Effigy

by Theresa Danley

  John set the note aside and started for his library. “Just wait right there,” he growled as he left the room.

  The library slumbered in darkness at the end of the hallway. John had always appreciated the solitude afforded by the windowless room. Time was becalmed in reclusive spaces and he’d taken great care to add to the effect with warm wood paneling, composed leather chairs and deep mahogany bookcases embedded into the walls. On the rare occasion when he required more life in the room he could part the long, flowing satin draping the French doors and the library would awaken in soft, frosted-glass light. Occasionally, after a refreshing study with his books, he’d find the inclination to stroll through those doors and comfort himself upon the cushioned wicker retreats strategically placed around Martha’s shaded garden.

  Today wasn’t going to be one of those days.

  John clicked on the nearby reading lamp and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose. The short wall contained his most cherished astronomy collection, while the adjoining wall displayed a satisfactory blend of Mesoamerican study. His finger trailed across the spines of Hamlet’s Mill and The Mayan Factor. Somewhere around that area he knew he’d shelved the booklet he was looking for.

  There it was. A stack of papers pressed between two cardboard covers, all bound by three brass brads. He retrieved the booklet and was thumbing through it when he rejoined Peet and Lori in the den.

  “I believe the word, ‘Acatzalan,’ comes from… Ah, yes. Here it is.”

  He sat down on Martha’s microsuede sectional sofa and laid his reference upon the glass coffee table. Peet and Lori gathered around as he marked the word with his finger. “Acatzalan—meaning ‘among the reeds.’”

  Peet leaned in close. “Among the reeds?”

  “What is this?” Lori asked. “A dictionary of code words?”

  “A glossary,” John said. “From the Florentine Codex.”

  “The what?”

  “The Florentine Codex. It’s a series of twelve volumes written by the Franciscan friar, Bernardino de Sahagún, during the sixteenth century. He documented Aztec life as he encountered it shortly after the conquest. What we are looking at here is the English version of the Nahuatl language originally compiled through Spanish and Latin translations.”

  John waited for a reaction from them but he found only confusion garnered within their expressions. He was confused himself. “Would you mind telling me how this relates to your dissertation?”

  Lori picked up the beige scrap of paper from the table where John had left it. “I was actually curious about the hieroglyphs,” she admitted. “They look like snakes.”

  “That they are,” John agreed.

  “Are they Mayan date symbols?”

  John looked at her curiously. “What brings you to such a conclusion?”

  “The two parallel bars to the left of each hieroglyph.”

  John straightened. Something was amiss and asking questions only made the topic even more confusing. He needed to know exactly what was going on.

  “Anthony. A word.”

  With Peet obediently at his heels, John led the way back into the library. The reading lamp was still casting a warm glow over his favorite leather chair, easing across a wall of books. With a flick of his finger he motioned Peet to close the door.

  “What’s going on here?” he hissed.

  “What?”

  “Since when does a student specializing in Anasazi ceramics suddenly recognize a hieroglyph from a Mesoamerican calendar?”

  Peet’s face was blank. “Is that so hard to believe? Anthropology students are exposed to a variety of world cultures before they specialize in their own fields.”

  John wasn’t convinced as he gave him a long, assessing glare. “But a calendar glyph?”

  “So it is a date symbol?”

  “You’re giving her instruction, aren’t you?”

  Peet shrugged. “She’s my student and she’s struggling with her dissertation. I thought she could use some help.”

  “Over summer break? It looks to me like you’re taking a personal interest in your student.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  John crossed his arms. “Then how do you explain your jacket? And that sweater she’s wearing. Martha bought that sweater for you years ago.”

  Peet noticeably shriveled like a dry leaf. John wasn’t about to let it go. “You’re her professor, for Heaven’s sake!”

  Peet avoided John’s glare. His hand dug into his back pocket and withdrew a red Zip disk. He held it out to John. “You’re right. I do have a personal interest.”

  John’s heart skipped as he eyed the disk. “Is that Cathy’s?”

  “There’s a Mayan calendar—”

  “How dare you bring this into my house?”

  “There’s another calendar on this disk but it’s not finished. It isn’t even labeled.”

  John snatched the disk and waved it in Peet’s face. “Do you know how long we worked on this? Do you know how long it took us to compile all the ancient calendars of the world?”

  “Please. We need your help on this.”

  “We?” John felt his anger rising uncontrollably. The heat was building around his collar. “You’ve never shown an interest in Cathy’s work before.”

  “That’s not true—”

  “Now it takes another woman to draw an interest in her work?”

  “Please—”

  John threw the disk at him. His aim was poor and it clattered harmlessly across the teakwood floor. “You make me sick!”

  Peet turned and picked up the disk. “You don’t understand. I really need your help on this one.”

  “Get the hell out!”

  Peet looked bewildered, frozen where he stood.

  “Get out and take that girl with you!”

  AFI Headquarters

  Diego left the regional director’s office with one thing on his mind—he had work to do and Escaban’s tantrum over tardiness and inefficiency had just been an inconvenient delay. He had a new name to query and there was no time like the present to get it over with. If he was lucky, he might come away with something that would make up for missing the siesta he desperately needed.

