by Curses!
The codex had already been recovered. The watch had still been there, and all it would take to find out if there was an incriminating 4:12 on it would be to go and turn it over. That was what he'd been trying to tell Marmolejo, and apparently he'd succeeded.
That still left plenty of questions, but his brain was aching with the effort of thinking. Julie was right. They could talk about it later.
He turned his face blindly toward her. “Been a long night?” he asked, enunciating carefully.
"Not too bad. Abe kept me company until a couple of hours ago, but I finally made him go get some sleep.” She squeezed his hand gently. “How do you feel?"
"Pretty good, actually. But my eyes don't seem—"
"Dr. Plumm said they might be paralyzed for a while, but not to worry about it. They'll be okay. Is everything else all right?"
"I think so. I'm just a little weak. And a little surprised to be alive.” The words were coming more easily now.
"You can thank Dr. Plumm for that. He keeps a few vials of coral-snake antivenin on hand, just for times like this. Not that there are ever times like this, except when you're around. He really loaded you up with it. Had to get refills by air from Valladolid. You're also brimming with other intravenously administered goodies. You know, we very nearly had to helicopter you to the hospital in Merida for the iron lung. Dr. Plumm says you're a very lucky young man. I quote him."
"It was a coral snake that bit me? How did he know?"
"From the chew marks, I suppose."
"I thought poisonous snakes always left two fang marks."
"Nope, not Elapidae. They chew on you."
"Elapidae?"
"That's the family. Coral snakes are in the family Elapidae."
"Oh.” He could feel a gauze bandage on his left hand. “Did he have to incise the fang marks, squeeze the blood out?"
"No, there's no point in doing that after the first thirty minutes. Anyway, it doesn't do any good with Micrurus."
"Micrurus?"
"That's the genus."
"Micrurus," he said again, more languidly. “You sure know the damnedest things."
It was very comfortable there, with his eyes closed and Julie holding his hand. He was relaxed and content, almost asleep. Those intravenous goodies, no doubt.
"Funny about the eyes,” he mused. “Why would only the oculomotor nerve be affected, and nothing else? No, wait a minute, the abducens must be screwed up too, because I'm not getting horizontal movement of the eyeball, which must mean involvement of the rectus lateralis. So..."
She laughed deep in her throat and lay her head on his chest. “I think I can stop worrying now,” she said, still laughing. “You're back to normal."
The low chuckling turned to slow, shuddering sobs against his chest. Her hands tightened along his sides. “Oh, Gideon, Gideon, I was so—thank God you're—"
"There, there,” he said drowsily, and lifted his hand to stroke her hair. “Everything's all right now."
And it was. He heard his own breathing become deep and regular, felt his hand slide flaccidly from her head, and seemed to observe himself descending back into the chasm, slowly this time, and peacefully, to a black and dreamless sleep.
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Chapter 24
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The next two days passed in a gauzy haze, mostly quite pleasant. Abe was in and out, cheerful and comforting. A jolly and sanguine Plumm seemed to pop in every five minutes to paint Gideon's hand with gaudy green or purple tinctures, or to administer one of his arcane tests; prothrombin time, partial thromboplastin time, fibrinogen titer. Marmolejo, almost equally jolly, came twice—three times?—to talk about police matters. And always there was Julie, quiet when he wanted quiet, talkative and reassuring when that was what he needed.
On the third day, Plumm told him he was fit to travel, and a week's rest at home was probably his best way to ensure his being able to start the next quarter's courses on time. In any case, Plumm told him firmly, there was to be no thought of continuing work on the dig. Gideon's feeble protests, strictly pro forma, were brushed aside by Abe; Gideon was going home. Doctor's orders. No ifs, ands, or buts. The skeleton in the Priest's House could wait. When Gideon returned later to testify at Leo's trial, he could finish working on it if he felt up to it.
And so, five days after being bitten by a testy Micrurus fulvius in a Mayan ruin in the Yucatecan jungle, Gideon was on the green-and-white ferry Yakima as it made its silent, stately way across a misty, blessedly cool Puget Sound. The flight from Merida to Seattle, even with its airplane changes in Houston and Denver, had been mostly dozed away while Julie read, but the sight of the pearly green islands of the Sound had brought him to life, and they had begun to talk about Tlaloc again as the ferry edged out from the Edmonds dock.
"Isn't it funny?” Julie said, watching the creosote-stained pilings slip by, “We all thought the codex was at the bottom of things, but it was the watch. Just that stupid watch."
