Effigy

by Theresa Danley

  No, he couldn’t think of anyone who would want to hurt Shaman Gaspar. Yes, the shaman had a very loyal and faithful following. Derek obediently answered all of Agent Diego’s questions and then threw a question of his own.

  “Did you find anything with the body?” he asked.

  “His items are in custody,” Escaban explained. “They are personal in nature. A wallet, keys, mirror, a cell phone—”

  “A cell phone?” Eva interrupted. “My father doesn’t own a cell phone.”

  “He bought it a week ago,” Agent Diego said. “We found the receipt in his wallet.”

  Eva didn’t like the way he looked at her, as though he were appraising a piece of furniture. She especially didn’t like the idea that Agent Diego had already helped himself to her father’s wallet.

  “There was nothing else with him?” Derek pressed.

  Escaban glanced at him curiously. “A dirty hotel towel.”

  That made absolutely no sense. What was her father trying to do with a hotel towel—muffle his voice over the cell phone? Why? What could her father have possibly gotten himself involved with?

  Diego shifted his weight to stand more squarely before them. “What is your relationship to the deceased?” he asked, his predatory eyes shifting to Derek.

  “Shaman Gaspar had a religious following. He hired me to write up his newsletters.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s it.”

  “Did your employer assign nicknames to his followers?”

  Escaban snapped a warning look to his agent. Derek shifted uncomfortably. The sound of his legs rubbing against the vinyl sofa accented the tension.

  “How did you know that?”

  Diego didn’t hesitate. “Did he give you a nickname?”

  “Yeah,” Derek said cautiously. “He called me Acatzalan.”

  * * * *

  Diego waited while Escaban helped Eva Gaspar and her friend into the squad car. His eyes remained fixed on Derek. There was something vaguely familiar about him. The face was familiar, but his nickname was what concerned Diego now. Acatzalan was the name Citlalpol had given him. It was also the name of Gaspar’s newsletters, the newsletters Derek wrote.

  None of this was incidental. Diego didn’t believe in coincidence. But what he did believe was that he was finally looking at the Equinox Killer. He was tempted to arrest Acatzalan on the spot, but after the fiasco with the questionable arrests of the New Agers, Escaban would require more proof. Diego had not yet told him about Acatzalan, and arresting people on a whim had become a thorn in Escaban’s side.

  But that was Escaban. The shoot now and ask questions later tactics Diego had once been so fond of with the PJF were still close to his own heart. At this point, he was ready to do anything to bring in the Equinox Killer.

  Zócalo

  Rental cars in downtown Mexico City were targets, Derek decided, and he must be driving the biggest bulls eye of them all. At nearly every stoplight he was bombarded by street peddlers vying for position at his window, flashing everything from city maps and key chains to papier mâché skeletons, cigarettes and chicle gum, to fresh cut Calla Lilies. They swarmed the car as though it was an armored truck with bags of money falling out the back.

  From the passenger seat Eva watched the vendors with no apparent concern or sympathy. While Derek found the constant interruption annoying at best, Eva didn’t seem to notice it at all. She merely stared out her window, stared right through the street merchants like they weren’t even there.

  Finally, they managed to escape into the historic district where Derek spotted a parking space along the street and quickly turned the wheel to claim it.

  “What are you doing?” Eva asked.

  Those were the first words she’d spoken since leaving the morgue.

  Just beyond her window Derek noticed an old woman sitting outside a humble dulcería, her bony frame wearily perched on an overturned plastic crate. Her chin was cradled in her hand which was propped up by the knobby elbow digging into her knee, and she was looking back at him through Eva’s window. Both women were watching him expectantly.

  “Derek?” Eva said, snapping him back to attention. “What are we doing here?”

  Derek reached for his door and opened it. “C’mon. Let’s go for a walk.”

  Within a couple blocks they found themselves approaching the Zócalo, a great barren city square as imposing in its openness as the surrounding austere palaces and baroque cathedrals were in opulence. Even the oversized national flag swaying on the center pole seemed to signify grandeur and supremacy, an overblown paradox for a country better known for its poverty and corruption.

