by Farris, John
Greg was wearing tinted glasses, as if the glow from the altar at the front of the nave was like the incandescence of a blast furnace to him. He also had on the bush jacket I'd seen him in every day since he came to Cobían. It was humid in the basilica, and there was a sheen of perspiration on his highlighted profile.
I came up to him on the other side. A little girl wearing an embroidered white dress and a tiara glanced at me and moved closer to her mother, giving me room. I jabbed the muzzle of the revolver I had taken from Veronica Nespral's house against the small of Greg's back. The revolver was in my left hand. There was nobody between me and a font of holy water standing against the wall.
"Kneel down," I said, "while we talk."
He stiffened, but didn't move. "What's that?"
"Colt Cobra. It won't make much noise going off like this. It will go off if you try to turn around."
He hesitated a couple of moments, thinking things over. "C.G.? Is that you?"
"Yes, it's me. Get down on your knees."
"I thought I recognized . . . what's this all about?"
"Maybe I can't kill you," I said, "but I'll bet a shot-up liver will put you under the weather for a few days. Now get down."
"All right," he said, and dropped slowly to his knees in front of the statues. I followed him all the way with the muzzle of the revolver pressed against him.
"Give me a hand back here," I said. "Thumb up."
He put his left hand behind his back, and I snapped my cuffs on the exposed wrist. Prodded him with the pistol to offer up the other hand. I cuffed the wrists together. He drew a sharp breath. They were a good pair of handcuffs, nickel case-hardened steel, with a two-inch-wide hinge instead of the usual chain separating the cuffs. It allowed for no movement of the hands at all.
"Break a knuckle beating up on Veronica Nespral?" I asked him.
"Am I under arrest?" He sounded exasperated and inconvenienced, but not angry. "I haven't committed any crime. And I'm sure you don't have jurisdiction—"
"I'm just giving myself a high comfort level while we talk," I said.
I put the revolver back in my pocket and changed my position, on one knee beside him where I could watch his face. He seemed composed, in spite of the awkwardness of the restraint. It was dark enough near the floor so that anyone looking our way probably wouldn't notice that he was handcuffed.
"The Virgin has blue eyes," he said. "I've visited the basilica quite a few times; it's odd that I never noticed before."
"How many times have you been in Cobían? I could only trace you back to 1840."
"Oh, I see." His head dipped, as if he were hiding a slight rueful smile. Except for the gloss of humidity on his tanned skin, he was so damned at ease he was making me nervous. "I suppose I never gave you credit for being such a good detective. Even when I had warnings that you might have been alert to something. What was it?"
"Too many coincidences. That, and a hair sample Roxanne Sullivan carried with her in her locket. I have an exact DNA match, no room for doubt."
He nodded thoughtfully, but not as if he cared anything about DNA matching.
"C.G.? I'm uncomfortable like this. Isn't there somewhere else we can talk?"
"No."
"I'm willing to answer whatever questions you may have. It really can't do me any harm."
"What happened to Bonnie?"
"She died."
"In Guatemala?"
"Yes. There was a cholera outbreak shortly after we arrived. It's a matter of public record."
"Where did you bury her?"
"In a mass grave, near the village of Matapalos."
"How about your other children? Naomi. Cynthia. Ellen. Joseph. What mass graves are they buried in?"
An unexpectedly wide smile, that seemed remorseless to me. Otherwise he was calm, invulnerable, looking up at the face of Mary. The light above the heads of the statues made iridescent pools on the bronze lenses of his glasses. His fingers flexed behind his back, as if he were trying to find something to anchor himself to.
"They weren't all my children. Cynthia was my wife. We came to Cobían on our wedding trip. Let's see, that was—"
I had a sudden throatful of nausea. "How old was she?"
"Seventeen. Her eyes were blue. The blue of the Virgin. I loved Cynthia very much. It was an ideal platonic relationship. Unfortunately, we couldn't remain together for as long as I would've liked."
"Did you kill her, Greg?"