"Right,” Gideon said. “Leo knew the codex was a lost cause, what with that all-out campaign by the committee. But the watch—that was important; that could tie him to Howard's murder."
"Well, I still don't understand why he took the chance of waiting so long to do something about it. Why didn't he try to get it years ago when there wasn't any digging going on?"
"But he wasn't taking much of a chance. When the Institute shut Tlaloc down, they really shut it down. ‘For all time,’ they said, which suited Leo just fine. And even if it reopened in fifty years, what could anyone make of the watch by then? The trouble was, they changed their minds in just five years."
"So he came back to try to find it before Abe got to it. That's why he was digging under the temple at night?"
"Uh-huh, but I think that was pretty halfhearted. He knew his watch had come off while he was fighting with Howard, and he'd have liked to have it back to be on the safe side. But it wasn't anything to panic over. He figured there wasn't any way to connect it with him."
"Until you showed up yammering about his watch stopping at 4:12."
Gideon glanced back at her from the window he'd been looking through. His eye muscles were still stiff, and he had to swivel his head to do it. He thought it gave him a certain dignity. “There is,” he said, “no need to be unkind."
She laughed. “How would a bowl of Washington State clam chowder strike you?"
"As if I've died and gone to heaven,” he said earnestly and began to get up.
Julie stood first and leveled a finger at him. “Stay. I'll go get some. I'll bring some hot chocolate to have afterwards, too. Dr. Plumm said hot liquids are good for you."
"Great.” Gideon settled back at the window, feeling luxuriously convalescent and pampered. All he needed was a lap robe. Outside, a string of cormorants scudded along three inches above the water on some urgent avian mission, their black, snaky necks stretched out ahead of them and their wings flapping frantically to keep pace with the ferry. Above and to the north, a lone bald eagle wheeled slowly over the Sound, wings outspread, against swollen clouds.
Julie was right, of course. If not for that conversation about the watch, Leo might have continued to poke along, trying to get in a little more digging of his own, but not overly concerned. There was time, after all; the codex, the body, and the watch were all still well below the surface of the rubble. As Leo very well knew, having so selflessly volunteered to supervise the stairwell excavation.
But once he learned that Ard and Gideon were aware of the watch, he had to act more decisively. And so the threatening note had come within a few hours of that conversation, and the Chichen Itza attack had followed the next night. And when Ard announced that he was leaving Yucatan, Leo had to get rid of him immediately. He couldn't chance Ard's finding out—perhaps when he was back in the United States, out of reach—that a watch stopped at 4:12 had been found near a body lying in the stairwell. Even Stan Ard had been capable of putting two and two together from data
like that. Poor Ard.
As for Gideon, his clock had run out the moment the watch had been uncovered by Marmolejo's men. God, how Leo must have panicked at that point—but of course Marmolejo had given him another night's grace when he'd put off digging it out until the next morning. And Gideon himself had told Leo just how to put that night to good use; he had forthrightly proclaimed his intention of doing a thorough skeletal analysis the next day...after getting his tools from the work shed.
Sealing his own doom, Ard would probably have called it, and the flea in Leo's ear had been enough. All he'd had to do was go to the back gate at Chichen Itza, buy a cute little poisonous snake in a cute little basket from one of the cute little kids (even with a vocabulary of bueno-bueno, how hard could it have been?), return to the site the same afternoon, stuff it in the storage bin with the basket lid loose, and leave it there all night to grow more and more agitated and enraged. Then when the blissfully unknowing Dr. Oliver returned in the morning...
"Question,” Julie said, putting a tray down on the table. She set out cardboard bowls of clam chowder for both of them, along with crackers, plastic spoons, and two cups of cocoa, then slid into her seat across from him.
"I've been giving this a lot of thought,” she said, “and what I don't understand is why Leo was working so hard to make it look as if Howard was behind everything. I mean, he knew it was just a matter of days before we got to the skeleton. The minute Howard's body was identified, all that fancy footwork wouldn't count for anything."
"Ah, but he didn't expect Howard to be identified. You know, that clarinet-playing business was just a freak bit of luck. And Howard didn't have any identification on him."
"No, but Leo couldn't be sure of that."
"Yes, he could,” Gideon said. “I was thinking about what went on after we found the codex in ‘82, and I remembered that the foreman asked for the workmen's pay. Howard said he couldn't give it to them because he didn't have his wallet on him. Well, if he didn't have his wallet, it was pretty unlikely that he had any ID. There wasn't any reason for him to have a passport tucked in a pocket. I'm sure that didn't get by Leo."
