dwarf. But people back then, a thousand years ago were short. He carried something in his hand.

An axe.

She blinked her eyes, rubbed them, tried to refocus. The figure strode up the path with a stomping gait, heading toward the site of the murder. He paused, looked around then continued upward, disappearing into the building at the top of the pyramid. No, she wouldn’t be spending the night here. She took off running down the path, back to civilization, safety, and sanity.

Maybe.

* * * * *

A truck had arrived that day with a shipment of medical supplies badly needed in the clinic. Two exam tables came along with a sterilizer, cabinets and supplies – bandages, medicines, tongue depressors, hypodermic needles and more. Dominic had set up the exam tables, one in each of two rooms at the back of the clinic.

Little Gordo rested on one of the tables after a thorough exam by Corazón. Dominic had bathed him in the narrow bathroom in the clinic. The boy was so weak he hadn’t protest the scrubbing. Corazón had found a clean T-shirt from their supply of donated clothing and a pair of shorts a little big but serviceable. She had checked his head for lice, exclaiming over what a miracle it was this child had none, and had given him a pill to calm his digestive system.

“These children need to be in a home,” she said. “Why they do not stay at the Catholic relief house, I do not understand.”

Dominic understood. These boys were wild things, unable to live life penned up in an institution, preferring the life of a vagabond to life confined with rules and regulations. Because circumstances forced them into petty thievery, they feared incarceration if they were caught.

He finished for the day and checked on Gordo in the exam room to see if he were awake. The boy was sitting up, rubbing his eyes, scrutinizing the room.

“Feeling better?” asked Dominic, not turning on the bare light bulb in the exam room, but depending on the light from the waiting area to see.

“
Sí mucho mejor
,” said the boy. “
Hay de comer
?”

Dominic smiled. It was a good sign the boy wanted something to eat. “You may have some chamomile tea and crackers until your stomach feels better.”

He boiled water for tea on the single burner plate in the tiny kitchen of the clinic. A small refrigerator for perishable drugs, a sink and a cabinet rounded out what there was of the kitchen. Dominic found a box of crackers, stirred a generous helping of sugar into the cup of tea, and took the small repast to the boy.

Gordo looked at the crackers, his dark eyes wide.

“
Gracias
,” he said and gobbled the crackers two at a time, chewing with his mouth open.

“Here’s the tea. Sip it with the crackers. I’ll be back.”

He wanted to talk to Corazón. The boy couldn’t stay alone in the clinic overnight. They discussed taking him to the Catholic relief house for the evening and decided this was best solution. Dominic would drive the boy to the house to see if the nuns had room for him.

Gordo finished the tea and every last cracker crumb. Dominic explained where he was taking him.

“I don’t want to go.”

“You can stay there until you are better. You can’t spend the night under the bridge.”