Effigy

by Theresa Danley

  “We found the storage room torn apart and the effigy gone,” Lori added.

  John nodded and glanced at the boxes sorted across the lab tables. “So that explains the mess,” he said bitterly. “Did either of you get a good look at him?”

  Peet shook his head. “Lori had the best opportunity. She’s the one that chased him down.”

  John turned to her in surprise. “You chased him down?”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, sort of. But not really.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Lori huffed impatiently. “It means I didn’t get a good look at him,” she blurted. “He had on a mask. One of those Zorro-type masks, that goes around the eyes.”

  John stepped back. “That’s a bit odd.” He turned to Peet. “How about you? Did you notice anything?”

  Peet thought back to the night of the theft. The only time he got any real look at the thief was right after he’d boldly stepped out of the lab. He was walking away, nothing more than a shadow going down a dark hall.

  “There’s something else,” Lori interrupted. “When he was getting into his car I noticed something catch the street lights from his belt.”

  John returned his focus to her. “You mean something metallic, like a belt buckle?”

  “I thought so at the time, but now I think it was bigger than a belt buckle. And it was hanging at his hip, not in front where a buckle should be.”

  “Could have been a knife,” Peet suggested.

  Lori shook her head. “It was round. I didn’t get a real good look at it though.”

  “How about a license plate?” John asked. “Did you get a look at that?”

  Peet shrugged. “Everything happened so fast.”

  “And afterwards? Did you think to call the police?”

  He cringed. This wasn’t going to sound good, no matter how he said it. “We haven’t called them yet.” What more was there to say?

  John turned away with a heavy sigh. It was that sigh of utter disappointment. Peet knew it well.

  The silence that followed was pure agony. John was pacing the floor with his own thoughts. Peet felt his fate hanging from a frayed line of trust. Perhaps that too had already snapped.

  John reached into his coat pocket and withdrew his cell phone. Lori bolted toward him.

  “You can’t call the cops,” she cried, snatching the phone out of his hand.

  “Have you lost your mind, Miss Dewson?”

  “We can fix this,” she said.

  “How, may I ask, are you going to fix this?”

  “The thief left a ransom note.”

  “We think it’s a ransom note,” Peet clarified.

  John looked puzzled. “What note?”

  “The stationary we showed you with the Toltec date symbol. We think the note is telling us that we have two days.”

  “Two days for what?”

  Lori bowed her head. “We haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Surprisingly, John’s posture relaxed as he took the phone back from Lori. His anger seemed to be replaced with disappointment, like a reluctant father about to punish a disobedient child. Peet guardedly welcomed the altered disposition. It gave him hope that his estranged colleague would help after all.

  “Well,” John said in an all-knowing tone. “The two of you can sit here and waste your time on that ridiculous note, or you can come with me.”

  Lori glanced at Peet. By the look on her face she was just as confused as he was.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “If you must know, I was about to call the airlines.” John eased his hand into the second glove. “I’ve been requested to fly down to Mexico on the next available flight.”

  “What are you talking about?” Peet asked.

  John waved the cell phone in the air. “That call was from one of your former students.”

  “Who?”

  “Derek Riesling. He says he’s met with the police in Mexico City.”

  Lori gasped. “Mexico City? That’s impossible. I just saw him at his apartment yesterday.”

  “Apparently the boy gets around.”

  Peet was shaking his head, trying to make sense of what he was telling them. Derek Riesling hadn’t been a student of his for over three years. What was he doing in Mexico?

  “Why is Derek with the police?” Lori asked.

  John sighed. “Evidently he stole the effigy.”

  Year Signs

  Dr. Peet’s car was already parked in the driveway by the time Lori reached Dr. Friedman’s house. She’d packed in a hurry. With all the flights to Mexico City booked through the next three days, Dr. Peet had to settle for a redeye out of Denver, leaving them with three hundred and seventy miles to go and ten hours to get there.

