Tears of the Jaguar (18 page)

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Authors: A.J. Hartley

BOOK: Tears of the Jaguar
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Was it possible that someone she knew could have done this?

She tried to shrug the thought off, but she knew the police were right. Eustachio could have been killed by a neighbor or family member for some unknown personal grudge, he might even have been the victim of some psychopath who stumbled on him here, but it was considerably more likely that he had been
killed for the tomb treasures, and that pointed squarely at the archaeologists.

So now what?

They had been due to begin the excavation work proper in a week, once the interns returned from their break back in the States. But now everything was up in the air. The new find had derailed the schedule—albeit gloriously—and they were behind on the surveying. With a full-blown murder inquiry in addition to the less intense inquiry into the child’s bones, on top of the investigations into the theft of the grave goods, the site would surely be shut down. She should just tell Powel that they had to cut their losses and close the dig indefinitely. Then she realized that even if it closed, the authorities might not let the team out of the country. Might not let
her
out of the country.

God, what a mess,
she thought
. My mess
.

She leaned on the rail and gazed out over the site, the stone structures rising up out of the trees beautiful and awe-inspiring still, but tainted now by the pall of her failure. Her hair was tangled and thick with silt, her clothes still slightly damp. She squeezed her eyes shut, biting back the urge to shout or weep or
something
.

Bowerdale would have to stay to finish the surveying—assuming the police gave him access to the site. Aguilar could return home without difficulty. Rayburn, Rylands, and Stroud could all stay, she supposed, and get some productive work done on what they had already unearthed. There were, after all, bones to be analyzed, glyphs to be read, vegetable matter traces to be processed. Even the Brit could make himself useful with his camera. It was only Deborah, it seemed, who had no clear purpose
if they weren’t actually digging. But as site director, she couldn’t leave if anyone was doing anything, even if the police let her go.

What a goddamned mess
, she thought again. Then another thought, even more familiar:
You don’t belong here
.

That might have been the usual anxiety about her professional competence, but it went deeper than that. Up here on the tower, surrounded by jungle and by the structural remains of a civilization she barely understood, she wondered what she was doing here. This was not her world.

But then what was?

Below her a motmot lurched out of a tree and glided in a flash of turquoise and green onto a branch fifty yards away. As her eyes followed it she saw Nick, the British photographer looking up at her, watching. When he saw she was looking at him, he motioned her to come down. She shook her head and brandished her cell phone.

“I have to make a call,” she called down.

“What?”

“I have to call Cornerstone,” she shouted.

“Come down as soon as you’re done,” he yelled back. “The police want to talk to you again.”

She closed her eyes and nodded, suddenly exhausted. When she opened them she was annoyed to see he was standing there still, waiting to escort her back. She dialed the Cornerstone number, stabbing each key in turn, then taking a long, steadying breath as it rang.

“Steve Powel,” said the voice on the other end.

“Hi, Steve, it’s Deborah. Listen, I’m afraid something very bad has happened.”

She talked for two and a half minutes, and he listened. When she was done, he said, “OK. I’m going to have to make some calls. Can I reach you on this number?”

“I only get a signal when I climb the tower,” she said. “I’ll be up here as much as I can today, but the police want to talk to me so I can’t stay forever. We could set up a video conference for later if I can get to the lab at Valladolid?”

“Sounds good,” said Powel. “I’ll get in touch with the embassy. Anyone here you need me to call?”

Deborah thought of her mother at home in Boston, heard her sister’s voice saying,
Come pick through Dad’s things...

“Not yet,” she said. “Let me see where this is going.”

“OK. I’ll call back. And Deborah?”

“Yes?”

“Hang in there, OK?”

“Sure,” she said, and hung up.

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the English photographer starting to pace below. She turned to make it harder for him to see and dialed another number.

“Come on,” she muttered, as it rang. Almost immediately the phone was picked up.

“Federal Bureau of Investigations, how can I direct your call?”

“I’m trying to reach Agent Chris Cerniga,” she said.

She was about to add that she was an old friend of his, but decided that that wouldn’t help and wasn’t strictly true anyway. Their past interactions had been entirely professional, and in one of them she had briefly been a suspect in her mentor’s murder. There was a long, staticky silence, and then Cerniga’s voice came on the line.

“Hi, Chris,” she said, taking a chance at familiarity. “It’s Deborah Miller.”

“Let me guess,” he said, barely missing a beat. “International art smuggling.”

She didn’t attempt to prevaricate. “I wish it were that simple,” she said. “I need your advice.”

There was a long pause, perhaps while he closed an office door or sat down, then he said simply, “Go on,” and she told him everything: the find, the theft, the murder, the swarming police and their suspicions. When she was done, he blew out a long sigh, but when he spoke his voice was urgent and uncompromising.

“You need to get out,” he said.

“Out of town?”

“Out of the country,” he said.

“I can’t do that.”

“Deborah, listen,” said Chris. “The laws in Mexico are changing, but a good deal of it still depends on the old Napoleonic code, which for a lot of people still means guilty until proven innocent. They can arrest and hold merely on suspicion, and it could be months before you get out even if they can’t build a case against you. There are a lot of good cops in Mexico, but there’s also a lot of corruption, and a lot of police testimony is extracted from arrestees under severe duress.”

“You mean...”

