BOOK ONE
(Lucy)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“I think it was a woman.”
He brushed his beard against my cheek. “You think who was a woman?”
“Whoever did it.”
“Why do you think it was a woman?”
“I’ve been thinking.”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Something happened to me while I was in the jail. I saw something I hadn’t seen before, I mean, about God.” I looked at him.
“Lucy, I don’t want to talk about this.” He slid a finger up the sleeve of my T-shirt.
“I called to him but he didn’t answer.”
“Who didn’t answer?”
“God. It’s like archaeology.”
He laughed out loud. I sat up straight. “He speaks when he is silent. You start with silence, don’t you? You start with nothing and you dig. You build a story from what you find, backward to forward. That is where you begin, right?”
“Well, we start with dirt and mounds and an idea about what is likely to be buried there, but I see your point.”
“You get clues. You piece them together. You see a picture. You see the Maya.”
“Yes. We see the Maya. You’re right,” he said.
“When I was in the jail I was surrounded by voices, but the one voice I called to, didn’t answer. Like when Jesus was dying. He was surrounded by voices, but the one he called to—God—didn’t answer him either. It’s like an archaeological project.”
“How is Jesus’ dying like an archaeological project?”
“What were the Maya trying to achieve through their sacrifices?”
“The gift of the blood nourished the gods. It satisfied their demands.”
“Is it fair to say the sacrifices were an attempt to be heard by the gods and move them to action?”
“It is fair to say that, yes.”
“Is it fair to say the sacrifices were a gesture of longing?”
“Longing?” He rubbed his eyes. “I wouldn’t say longing had a whole lot to do with it.”
“But why else would they go to the trouble? There was something inside them that wanted to touch the gods. The best way to do it, they thought, was to offer human blood. Isn’t that an expression of longing?”
He waved a hand. “Okay. Longing. Fine.”
“Was the sacrifice a means of resolution?”
“Only in so far as their deeming human blood the only worthy conduit to repay the debt owed the gods for perpetuating the cycles of life. Otherwise, I’d say no. Resolution wasn’t the point.”
“Okay, maybe not resolution.”
He folded my fingers into his. “I thought journalists were gifted at getting to the point.”
“Was it guilt that compelled the Maya to pull the hearts out of captives?”
“They offered the blood of the captives as a sacrifice to the gods to maintain the dominance of the king, to keep the planets in motion.”
“So without the blood, they—meaning the rulers—sensed there was an impediment to winning the favor of the gods. The Maya sacrificed those whom they could seize in war and felt the need to appease the gods with more and more blood, yeah?”
“Close enough.”
“I sat in the jail and God didn’t speak, which made me think that maybe God’s silence is his way of telling a story another way, backward to forward. It’s like archaeology. Archaeology is about finding the story out of the dirt that the Maya left behind, backward to forward. It’s not just dirt. It’s evidence of a narrative. That’s why I think it was a woman. I think this murder-slash-sacrifice tells the story of the one who did it, backward to forward. Her secret is perceivable in what she does not say. Don’t you think?”
“Does it matter what I think?”
“What do you think?”
“I think I don’t want to spend what little time we have dealing with a blue sacrificed body. We are working on it. The police are working on it. It’s not your problem, Lu. How long are you staying? What are we going to do? Can we talk about that? That’s what I want. That’s what I think.” He rubbed his beard. “But something tells me you have other thoughts in mind.”
“Well, in a way, it is my problem. Because our talking about what we’re going to do relates to coming to terms with who did this.”
“Why?”
“Because in the story, I am hearing that you are the antagonist.” He looked at me equally alarmed and bewildered. “You start with what you know, then move backwards.
“When we were making our way to the tomb, I couldn’t shake the question about how a dead body could have been navigated through these tunnels. So I wondered if Berto had been led there first and then murdered on site? But then I wondered why there—why in the location of the archaeologists’ most treasured discovery, and one that commanded international attention? And when we were in the tomb, I couldn’t help wondering why the killer suspended the victim over the tomb, rather than simply leaving him dead on the ground? And why paint him blue? Why the day of the press conference?
“That’s what we know. The body was either led through the tunnels, then killed, or killed before the tunnels and carried through them. The target location had been the tomb of Yax K’uk Mo’ and rather than risk damaging the site that the killer had to know you cherished, she went to great lengths to suspend the victim over the site, that is, after she painted him blue.”
“You still haven’t told me why you think it is a woman.”
“Because she left her story behind her. The sacrifice suggests she is wanting to move cosmic forces to action. She is expressing a gesture of longing. She is asking for the favor of the gods. It’s a well-known fact that women are more religious than men.”
James sighed.
“Whoever sacrificed the victim wanted appeasement. Women regularly feel such things, especially Honduran women.”
“How could a woman get the body through the tunnels?”
“Regardless of how the body made it through the tunnels, whoever got it there knew the way. And only a few people know how to access the tomb of Yax K’uk Mo’, Berto being one of them. Therefore, the implication is (as you yourself so often say), that whoever did it is someone who is closely connected to your work.
“There’s something else.” I pulled the pictures of the body from my backpack. “I was looking at these this morning.” I flipped through the photos and stopped at the image of the bound arms. “Look at the hands.” James took the photo and examined it. “When you and I were locked inside the grounds that day and Berto unlocked the gate, as he was flipping through the keys, I noticed his fingers were bent and crippled from arthritis. Those aren’t the same hands. Those fingers aren’t bent the same way.” I looked at him. “Didn’t Berto say something about being eight minutes older than a brother? I think the person hanging here is Berto’s twin brother, and that whoever did this wanted us to think it was Berto.”
I paused.
“This is the story I am hearing. Someone closely related to Berto, who knew about Maya rituals and had access to the tunnels, used this moment to invoke the only power she had. She understood the value of the tomb, so did not damage it. She got into the tunnels with someone who had a key and she was outraged enough to paint a dead man blue. And she wanted us to think it was Berto.
“The most telling part of this, to me anyway, is that she waited until the day of the press conference to make her statement. The timing would hurt you more than anyone. That is the story she is telling.—Oh, and she had dandruff, which explains the soapy smell and the blue.”
He stared incredulously. “Dandruff?”
“I faintly recognised that soapy smell inside the tomb that morning we found him, along with all those other smells. Then, in the jail, I remembered what it was. When Gabe and I were in high school, he contracted an infection on his skin and the doctor told him to rub on Selsun Blue, dandruff shampoo. Gabe used to rub it all over his arms and chest and back and let it soak in before showering. That was the soapy smell I recognised in the tomb. Selsun Blue. That’s what she used to paint him. But it hadn’t soaked in, the way Gabe’s did, which means he must have been dead before she covered him with it.”
James groaned. He looked at me wearily.
“Every mystery writer knows that the only way to solve a murder is to reconcile motive, means, and opportunity. The motive was to hurt you. The means would have been access to the tunnel, which Berto had. And opportunity points to the evening before the press conference when the grounds would have been empty. Except that you and I made an unexpected visit to the tomb. Did Berto ever say where he was when we found he was not at the gate and so we were locked inside? Where was he?
“I remember when I bought yuca from the vegetable lady the other day on the air strip, she told me she worked on the grounds as a maid and she asked if I was going to ‘the party.’ She brushed dandruff from her shoulder.”