  He was considering his next move when he passed Officer Gomez carrying a tower of boxes into headquarters. Diego noticed one of them labeled D14—a light security prison cell.

  “What’s this?” Diego asked as Gomez relieved his load onto a nearby table.

  The officer caught his breath. “Personal possessions of those New Agers we brought in. Escaban wants to go through them one last time before we kick them out.”

  Diego popped the lid of the D14 box. “Looking for anything special?”

  “Anything out of the ordinary, I guess.”

  Diego casually sifted through the box. There wasn’t much inside. One pair of men’s oversized blue jeans, a white t-shirt with the serpentine snakes centering the front and back, one pair of sneakers, a cheap digital watch, and a money clip that had no doubt been relieved of its contents shortly after the New Ager received his cell assignment.

  Beige paper protruded from the back pocket of the jeans, which Diego curiously retrieved, discovering two sheets of stationary folded into each other. His thumb found the edge and unfolded them. It was obviously a newsletter of some sort and when he snapped it open to its full length, the title nearly shocked him speechless. There, in bold letters printed across the top of the front page was the name Sanchez had uttered in the farmhouse, the name Diego had assumed belonged to the Equinox Killer.

  ACATZALAN.

  Diego crushed the newsletter with a curse. Acatzalan! It was the name of a goddamned newsletter! He’d been fooled by a treacherous little man.

  “Something wrong?” Gomez asked.

  Diego quickly composed himself. “I’m going to borrow this,” he said, swiftly rolling the newsletter and tapping it against his palm.

  “What for?”

  “Reading material.”


  Gomez frowned. Diego sighed impatiently at the dimwit and glanced over at the men’s restroom. Gomez finally caught his drift and smiled.

  “Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

  Diego escaped to the restroom and spread the newsletter onto a dry corner of the counter. Curiously, its entire length was printed in English. Thankfully, Diego knew enough to translate the gist of it. He stood there in that open silence, the air smelling of wet paper towels and dank urinal disks, searching for the name of the newsletter’s printer, an editor—even a writer. There were none so he scanned through the paper until he came across the title of a small article on the inside page.

  THE TIME OF TRANSITION IS HERE!

  The words were printed in bold, the font slightly larger than the other article titles, designating importance. Diego read on.

  I hope you have all prepared for the equinox. As a reminder, our place of worship for this holy event will be atop the Pyramid of the Sun in the birth city of our hallowed guardian. For those planning to attend, be sure to purify yourselves on the 20th. Members of the Hidalgo chapter have agreed to assist all new comers around Mexico City during your stay.

  Do not forget your shirts!

  I look forward to seeing everyone there and wish you peace and harmony into the coming age.

  The article was left without an author. Another dead end. The newsletter was just as frustrating as the interrogations. This time, however, it felt as though the Equinox Killer was speaking directly to him. Mocking him.

  But Diego wasn’t beaten yet. Folding up the newsletter again, he decided it was time to pay a visit to cell D14.

  * * * *

  The guards of cell block D were easy enough to distract. Three thousand pesos of Zedilla’s money split five ways was a little spendy, but well worth free access to cell fourteen. Within a matter of minutes he was standing inside, alone with the New Ager who had an annoying habit of wringing his chubby hands in his lap.

  “I told you guys everything,” the New Ager implored from the edge of his cot.

  “Relax,” Diego said, holding up the newsletter. “I won’t hurt you as long as you tell me who wrote this.”

  The New Ager sat still, his eyes glued to the newsletter. The dumbfounded look on his face was all the more aggravating. Diego shoved the newsletter closer to the prisoner’s nose. He opened it to the middle section.

  “Tell me who wrote this article or you’ll find yourself in a lot smaller box than this cell.”

  The New Ager trembled. “No! Please!”

  “Who wrote it?”

  “The shaman.”

  “What shaman?”

  Sweat began to bead on the man’s pasty face. “Shaman Gaspar. He founded the New Age Followers of Quetzalcoatl.”

  Diego smiled. It was about time he made a breakthrough. He was impressed with the tight-lipped New Agers. None of them had dropped the slightest clue about Shaman Gaspar, but then again, the interrogators had assumed Citlalpol was the top of the New Age chain. Impressive for a large group, yet annoying, for it gave Diego all the more reason to despise secret societies.

  “Why haven’t I heard of this Shaman Gaspar before?”

  The fat man wrung his hands even faster. “Nobody talks about him. He’s nearest to the gods. He’s like an angel or something.”

  “Gaspar isn’t some bogus alias, is it?”

  “No! The shaman’s real.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  The New Ager hesitated.

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Diego couldn’t stand there watching those ceaseless chubby hands any longer. He grabbed the New Ager’s finger and wrenched it until the fat man fell to his knees in pain.

  “I’m not in the mood for games,” Diego growled.

  The prisoner whimpered with panic. “I’m telling you the truth! I’ve never met him.”

  Diego pulled harder. “Surely you know the base of his operations!”