“You know what I mean, Deborah. It’s not supposed to happen, but it does, and the courts often turn a blind eye if the confession can get a conviction. US citizens are subject to Mexican law while in Mexico, but they are also targets of extortion while in police custody, either as ‘protection money’ to other inmates, or in the form of bribes and fines to the authorities themselves.
US citizens have been beaten, raped, and killed in Mexican police custody. If you are arrested, it could be months before the State Department can put enough pressure on the Mexican government to get you out, and by that time who knows what you will have been through. So let me say it again, Deborah, and it’s what the embassy would tell you if they could: you need to get out of the country. Now.”

Chapter Thirty-One

 

Krista Rayburn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had told the policeman—a small man in a sweat-stained synthetic uniform who kept eyeing her breasts—all she knew, which wasn’t much. She folded her arms discreetly across her chest, but she had been polite and as open as she could be, which meant freely offering that she had no alibi for the hours in question because she was alone in bed in Valladolid. The policeman had smiled at that, but he didn’t seem unduly concerned, and when she got up to leave had simply said that he would like to speak to her again later. But now she was back with the other archaeologists and there was a brewing hysteria that caught her completely off guard.

“You’re suggesting we should run from the police?” she said, unable to suppress a smile. “Isn’t that a little melodramatic?”

“I’m just passing along what I’ve been told,” said Deborah Miller. “I suggest you take what action you think appropriate.”

“You think you can flee the country and the government will invite you back in to complete the dig?” said Rylands. The sneer he always seemed to wear had grown harder since the news of the murder. “If you leave now, you’re never coming back.”

“I can’t leave,” said Bowerdale. “I have to complete the survey in preparation for the dig for whenever things start up again. And for whoever leads it.”

Deborah Miller gave him a thoughtful look but didn’t rise to the bait.

“This is crazy,” said Krista. “If we hightail it out of here now, it just makes us look guilty as hell.”

“They already think we’re guilty, Krista,” said Miller. “A man—a local man at that—has been killed, a man who probably knew the whereabouts of archaeological treasures we unearthed, things
we
value more than anyone else would. And he died after suffering through the kind of ancient Mayan bloodletting rituals that aren’t exactly common knowledge, and on
our
site. Who knows more about those practices than us? The police would be crazy
not
to consider us suspects.”

Krista opened her mouth but could think of nothing to say. She looked to Aguilar, whom she’d quickly come to trust, but his face was unreadable. Stroud was exactly the same as usual, saying little, seeming hardly to listen and staring fixedly at nothing.

“I am not leaving till my work is done,” said Bowerdale again.

“Martin,” said Miller, quiet but urgent. “They could throw you in jail for months.”

“I can’t leave,” he said. “I won’t. We’ve made one of the most important discoveries in Mayan archaeology and haven’t even begun the work on Structure Three that we originally came for
! If I leave now, someone else will take over.”

“This is no time to worry about who gets credit for—” Miller began, but Bowerdale cut her off.

“It’s not about getting credit,” he spat. “It’s about being there at the moment of discovery, like Howard Carter at the tomb of Tutankamun, Leonard Woolley at the royal cemetery of Ur, Schliemann at Troy, or Arthur Evans at the palace of Minos in Crete. I could be Hiram Bingham, overlooking Machu Picchu. I will not give up my place in history because of a few bullying cops.”

Krista stared at him. What had begun as a little pompous but impressive had strayed over into something that looked—for the briefest of moments—like obsession. Miller seemed to recognize it too, because she raised her hands in surrender.

“You do what you think is best, Martin,” she said. “At least call the embassy and talk to them, and do it quickly. The police will act soon, I think. They don’t need much of a case to arrest us.”

“You’re going to leave?” said Bowerdale to Miller. “Isn’t the captain supposed to go down with the ship?”

Miller seemed to hesitate.

“Maybe,” she said at last, and she seemed defeated, shrunken. “But I didn’t sign on for this. If there was a principle at stake, that would be one thing, but to go to jail and deal with Mexico’s judicial system? No. I won’t go down with the ship, Martin. I also won’t stick around to get shot at again, and I’d advise you not to either.”

“What if we get caught?” said Krista suddenly. “Even if we jump in our cars and go, they can catch up with us or flag our passports so that we can’t get a flight.”

“You may have some time,” said Aguilar. It was the first time he had spoken up, and everyone looked at him, expectant. “There will be several branches of law enforcement involved in this and they will not be well coordinated out here. The
Federales
will be involved because you are foreigners and because of the theft, but they haven’t even gotten here yet. When they do, things will tighten up. But you may have a window. The dead man is a Mayan, not some Mexico City politician. The police will take longer to get seriously involved.” He said this last with his eyes cast down, though Krista wasn’t sure if this was embarrassment or something else. Guilt, perhaps. It lasted only a moment and when he looked up, he seemed determined. “If I were you,” he said, “I’d go now.”

Bowerdale turned away, staring at Structure 3.

“Thanks, Porfiro,” said Miller. “So. If you leave and they catch up with you, just tell them the dig had been closed and you were due for a trip home before coming back. No one told you not leave. I don’t see how leaving can be worse than being arrested on suspicion of murder. Once out of the country, I’ll talk to Cornerstone and our sponsors in the Mexican government offices to try and clear things up and—hopefully—prepare for our return. With luck, all this will blow over quickly, they’ll solve the murder, and we’ll be able to get back to work. And if anyone does stay and is arrested,” she said, looking pointedly at Bowerdale, “I will do everything in my power to see that they are released.”

Krista felt a rising sense of panic and something darker beneath it. She assumed it was fear of her predicament, but it was only later, after the group had dispersed to make their decisions and plans, that
it occurred to her what it really was. Everyone was acting as if arrest was an inconvenience, an injustice. But what if it wasn’t? What if the police were right, and one of them was a killer?

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