  There was more than enough room here to think.

  “Are you hungry?” he asked as they wandered onto the vast swath of pavement.

  Eva shoved her hands into her pockets as if to warm them, though Derek was already feeling clammy beneath the sun. “Food isn’t a high priority right now,” she said.

  She looked at a loss for words, at a loss for emotion. Now that they’d found Shaman Gaspar, Eva seemed deprived of purpose, like she was just wasting time until they could go back home.

  Derek sighed. “Look, there’s something I should tell you.”

  He led her to a bench situated just outside the entrance of a nearby hotel. Eva sat down with a confused look but quickly diverted it by fishing out a cigarette from her purse. “So?” she asked into her cupped hands as she lit the end with a lighter. A plume of smoke emitted between her hardened lips and the smell of cauterized nicotine filled the space between them.

  Derek hesitated, debating whether he’d prefer to stay on his feet or stand. Eva tossed her head back as if relishing her smoke, and then trained a curious eye on him. He promptly parked himself beside her.

  “I think I know why your father came down here,” he confessed.

  “It had something to do with that New Age crap, I’m sure.”

  As tempting as it was to let it go at that, Derek knew he had to tell her. There was a chance, as slim as it may be, that they could track down the effigy and he was going to need her help doing it.

  “Your father brought an artifact down here,” he said. “A valuable one.”

  Eva pulled the cigarette from her lips. “How valuable?”

  “Priceless.”

  “And you know this for a fact?”

  Derek nodded.

  “How?”

  “I took it to him.”

  She gave him a steely glare. Her cigarette smoldered between her fingers. “What does it look like?”

  “Quetzalcoatl. What else?”

  “I thought you weren’t a follower,” she challenged.

  “I’m not. It was all his idea. I was just the guy who could get it for him.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How did you manage to get your hands on a priceless Quetzalcoatl artifact?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “You stole it, didn’t you?”

  “I borrowed it, but I have to get it back before—”

  “Before someone finds their artifact missing.”

  Derek bowed his head. “Something like that.”

  “So what you’re telling me is that if it weren’t for you, my father would still be alive and at home where he belongs?”

  “Actually, he’d probably be packing for the New Age gathering on Sunday, but yeah, he’d still be alive.”

  Eva sat back as though trying to absorb the idea of Shaman Gaspar alive somewhere far away from Mexico. Derek tried to predict her reaction by the expression on her face, but she was a blank slate. Surprisingly, she didn’t appear upset at all. After a moment, she even looked slightly amused by the whole situation.

  “Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.

  “I’m hoping you might know where he took the artifact since it wasn’t in his hotel room.”

  “So that was the purpose of our little stop,” she said as if realizing the answer to an unanswered question.<
br />
  Certain they’d find the effigy at the Agave Azul, Derek had made a beeline from the city morgue to inquire about Shaman Gaspar’s room. To his utter disappointment, the room had been cleaned. Shaman Gaspar had checked out yesterday afternoon, and he’d left nothing behind.

  Discouraged, Derek simply drove from the hotel and into the heart of Mexico City with no specific destination in mind. Eva seemed not to care where they were going. While she sorted through her thoughts, Derek needed to deal with concerns of his own.

  The effigy was gone. When the university learned of his theft, he’d be expelled. Worse yet, his exotic freelancing career would likely become nothing more than a distant dream rotting away in a prison cell. He shuddered at the thought of confinement, of reading about archaeological digs around the globe from articles written by contemptible stringers spot-hired by the very magazines with which he sought publication.

  Things weren’t looking good for Derek Riesling, esquire. His only hope was finding the effigy and getting it back to the university.

  Eva laughed. Actually, it was more of a snide cackle that basically said, You’re out of your mind. “Well it appears to me that my father was murdered for this priceless piece of junk you gave him. I’m sure the killer’s already pawned it off somewhere.”

