by Farris, John
"How? What does killing his own child have to do with prolonging his life?"
"It only happen . . . if he shed the blood of a virgin, un adolescente, at the right time . . . during eclipse of the sun or moon. It is . . . an old, old ritual. The anointing power of virgin blood, taken from a still-beating heart."
"Bullshit," I said, but I was livid from shock. "I don't know why he's as old as he is, or what keeps him looking the way he does. But if he's been sacrificing kids to justify his mania, then he's nothing but a psychotic murderer."
"And how . . . do you explain all the others, who are just like Walker?"
She was calm now, lying very still under the comforter, but taking shallow breaths, her eyes opening, closing. The blood had stopped welling at the corner of her mouth. I was the one who was shaking. Everything I had on was soaked.
"I don't know about that! I don't care about . . . others. It's a lot of goddamned superstition. If he killed Bonnie Sullivan in one of his rituals, then I'll do my best to nail him for it. But nothing like that is going to happen to Sharissa, you hear me!"
"What . . . can you do, Detective? Can you kill him? Not simply kill him, but . . . cut off his head?"
"Jesus! What are you saying?"
"Walker . . . is too strong for you. Too cunning. The power of the cofradía protect him. Growing up, I am hearing many things. Whispers of ancient secrets. The secret of the Timekeeper. Don Santiago, my uncle . . . was a Timekeeper. Chattel of the owl and harpy. A society of these peoples who can live long, very long, as they desire, and if they are careful . . . not to make themselves known to ordinary human beings. Above all, taking care not to lose their heads. There is no ritual that can restore life to the headless. Even so, they are sacred beings, descended from priests of Maya. Now I think the new Timekeeper is Francisco. From father to son, no? He is sworn to protect the immortals. I am . . . tired, amigo mío. And the pain is very strong."
"I'll take you to the hospital."
"Hospital no good here. Too many sick people, I will catch something awful and die. There is a clínica, run by a friend, Dr. Arturo Gùzman. Francisco may . . . change his mind about me. Thinking I am a risk to him, and the cofradía. I will be safe for a little while at Arturo's. It was there my husband and I were taken, after . . ."
Tears were flowing again, and she whimpered. I held her hand.
"You are cold from the rain," she said. "Take time to change now. In the next room, clothing of Enrique's. Some of his things . . . may fit you."
Kiki, Kiki—it was her late husband's pet name she'd been saying on the porch. The clothes she was talking about were in an old steamer trunk, a lot of rugged mail-order stuff from Bauer and Bean, everything washed, ironed, and packed away. I guessed that Enrique Nespral had been a few inches taller than me, and big through the chest. I stripped to the skin, put on clean socks and khaki walk shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and a roomy bush jacket. The Nike running shoes were surprisingly small and pinched my toes, but at least they were dry.
In a drawer of the trunk there were two loaded handguns in woven leather holsters, a Firestar automatic and a Cobra .357 Magnum revolver. I'd never been partial to automatics, even with the extra capacity. I put the Cobra, holster and all, into an inside pocket of the bush jacket.
Veronica wouldn't let me carry her outside to the Land Cruiser. She forced herself to walk. Little sliding steps in huaraches, leaning on me for support.
When she saw the dog stretched out on the carport floor she groaned in anguish. "Zorro!" He looked at her, quivering, but made no attempt to get up. He had a gash on his head behind one ear from a blow that might have damaged his brain. Or maybe he only had a bad headache.
"Arturo will send someone to look after him," Veronica said. "Leave the lights and lock everything behind us."
The rain had stopped. I backed the Land Cruiser outside and closed the gates. Veronica slumped in the front seat beside me, head bowed, suffering as silently as she could, giving directions in a monotone. I drove down a lot of unfamiliar roads, through a couple of villages, going around the swampy west shore of the lake, then heading north on higher ground.
"There were guns in the trunk," Veronica said. She held her head up, staring through the dirty windshield. "I forgot to tell you."
"I saw them."
"Did you take one?"
"The Cobra."
"Are you good with a gun?"
"Yeah, on a target range."
"Can you shoot Walker if you have to?"