  Lori set her duffle bag next to the trunk of Dr. Peet’s car and, without bothering to knock, let herself into the house. She spotted Dr. Peet first, leaning a shoulder against the far wall with his back turned to her. He was idly toying with the band of his hat while Dr. Friedman scurried around the living room, throwing a few last minute items into his Samsonite suitcase. He was talking, and his words were heavy and tense.

  “Martha won’t be happy when she learns about this,” he was saying.

  “You should bring her along,” Dr. Peet said sedately.

  “I can’t bring her along,” Dr. Friedman snapped. “Not on something like this. No. I encouraged her to visit her sister in Nevada. But if she ever learns I’m headed to Mexico with you, I’ll never hear the end of it. This is all your fault, you know.”

  Lori shut the front door hard enough to catch their attention. Dr. Peet spun around. Dr. Friedman just glanced up from his packing.

  “I’m glad you’re back, Miss Dewson,” he said. “I’m almost finished here and we’ll be on our way. Did you bring your passport?”

  Lori nodded.

  “Good. You’ll need that.” He snapped his suitcase shut and when he glanced back at her, he had a tenuous smile on his face. “I think you’ll like Mexico, Lori. Such a colorful country.”

  Lori felt herself relax a little. “I’m just glad we know where the effigy is,” she admitted.

  Dr. Peet grunted as he reached for the luggage. “I’ll be happier when we’re back at the university with it.”

  He skirted around her and once he was out the door, Lori turned to Dr. Friedman. “Something’s been bothering me,” she admitted.

  “Yes? And what is that?”

  “Why did Derek call you?” she asked.

  Dr. Friedman shrugged. “I suppose he thought I was the one to call since I headed the research on the effigy.”

  “He has your number memorized?”

  He chuckled and Lori marveled at his relaxed posture. His urbane expression engendered a self-assured smile which seemed to have dissolved the tension from his voice, a voice suddenly smooth as a gentleman’s whiskey.

  “I’m sure Derek had me on speed dial,” he said. “He was following the effigy research closely—always looking to write up another article for the school paper.”

  Lori nodded, but something inside still nagged her. Something else just didn’t seem to be adding up. It was the same feeling she got with the effigy—the feeling that despite Dr. Friedman’s conclusions, the effigy couldn’t have been traded to the Anasazi. The circumstances just didn’t make sense.

  Now, she found herself similarly conflicted. She still wasn’t convinced that it was Derek who stole the effigy. First of all, the car that dragged her around the parking lot wasn’t flashy enough for Derek. It wasn’t his car. Secondly, she knew Derek, or at least she thought she knew him. She at least knew his shape and movements well enough. The thief was taller than Derek and although it had been dark that night, Lori could tell that the thief’s husky frame didn’t have Derek’s fluid athleticism. Then there were those hauntingly cold eyes behind the black mask. Those were not Derek’s eyes.

  But if it wasn’t Derek who she chased out of the lab, th
en who was it? And if Derek had the effigy, what was this mysterious intruder carrying? She recalled the strange black box. In the pace of the moment she had assumed the effigy was in the stranger’s box, but now she wasn’t so sure. That uncertainty brought her thoughts back to Derek. How did he get the effigy, and what did he want with it?

  “Did Derek have a particular interest in the Toltec Calendar?” she pressed.

  “Not that I recall,” Dr. Friedman said as he collected his passport and a map of Mexico City from a nearby desk drawer. “But I believe it did come up through conversation once. I think we were talking about the Mesoamerican year cycles, but not the daily cycles. The daily calendar would have been too detailed for any discussions we shared.”

  “How so?”

  He paused. “Let me show you.”

  With a quickness Lori wouldn’t have expected from a man his age, Dr. Friedman marched to his library and almost immediately returned with a book titled, New World Calendrics. He was thumbing through it when he lowered himself on the sofa, inviting Lori to do the same.

  “Here it is,” he said, leaning toward her to share the page he’d turned to. “This is an illustration of the twenty day symbols of the Toltec Calendar Round.”