No great change came over him. I once sat in on the interrogation of a murder suspect who had denied guilt consistently and rationally for three days; then, between drags on his umpteenth cigarette, he tamely admitted chopping up a couple of preschoolers in his toolshed. Bells rang on the basilica altar: once, twice, thrice. The bells seemed to signal to Greg that it was time to move on, to a more meaningful level of confession. Did you kill her Greg?
"Yes."
"All of them?"
"I don't deny it."
"Bonnie, too?"
He altered his story. "She had taken sick. The cholera. It was a bad time to come to Guatemala. But since I didn't have any choice—I was able to spare her a terrible death."
"How did you kill them?"
"Humanely. I promise you that." As if he were satisfying a condition for my approval and compassion. "The act of killing is a cruel thing. But they were all my dear ones—they died blessed in me."
"You're insane, Greg. I hope you realize that. And that it's time to stop."
He looked at me, for the first time since kneeling in that shadowy corner of the basilica. His eyes were unseeable, the light having vanished like spirits from the lenses of his glasses. And something else was gone too: the pretense, despite my rough handling of him, that we were like two casual acquaintances who had run into each other between flights at an airport far from home. Making small talk about bloody crimes. There was a tone of emotion in his voice when he spoke again.
"You simply don't understand. But how could you hope to? I've had a fortunate existence. I'm superior to all but a handful of men on earth. That is a fact, not -lunacy. My father, who was renamed by the Spaniards Don José Pablo Canek, recognized, soon after I was born, that I was one of the immortals. He brought me here when I was seven, to be instructed by the Timekeeper. There is nothing impure about the ritual. It is an honor to those we choose to assist us. They are exalted by our gods."
"Your gods exist only in your own mind. And it stops now, you hear that?"
He shook his head to silence me, then cocked his head toward the altar, where the Eucharist was being celebrated.
"The body of Christ," he murmured. "The blood of Christ. In all ritual we find renewal. Spiritual, physical. A timeless thing, of sublime meaning and beauty. The Sacred Heart is the lodestone, the great seed of life. You shouldn't be afraid of what you don't understand. Why don't you take off these handcuffs now? They don't give you any power over me, not in this place. And I don't mean you any harm."
"Somebody else will take them off," I said, "when Sharissa and I are well on our way out of here."
It was reckless of me; he jerked his head in a display of nerves and passion that emphasized the danger in him.
"Oh, no. You've made a mistake, C.G. You can't take Sharissa away from me."
I had the Colt out again, where he could see it. I wanted to stick it in his ear. "Let's go," I said. "On your feet."
I pulled him up with my right hand, yanking on the sturdy hinge that connected the bands of steel around his wrists. It is guaranteed to be very painful. He reacted to the pain by arching his back. Then he threw his weight against me, just as I shifted my own weight back onto my right foot, and was slightly unbalanced for half a second.
His move staggered me. He couldn't do anything with his hands, but he pivoted and drove the top of his head into my breastbone. I went sprawling into the midst of worshippers kneeling nearby. A woman screamed as I rolled over her. Greg came after me, trying to kick my balls off. I caught the kic
k on my thigh instead, scrambled, was eye-to-eye with a terrified little boy, pushed myself to my feet and lunged for Greg. I clubbed him in the side of the head with the Cobra. A lot of people were screaming now. The blow to the head bloodied Greg's ear and sent him reeling toward the aisle. I was hobbled by the kick and slowed by worshippers cowering on the floor as I went after him.
"¡Policía!" I shouted, pushing my way through what was turning into a panic-stricken crowd, trying to get my hands on Greg. But he was shouting too, in a language that wasn't Spanish, his voice rising hysterically, like a demagogue's. He turned to look at me, tinted glasses askew on his face, one brown bloodshot eye like that of a stampeding bull, trampling, screaming. A plaster saint rocked on its pedestal as bodies jostled against it. I stepped blindly on someone lying facedown in the narrow aisle. People were rising in the pews, looking at us in horror, staring at me with the shiny gun in my hand. Some of the Maya faces were angry, not horrified, as Greg continued his retreat, gaining a little on me, pressing backwards down the aisle, still shouting above the uproar of shrieks and lamentations.
