Human Sacrifice

by Cindy L Hull

  In that instant it all came back to Claire, and in the same moment she remembered Paul’s slide presentation to the faculty. He had included a photograph of a vendor called Don Benito. She remembered the initials ‘BS’ in the notebook and the drawings. But drugs? Maybe her colleagues weren’t involved after all. This thought gave her some hope. But it also caused a pang of fear…she had met this man before…thirty years ago.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Wednesday Afternoon

  After a short siesta, Claire struggled from the deep folds of a hammock that the family had provided for her stay. Once wrapped in the soft mesh, extricating herself was both a physical and emotional hardship—physical because it required dexterity innate to Mexicans but hard-learned by others; emotional because the coolness of the mesh and gentle rocking of the hammock enveloped one into a lush protective womb. She had one more visit to make before she met Roberto in Motul.

  Even in late afternoon, the sun’s rays radiated off the limestone path. Her sleeveless dress was already damp with perspiration. As she walked, she took photographs of the village, the houses, the stores, and the people as they emerged from the relative cool of their homes to resume their daily life.

  She hoped she would find Don Santiago at home. He was one of the last shamans, or h-menob, who still practiced the annual rain ceremony in the area. His sons, who would normally learn the ancient rain and curing rituals, had no interest in learning the Mayan traditions and had moved away.

  Santiago and his wife, Sofia, lived at the far eastern edge of the village in a traditional oval-shaped house made of crushed limestone. It stood along a narrow two-track road that led to the cemetery. For many years, the house consisted of one room with a dirt floor and thatch roof. That had changed several years before when one son, who had recently returned from work in the United States, had made major renovations: a bathroom, cement floor, and corrugated roof. This had happened during Claire’s last visit, and she was anxious to see if they were happy with the upgrade.

  Claire stood outside the dilapidated stone fence, readjusting her straw hat. The family dog, of indistinguishable breed, came out from behind the house and barked half-heartedly, alerting the owners. Doña Sofia came to the gate, opened it and, smiling, waved her in.

  “Doña Clara! ¡Kosh! ¡Pase usted!” She invited Claire in, using two languages.

  Claire entered the sparsely furnished house, with wooden chairs and an armoire along one wall that served as a closet. Their family altar held faded photographs, worn candles, and a faded print of the Virgin of Guadelupe that had been torn from a magazine. One frayed hammock hung from a hook on the wall. The second hammock was stretched across the room, the one from which Claire had awoken the elderly woman.

  Sofia resembled most clearly the figures carved in stone at the ancient sites, solidly built with a round dark face and Mayan hooked nose. Her dark eyes reflected ancient knowledge as she vacillated between Mayan and Spanish in her conversations. Now she re-coiled her waist-long gray hair and secured it to the back of her head with a large plastic comb.

  “I am so sorry I woke you,” Claire said.

  Sofia brushed her hand over her soiled huipil and said, “Oh, no, Clarita. I was awake.” To cover her small deception, she detached the hammock from the hook on one end of the house, wound it around her arm just as she had coiled her own hair and attached it to the hook on the other wall.

  “Is Don Santiago here?” Claire asked.

  “Sí, cierto,” she replied. She pointed to the back door of the house.

  Claire followed Sofia outside, through the lean-to kitchen comprised of a stone firepit and wooden shelf suspended from the lean-to by a strong rope made with henequen fibers. Along the kitchen area, pots of herbs grew in a hodge-podge: cilantro, several varieties of peppers, and others unrecognizable, grown specifically for Doña Sofia’s herbal medicines. They maneuvered around aloe and pineapple plants. Don Santiago rested in a hammock strung between two large trees.

  “Why doesn’t he nap in the house out of the sun?” Claire asked.

  She smiled and whispered, “He doesn’t like the tin roof. It is too hot. But don’t tell our son. He spent so much money to build it.”

  Their conversation woke the elderly shaman, who jumped from his hammock as a child would, his tiny, lithe body exploding from the folds of the mesh.

