Tears of the Jaguar (19 page)

Deborah spent an hour with Eustachio’s family at their square cinderblock house in the village. She was anxious to be gone, but she had to at least acknowledge the man she had known in the presence of his family, and she needed to see Adelita again. As she approached the house, she put her hands behind her back, trying to fight the impulse to check her watch. She hadn’t known what to expect and was braced for both expansive grief and accusations of responsibility. It was, after all, her dig. What she found in the little spartan house was, however, something quieter, sadder. Juan fiddled with the heavy knot at the end of the hammock he was making, and Consuela washed clothes in the sink, from time to time arching her back to balance the weight of her pregnant belly. Adelita made tortillas in the cabana behind the tiny house, patting out the cornmeal, squeezing it into shape with her fingertips, and dropping each one onto the
flat pan over the fire. She didn’t speak and didn’t cry, but she looked older than ever, weary somehow, as if a little of her childhood had been siphoned off overnight.

Deborah offered to help each of them in their tasks, but though they were polite they didn’t want her help. Adelita’s parents spoke little English and Deborah’s Spanish wasn’t up to serious conversations about death, so she sat with the child, watching her turning the tortillas with an almost mechanized precision, plunging them briefly into the fire itself till they puffed, then stacking them and moving on to the next.

There was a math textbook by the fireplace, dog-eared and grimy from use. Deborah had seen the girl engrossed in it, smiling delightedly to herself as she worked out the answers to her homework. And what would she do with math? Use it to count knots on a hammock, or measure out cups of corn flour?

So what if she does?
There are more versions of success than yours.

But looking at the girl, she wanted to envision a bigger future for her.

After a while she heard the TV go on in the house, heard the crack of an opening beer can, and decided she could wait no longer. She hugged the child, feeling the girl’s thinness against her chest, told her that she would see her again, and left.

“I’ll come back to see you,” she said. “Soon.”

A promise.

On the way out she tried to speak to Juan, but his eyes wouldn’t leave the television, and, feeling suddenly uncomfortable, she left. She was already in the street before Consuela called her back.

“You think it was one of the archaeologists?” she said.

Deborah had never heard her speak so much English so the question caught her doubly off guard.

“The police seem to think...” she began, but the Mexican woman stopped her.

“What do
you
think?”

Deborah had no idea. She thought for a long moment, and the weight of the question settled on her for the first time since the possibility had been raised.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I hope not. I hope...”

But she couldn’t think of a way to end the sentence that wouldn’t be insulting.

I hope it had nothing to do with me, that it wasn’t my fault.

She thought of the gemstones that Adelita had described as the color of blood and tears mixed, then shook her head and smiled sadly.

“I am sorry for your loss,” she said, hearing the hollowness of the phrase as it came out. “Eustachio was a good man. I will do what I can to help find the person who did this.”

Consuela’s frank, appraising eyes held hers for a long moment, and then she nodded in acknowledgement and turned back inside, where the TV seemed to have gotten louder.

The two graduate students opted to stay in Mexico. They told Deborah that their plan was to lose themselves on the beaches south of Cancun. That way, they could get back easily enough if the situation improved.

“At least there we’ll be able to get a cell phone signal without having to build a siege tower,” James quipped.

Bowerdale had insisted on staying, and Aguilar said he would stay on for a while before returning to Mexico City, where Krista also planned to spend some time. Rylands wouldn’t say what he was doing, but when it was time to head out to the airport he made no move to go with them, so Deborah drove to Cancun with only Nick Reese and Marissa Stroud for company. Before leaving, she ran inside the lab in Vallidodad and took the external hard drive that stored the video, pictures, charts, and documents they had built after discovering the new tomb. There was still so much to figure out.

Deborah avoided the toll roads with their checkpoints and groups of heavily armed police, and checked her mirrors constantly. The road took her through towns and villages where they had to crawl through traffic, often reduced to ten miles an hour because of the numerous, oversized speed bumps that Reese, sitting next to her and navigating, called Sleeping Policemen. Normally this would have struck her as funny, but today she was not in the mood.

She had left most of her things at the Oasis cabana. Deborah gripped the steering wheel and tried not to think of Eustachio’s gaunt, smiling face. She couldn’t suppress the thought. She had to wonder if she was aiding his killer’s escape, and suspected the same question was in the minds of the others. After the murder, everyone on the team had simply stopped talking to each other. Professional rapport didn’t amount to trust or to the certainty of innocence in a case like this. She reminded herself of the two promises she’d made to Eustachio’s family: that she would return, and that she would help find the person who had tortured the old man to death. She kept those promises at the front of her mind as she stared at the road ahead. She
would
keep them. She had to.