  “We don’t know that. There might be a chance—”

  “Look kid, other than the stories my father told me when I was little, I don’t know anything about this part of his life. I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

  They both eased back against the bench, watching the tourists meander around the square. Derek felt like hiding under the nearest rock, while Eva had the casual alertness of a Sunday stroller taking a breather in a city park. Her cigarette had burned down half its length, the long ash still clinging, waiting for the slightest movement to dislodge from her fingers.

  Derek watched the thin breeze flip a corner of the giant tricolor flag and then let it fall into its heavy green and red folds again. He caught a glimpse of the nation’s seal at its white center, the eagle perched atop a cactus with a rattlesnake clutched in its claws—the sign that once convinced the Aztecs to settle and build their own city here. In fact, the ruins of the Aztec Templo Mayor had been excavated just beyond the Zócalo, just beyond the great flag.

  Cities atop cities, temples atop temples. What was it about this place that commanded grand scales of inspiration?

  When Eva did move it was to sit up again. She inspected the wasted end of her cigarette and finally tapped off the ash. She didn’t bother to take another drag, but merely, inquisitively, stared at her smoke as though expecting it to do something other than smolder.

  “You know,” she said in a contemplative tone. “Your story does shed a little light on something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The phone call—when Father told me to come to Mexico.”

  This time it was Derek’s turn for curiosity. “What about it?”

  “Just before hanging up he told me something. I thought it was just gibberish at the time. But he said I should find the smoke in the snake’s mouth.”

  “The smoke in the snake’s mouth?”

  Eva stared blankly at her cigarette. “Wait. There’s more.” Her lips silently repeated the words as though she was trying to memorize lines of poetry.

  She mumbled over the phrase again, her cigarette now bobbing in verbal articulation. “Find the stone…no… Behind the sun stone, find the smoke in the serpent’s mouth. That’s what he told me.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Derek said.

  “Makes even less sense to me.”

  Derek thought over Shaman Gaspar’s words—his final words for all he knew. Behind the sun stone, find the smoke in the serpent’s mouth. Quetzalcoatl was a feathered serpent, and the effigy did have an open mouth. Was this the serpent mouth Shaman Gaspar was referring to?

  “It’s almost like he’s talking about something he hid inside the effigy.”

  “From the sounds of it, he must have stashed your artifact behind some rock.”

  “The sun stone.”

  Derek suddenly felt rejuvenated. He sprang to his feet. “If Shaman Gaspar hid the effigy, then that means his killer didn’t take it.”

  “Sounds like all you have to do now is find that sun stone.”

  Derek reached for his cell phone. “And I know just the guy who can help.”

  Laboratory

  Lori picked up a mid-nineteenth century medicine flask from the storage room floor. The glass was thick and sun-aged purple and a small chip was missing out of the lip. Perhaps the piece lay somewhere on the storage room floor. Perhaps it was still lost on the battlefield. In either case, Lori doubted it would ever be found.

  She located the identification number written on the bottom and took a moment to scan across the last three rows of lab tables laden with boxes and artifacts. She spotted the collection of Civil War artifacts and placed the bottle there where it could be easily retrieved if, by chance, they recovered the missing chip.

  Dr. Peet stood at a table nearby, returning an eastern woodland tribal mask to its box. He paused there, one hand bearing his weight over the box while the other rubbed his red, swollen eyes. Lori doubted he’d slept much over the past two nights. She hadn’t either for that matter, and were it not for the sore and slow-healing ankle, and the tables of artifacts that still needed organized, she might have thought the theft of the effigy was nothing more than a nightmare.

  A never-ending nightmare.

  Dr. Peet slammed his fist on the table with a furious curse.

  Lori tentatively joined him and pulled up a stool. “Let’s take a break,” she said.