  Lori studied the wheel at the top of the page. It was sectioned into twenty blocks, each block filled with a Toltec date symbol. Sure enough, the reed sign was there, along with the serpent Coatl sign.

  “As you’ll recall,” Dr. Friedman said, “the Toltecs used the numbers one through thirteen and these twenty day symbols to label their days. However, their solar years began each year on one of only four of these symbols—Knife, Reed, Rabbit and House. Now, you might notice that these four year signs quarter the Calendar Round.”

  Lori did notice as Dr. Friedman’s thick finger pointed out the four symbols which, if she were looking at a clock, would have been located near two, five, eight and eleven.

  “So the years are labeled by thirteen numbers and four symbols?”

  “Precisely!”

  “So what year are we in now?”

  Dr. Friedman closed the book, thinking. “As I recall, 2012 is the year of Thirteen Knife.”

  Lori sank back in the sofa. “Oh.”

  “Were you expecting something else?”

  She sighed. “I guess I was hoping for a significant year, like One Reed. Just something that might pull all the pieces of this puzzle together.”

  She spotted Dr. Friedman’s printout of the Toltec Calendar Round and absently patted the pages together. The day Ten Coatl in the year Thirteen Knife. May 20, 2012. What was the significance of that date? If Derek really had taken the effigy, what did the date mean to him?

  Lori picked up the stack of pages of the Calendar Round. “What were you looking for when you created this calendar?” she asked.

  Dr. Friedman shrugged. “Nothing in particular. I used it for reference mostly. There was a time when I was comparing ancient calendars from all over the world with significant dates in history. When I started the Mayan and Toltec calendars I was concerned with how the Mesoamericans might have viewed the Spanish conquest through mythologies surrounding their calendar dates.”

  Lori flashed him a confused look.

  “It was more out of personal interest than academic study,” he admitted.

  Lori nodded, but the uneasiness lingered within her nerves. There was still something missing, something that linked Derek to the Toltec calendar—something that linked Acatzalan to Ten Coatl. She could make no sense of the note he’d left behind. Derek may have wanted the effigy for its monetary value, but then why would he confess his theft to Dr. Friedman? If she was ever to find the answers she needed, she had to somehow cross this impenetrable barrier of questions.

  Dr. Peet poked his head back through the front door. “Let’s get this show on the road,” he called. “We’ve got a border to cross.”

  PART IV

  Saturday, May 19, 2012

  “There is only one god; named Quetzalcoatl…you shall sacrifice before him only serpents, only butterflies.”

  Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl

  Sacrifices

  Mateo De Ramos watched the curious activity of humanity scurrying about the Zócalo. At first it was a pleasing sight to see so many people carrying on in their ignorant existence. Their lives were being spared from the trauma of a changing world order—the calamity he’d been dreading all his life. However, just in time, Mateo had found a way to maintain harmony, allowing people around the world to determine their own fates and not fall helplessly victimized by a greater force beyond their control.

  In short, Mateo was saving the world.

  But as he stood at the window overlooking the bustling city square, his inner revelry gloomed. So many people and they were all oblivious of his guard. They were completely incognizant of his glorious intervention, ignorant of the deprivation he’d spared them.

  In that moment he transformed from a noble savior to a loathing and unappreciated god.

  Mateo was offended by their ungrateful disregard. There’d been no acknowledgment of his sacrifices, but then, how were the people to know the goodness he’d done? How could they realize the salvation he’d bestowed upon the world if they didn’t know the consequences of failure?

  He considered the jaguar box sitting on the lamp table beside him. He’d found it circulating the underground market—the same place he’d found the obsidian knife—and promptly traded one hundred grams of marijuana for it. One might consider it a hefty price for a vessel that couldn’t contain the effigy, but that wasn’t the reason for the purchase. The jaguar box was just large enough to hold a human heart, and that in itself made it well worth the trade.