  The fat man began to hyperventilate. “I think…I think I heard he lives in Utah.”

  “¿En los Estados Unidos?”

  “That’s what I heard!”

  Diego released the finger which immediately plunged into the New Ager’s mouth. A heavy weight finally lifted off of Diego’s weary shoulders. His luck had just taken a turn for the better.

  He smiled at the New Ager cowering at his feet. “Gracias, amigo.”

  As Diego sauntered out of the cell, he was feeling much better. Hell, he was like a new man. Finally! He’d found the name of the Equinox Killer and it was completely out of his hands to track him down. Bartering with the United States was far beyond his scope of employment. If Escaban wanted his killer, he’d have to do the legwork himself and with the United States keeping the regional director occupied with international protocol, as no doubt they would, he’d be too busy to notice the affairs of the Zedilla cartel.

  Perhaps Diego would catch his siesta after all.

  Salt Lake City

  The skies had cleared and the pavement was drying by the time Lori pulled into the parking space in front of her apartment. It had been a long twelve hours and the thought of curling up in her own bed sounded like heaven. She was worried though. She was worried about Dr. Peet.

  Just as he’d feared, the stop at Dr. Friedman’s house had been a dead end, and with no other options to turn to, he decided it was time to go to the police. Lori thought she should go along, but Dr. Peet insisted that he’d take care of it.

  “The less involved you are,” he said, “perhaps the less likely you’ll be expelled. I’ll just tell them I was working in the lab. Nobody has to know you were there.”

  The entire situation didn’t feel right, and she could tell Dr. Peet didn’t like it any better than she did. “There’s no reason for both of us to get thrown out of the university over this,” he’d reasoned. “Besides. You need to go home and take care of that ankle.”

  Lori felt like a criminal. They’d done nothing illegal, but she knew the university wouldn’t look at it that way. A priceless artifact had been stolen while they were in the very building it was taken from and at a time when they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. They were mere victims of unfortunate circumstances.

  She was contemplating their desperate situation when she buried her key into the doorknob of her apartment. The lock clicked free, allowing the door to swing open and that’s when something caught her eye. She glanced up and there, taped over the peephole, was a note.

  She pulled it off the door and recognized Derek’s handwriting scribbled across it. There were only two words: “Find me.”

  Lori groaned. I forgot about our date! Spinning on her heel, she swung the door shut and started back down the sidewalk.

  How am I going to explain this to Derek?

  * * * *

  Derek Riesling had just thrown a box of dirty laundry into his car when he spotted Lori approaching along the sidewalk. She’d nearly broken into a run at the pace she was going, but he sensed she was holding back.

  Was she limping?

  “Derek!” she called, as he turned back toward his apartment. “Derek, wait!”

  He obliged, unsure if he should be angry, or if he just shouldn’t give a damn at all.

  “I see you finally found my note.” He glanced at his watch for emphasis. “Took you long enough.”

  “I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I just lost track of time”

  “Please,” he said. “Save it. I’m sure you have a good reason for ditching me.”

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said, almost breathlessly.

  “You have a cell, don’t you? Why didn’t you call if you couldn’t make it?”

  There was a detectible coloring of her cheeks, likely from the exertion of her walk. However, when combined with her downcast eyes it gave her face an ashamed appearance rather than a tired one, but Derek easily read through that. The dark lines under her eyes gave her weariness away. It must hav
e been a very long night, he snarled to himself.

  “I forgot,” she admitted in a low voice.

  Derek crossed his arms. “It must have been real important, whatever it was that made you forget.”

  “I was in the lab and—”

  “I know where you were,” Derek snapped. He didn’t have the patience for this. “I saw you in there with good ol’ Quickie Peet. He give you that sweater, did he?”

  Lori looked stunned. She glanced down at her sweater as though she’d forgotten she had it on. But when she looked back at him, Derek could tell that her clothing was the last thing on her mind.

  “You were in the building last night?”

  “Yeah, right,” he sneered. “I saw the two of you through the window. It’s a good thing the doors were locked because I might have just come in and pounded a mud hole out of the son-of-a-bitch.”

  Lori had the audacity to look appalled. “Why?” she demanded. “Because he’s trying to help me with my dissertation?”

  “No. Because I couldn’t nail the real culprit that’s been keeping us apart.”

  “And who would that be?”

  “Your work, Lori. With you there’s nobody else but your work.”

  “I thought you liked that about me. You said I should never apologize for hard work.”

  “That was before I realized I had to compete against it. But I figured out last night that you’re already married to it.”

  Derek stood there, staring down that beautifully simplistic face of hers. Those earnest green eyes implored him like translucent gemstones. He expected her to turn around and leave in the way girls always did when they couldn’t find the upper hand. Or maybe she’d burst into tears, but to her credit, Lori held her ground and damn it all to hell, that made him want her more.

  For years, it seemed, he’d hoped to develop more out of their relationship, whatever that might actually be. He’d tried subtle tactics. He’d tried abrupt tactics. None of them seemed to hit their mark. Derek was facing defeat, and somehow, when it came from Lori it hurt unlike any other disappointment that had come before.