  “Clarita, come, sit.” He dragged a metal chair from underneath a nearby mango tree and motioned her to sit among a tropical orchard that surrounded her with the colors and scents of banana, mango, orange, lime, and papaya trees.

  Don Santiago returned to his hammock using it as a swing, pushing back and forth with his misshaped calloused bare feet. Doña Sofia left them alone to speak.

  “You will never guess,” he smiled widely. “We get electricity soon. The new president has promised to bring it up our road.”

  “And then what will you buy?” Claire asked curiously.

  “Why, a television of course…and then, some fans. That roof is too hot!”

  Claire laughed and shared news of her daughter’s interest in medicine and healing. She described the conference that brought her to Yucatán and eventually eased the conversation toward his memory of other anthropologists he might have heard of through conversations with family and friends in neighboring villages.

  “Ah, so you are here to test my memory,” Santiago teased. “I thought you came to visit two viejitos, old people.”

  Claire felt herself blush. She had indeed pushed the conversation too quickly, and he was justified to call her on it. “I came to visit you,” she insisted, “but, I’m also interested to learn about other anthropologists who have worked near here after me.”

  Doña Sofia brought a plate of fruit and placed it on a wooden chair between Claire and her husband. The plate held sweet orange wedges and sliced papaya, freshly picked from her trees. Claire chose a wedge of naval orange. “Something has happened at the conference—and in Motul too—and it might involve Americans who have worked here.”

  Santiago paused in his swinging and reached for a slice of papaya. “Don Benito,” he said thoughtfully, as he popped it into his mouth and resumed his motion.

  “You knew?” Claire asked.

  “Cierto.” He stopped swinging, intrigued now. “You want to know about anthropologists around here?” His dark intelligent eyes bored into her from his heavily creased face, testament to a long life in the tropical sun.

  “I’m sure you remember them.” Claire popped another orange wedge into her mouth, savoring the crisp flavor while Don Santiago thought about her request.

  “There were several anthropologists around here after you,” the shaman said.

  “Do you remember a Brad or Jamal, Paul or Pablo?”

  “Where did they live?” Santiago asked.

  “Pablo might have lived in Motul. He studied turismo.”

  “Ah, that was not long ago. I remember Pablo. He always bothered the storekeepers about their businesses. People got tired of him.”

  “And Brad and Jamal?”

  Santiago thought awhile. “Jamal lived in Dzab, but I don’t remember a Brad.” The shaman struggled with the “Br” sound. It came out as “Bl” instead.

  Claire prompted, “Brad would have been in Tixbe.”

  The shaman tilted his head. “That was Jaime. That was a while ago.”

  “Jaime?” Claire asked. “Do you know what he studied in the village?”

  “My friend, the h-men in Tixbe, told me Jaime was interested in the rituals and the sacred items we used in the ceremonies.”

  Claire frowned. “And Jamal?” she asked. “What did he study?”

  Don Santiago smiled. “Jamal worked with my friend, Don Cristo. He was studying h-menob, but he was more interested in the drugs. He was a black man, un negro.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FO
UR

  Wednesday Evening

  Claire waved farewell to her friends, avoiding their questions about her evening plans, but promising to return to the village at a respectable hour. She felt like a teenager sneaking out for a clandestine date.

  She retraced her route to the plaza. It was early evening, and the village had emerged from its afternoon slumber. The sweet aroma of freshly baked pastries and bread from Doña Isabela’s bakery wafted through her open car window. She paused for the inter-village bus as it stopped at the main plaza, discharging villagers returning from city jobs—nurses, teachers, factory workers, and maids. As she left the village behind, she sped through the countryside, slowing for speed bumps as she passed through small villages.

  While Merida drew tourists seeking Mayan history from the protection of the international hotels, Motul’s appeal lay in its quaint colonial feel: small hotels, produce markets, tourist shops, and restaurants offering Yucatecan cuisine. Claire parked in front of Café Flor, a small café that spilled out onto the sidewalk, facing the main plaza. She settled at a table to wait for the detective.