"¡Policía, policía!" But I couldn't reach my shield, I was too tightly packed in with a lot of people who were suddenly acting very hostile. Toward me, not Greg.
Somebody grabbed the gun, a dangerous thing to do; at the same time I was pummeled from behind. I had to let go of the Cobra or have a couple of fingers or my wrist broken. I took a fist in the ribs and one in the kidneys and realized I was in serious trouble. Then it was just fists, fists, and feet as I went down and tried to assume the correct position to protect my vitals. I was too stunned to be afraid, even though I knew I was in danger of being beaten to death by a mob. None of it seemed very real to me. I must have been in shock. I wasn't interested in Greg anymore.
I don't know when they stopped kicking me and started smothering me with the weight of their bodies. I was on my side in the aisle with my head against a pew, and there wasn't much air to breathe down there on the stones. I felt like I had as a kid when I was gang-tackled in football, all the other kids deciding to have fun by piling on Butterbaugh. It was my punishment for being gullible enough to think they were going to let me run with the ball. I felt close to tears, even as I slowly suffocated.
I was never going to score the winning touchdown. And Sharissa stood off in a fog on the sidelines, smiling sadly before she turned away.
Church bells were ringing. They sounded distant, and alarming. It was the last thing I remember about the Basilica of the Iluminata.
Lights; but unsteady lights, as if I were peering with blurred eyes at a night sky that contained only two widely separated galaxies. At least I was able to breathe again.
A lungful choked me; it tasted like cement dust. I coughed until something jetted up and spilled down my bearded chin. A sour, almost bitter liquid. I coughed some more. By then my heart was beating wildly. I couldn't feel my hands or feet. I seemed to be numb in a lot of places, but damp in the crotch.
The coughing brought pain. Lord, it was a lot of pain! As if my body had been twisted into an unnatural shape, then pressed in a vise. Sharp pains in my lower back. An aching neck. A mouthful of cement and puke.
I had the bright idea to call for help.
As soon as I tried that, one of the galaxies that had been shimmering at the edge of my field of vision sharpened and swung closer; it seemed to smack me in the side of the face like a comet.
The blow sent a few more stars shooting through the darkness out there. The light stayed close to my head, dangling, swinging slowly in a circle. It assumed the shape of a bulb in a cage. A workman's utility light. The glare made my eyes water. I heard voices: low, indistinct.
They were speaking Spanish. I heard other sounds, that I couldn't identify: one was a rhythmic scraping, metal against metal.
I was sitting down. Concrete floor. Legs stretched out. I was wired at the ankles. My hands were in my lap, I discovered, also wired together. My back was against something solid, a wall with uncomfortable horizontal ridges. I blinked a few times to try to clear my eyes and saw someone moving through the periphery of the bright bulb swaying near my head. He wore dusty paratrooper boots and military-style jungle camouflage pants.
"What's . . . going on?" I said.
The other side of my face was struck—an open-handed slap. His hand was hard. I yelped.
"Don't do that," Greg Walker said. His voice came from somewhere else; he wasn't the one who had hit me.
The boots moved away. The scraping, slopping sounds continued. I identified the odor of wet cement. More conversation in Spanish. Someone lit a cigarillo. I saw his face briefly. Swarthy, pockmarked, two unshaved chins, and a scar straight down the center of his forehead. Smoke drifted my way.
"I'm allergic," I said, just to be saying something.
Footsteps. They echoed slightly. I had the impression we were in a large unfinished room somewhere. There were concrete block walls on either side of me. I seemed to be sitting in a three-sided alcove about six feet deep.
Greg Walker showed up in the light, holding the manila envelope I had taken with me to the basilica. The envelope had contained photos of him with his daughter Bonnie Sullivan, with Francisco Colon in conversation on the terrace of the hotel, with Nils Lagerfeld in the cafeteria at Kan Petén. Copies of the DNA autorads. All of my notes on the investigation, including Lagerfeld's statements, unfortunately not signed by the late archeologist.