Reese talked as they drove, describing his boyhood in Lancashire and how out of place he felt when he first moved to London, where everyone sounded so different. He said he wished they’d had time to find some really spicy Mexican food and wash it down with a couple of cold beers. He asked her about her work for the museum and even managed to get her to admit that there was no one special in her life. He raised it casually like it was just another professional detail, but his eyes flicked to hers and his shrug didn’t completely hide what looked like genuine interest.
Another day, she might have been flattered, and even with all the other stuff in her head she found herself smiling briefly as she turned and looked out of the side window. Throughout, Stroud sat in the back saying nothing, apparently unaware that the conversation was taking place.

In the airport, she took leave of Reese and Stroud, ducking into the bathroom to let them get ahead. When she emerged, she looked around the airport for signs of anyone watching her closely—particularly police—then checked her watch. She had no idea how long it would take for some kind of flag to be placed on her passport. It may have already happened. She wouldn’t know until she tried to get a ticket, and maybe wouldn’t be alerted to the fact until she actually tried to board the plane.

Deborah’s smart phone chimed: a new e-mail message. It was from Aguilar and contained two links, a table of numbered data, and a single sentence. The first link took her to an obscure local history and archaeology journal coming out of Lancaster University in Northwest England. The article entitled “Pendle’s Malkin Tower Found?” was attributed to Professor Francis Hargreaves.

Deborah was confused. What did this have to do with anything? Her eyes flashed over the account of stone remains found in a farmer’s field during plowing. In a box buried in the centre of the structure was a “pale-red gemstone.”

Deborah stared at the words. How could a Mayan tomb be connected to an English farm?

The second link took her to a page of mineralogical data apparently breaking down the unusual properties of the Lancashire gem. Aguilar had highlighted the crucial information: chrome
and ferric iron, with virtually the same numerical values for the sample stone recovered in the Mayan tomb.

Deborah wondered how much longer she would be able to go on thinking of the tomb’s most compelling properties as Mayan. Everything was starting to point elsewhere. Lancashire?

“Next, please,” said a voice.

She had reached the front of the line without even realizing it. She looked up from the computer and moved quickly to the desk, proffering her passport.

“One-way ticket to Atlanta via Chicago, please,” she said.

“Heading home, Miss Miller?” said a slightly brittle-looking strawberry-blonde woman.

“What?” said Deborah, a realization coming to her like she was just waking up. “No, actually. I’m going to England. Can I? Well, I guess I can. How much will it cost? Either way, I guess I need to buy a ticket. Yes, one ticket to London, please.”

The woman gave her a stern look and her lips tightened.

“You’re in the wrong line,” she said, as if this was to be expected given the people she had to deal with every day. “You need to be over there.”

Deborah followed the woman’s eyes, but she hesitated, struck by what she was planning to do. This was nuts.

The woman looked suddenly concerned.

“You OK, hon?” she said.

“Yeah, thanks,” said Deborah, still not moving.

“And you’re sure you want to go to England?”

Deborah blinked, then nodded.

“Yes,” she said, stepping into the other line and returning her eyes to her phone. “Thanks.”

Lancashire? What on earth was she doing?

“Could I see your passport, please?”

She looked up. An officious-looking woman in a uniform was staring at her.

“I’m sorry...?” Deborah began.

“Your passport,” said the woman. “You are from the United States, yes? You speak English, yes?”

“Yes. Hold on. I have it here.”

She fumbled in her bag and her hand was trembling slightly. She didn’t know if the woman worked for an airline, for airport security, or for some larger branch of law enforcement. She couldn’t ask. Her mouth was dry. She continued to poke in her bag as if she couldn’t find it, but that clearly wasn’t going to help. In the end she plucked it out and stood up. She was a foot taller than the other woman, who had iron-grey hair and broad shoulders. If the police were looking for her and had sent a description, that was it. She stood out like...well, like she always did.

She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out, and she could think of nothing to say. The woman snatched the passport from her and flipped it open. Deborah just stared, unable to even look around to see if their exchange was being monitored by anyone else.

The woman punched some numbers into a handheld computer of some kind, then slapped the passport back into her hand.

“Thank you,” she said robotically, moving to the next person in line. “Enjoy your flight and thanks for visiting Cancun.”

Deborah heaved a sigh of relief and turned her attention back to her phone, but now her eyes slid past the details about the red gemstone from Lancashire. She saw the only actual words that Aguilar had written in his e-mail:
Bowerdale arrested for murder
.