The Dig (The Blackwell Files Book 9)

by Steven F Freeman

  “Sí. I remember you. What do you want now?”

  Mallory glanced over her shoulder. “Is there somewhere where we can talk alone?”

  The host frowned. “Does it really have to be right now? ‘Cause—”

  “Yes, it does,” said Mallory. “I’m assisting the Guadalajara police in a murder investigation.”

  “What if I don’t want to be part of your investigation?”

  “Then I call Lieutenant Vasquez, and we’ll conduct this conversation at the police station.”

  The man hesitated, uncertain. The clattering of soiled dishes being piled into a tub rang out from a nearby table. At last, he motioned to another employee to take his place.

  “Okay, come with me,” he said.

  Mallory and Mastana followed the man as he wound his way through wooden tables and to the far end of a heavily-oiled oak bar that looked to have occupied the spot for decades.

  The man flicked a hand at a portly bartender sporting a grimy apron. Within seconds, a beer appeared as if from nowhere.

  The host took a sip and locked Mallory in a silent, hostile stare.

  “Some of the workers at the basilica reported seeing you sitting outside the building on several occasions,” said Mallory, “like you were waiting for something…or someone.”

  The man shrugged. “So?”

  “They said you were often out there around five in the evening, about the same time one of the murdered workers usually left the site each day. Her name was Eden Grey. Did you know her?”

  The man stiffened, and the color drained from his face. Not much of a poker face—or had the question evoked a surge of emotion no one could have contained?

  “Eden Grey, you say?” he asked, fighting a tremor in his voice. He made a point to shrug. “I knew her a little. She was part of a group of friends I hung out with. But I didn’t know her very well.”

  Mallory leaned forward. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure. She was a friend of a friend, you know what I mean?”

  “When did you normally hang out together?”

  “Usually around seven, but it wasn’t the same every time.” The man’s haggard expression suggested he knew more than he was letting on.

  “So if I ask the owner here—Julio Diaz, right?—he’ll tell me the same thing?”

  The host issued the quick bark of a humorless laugh. “My father? He don’t know nothing about my life outside this place. He only cares what I do for the restaurant. It’s his life.”

  “Julio Diaz is your dad?” asked Mallory. “And your name is…?”

  “Marco. Marco Diaz.”

  Mastana spoke for the first time. “I am sad to hear you say these words.”

  Marco cocked his head. “What words?”

  “That your father cares only for his business. I don’t think you are this kind of man. It must make you sad.”

  Marco swallowed before speaking. “How can you say that? You don’t know me or my father.”

  Mastana hesitated as a customer staggered past on his way to the bathrooms in the back. “Your words, how you say them—this tells me much.”

  Marco fought down another surge of emotion, fear mixing with a longing to come clean. Mallory had seen that look before, usually from petty criminals in over their head. Had Marco been thrust into some nefarious sequence of events? Had he tried to avoid playing a part of some criminal plot yet found no way to extract himself?

  Mastana sensed this, too. “Marco, I am from Afghanistan. My uncle was a member of Al-Qaeda and told me to do many evil things when I was just a child. I did not want to do these things, but for many days, I didn’t know how to escape. I felt trapped. And I would understand if you feel trapped, too.”

  Everything in Marco’s countenance suggested an imminent outpouring of words, yet the man remained silent.

  “Is there not something about Eden Grey you would like to tell us? Something that in the telling, will give relief to your soul?”

  Marco’s eyes glistened, but he shook his head. “No, I don’t know nothing about her murder—only what I hear in the news. I wish I could help you. But I can’t.”

  Mallory glanced at her teen companion, who shook her head ever so slightly in disappointment. She withdrew a business card from her wallet and slid it across the bar to Marco. “If you think of something, anything, let me know.”

  Moments later, the investigative duo emerged from the restaurant’s gloom into the bright afternoon sunlight.

  “It was a good try,” said Mallory.

  “But not good enough,” replied Mastana. “He knows more than he is saying. I am sure of it. But we will have to figure out his unspoken truth on our own.”

  CHAPTER 30

  Alton and Vasquez trudged from the rocky soil over their cenote escape route to the lieutenant’s car. As they traveled, the barren ground gradually transformed into lush jungle.

  “What is this other method of tracking down Cruz you mentioned?” asked Vasquez.