  “Good evening.”

  Claire turned to see Roberto Salinas at her side. He sat across from her, and Claire felt uncomfortable as he looked at her.

  “I like your hair when you wear it down, like this. It’s much less…how do you say…professorial?”

  Claire self-consciously fingered her hair that came down below her shoulders in natural waves. “My mother says I’m too old to wear my hair long, but I’m too Mexican to cut it. Maybe when I’m sixty, I’ll chop it off.”

  He laughed. “No, don’t do that.” He waved to a waiter and they ordered drinks. “I thought we might start here, but I found a wonderful little restaurant nearby. I’m glad you came. It has been a rough day.”

  “You mentioned a suspicious death. I have heard about it, I think.”

  “Oh?” He raised his eyebrows.

  “Yaxpec is a small village, but a little thing like a lack of telephones doesn’t stop gossip.” She paused as the waiter brought two beers to the table. Pushing her lime into her bottle, Claire continued, “My compadre, Arturo, heard about the death of a souvenir vendor named Benito Suarez. Arturo said he might have been involved in mal negocios, perhaps drugs.”

  “Yes, that’s the man,” Salinas said. “It seems he had a side business of selling marijuana to tourists and local ex-patriots, but the antiquities angle is more interesting to me, given the drawings in Paul’s notebook.”

  “You asked us this morning about the initials BS, and I had no idea who that might be, but now that I know his name, I have to confess that I met him, many years ago.”

  Roberto raised his eyebrows again. “Tell me.”

  “Arturo reminded me that Don Benito had visited Aaron and me selling artifacts.” The mischievous smile on Salinas’s face gave him away. “But, of course, you knew this already,” Claire said.

  “You were in the notebook.”

  “I didn’t see a page with my name,” Claire protested.

  “Paul had a page for Benito Suarez at the back of the notebook. He had listed names of people he might have suspected of purchasing items from him, and there you were…CAC.”

  “Claire Aguila Carson.” She set her bottle on the table. “Are you investigating me?”

  “Poor Sergeant Garza and our team have spent the day matching initials with conference attendees and comparing them to the list of clients that we found at Señor Suarez’s store.”

  “We didn’t buy anything,” Claire said defensively. “Perhaps I should go.” She stood to leave.

  “Please, stay.” He reached out and touched her arm. “There is no evidence that you ever purchased anything. You weren’t listed in his customer book.”

  “But others were?”

  “Perhaps.” He sipped his beer. “Would you recognize Señor Suarez if you saw him?”

  “I think I have seen him—in Paul’s slide presentation.”

  “Slide presentation?”

  “At his interview. It was on his computer.”

  Roberto sighed. “Can you describe it?”

  “The presentation included photographs of vendors Paul had interviewed for his research. In one of them, an old man stood at a store counter. Several statues stood on the counter in front of him. I think Paul called him Don Benito. I didn’t recognize him at the time, but now I think it could have been the same man. It was a long time ago,” Claire repeated.

  Salinas sipped his beer. “He sold replicas that his relative produced. But he also had access, through family and friends, to some—let’s say ‘discovered’—artifacts, and he sold them for extra cash. We are trying to find out if he had a partner or someone who may have purchased these special artifacts from him. Perhaps he was, how do you say, a middleman?”

  Claire settled back into her chair. “Do you think his death is related to Paul? Or Tanya?”

  “It seems likely.” He looked at Claire, his face stern and unreadable. “Tell me, Claire, did anyone react when Paul showed that slide?”

  “Paul asked Brad if he had met this man, since his store was on the road to Tixbe where Brad worked. Brad said he remembered the store and the storekeeper, but he didn’t know him.”

  “Was he convincing?”

  “I had no reason to doubt him.” She paused as something occurred to her. “But Jamal reacted.”

  “How?”

  “I heard him take a deep breath, like a gasp…Dios mio!” Claire sat back in her chair and looked wide-eyed at Roberto as if just receiving an electric shock. “Don Santiago!”

