Dr. Friedman reached for his magazine and snapped it open again. “That sounds even less likely,” he said.
Lori reconsidered this a moment. Although the taunting spirit of the mysterious note certainly felt cocky enough to have been left by Derek, the message didn’t sound like him at all.
“If you ask me,” Dr. Friedman said, scanning leisurely over the pages in the magazine, “that note was nothing more than a distraction meant to keep us busy solving puzzles while Derek got away with the effigy.”
“I suppose,” Lori said glumly.
“I wouldn’t put much more concern into that silly note, Lori. In a few hours I’m sure Derek will explain everything.”
* * * *
Peet couldn’t have been happier to feel his feet on solid ground again. He’d never enjoyed flying. In fact, he made a point of it to drive everywhere he went. But this time it was unavoidable, and suffering over six hours in the air was almost intolerable.
“I guess we better find a hotel and drop off our luggage,” John thought out loud as they stepped out of the beautiful glass terminal.
Peet spotted a green Volkswagen with a taxi light but when he stepped forward to flag it down, John pulled him back.
“Not the bugs,” he warned and they let the taxi pass.
“How are we going to find Derek in all this mess?” Lori asked, scanning the steady flow of traffic maneuvering the pickup lanes.
“I suppose our first stop will be the police station,” Peet said.
John glanced over Peet’s shoulder as he discreetly pointed through the milling travelers. “Or, he’ll find us first.”
When Peet turned he immediately spotted the young man making his way through the crowd, dressed like a tourist fresh from Hawaii in his loose shirt and shorts. When Derek’s wandering gaze landed on them he froze in his tracks, his face dropping as though he hadn’t expected to see them standing there. He immediately backpedaled into the crowd and a few steps later he was running away.
“Now what do you suppose got into him?”
Before the words had fully escaped John’s mouth, Peet was on the chase. He bolted into the crowd. He didn’t know why Derek was running—he only knew that he’d stolen the effigy, put his teaching career on the line and was well on his way in ruining Lori’s professional reputation. Peet was badly in need of some explanation.
Derek darted into the traffic, dodging honking cars and making an impressive Bo Duke slide across the hood of a parked Geo. Regrettably, Peet didn’t have that kind of athletic ability. What he did have was the capacity to anticipate Derek’s change of course when he veered into the short-term parking garage.
Peet had already begun sweating through his shirt when he ran into the warm Mexican air trapped within the garage. He was gaining little ground when Derek made an abrupt turn three rows in and ran parallel to, and against the flow of the pick up lanes.
“Derek!” Peet yelled.
Derek took a quick glance over his shoulder. Just as he did, a briefcase flew around a concrete pillar, stopping him cold in his tracks and laying him out flat on the ground. Peet was stunned and smiled gratefully when John stepped out from behind the pillar.
“Guess he didn’t see that one coming,” John said, brushing a hand across his briefcase.
Peet grabbed the front of Derek’s shirt and pulled him to his feet. The young man cupped his rosy cheek in one hand. His nose began to bleed.
“You about broke my face!” Derek protested.
“What were you running for?” Peet demanded. “You call us down to Mexico and then you run away?”
“I called Friedman,” Derek spat. “I didn’t know he’d bring you along.”
“Why’d you steal the effigy?” Peet growled. “Are you trying to throw me out of a job?”
By this time Lori had joined them, burdened by her duffel slung over her shoulder and all but dragging Peet’s luggage behind. Derek spotted her. “Looks like you’re doing that all on your own, Quickie Peet,” he sneered.
Peet tightened his grip. How he’d love to choke the little bastard. “What is it you have against me?” he demanded. “Why’d you steal the effigy?”
“What makes you think the effigy had anything to do with you?” Derek asked, wincing as he dabbed at the blood dripping from his nose.
“Do you realize how many artifacts you destroyed in the storage room?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Peet didn’t have the patience for Derek’s games. Now that they’d found the person responsible for the mess he was in, he was ready to tear him apart. He pushed Derek against a car, but hesitated when the car’s security alarm blared in protest. He felt the eyes of nearby travelers turning their way. Frustrated, he pulled Derek away and as they walked back down the parking garage, Derek finally shrugged him off.