  He glanced at her with a beaten look in his eyes and offered a weak, relenting grin as he sat down on a stool beside her. He propped his elbows upon his knees and buried his face with a sigh. His shoulders had lost their sturdy span and now slumped like a heavy wet coat slung over a bent wire hanger. When he sat back again his head still drooped and from it hung a morose expression.

  Dr. Peet closed his eyes and there, in the crushing silence of the room, amid all the remnants of dead and forgotten generations, Lori suddenly felt the energy of a storm compressed within him. She thought she understood. After all, the stolen effigy was weighing heavy upon her own mind. She, herself, had slept only a few hours before the remote atmosphere of her apartment drove her to the anthropology building shortly after six a.m.

  Dr. Peet’s car was already there.

  How long he’d been there, she couldn’t say for he’d barely muttered three words to her since she tapped on the lab window and asked to join him. He compliantly let her in, ensuring the front doors locked securely behind them.

  Lori now glanced at her watch.

  “Almost noon,” she said. “Maybe we should break for lunch.”

  Dr. Peet offered a hollow grunt.

  All morning they’d worked in the storage room, picking up scattered artifacts and returning them to their appropriate storage containers. Lori refrained from chatter and she sensed Dr. Peet appreciated that. Not that she felt much like talking anyway, but she could tell something was surging through her professor’s mind. She saw it in his face and in the way he avoided direct eye contact. The effigy was certainly on his mind and there was a good chance that it mingled with worries over that performance evaluation he’d mentioned.

  Lori decided the time for passive evasiveness was expired.

  “I hope you don’t mind me saying,” she began, “but you look like a man dangling at the end of his rope.”

  Dr. Peet grinned with sarcastic appreciation. “I feel like I’ve been whipped by it, Lori,” he said, finally straightening on his stool to address her. “But it hasn’t hung me—yet.”

  “You place too much on yourself,” Lori observed. “Try to relax.”

  Dr. Peet chuckled, but it was a mere hairline fracture to his tension. “I hope you don’t intend to lead by example. As I recall, I wasn�
��t the only one who beat the morning traffic getting here.”

  Lori smiled to cover her own strained thoughts. The effigy hadn’t been the only thing that kept her awake last night. Derek had been there too, haunting her with his angry remarks and that hurtful look in his eyes. How could she have completely overlooked their date, if indeed that’s what it was meant to be? She couldn’t blame Derek for being upset and it troubled her to know she’d broken a promise. But the guilt was worsened when she realized that had she gone out with him the other night, Dr. Peet wouldn’t have had reason to remove the effigy from the museum and the thief wouldn’t have found it so easily accessible in the laboratory. Had Lori remembered their date, the effigy might still be safe.

  She nudged Dr. Peet in a half-hearted tease. “All right, so we’re both a couple of basket cases.”

  The professor’s attempted chuckle quickly faded into an airy sigh. Lori glanced across the lab tables. A good majority of the artifacts were back where they belonged, though there were still more to sort. She spotted the effigy’s empty aluminum container sitting on top of the microscope counter.

  “I’m sure the cops are doing everything they can,” she said, trying to sound optimistic.

  Dr. Peet’s expression fell again as he woefully shook his head. “I wouldn’t count on it.”

  “Sure they are. They wouldn’t let something like this just slide.”

  “They would if they didn’t know anything about it.”

  Lori snorted. “You don’t have to know anything about the effigy to realize how important it is. All they have to do is look at the newspapers.”

  He shook his head again. “That’s not what I meant,” he said, turning back to his hands folded in his lap. “They don’t know anything about the theft, Lori. I never reported it to them.”

  * * * *

  Peet felt her astonished stare as he focused on his hands. How could he tell Lori that although he’d driven as far as the police station yesterday, he’d only managed to sit like a lump in his car, fearing the suspicion that was sure to arise from his delay. Surely the police would want to know why he hadn’t called them immediately after the theft, and he had yet to find a convincing answer. They wouldn’t believe he thought he could capture the thieves by deciphering a Mayan hieroglyph printed on a torn piece of stationary. He hardly believed that himself anymore.