Skull Duggery (25 page)

“Oh, I think I know what his motivation was.”

She looked sharply at him. “I thought you didn’t have a clue.”

“Not to his reason, no, but to his motivation, I think so, yes.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“His motivation was to prevent my seeing that skull this afternoon. What else could it possibly be?”

“Well-almost anything. I don’t know, maybe it had something to do with your identifying Blaze’s skeleton.”

“I guess so, but that‘’s already done; he couldn’t do anything to change that. Also, he found out about that yesterday, at dinner. He’s had all kinds of time to cook up some more subtle, less risky way to do me in between then and now-I don’t know, poison, an accident, whatever. But he didn’t. Then at, what was it, about eight o’clock this morning, he finds out I’m going to look at the skull this afternoon, and two hours later he’s shoving me off a wall in a public place. I can hardly imagine a more desperate, clumsy, dicey way to try to kill somebody. Why was he in such a hurry?”

“Because he had no time to plan anything fancier,” Julie said, nodding. “Because we were going into Oaxaca at noon.”

“That’s the way I see it.”

“Yes, you’re right, I think. But why was he so afraid of your seeing the skull?”

“Ah, see, that”s what I meant about the reason part. That”s the part I don’t know.”AS usual, Marmolejo didn’t seem to be doing much of anything when they got to his office. He was standing at one of the big mullioned windows, demitasse cup and saucer in his hands, tranquilly contemplating the peaceful scene in the plaza below. As always, he had on an embroidered white guayabera worn outside crisply pressed pants. His eyes lit up when he saw Julie, for whom he had a soft spot, and they quickly embraced, with the top of Marmolejo”s head coming up to the level of her nose. He called for more coffee at once, and pastries as well, sat them down in the cozy grouping of leather armchairs in one corner of the big room, and started chattering happily about old times.

“Javier, this isn’t exactly a social call,” Gideon said.

Marmolejo”s eyebrows rose. “I grieve to hear it.” He waited expectantly.

Telling him about what had happened at Yagul took five minutes. Explaining to him who Tony Gallagher was, and the whole twisted story of the Gallaghers and their Byzantine history, took half an hour, most of it provided by Julie. Corporal Vela had brought in coffee and a plate of chocolate wafers. Only Gideon, suddenly ravenous, had eaten any of the wafers, wolfing down four of them, when Marmolejo called a pause to ask Vela to contact the hospital in Tlacolula about Tony”s condition. The coffee had been drunk, and Vela had brought in another serving in fresh demitasse cups.

“And so you believe this attack occurred because he was afraid of what you might find when you looked at the skull?” Marmolejo asked as he spooned in his usual two teaspoons of sugar. “There was no history of animosity between you?”

“None. It’s got to be the skull.”

Marmolejo stirred, tapped the tiny spoon elegantly against the cup’s rim, and laid it soundlessly down in the saucer. “And of what do you think he was frightened?”

“We talked about that in the car,” Julie answered, giving Gideon a chance at another couple of wafers. “All we could come up with was that he was afraid that the skull would turn out to be Manolo’s-at breakfast this morning, we told him that we thought it might be.”

“And if it was? Why should that cause him concern?”

“Well, if he murdered Manolo-and if he killed Blaze as well-and wouldn’t it make sense that the same person killed them both?-then…” She shrugged.

“Then what? Let’s say he did kill them. Why should identifying the skull as Manolo’s, if indeed it should turn out to be, bring suspicion down on Tony Gallagher in particular?”

“We couldn’t come up with any reasonable answer for that either, Javier,” Gideon said, swallowing a slug of coffee to wash down the wafers. “We also couldn’t think of any reason for Tony to kill them in the first place. He wasn’t a betrayed husband or a jealous lover, after all; he was Blaze’s brother.”

“I wonder if we’re barking up the wrong tree altogether,” Julie said thoughtfully. “Maybe your going to look at the skull doesn’t have anything to do with what happened in Yagul. Maybe it is just an old Zapotec skull after all, and not Manolo’s.”

“That could be,” Gideon said. “But my intuition’s sure telling me otherwise. In any case, we’ll find that out this afternoon.”