He paused for his first taste of the smooth white chowder. Plastic spoon, cardboard bowl, and all, it was wonderful, redolent of the sea and the Northwest. It was very good to be home.
"Besides that,” he went on after a second spoonful, “Leo knew Howard had been wandering around Central America for over a decade, so no one was too likely to identify him through his dental records. No one was too likely to identify him, period."
"Except you."
Gideon demurred. “Luck,” he said again. “And the fact that I knew the guy. But once I was out of the way, Leo would have been free and clear. No one to recognize the watch, no one to identify the body. How could a Mexican pathologist who didn't know Howard ever figure out those bones were his? The corpse would be listed as unidentified, and poor Howard would be blamed for that murder too—his own—on top of everything else."
"But you'd already identified him. Killing you wouldn't—"
"But Leo didn't know that, remember? Marmolejo didn't want the crew to be told."
"Mm, that's right,” Julie said.
For a while they attended quietly to their meal. Outside the window a misty drizzle spattered the metal deck. It looked cold. It looked good.
"Gideon, what do you suppose it was all about? What did Leo have in mind in the first place? Why did he attempt to steal the codex? What kind of plans did he have for it?"
"I don't think it was that kind of thing at all, Julie. No carefully worked-out plan, no complex motives. Nobody even knew a codex existed until almost five o'clock, and by nine Leo had already made his stab at getting it."
He shrugged. “I suppose Leo just heard Howard say he could get two million dollars for it—'easy,’ I think he said—and that was enough to set him off. Sneak back to the site, remove it without anyone seeing him, have it blamed on the bandidos, and then look into peddling it at his leisure. Or at least that's what he must have had in mind."
He pushed his empty bowl away. “There is one thing I still haven't figured out. The gun. How did Leo get it out of the country in 1982 and then get it back in through airport security? And what for? It was a hell of a chance to take."
Julie concentrated on chewing and swallowing a particularly tough piece of clam. “Oh, I know the answer to that one. He didn't."
"You mean he hid it somewhere around the site for five and a half years? I don't know, that seems—"
She shook her head. “No, I mean the gun got caught in the cave-in too, and then turned up in the rubble some time during the last few weeks. Leo must have been keeping a pretty sharp eye out for such things, and he probably grabbed it before the workmen even realized what it was. Using it on Stan was probably just an afterthought; one more way to incriminate Howard."
Gideon considered this. “Good thinking."
"It's Inspector Marmolejo's thinking. The gun turned up a few days ago, conveniently tossed under a bush just fifteen or twenty feet away from where Stan was killed. Inspector Marmolejo says there was limestone dust in all the crevices. It'd been buried, all right"
"Ah, good old Marmolejo. You're frowning. Something's still bothering you."
She nodded, spooning up the last of her chowder. “Well, what do you suppose that curse business was all about? Was it some sort of smoke screen? Was it a plan to upset Dr. Villanueva enough to close down the dig again? Leo couldn't really think anyone—besides Emma—would take the curse seriously, could he? Or could he?"
"I don't think so,” Gideon said. “And I don't think he was trying to make it look as if the curse were coming true; I think he was trying to make it look as if a desperate, demented Howard Bennett was trying to make it look as if the curse were coming true."
She nodded sagely. “That's just clever enough and crazy enough to be right. Hence the message from the gods on Howard's typewriter.” She pulled the lid from her cocoa, sipped, and grimaced. Chowder was the Washington State ferry system's long suit; the cocoa came out of a packet that you stirred into a Styrofoam cup of tepid water.
Above them the ferry's horn hooted, loud and deep and throaty, and the big ship began its majestic turn into the Kingston ferry dock. Behind the little port town the rich green flanks of the Olympics rose and disappeared into the mist. It was snowing up there.
"Home,” Julie said with satisfaction. “Had enough hands-on anthropology to last you for a while?"
"You better believe it,” Gideon said. “You know the first thing I'm going to do when we get back?"
"Yes,” she said with her no-nonsense look, “you're going to stay in bed for a few days, the way Dr. Plumm told you to."
"After that."
"Let's see. Build those bookcases?"
"Nope."
"Finish that monograph?"
"Nope. I'm going to straighten up my office. Everything in its proper place."
"Good."
"I'm cleaning up my act. I'm a new man."
"I'm glad to hear it."
He drained the last of his cocoa. “Besides,” he said, and smiled, “did you ever stop to think what might be lurking in there under all that junk?"
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