Deity

by Theresa Danley

  Which brought her to Mike and Gabriella.

  But as she waited along the lone, Yucatan highway, her mind drifted to the man who had been her companion since the day they’d pulled the Effigy from the earth—the man who was strangely missing from her journey now.

  Dr. Peet.

  University Of Utah

  Five Months Earlier

  The staccato beat of Lori’s heels echoed purposefully down the dark, empty halls of the William Stewart Building of Anthropology. A single light penetrated the end of the row of darkened offices just ahead. Within the glow spilling from that office door stood the silhouette of Dr. Anthony Peet.

  And he was waiting for her.

  “Lori,” he greeted solemnly. His voice was smooth, as though lending itself to the slumbering stillness of the building.

  “Dr. Peet,” she returned, keeping a respectful space between them, allowing him to invite her into his office.

  She took a seat in a chair set before his desk—the only chair offering a place to sit. The other chair, Lori noted, was occupied with a box of excavation tools and screens, all waiting to be removed to the field. Dr. Peet looked just as prepared to escape. He even wore his Gore-Tex boots—the ones he always wore on excavations.

  Lori slid to the edge of her chair.

  Dr. Peet chose to perch above her from the corner of his desk. “We can’t keep meeting like this,” he said.

  “You chose the time and place,” Lori shot back, holding steady to his handsomely weathered eyes.

  Dr. Peet smiled nervously. “But for the last time.” Lori didn’t return the smile and his quickly faded away. “I’m assuming by the urgency of your request that you must have received my letter,” he continued.

  Lori withdrew an envelope from the notebook she’d had tucked beneath her arm. From it she pulled out a folded piece of paper. “If you’re referring to this form letter, then yes, I did.” She quickly peeled the page open and flipped it around, giving Dr. Peet full view of the letter, complete with the anthropology department’s letterhead.

  Dr. Peet bowed his head toward his hands folded loosely atop the muscular thigh he’d thrown over the corner of his desk. Just as quickly he looked back up again. His eyes sagged apologetically.

  “What is this all about?” Lori asked, failing to keep the demanding tone from her voice.

  “Just what the letter says,” he said.

  “You’re rejecting my field study application?”

  Dr. Peet visibly sagged, as if her words were pressing him into the desktop. His head bowed again, hanging heavily from the extending span of his shoulders.

  “Even after the dean gave us the okay to finish excavating The Trader?” Lori pressed. “Why?”

  Dr. Peet sighed. “We had an unprecedented number of applicants this year,” he explained. “Many of the students who applied have not yet received the field experience they need to complete their degrees.”

  “And I suppose you have to give equal time to everyone,” Lori spat.

  “You have the most field experience of all our students,” he reasoned. “The physical anthropologists need this experience. It isn’t every day they get to excavate human remains.”

  Lori was furious. “But this is my dig. They wouldn’t even have The Trader’s remains to excavate if I hadn’t found them.”

  She couldn’t help but feel cheated. She would have finished the excavation herself had there been more time. It was her discovery. Not only had she recognized The Trader’s petroglyph and there, recovered the Effigy of Quetzalcoatl from the grave, but The Trader’s grave was located on her father’s land.

  “I could call my dad and have him stop the excavation,” she threatened.

  Dr. Peet saw right through her. “Lori. Do you really want to impede this research? I know you want to learn more about The Trader as much as anyone else.”

  “Not so much as the dean, I’m sure,” she said sourly. “Just what does he think of your decision to reject my application?”

  Dr. Peet cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, his fingers fidgeting with the cuff of his shirtsleeve, “it was the dean who recommended it.”

  * * * *

  Dr. Terrence Snead was pulling grass from the tender moat of irises that aligned the brick facade of his house. In his oversized straw hat and bright yellow garden gloves, he looked so unlike the pompous antiquarian Lori knew. He even had a trace of dirt on one knee of his trousers—a crime against the immaculate dean who oversaw the University of Utah’s anthropology department.