  “Who?”

  “Don Santiago is the h-men of Yaxpec. I visited him today and asked him if he remembered any of the anthropologists who worked in this area. He remembered Jamal because he studied ritual with one of Don Santiago’s friends, the shaman in Dzab. It seems that Jamal might have been interested in drugs, perhaps for personal use. What if Jamal bought marijuana from Benito?”

  “Paul wrote ‘BS’ on Jamal’s page also.” Roberto tipped his hand upward in a ‘there you go’ gesture.

  Claire regretted her indiscretion and felt compelled to defend her colleague. “Jamal couldn’t have killed anyone.”

  “It’s amazing how many times I hear that.” Roberto studied Claire as he sipped his beer. “What made you think to ask the h-men about your colleagues?”

  “It interested me that Paul, Brad, and Jamal all worked in this area. Even though shamans are elders, they have keen memories and they know each other. I knew that Jamal studied the botanical aspects of shamanism and Brad studied ritual objects. I thought perhaps Don Santiago might have heard of them. Besides, anthropologists are a novelty. People remember us.”

  “I applaud your initiative.” Salinas said.

  Claire frowned. “I feel like a traitor.”

  “Did Don Santiago remember Doctor Kingsford?”

  “There’s something odd about that,” Claire said. “Brad worked in Tixbe, but Don Santiago remembered him as Jaime. If Jaime is Brad, then he used a different name.”

  “Could Brad have had a motive to hurt Paul, Tanya, or Benito?”

  “I can’t think of a motive for any of us. None of us knew Paul before this weekend. It could have been someone local, someone he knew. He was involved in illegal activities. It could have been anyone.” She cupped her bottle with both hands. “After all, Jamal lived in Dzab five…six years ago? He had no recent connection to Benito…unless he went to purchase some marijuana during the conference, but would he be that stupid?”

  When Roberto made no comment, Claire continued, “It has been even longer since Brad lived in Tixbe.” She paused, aware of Roberto’s intent gaze. “Paul knew Benito, but, if he was killed Monday morning, Paul was already dead.”

  Roberto nodded. “We are questioning everyone who knew him
, but it seems that Benito had several visitors Monday morning.”

  “Visitors?”

  “Non-locals. At least three vehicles were seen at Benito’s store and attached house. A large black car was seen leaving the area very early in the morning; then, a light-colored car, and finally, around noon, a white Ford Fiesta. An elderly woman remembered the Fiesta because it had a Spanish name. Witnesses all agreed that the cars looked too nice to be local.”

  “Could the witnesses identify the drivers?” Claire asked.

  “It was still dark when the black car drove by, and the witness couldn’t see his face. The second man had light skin and wore a straw hat. He knocked at the storefront, then went behind to the house. He left a few minutes later. The third man went directly to the back door, but he stood out to the witness. He was black.”

  Salinas watched Claire over the bottle as he drank. He put the empty bottle on the table. “Strangely, no one went to check up on poor Señor Suarez until later when his store didn’t open. A neighbor found him dead in his house and reported to the police.”

  “He lived alone?”

  “His wife died many years ago.”

  “We all ate breakfast together Monday morning,” Claire insisted. “What time did he die?”

  “Late Sunday evening or early Monday morning.”

  “It couldn’t have been my colleagues,” Claire said, pushing her bottle aside.

  Roberto motioned for the check. “Let’s walk.”

  The air had cooled, and Claire detoured to her car to get her shawl. They strolled quietly along the central plaza. Men in white guayaberas sat in their horse-drawn carriages along the plaza, awaiting customers. A driver offered them a good price for a ride, but they shook their heads and walked on.

  Claire pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders, and Roberto took her arm as they continued down the narrow sidewalk as the streetlights illuminated. “You need to think of the deaths of Paul, Tanya, and Senior Suarez as related. Someone is nervous, perhaps desperate, and people are dying. I think you can help me find out who that is.”