At this point Corporal Vela came in with a sheet of paper for Marmolejo. “ Gracias, Alejandro,” he said, and scanned the few typewritten lines on it. “It’s about Mr. Gallagher. The hospital says his condition is critical but has stabilized. He is in a coma designated as a five on the Glasgow scale.” He looked at Gideon. “Is this something with which you’re familiar?”

“Yes, a little. The Glasgow Coma Scale-”

“Wait, start at the beginning,” Julie said. “What is a coma? He was already unconscious when they took him away. When does being unconscious turn into a coma, exactly?”

“Well, there is no ‘exactly.’ A coma is just a state of protracted unconsciousness. A boxer who’s knocked out and gets up a few seconds later wasn’t in a coma. If he’s still unconscious at the hospital an hour later, that’s a coma. If he’s still in it a month later, they usually reclassify it to ‘persistent vegetative state.’ If he’s still in it a year later-well, then he’s almost certainly never going to wake up.”

“And this Glasgow scale of five, what does that tell us?” asked Marmolejo.

“Not anything good, I’m afraid, as far as Tony is concerned. It’s based on a bunch of basic tests: you know, can he answer a simple question with a yes or a no? Can he move a limb or nod his head if he’s asked to? Does he react to being stuck with a pin? The scale runs from a three, I think, to a fifteen, with three being the lowest you can get.”

“So a five,” said Marmolejo, “would not be a very good sign.”

“A terrible sign. If I remember correctly, three to five generally means the person has probably suffered a brain injury that’s going to wind up killing him. Never going to regain consciousness.”

“Can he live a long time like that?” Julie asked.

“Not likely, but it happens. Comas aren’t very well understood.”

“So,” said Marmolejo, “wherever we find our answers to our questions, they are not likely to come from Mr. Gallagher himself.”

“I think you can count on that,” Gideon said. “Listen, Javier, I want to ask you something. You said nothing could be done about Blaze’s murder because the statute’s run out.”

“Correct.”

“And if this skull at the museum does turn out to be Manolo’s, the same would apply to him.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, doesn’t what happened today change things?”

“I don’t see how. Yes, of course we will look into it, but it’s a completely separate matter.”

“Is it? Here’s this peaceful little village, Teotitlan, that supposedly hadn’t had a homicide in umpteen years-umpteen decades -and now we find out that Blaze Gallagher, or rather, Blaze Gallagher Tendler, was killed ten years ago, only no one knew about it. And today, one day after I identify her body, and only hours before I go to look at a museum specimen that might be her lover’s skull, Tony Gallagher, Blaze’s brother, tries to murder me. And what about that mummified guy I looked at the other day-”

Julie shook her head. “Where does he come into it? I thought he was just a drifter who happened-”

“Who happened to be seen heading up toward the Hacienda Encantada, and who was found dead, murdered, a few months later out in the desert. That adds up to two certain murders-Blaze and the drifter-one possible murder-Manolo-and one attempted murder-me.” He had ticked them off on his fingers and now he held up his hand. “Four. Count ’em. Wouldn’t you say that’s quite a lot for this ‘peaceful’ little village? And wouldn’t you say the Hacienda connection runs rather distinctly through them all?”

“And you think Tony was behind all of them?” Julie asked.

“I’m not ready to go that far. I can sure tell you he was behind one of them.”

Marmolejo had been silent for a few minutes, having gotten up and gone again to the window, where he stood looking out with his hands behind his back. “I take your point, Gideon,” he said without turning around. “I expect that we will indeed be taking another look at Blaze’s murder, but I’m afraid it will be only to see what light it might cast on the attack on you. To her, the statute of limitations must still apply. If we should discover her killer, there will be nothing we can do about it.”

Gideon shrugged. “Good enough. I understand. What about this drifter, though? He was killed only a few months ago.”

“Oh yes, Manuel Garcia; we’re proceeding with that, as we would have in any case. Now, however, I think we will be inquiring more deeply as to what business he had, if any, at the Hacienda. Oh, that reminds me-” He turned from the window. “I received the report of his autopsy from Mexico City this morning. Apparently, it confirms your findings in their entirety.”

“Stabbed to death with a screwdriver?”