  Such a domestic display caught Lori off guard, temporarily dislodging her pursuit to seek justice for the revenge he’d exacted upon her.

  Snead had been overly excited about the discovery of the Effigy. He’d been outwardly spoken about its priceless value from the start, though anyone who’d taken one look at the artifact could make the same assessment themselves. But to Dr. Snead, the value wasn’t restricted to incalculable monetary measures. He’d been quick to use the Effigy as a promotional tool to boast about the high quality of his department, and it worked. The university saw an immediate twenty-seven percent increase in enrollment—mostly through the anthropology department.

  Despite the dean’s enthusiasm, the Effigy technically remained in Lori’s control, and ultimately it was her decision to pass up the Utah Museum of Natural History to donate the artifact to the National Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City. That single decision infuriated Snead which had to be the reason he told Dr. Peet to decline her field study application. And it was that underhanded act of revenge which prompted Lori to track the dean down on the front lawn of his high-suburban home.

  He had the gall to look surprised.

  She skipped the formalities and cut straight to the point. “Why have I been rejected from this summer’s field study?” she demanded, waving the creased and crumpled rejection letter at him.

  Dr. Snead straightened and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his Roman nose. “That is a faculty decision, Miss Dewson,” he explained matter-of-factly.

  “Is it?” Lori pressed. “I was told you made some recommendations.”

  Dr. Snead stood and shifted uncomfortably. “This is highly unprofessional bringing this issue here,” he said evasively.

  “I had no choice. You apparently don’t go to your office during the summer break.”

  “There’s little business to attend to until summer classes begin,” he said. “Not that you need be concerned with that.”

  “This letter concerns me,” Lori snapped.

  “Then you should take it up with the faculty that will be heading the field study.”

  “I already did. Dr. Peet said you recommended my rejection and I demand to know why.”

  Dr. Snead rocked back on his heels and finally stood, peeling the gloves from his hands. “Miss Dewson, when there are other students that might find greater benefit in the study, I do recommend they take top priority.”

  “This was my project,” Lori said. “Who could possibly take higher priority?”

  Dr. Snead raised an eyebrow. “As I recall, Miss Dewson, you turned your project over to Mexico.”

  “I don’t need the Effigy to excavate The Trader’s bones.”

  “Perhaps, but you don’t need to excavate the bones in order to study them. Let the other students do the work for you. Then, when they are safely returned to the university, you may study them with everybody else.”

  Lori began to shake with fury. “You know I’m running out of time to complete my dissertation,” she spat. “I’m losing valuable time if I sit around waiting for the excavation to wrap up. I need the data in situ.”

  “Don’t you worry about your dissertation. I know you’ll do just fine.”

  “But I’m going to need another draft submitted to Dr. Peet first thing come fall semester,” Lori insisted.

  “Oh,” Dr. Snead said, slipping off the straw hat to dab at the sweat beading along his balding head. “

  But Dr.
Peet has stepped down from your graduate committee.”

  Lori was floored. “What?”

  “Didn’t he tell you? Well, I’m sure there’s another letter in the mail.”

  Lori’s knees felt weak. Her fire was suddenly doused by this new revelation. “How can this be? He’s been my advisor since my Freshman year.”

  But there was much more to it than that. Dr. Peet had been the one constant throughout her collegiate career. His primary interest in Southwestern cultures complemented her study in the Anasazi ceramic trade. At first he was just her professor. As her own studies progressed beyond her Master’s degree, he’d become less of an instructor and more of a partner, a sounding post for research, a colleague. So quite naturally, Dr. Peet became the chairman of her graduate committee that headed her dissertation—that final momentous step toward receiving her Doctorate. Now, just when she needed his knowledge and support the most, he was intentionally making himself unavailable.

  Dr. Snead shook his head. “At this point in your career, Miss Dewson, you don’t need an advisor.”

  “How can Dr. Peet back out of my research now? I’m so close to finishing.”

  The dean shrugged unsympathetically. “Perhaps he’s no longer qualified for that position.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. If he isn’t qualified, who is?”