“Don’t lie to me,” Peet growled under his breath. “I can end your college career just as easily as you’re ending mine.”
“I swear. I only took the effigy and left. Didn’t you see the note?”
Peet reached into the breast pocket of his blue, cotton shirt, now damp with sweat. He pulled out the scrap of stationary. “You mean this note?”
“That’s part of it. Where’s the other half?”
“There was no other half,” he growled.
“There was more to it than that.”
Peet clenched his fists. He grabbed Derek’s collar again. “You better start talking straight, damn it!”
John and Lori approached, their footsteps echoing behind them. “Let the boy go, Anthony.”
Peet hesitated, his eyes locked on Derek.
“You’re not going to get anything by beating him to a bloody pulp,” John added.
“Can’t you see he’s playing games with us?” Peet snarled.
Lori stepped in close, placing a gentle hand on the fist clenched around Derek’s collar. “I think he’s telling the truth,” she said.
Peet was nearly floored. “What? You’re sticking up for him now?”
“I think there was a second person that came to steal the effigy,” she explained.
“There were two thieves?”
“I think so.”
Peet turned back to Derek. “Highly unlikely,” he gruffed in his face.
“Unlikely, yes,” Lori persisted. “But why would Derek tear the storage room apart if he already had what he came for? Someone else must have come in and destroyed the room looking for the effigy after Derek already took it.”
Peet looked at Lori who stared back with imploring eyes. He didn’t want to even consider such an absurd suggestion, but there was something in her expression that begged to be trusted. Reluctantly, he released Derek again and, struggling to find a calmer tone, he asked, “What did you do with the effigy?”
“That’s what I called Friedman about.” He shot John a testy glance. “But I thought you’d come alone.”
“Where is it?” Peet demanded.
Derek touched the tender ridge of his cheek. “I gave it to Shaman Gaspar.”
“Who the hell is Shaman Gaspar?”
Just then the passenger door of a nearby car opened and a woman stepped out. She was eyeing them all as she stepped forward. She was middle-aged, but nice-looking, with a pleasant shade to her complexion. Probably Mexican.
She stopped beside Derek and handed him a handkerchief, which he pressed against his bloody nose.
“Shaman Gaspar is my father,” she said.
Tezcatlipoca
“My father was the founder of a secret society called The New Age Followers of Quetzalcoatl. He’d been obsessed with Quetzalcoatl for as long as I can remember.”
Eva looked pitiful, John noted as she toyed with her half-eaten enchilada. Her eyes were heavy and sleepless. Her face weary and troubled. She was a physical representation of the jet lag threatening to settle into his bones.
The restaurant was small and quite dark at the corner table where they’d been seated.
The tempting aroma of spices mingled with the steam floating over plates loaded with a variety of savory meats and tortillas smothered in a myriad of sauces, salsas and beans. Mariachi music played over the speaker hidden within a sombrero hanging in the corner above them.
John was starving and any other time he would have enjoyed the cultural flavor despite its slight enhancements to attract tourists, but today he found his corn tamale less than satisfying and the climactic music threatened to hinder the conversation. Signs of old age, he thought. But the past twenty-four hours had been trying enough. Even Anthony Peet was looking somewhat ragged in his chair. Of the three of them, Lori seemed to be fairing the best.
Oh, to be young again.
“So an effigy of Quetzalcoatl naturally caught your father’s attention,” Peet said sourly.
Eva shrugged. “I’d assume so. I stopped following all of his Quetzalcoatl nonsense a long time ago.”
“Hell yeah, the effigy caught his eye,” Derek piped in over a mouthful of the restaurant’s sorry tribute to an American hamburger. “The guy was a nut for anything associated with Quetzalcoatl. He encouraged his followers to bring him any trinkets even remotely related so he could bless them. I thought it was some sort of snake fetish myself.”