"I'm not going to shoot him," I said. "I'm not going to cut his head off, either. I told you, I only care about Sharissa."
"But you took the gun anyway. That was so you will feel brave?"
I didn't answer her. I thought about it, and I still didn't have an answer.
"You will kill him," she said. "When the time comes." It wasn't a request, it was a pronouncement.
A few minutes later I passed through the open gates of a small hacienda at the end of a rocky village road and next to a church and orphanage.
The clínica had double-barred glass doors off a spacious tiled veranda. I rang a few times. A man came down the central hall and looked out. He was wearing a robe and slippers. He had a very obvious glass eye, and a suspicious manner.
"It's Veronica Nespral," I told him through the door. "She's been badly hurt. My name's Butterbaugh." I held up my shield and identification for him to look at. He nodded and unlocked the door.
"So? What's a redneck cop doing in this neck of the woods? You on vacation?"
"No. Veronica's in the truck."
"Can she walk?"
"I think it'll take both of us to get her up these steps." He followed me out. "Veronica? What the hell happened to you?"
"Hi, Arturo. You meet my friend? What was your name again, Buzzerball?" She couldn't hold her head up for more than a couple of seconds. Her speech was slurring. I was scared for her.
"Yeah, Buzzerball. She got beat up pretty bad, doctor."
"Okay, let's get her inside."
We carried Veronica between us, fireman's carry, to a treatment room of the clinic. She kept saying, "Kiki, Kiki," and moaning. "No, it hurts. ¡Dios mío, give me something!"
Arturo Gùzman took off his robe and put on a white jacket after we placed Veronica on the table. He must have rung for help when I wasn't looking; a sleepy-looking young man showed up in the doorway, glanced around and put on another jacket hanging behind the door. Arturo spoke rapidly to him in Spanish. Then he looked around at me.
"You could wait in the office across the hall."
Veronica said, not opening her eyes. "He see everything I have already. We are practically engaged."
Arturo said, "That's nice. Maybe you're hungry, Butterbaugh. Or help yourself to coffee in the kitchen."
I took the hint. As I was leaving Veronica cried out and said, "They broke my ribs, 'Turo!"
"You let me be the médico here, cara mía. Relax now, we're just gonna give you a little something to take the edge off."
I poured myself some coffee in the kitchen, and added several lumps of sugar. I had a stress headache. I took a look around while I sipped the coffee. The clínica was scrupulously clean. There were four treatment rooms and an operating room, up-to-date X-ray equipment, an infirmary with six beds, four of them occupied by children. A night nurse was on duty; she was reading a Spanish fashion magazine by the light of a gooseneck lamp. I wandered back to Gùzman's office. The lack of an accent was explained by the diplomas on one wall—prep school in Los Angeles, UCLA for college and med school. He'd done his residency in internal medicine at St. John's Hospital, Santa Monica. There were pictures of his wife and kids on his desk. She was a California blonde with long legs, posing with her arms around a surfboard.
After about forty-five minutes in the treatment room and X-ray, Gùzman and his assistant wheeled Veronica, sedated, into a private room next to the small infirmary.
They were giving her IV fluids, two bags of it. Gùzman left instruct
ions with the nurse and came out, put a hand between my shoulder blades and guided me back to his office. He was about my height, stocky, with heavy eyebrows, a sensual Latin nose and a chin cleft that probably drove women nuts.
He closed the door and took out a pack of American cigarettes.
"Yeah, I'm one of those doctors who still smoke. But only three a day." We both looked at the ash tray on his desk. At least a dozen filter-tip ends were there, snitching to his conscience. He sat on the edge of the desk and pushed the ashtray behind him, held out the pack to me.
I shook my head. He lit up and inhaled. He had unkempt curly hair and sunken, darkly circled eyes. The glass eye put his gaze a bit off-center, but it was nothing that detracted from his wounded-Romantic looks. He studied me thoroughly while he took a few more drags.
"So what kind of trouble is she in?"
I had been thinking about how much of an explanation I was going to give him. I stalled by saying, "How much did Veronica tell you?"