Greg had taken off the tinted glasses. There was a cut on his right ear that had dried, but the ear was red and puffed from being struck by my revolver.
"How did you manage it?" I asked him. "Those people in the basilica . . . wanted to kill me."
"Most of them were Maya," he said. "And you have green eyes."
"More hazel than green, except when I wear . . . contacts."
"For the Maya, green eyes are a sign of evil. I told them you had been possessed by a demon, but God would protect them if they drove the demon from your body. If there had been any stones handy, they would have stoned you to death." He was looking at me with an expression of mild regret. "I'm really sorry about all of this," he said. I think he was referring to the contents of the envelope, which he replaced.
"There's copies everywhere," I said. "Adrienne Crowder knows everything I know."
He nodded, acknowledging that I was a prudent and cautious guy, then said, "Well, that doesn't really matter, C.G. None of this information will do anyone any good. Another forty-eight hours, and I won't be here."
"Where will you be?"
Greg smiled and shook his head.
"More blood on your hands?"
He looked perplexed by the implication of butchery. "You just don't understand. How deeply I loved them all. Sharissa has been a wonderful part of my life."
"Spare me." I tried to clear my throat. "I'll get you, Greg. No matter where you run . . . we both know you'll be running in a circle. If it takes nineteen years, when you come back here I'll be waiting for you."
"Yes, you will be here," he said without irony. "And long forgotten."
That clarified one thing. I was being walled up here instead of dumped in a ditch with my heart cut out, because unexplained disappearances tended to lessen the urgency and thoroughness of follow-up investigations. Whatever happened to C.G. Butterbaugh? Maybe he went native or something, down there in the tropics. Gone without a trace. And who would really care, other than my aging parents? Adrienne Crowder would probably believe I'd been bought off by Greg.
I tried to get up then. I was able to lift my butt off the floor, but I couldn't get my balance on wired-together feet. Dizziness from the surge of activity toppled me. I don't remember hitting anything; I must have blacked out for a little while. When I came to I was seated again, but this time there was baling wire around my neck, fastened to what felt like an eyebolt in the wall behind me. Someone had plastered my mouth with filament tape.
The worklight was still on, and a couple of men were crouched at m
y feet, busily slapping cement onto concrete blocks with trowels.
Either Greg had left, or he was standing, godlike, in the dark void, watching me being walled up in the alcove. The wall which the workmen were building in front of me had risen to three courses of block. Just behind them the man in jump boots and jungle fatigues was smoking another cigarillo, looking impassively at me. He had a flashy gold Rolex on one wrist.
The other two worked quickly. Slather on cement with twists of the wrist, gently knock the block into place. How long did it take cement to dry? I tried to get my feet up to kick at the wall, but I was inches short, and the baling wire cut into my throat. Strangling was an unpleasant way to die. Better to stay calm and try to think. Be rational and objective. Count my blessings. I was still alive, that was something, wasn't it?
Hell no it wasn't, and the panic center in my brain was shooting off fireballs. Breathing was already a chore. I raised my hands from my lap, attempting to get at tape across my mouth. They had thought of that, too. A thinner wire I hadn't noticed ran from my wrists to the wire that bound my ankles tightly together.
The man with the dark-toned cigarillo frowned, and put a hand on a shoulder of one of the workmen.
They moved out of his way, and took a break. He stepped over the low wall and crouched in front of me, cigarillo in one corner of his mouth. He picked up my hands and pushed back the left sleeve of my jacket, then unstrapped my wristwatch and looked it over.
"Ees old one, no? But valuable." He put the Hamilton watch in a pocket of his own jacket.
I felt indignation stronger than my fear of dying. Maybe he sensed that. As he was stepping out of my little cell, or tomb, he stopped and grinned at me. Then he sat on the low wall, reached out and put the nicotine-yellowed thumb and forefinger of his right hand on either side of my nostrils. He pinched firmly. I held what breath I'd been able to collect for what seemed like a very long time, looking into his bloodshot eyes. He smoked with his other hand and studied me intently, with a continuing hint of amusement, until I passed out again.