  Dr. Snead smiled. “Given the exceptional circumstances regarding your dissertation, Miss Dewson, I will now chair your graduate committee.”

  Lori’s head spun. This was so unlike Dr. Peet. So unexpected. She needed a clearer explanation, one Dr. Snead seemed to refuse to give. She needed answers and she was bound and determined to get them, even if she had to confront Dr. Peet again. After all, his absence from her graduate committee would leave a big hole that nobody, not even the department dean, could fill.

  Peet

  Anthropologist Anthony Peet held a death grip on the control panel in front of him, holding firmly to a small area of plastic and dials where he knew he wasn’t going to bump a button or gadget or anything else that might result in a shift more violent than the pitching he was already enduring.

  “Take it easy over the speed bumps, KC,” he complained into his headset.

  The pilot simply laughed. “What’s the matter?” she teased. “Are your legs too long for your wings?”

  “My legs are just fine,” Peet groaned, “when they’re set firmly on the ground.”

  Interestingly enough, it was when Peet couldn’t see the ground that he seemed to handle flying the best. That, he’d just discovered, was the benefit of flying at night. Surrounded by darkness it was easier for the lights blinking at the wingtips and the slight glow from the cockpit panel to sooth his nerves. It was easier to forget he was flying when earth and horizon were indistinguishable. But now dawn saturated the eastern sky and the dark earth was readily absorbing the morning glow below…far, far below. To top it off, they’d flown into unstable air which seemed determined to shake any lingering traces of night from their wings.

  “Don’t get antsy just yet,” KC said. “We still have a good twenty minutes of air time, and it’s bound to get bumpier as we head in.”

  Peet didn’t like the sound of that as the Twin Commander bucked again if only to prove her point. Flying was not exactly high on his preferred-modes-of-transportation list. In fact, it ranked right there at the bottom with oxen-yoked prairie schooners. The one thing going for the Oregon Trail was it’s location on the ground. Bicycles, buses, trains, boats…he might even handle the claustrophobic confines of a submarine…he’d take anything over flying—especially in this droning, cramped sewer tube about to be permanently marked with the indentations of his fingers. But this time he had no choice. He had to get to Mexico City.

  And he had to get there fast.

  That’s how he came to meet KC McCulley. The seasoned pilot had been a referral when the Aeromexico ticket agent informed him that all flights to Mexico City were oversold for the next two weeks. As Peet shuffled away, a luggage handler stepped out of the back room and called him back up to the ticket counter.

  “You flying to Mexico?” the husky, middle-aged woman asked as she removed the blackened leather gloves from her hands.

  “As soon as I can find a seat,” he said. “But it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.”

  The woman leaned over the counter and lowered her voice. “My sister will get you there. She’s a bit of a flyboy, but she’ll get you where you need to go.”

  KC turned out to be nothing like the brute of a woman her sister was. She wasn’t quite forty, he guessed, and trim, attractive even, and brimming with self-confidence. She was all business—that’s what Peet noticed immediately. In a take it or leave it manner she introduced him to the small Twin Commander she simply called The Ladybug for the red and black lines streaking along it sides. Her services were his, but it mattered little if he turned her down.

  “You fly to Mexico in this?” Peet had asked, carefully stepping around the tie stretched between the left wing and the pin bolted into the tarmac.

  “Been down and back twice already,” KC boasted as she manually lowered the cabin door. Peet followed her inside.

  The plane had been internally gutted from tail to cockpit save for a mess of cargo nets and a pair of passenger seats bolted near the bulkhead. Peet swallowed hard, suddenly wishing for the team of oxen.

  “Is this legal?”

  “You’ve got nothing to fear,” KC said. “The FBI already has my prints.”

  Peet’s concern must have washed across his face for she suddenly laughed. “My fingerprints have to be on file in order to carry the U.S. mail,” she explained. “I had the rural route to Garrison until some jerkoff company bid the contract out from under me six months ago. Luckily there’s a lot of interest in Mexico right now. You know, all the 2012 bullshit. Sounds like that’s the place to get front row seats to the end of the world, if the end of the world is where you want to be.”