He nodded. “The chief examiner telephoned me to express his appreciation to you. Neither the screwdriver impressions in the bone nor the puncture of the chest wall by a rib was anything he had ever encountered or heard of before. He said he learned much, and that it was an honor to have ‘collaborated’ with el famoso Detective de Esqueletos.”

“Well, please let him know that I appreciate that. Did the report turn up anything new?”

“I’ve yet to read it. It’s still on my desk. Would you like to see it?”

“Gee, I wonder what the answer to that’s going to be,” Julie said to the ceiling.

Gideon smiled. “sure, just for a few minutes, anyway.”

Marmolejo went to his desk and got a thick, neatly opened envelope that he brought to Gideon. “I can show Julie around the building in the meantime, if she’d like. There are some interesting old corners that not many people get to see.”

“I’d love it,” said Julie.

They were hardly out of their chairs when Gideon, scanning the first page, asked with a distinct edge of excitement: “Javier, does placas y tornillos de fijacion mean what I think it does?”

“ Placas and tornillos are-”

But Gideon had already flipped to the sheaf of color photographs at the back. They had removed the mummified hide of the head to expose the skull and mandible, and there were photos. “Never mind,” he said, staring hard at the very first photograph. “I’ll be damned. This whole thing gets weirder by the minute.” He looked up at them. “I don’t know what it’s all going to add up to in the end, but there’s one thing I can tell you right now. Julie, you were absolutely right. Whoever that skull at the museum belonged to, I’d be real surprised if it turns out to be Manolo’s.”

“And why?” a frowning Marmolejo asked.

“Because,” said Gideon, slowly tapping the photograph, “that’s who this is.”

In the space of a few seconds, with very little help needed from Gideon, it became as obvious to them as it was to him. The placas and tornillos -plates and screws-were clearly visible in the photos of the bared mandible: three narrow, inch-long metal bands, each secured with four screws, which had been inserted to hold together the jaw that had been shattered by Carl Tendler almost thirty years ago. The two fractures themselves were long-healed, but the plates and screws remained.

“But wait a minute,” Julie said. “Didn’t you tell Tony this morning that you’d know if the skull in the museum was Manolo’s because they wouldn’t have removed the wiring yet?”

“Right.”

“ ‘ Yet.’ The implication being that, eventually, it’d be removed. Well, he was killed only a few months ago. Why is it still there?”

“Oh, this isn’t the wiring. The wires would have been between his upper and lower jaws to keep them from moving. They were taken out long ago. If not, he’d have been eating his meals through a straw all these years. No, these plates are put in to keep the pieces in place while they heal-like splints or casts, only on the inside. To remove them would take another operation-two operations. So unless there’s a problem-infection, say-they stay in for good.”

“Ah. But how come you didn’t see this when you looked at the body yourself?”

“Because it was covered with skin, which I wasn’t about to try to remove. It took an autopsy to reveal this, and I wasn’t doing an autopsy; I was just looking at the thing, helping Flaviano out.”

“Well yes, this is all very interesting,” Marmolejo said, “but right now I’m anxious to get started on what happened today.” He steepled his fingers at his chin. “I will send a man to the hospital in the event Mr. Gallagher should speak after all. And I will have someone go out to the Hacienda this afternoon to conduct interviews; perhaps I’ll go along. It may be that someone can throw light, even inadvertently, on Tony’s actions. You know how important it is to gather information quickly, while events are still fresh in everyone’s minds.”

“Well,” Gideon said, taking the hint and gathering himself together, “I guess maybe Julie and I will head over to-”

“And I guess maybe you’ll head over to the interrogation room with Corporal Vela, where you’ll make a detailed statement as to today’s events while they are still fresh in your mind.”

“Of course,” Gideon said, “although today’s ‘events’ lasted all of about two seconds. Listen, Javier, before we get started on all this, what about this guy, Manolo?” He brandished the file. “He was alive only a few months ago. The statute of limitations doesn’t apply. You’ll be looking into it, won’t you? Besides, there’s got to be a connection there to what happened to me, and to all the rest of it.”

“Yes, naturally, we’ll look into it. However, I think we need a bit more evidence than these placas and tornillos before we conclude that he truly is this Manolo. Other people have had broken jaws.”