"Nothing. From the looks of her, I'd say they worked her over with a pole or stick, then got in a few bare-knuckle licks, which did her ribs in. A lung was nicked. Her spleen is okay, but her diaphragm has a tear. Kidneys, I'm not sure yet. No indication of rape. Do you know who they were?"
"Her cousin Francisco." He winced, and vented smoke through his nostrils. "He was there, I suppose he sanctioned the beating, but he didn't participate, she says. It was a man named Walker, Greg Walker, from my hometown of Sky Valley. What are the chances we can get him locked up while the local police investigate this?"
"Investigate? You're kidding me. If Francisco had her beaten, she won't rat on him. It would bring dishonor to the family. I don't know how long you've been in the Petén, but it's like the Old West around here. There are laws, and there are prohibitions, and then there's Francisco Colon and the cofradía; they're the final authority when something is going down. The local magistrates, on those occasions when the government allows the judicial system to function, would look the other way, even if Veronica dies. The situation doesn't exist for them."
"Yeah, I thought so," I said dispiritedly.
"Don't make a mistake about my loyalties. 'Nica and my wife are good friends. What's your reason for getting involved? Do you know Veronica from somewhere?"
"I know Greg Walker."
He smoked, watching me, and neither of us said anything. Then he reached into his pocket for another cigarette, glancing at the photos on his desk.
"Barbara's away doing a year of residency at Cedars Sinai," he said. "The kids are all in boarding school. Gets damned lonely around here."
"You're both doctors?"
"Well, Barb came to medicine late. She was a sorority chick at SC when I married her. Family went crazy, Barb married a spick, and all that. Old Pasadena family, groves or something. I come from original Spanish land-grant people, late eighteenth century. Half of the Santa Clarita Valley still belongs to some of us."
"You're a long way from home."
"This is home, Butterbaugh. Came here for six months on a WHO grant to complete a research project, and never left. That was twenty-three years ago. When the kids got old enough, Barb told me she wanted to be a doctor, too. Until then she'd concentrated on fund-raising for healthcare facilities all over Central America. Fifteen million dollars. I said, sure. Go for it. What about this Walker? You want him for something?"
"I'd like to put him away. But I can't prove what I suspect."
Gùzman waited, and yawned. "That's all you want to tell me?"
"You saw the damage he did to Veronica. I think it would be better if you didn't know any more about him."
"Or his relationship with Francisco Colon?"
"That, too. By the way, did you know Francisco's father, Don Santiago?"
"I met him. I wasn't his doctor. I don't think he ever needed a doctor. He was . . . one of the most remarkable men I've heard of or read about."
"Because he lived to be a hundred twenty?"
"It's not medically impossible to live that long, or even to retain a certain amount of mobility at such an age. But the Don played a mean game of tennis. And he was still ready and able to hell around with the ladyfolk."
"How do you account for that kind of longevity?"
"Obviously it's a matter of cell replication and elasticity, which requires an abundance of an enzyme called superoxide dismutase—the enzyme neutralizes free radicals in the body. He had a hereditary endowment the rest of us can only wish for."
"Do you think it's medically possible for a man to stay in his prime for a hundred fifty years?"
Gùzman looked at me with kindly contempt. "A biologist friend of mine at Cal Irvine selectively bred fruit flies until he came up with a group with a life expectancy, in fly time, equal to one hundred fifty years. That kind of Selective breeding with humans is way off in the future somewhere. What are you worried about, Butterbaugh? You can't be much over thirty. Relax and enjoy your normal three score and ten."
There was something hard in my throat that I was having trouble swallowing. And something heavy in an inside pocket of my borrowed jacket, a reminder of just how soon it could be over for me, if I made a wrong move in the next twenty-four hours.
"I hope I'll be able to do that," I said to Gùzman.
Gùzman's assistant, a med-tech named Cuellar, drove me back to Veronica's place in her Land Cruiser. It was two in the morning. I had him ease into the driveway with only the parking lights on. There were no other visitors at the moment, but the dog was gone from the floor of the carport. I got out with my flashlight. The carport was empty and locked up. So someone had come back, disposed of Zorro in some manner, and probably looked around inside. They might have decided that Veronica had come to and driven herself to the hospital. On the other hand, whoever it was could have been sharp enough to conclude from the wet clothing I'd left hanging on the back of the door in the other bedroom that a) a friend had arrived, probably on foot in the rain, and b) had seen enough to be a potential problem. I hadn't left anything in the pockets of the wet clothes to identify me, but still I was beginning to feel insecure.