  Peet shared a smile as KC laughed again. Unfortunately, she was right. Any last minute hopes to jump a commercial flight to anywhere in Mexico appeared futile, unless one found an opportunistic pilot looking to make a few extra bucks, and for Peet, KC was it.

  It seemed ironic that in all his years in archaeology, Peet had never been to Mexico City. Just his luck, 2012 was his year and this happened to be his second trip in six months. Neither trip was intended to experience the chaos that had become 2012, though as it turned out, that was exactly what prompted his first frantic trip. So much was different about this trip, and yet, so much was the same, and he couldn’t help but wonder if all the 2012 hype was catching up to him yet again.

  And it all began some fifteen hours ago.

  * * * *

  “Anthony. Thank God you’re here.”

  Peet stamped his feet on the front step, noticing the December snow already foot-packed onto the unswept doormat. Without hesitation, Martha scampered back in her slippered feet as though her frail frame was caught by the door’s opening momentum. Her urgent hospitality caught him off guard as she ushered him through an ordinarily unwelcoming threshold.

  “I’m so glad you came,” she said. “I’m just beside myself. I don’t know what to do.”

  It wasn’t so much what Martha was saying that had Peet taken by surprise, though her use of God was completely out of character. It was more the fact that she was talking to him at all that he found confusing. Up until he’d received her frantic phone call thirty minutes earlier, she hadn’t spoken a word to him in years. He reached for the laces of his boots if only to give himself a moment to consider this sudden development when he felt her bony hands light on his arm and shoulder.

  “Don’t worry about the snow, Anthony,” she said, urging him to straighten again. “The rug will dry.”

  The rug, a handmade Tibetan Bufan sprawling just beyond the entryway, had been a gift from her daughter, Cathy, just before her unfortunate death; just before Peet and Martha had thei
r falling out. Shoes were not permitted across the vibrant pattern in the intricate fibers much less boots that had just tread through the slush and grime of the Salt Lake City streets. Surely the years hadn’t relaxed Martha’s standards.

  Peet obligingly followed her around the corner of the entryway, and right there in the cozy little den he was surprised to find two men contentedly sipping on Martha’s tea. The first, and tallest of the two, stood at the mantle of the gas fireplace while the second sat on the edge of the suede sectional sofa. This man rose to his feet as Martha let him enter the room.

  “Hello?” Peet said, failing to disguise the confusion in his voice.

  “Anthony,” Martha began uncomfortably. “This is agent Miles and agent—”

  “Agent Michael Kamenski,” the man from the sofa said as he set his tea down and whipped out his badge. “Federal Bureau of Investigations.”

  Martha’s grip tightened on Peet’s arms. “This is Anthony, my son-in-law.”

  Agent Kamenski stepped forward and extended a hand. “You must be Dr. Anthony Peet, the archaeologist?”

  “Peet will do,” he said, accepting the agent’s firm grasp. Everything about the man was solid, from his bulldog jowls to his rigid stance. It’d take a mighty wind to blow this man down.

  “What’s this all about?” Peet asked.

  “They’re here to inquire about John,” Martha said through a slight tremor in her voice.

  “We understand you’ve recently worked with Dr. Friedman,” the agent said.

  Peet shrugged. “I suppose if you consider June as recent.”

  “Have you made contact with him since then?”

  Peet thought a moment. “He called me in September to wish me a happy birthday but other than that, no.”

  “You must not be a very close family.”

  Peet shrugged. “Like she said, I’m the son-in-law. My wife has passed on.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that—”

  “Your careers don’t bring you and Dr. Friedman together?” Agent Miles cut in rather accusingly. The arrogant glint in his eye reminded Peet of his freshman and sophomore students, those who arrived on campus for the carnival of university life. Those who hadn’t been around long enough to take academic business seriously.