“And you had nothing to do with this secret society,” Peet blasted doubtfully at him.
John found his tone quite hypocritical considering, for reasons still unclear to him, Peet and Lori had tried to cover up Derek’s theft. They hadn’t bothered to go to the authorities, but once Derek had called with his admission, Peet seemed ready to strangle the boy at the drop of a hat. He might have followed through with it in the airport parking lot had John not interfered.
He’d always known Anthony Peet to be a rather impulsive individual, and yet, he’d also known the man to sit for hours at a dig site, patiently pecking away at the earth with a dentist’s pick. John had never known anyone so willing to react and yet so content with nothing to react to. Nevertheless, Peet’s actions had become erratic, unreliable and deeply suspect.
“I worked on the shaman’s newsletters,” Derek was saying. “That’s all. Just the newsletter.”
“Did your note come from one of your newsletters, by any chance?” Lori asked.
Derek smiled sheepishly. “Hey, it was all I had with me at the time. I left it in case someone noticed the effigy missing before I could bring it back. I just didn’t expect you guys to find it so soon.”
“There was no message on the note,” Peet said, flopping the scrap of stationary in the middle of the table.
Derek took one look at it and then flipped an arrogant hand at the torn edge. “Well, someone obviously ripped it off,” he said. “I swear I wrote my explanation on it.”
“What exactly did you write?” John asked as a little Mexican woman topped off his tall glass of water.
“‘The effigy is with Juan Gaspar,’” Derek recited.
“That’s it?”
“Something around those lines. I can’t remember exactly.”
“Why would you leave a note like that if you expected to return the effigy?” Lori asked.
“To cover my tracks in case the plan backfired.”
“Oh, it backfired, all right,” Peet snarled.
John didn’t care for his hostile tone. If he didn’t diffuse it soon, he feared another violent scene would break out in the middle of their dinner and that made for poor table manners.
“So, you weren’t a follower?” he asked, fixing his attention upon Derek.
The boy snorted, which sent crumbs of hamburger flying across the table. Peet sat back with a disgusted look, brushing the debris aside.
“I don’t get involved with snake-handling religions,” Derek said.
“Then why did you take the effigy to Gaspar?” Peet asked.
“He promised me a story if I brought it to him. I got the feeling it was going to be a big story. Career-launching, from the way he made it sound.”
“Well, was it?”
“I don’t know. He held out on me. Said he’d tell me once he finished blessing the effigy. The next time I saw him, he was dead.”
Lori paused over her plate. “Dead?”
“My father was murdered two nights ago,” Eva explained. “They found his body at some archaeological site just north of Mexico City.”
“Teotihuacan,” Derek added.
“It appears he was stabbed, and then his heart had been removed through an incision just below the ribs.”
John recoiled. There was a sudden heaviness in his stomach as he gently laid his utensils across the edge of his plate. He considered the strength it must have taken to rip out a human heart. The killer would have had to cut through the diaphragm. Then he must have been up to his elbows in blood as he bypassed the lungs underneath the rib cage. He wondered about the hands that could grip a sticky, beating heart and tear it from its cavity. The feat had to have been surgical, rehearsed.
“My God!” Lori gasped. “What happened to his heart?”
“We don’t know. It hasn’t been recovered.”
“And the effigy?” Peet asked.
“We don’t know that either.”
“There’s something else,” Derek said. “The police found a mirror on the body.”
“A mirror?” Peet asked.
Eva sighed glumly. “According to that Escaban fella, a round mirror had been placed over the incision. He called it a makeup mirror. The type you might find in a lady’s bathroom.”
“They found a mirror, but no effigy,” Peet considered out loud.
“How do we even know Mr. Gaspar brought the effigy down to Mexico in the first place?” Lori asked.
“The police found a wooden crate inside a pickup they think he stole,” Derek said. “The crate was empty but I think that’s what he used to smuggle the effigy down here.”
“Smuggle?” Peet asked as he used a sopapilla to sop up the last of the mole on his plate. “You mean he brought it down here to sell?”