On the way back to the hotel I scribbled a note to Gùzman expressing concern for Veronica's future safety and gave it to Cuellar. Then I had him drop me at the foot of the drive to the hotel, and walked to the entrance from there: I didn't want anyone seeing me arrive in Veronica's Toyota.
By then it was three in the morning. I tuned in to bungalow nine and heard nothing but the sounds of sleepers. I put the headset aside and changed into my own clothes. There were iron-on tags with Enrique Nespral's name on them in everything of his I'd borrowed. I rolled shirt, jacket, and shorts up tight and put them, along with the too-small sneakers, into a hotel laundry bag, zipped the bag into one of the compartments of my Samsonite hang-up. I tried to get some sleep then, because I had a good idea of what the next thirty-six hours would be like. But all I could see when I closed my eyes was Veronica's small, nude, battered body. Gùzman had taped her like a mummy and shot her full of antibiotics, but the internal and psychological damage would heal slowly, if at all.
Greg Walker's violence toward her suggested a man at the edge of his control. But in my dreams he just laughed at me, as I fired round after round from the Colt Cobra into his forehead . . . the bullets falling away like swatted flies. Don't hurt my daddy, Sharissa screamed. Don't hurt my daddy!
Oh, kid. I'm so sorry. How am I going to get you out of this?
I checked out of the Itzá Maya at seven the next morning, and took the hotel's shuttle van to the airport. There I stored most of my luggage, keeping a leather carry-on case that would fit beneath the seat. Then I went to the TAPSA counter and bought two tickets on Saturday morning's flight to Guatemala City, connecting with a flight to Houston at two in the afternoon. I sent a telegram to Adrienne Crowder with instructions for her to follow, had a few bites of huevos rancheros and a sticky bun for breakfast in the airport coffee shop, and rented a car from the local Hertz
affiliate.
The rental wag a stick-shift Ford with sixty thousand miles on it. No air conditioning. The windshield had a long diagonal crack on the right side, and the last renter had smoked a lot of cheap cigars. I needed two shots of nasal spray before I could breathe at all.
The road to Kan Petén was half a mile north of the airport. I arrived at the ruins about eight-thirty, just before they opened for the day, left all but my cameras and a manila envelope at the Inspectoría, and took the long walk uphill through cool, misty woods to the visitors' center. The Bell helicopter was still on the pad next to the museum wing where Nils Lagerfeld had his workroom and office. I hoped he would be in this early.
He was, and he wasn't.
He didn't answer when I knocked. The door was unlocked and not tightly closed, which I found out when I tried to use it for backing to write a note to him. The door swung inward a few inches. Inside there was wholesale devastation: shelving tipped over, file drawers emptied. He sat in the midst of it all in his wheelchair, withdrawn and silent, his chins on his chest, hands lying palms-up in his lap. Sunlight grazed the back of his head, disturbing the flies drawn to all the blood. I heard them buzzing in the dusty gloom. I shut the door slowly and carefully, as if I didn't want to wake him up. I walked away from the building and crumpled the note I had begun to write, then shifted the envelope containing an enlarged photo of Bonnie Sullivan with her father from one sweaty arm to the other.
I knew what I should do, but I had no qualms about putting distance between myself and the body of Nils Lagerfeld. I saw only a few early-bird tourists on their way to the pyramids, heading away from me, chattering obliviously. I wanted badly to know a lot of things about Lagerfeld's death that a few minutes' observation might have told me, and I already had information which would be valuable to the investigators who would be showing up eventually. I wondered how long they would hold Greg Walker, based on what I could tell them.
For a little while I was tempted to raise the alarm. But I knew the government cops would hold me a lot longer than Greg, once Francisco Colon's influence came into play. In the meantime I would probably lose track of Sharissa forever.