  It occurred to him that maybe public recognition would come when the jaguar box fulfilled its final purpose; when Mateo finished the job. After all, the first three sacrifices had merely proven his loyalty to the Mirrored One, and in return, the Mirrored One delivered the ultimate sacrifice into his hands. But Mateo had yet to complete the offering of the old man’s heart. He couldn’t just jump into it this time. He’d been bestowed a tremendous responsibility and he was in the middle of an extended fast, waiting for further instruction just to ensure he performed the offering properly.

  Then it came.

  Even as he stood there watching the Zócalo, he heard the Mirrored One whisper in his ear. It was going to take more than the old man’s heart to save the world. Something had to be offered with it. Something grand.

  Something priceless.

  Mateo was suddenly emboldened by the new plan. He sensed his own spirit lifting. He still had time to prepare. And this time, his efforts wouldn’t go unnoticed by the sleeping hordes of humanity.

  This time, the whole world would know of his sacrifice.

  Among The Reeds

  The hum of the airplane was perfectly quiet, or at least quiet enough to let Lori think things through. It was like studying in the confined light and silence of a lab lamp but without the room to sprawl. Instead, she found herself containing the stack of John’s Calendar Round upon the slippery surface of the seatback tray before her.

  The steady drone of the long flight had dulled Dr. Peet to a green-gilled sleep in the seat against the window. Lori never took him for a weak-stomached flyer until the first time he’d rushed for the lavatory with his hand over his mouth. He returned looking slightly less peaked and convinced he’d fully emptied his stomach. “I guess you’re not a frequent flyer,” Lori joked, which only sent him back for good measure.

  Dr. Friedman, on the other hand, appeared right at home in the air, browsing through the expensive airline shopping magazine, and taking advantage of Dr. Peet’s window seat evacuations to stretch his arthritic knee in the aisle.

  Lori sat contentedly silent between them, not even allowing the fussy baby three rows back to interrupt her concentration. With Dr. Peet settled in, she could focus on the Reed day symbol—a funny little square glyph that didn’t look like any recogni
zable figure she’d ever seen. It repeated itself every twenty days and each time Lori spotted it she felt her mind rolling over the word, “Acatzalan.”

  Nahuatl. Meaning “among the reeds.”

  Among the reeds.

  She repeated those words each time her finger passed over the Reed symbol. Nine Reed. Among the reeds. Ten Reed. Among the reeds. They cycled through her head like a child’s limerick.

  “See anything that interests you?” Dr. Friedman asked. He’d set his magazine aside and was watching her with a knee cradled within his folded hands. A rather gymnastic move for an old man, Lori thought, considering the cramped confines of their seats.

  She felt conscious of him glancing over her notes, though there weren’t many. In the margin beside May 16th, Six Water, she’d written: EFFIGY STOLEN. She’d circled May 20th, Ten Coatl, but there were only question marks scribbled beside that.

  “I guess I was hoping to find something that would tie all of this to the effigy,” she said.

  “Oh.” There was a doubtful tone to Dr. Friedman’s voice. Inside, Lori understood the sentiment. She felt uncertain herself, but…

  “I can’t help but wonder about the significance placed on reeds.”

  “I don’t know that there is one.”

  “There’s the word, ‘Acatzalan,’ which refers to reeds. Then there’s Quetzalcoatl’s relationship with the One Reed year, and the effigy is a representation of Quetzalcoatl—”

  “I think you’re grasping at straws,” Dr. Friedman said.

  “Maybe so,” Lori admitted.

  She paused as her thoughts returned to the calendar. Could it be no coincidence that the reeds referred to in the translation of Acatzalan were also symbolized in the names of Toltec days and years?

  Acatzalan. Among the…years?

  “Dr. Friedman, might the word Acatzalan refer to being one with time?”

  He shrugged. “That sounds like a stretch.”

  Lori wasn’t dissuaded. In fact, her thoughts were surging now. “Or maybe Acatzalan is a title for someone or something regarded as being one with One Reed, Quetzalcoatl. They are among the reeds.”