Derek shook his head. “No. As highly as he regarded Quetzalcoatl, I believe he only intended to bless the effigy. Though, if I had known he was going to bring it down to Mexico—”
“Do the police have any leads on the killer?” John asked, pushing his empty plate aside.
“Nothing concrete,” Eva said. “They call him the Equinox Killer. They suspect anyone in the medical field—doctors, morticians, veterinarians. But Escaban said the killer’s incision was by far cleaner and more precise than anything a surgical tool could have done.”
“What could possibly be more precise than a scalpel?” Lori asked.
Derek shrugged. “Nobody seems to know. But because of the sacrificial pattern to the murder they are focusing on religious groups too. Especially ones linked with Mayan or Aztec origins.”
“Such as the New Agers,” Peet said flatly.
“Are you kidding me?” Derek blurted. “Shaman Gaspar taught only the values of Quetzalcoatl—peace, tranquility, inner harmony, that sort of thing. Frankly, it sounded like a bunch of hippy talk to me, but I can tell you one thing—his followers are not into murder and sacrifice.”
Eva rolled her eyes. “The cops think there might be some sort of cult that follows the sacrificial gods.”
“Like Xipe, maybe,” Derek continued.
John shook his head. He’d been listening carefully to the conversation, but his mind was diligently rolling over the details. “The Xipe deity only wore the skins of his sacrifices,” he said. “The murder doesn’t fit that description.”
“What do you mean?”
“It appears this was not a random killing. Mr. Gaspar was murdered for the effigy, and I believe Lori saw his killer.”
Lori pushed back in her chair in shock. Her wide eyes flashed across the table. “What are you saying?” she asked.
The details were mingling now, merging into one. They made sense. The sacrificed hearts, the mirror…Zorro’s mask.
John focused on Lo
ri’s astonished face. “I believe the killer is the same thief you thought you saw removing the effigy from the laboratory.”
Now it was Peet’s turn to look surprised. “You mean the thief and the killer are the same person?”
“It’s simple. Now that we know Derek got to the effigy first, it only makes sense that this guy found Derek’s note, tracked Gaspar down and finally got what he was looking for.”
A tingle of satisfaction seeped through John’s pores. It was that feeling he got whenever he managed to sleuth out the solution to a longstanding archaeological problem. A feeling of evaporating tension, assuredness and poise. It made him feel precocious. It was exactly how he felt when he solved the mysterious presence of the effigy in an Anasazi grave.
“The thief was wearing Zorro’s mask,” John continued. “And didn’t you say, Lori, that there was something at his waist? Something that reflected the street lights?”
“Yes.”
“Could it have been a makeup mirror?”
“Who would hang a mirror from their belt?” Peet asked.
“Perhaps the same person who wears Zorro’s mask. There is only one Mesoamerican deity I know that fits those descriptions.”
Derek smirked. “A vain cowboy hero who traded his sword for a mirror?”
“I’m talking about Tezcatlipoca,” John said sternly.
“Who the hell is that?”
“His name translates into Smoking Mirror and he’s often associated with jaguars. According to the Florentine Codex, he’s been called the enemy on both sides, a sort of dark child of Mesoamerican deities even though he sometimes bestowed riches. His face was banded across the eyes and chin, and he was often depicted missing a leg, walking instead on a large obsidian mirror.”
“And he’s a god of sacrifice?” Lori asked.
“Very much so. The Aztecs performed a number of annual feasts and sacrifices in his honor.”
“So what does this Tez god have to do with the effigy?” Derek asked.
John dabbed the corners of his mouth with his napkin and finally retired it to his plate. “According to Mesoamerican mythology, Tezcatlipoca is Quetzalcoatl’s twin. The two were associated with the planet, Venus—Quetzalcoatl was Venus as the morning star, Tezcatlipoca was Venus as the evening star. But these twins couldn’t be more different. Wherever good was seen in Quetzalcoatl, there was something equally evil in Tezcatlipoca. They were like Yin and Yang, and according to mythology, were often bitter rivals.”
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