  “I need to confirm something first,” replied Alton. “When we get in the car, let’s break out that map we found in the cave.”

  Back at Vasquez’s rental, they donned clothes over their swimsuits and piled into the car. Alton took a second to let the moment soak in. Minutes earlier, he and Vasquez had been lost in underwater caverns, minutes from death. Now here they were, picking up the investigation as if nothing had happened.

  And why not? Alton had faced dangers in Afghanistan and on most of his investigations since then. Was this really any different? Somehow…yes. Perhaps the special horrors of a suffocation death rendered escaping it all the more exhilarating.

  “You okay?” asked Vasquez.

  “Yeah.” Taking a deep breath, Alton pulled the map from his swimsuit pocket and unfolded it across the car’s dashboard. He studied the complex tracing of lines and geometric shapes a minute before nodding.

  He turned to his partner. “You know how sometimes when you stop thinking about a puzzle, the answer seems to pop right into your mind?”

  “Yes. I know exactly what you mean.”

  “That’s what happened. We were scaling the wall out of the cenote a few minutes ago, and the answer just…appeared.”

  “What answer is that?” asked Vasquez.

  Alton smoothed out the paper. “The black lines never cross the big shapes. But see how most of the blue lines radiate out of this central rectangle? At first I thought all the lines were streets, but the blue ones run right through the rectangle itself. That didn’t make sense. But what if the blue lines represent structures underneath the rectangle?”

  “Tunnels—under the basilica!” said Vasquez, slapping the steering wheel.

  “The Guadalajara Cathedral, to be exact. Like you said, the blue lines represent tunnels. That’s why there’s so many and they seem to trail off at the ends. No one knows where they all lead. The black lines represent buildings and streets at ground level. This central rectangle is the downtown cathedral. Here’s the courtyard in front of it,” he said, pointing. “And you can see tunnels branching out from the cathedral.”

  “And some of them go in the direction of the warehouse across the street,” observed Vasquez.

  “Exactly.”

  Vasquez cocked her head. “How did you figure this out?”

  Alton shrugged. “Pattern recognition. It’s what I do in my day job.”

  “I see that,” she said with a raised eyebrow. She studied the map for a moment. “This is perfect.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Maybe Cruz is using the tunnels to store drugs. Or maybe he is using them to hide stolen artifacts. Either way, we can bring pressure on him.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  Vasquez fired up the car, a Ford Focus she had rented at the airport, and pulled out of the parking space. “A raid.”

  “I thought you didn’t have enough evidence for that.”

  Vasquez smiled. “Not a raid on his warehouse. We know h
e has nothing there.”

  “The tunnels!”

  “Exactly. Cruz can’t object to that. He doesn’t own those structures.”

  “True,” said Alton. “And odds are, he isn’t expecting anything stored in there to be discovered. They probably wouldn’t be wiped clean of fingerprints or other forensic evidence that could tie it back to him.”

  “We can only hope.”

  Several hours later, Alton and Vasquez met a half-dozen plainclothes policeman downtown, a block over from the Guadalajara Cathedral.

  Vasquez held up the map to the huddled officers and pointed to a particularly thick blue line. “This seems to be the main tunnel leading from the church towards Cruz’s warehouse. Most of us will storm that tunnel. Once we get in there, Garcia, you take this branch to the left. Ramirez, you take this other one on the right. We’ll be dusting everything we find down there, so be careful not to touch anything. Any questions?”

  Their heads shook in unison.

  “Enter the cathedral one or two at a time. Meet up at the vestibule at the back of the sanctuary. And keep your weapons concealed until we’re in the tunnel. We don’t want to give Cruz’s people time to sound a warning.”

  Alton leaned over to whisper to Vasquez. “No weapons ‘til they’re in the tunnel? What if they walk into an ambush?”

  “In the two years the archeologists have been working down there, no one has ever ambushed them. We’ll only need weapons when we venture down the tunnels leading towards the warehouse.”

  “Got it.” Alton checked to ensure his handgun remained safely tucked into the rear waistband of his pants.

  He and Vasquez sauntered through the plaza and entered the cathedral. With their mussy, post-swimming hair and rumpled clothes, they resembled anything but police.

  They traveled along the sanctuary’s right wall and entered the rear chamber containing access to the tunnels. Within fifteen minutes, the rest of the officers arrived.

  “Ready?” asked Vasquez.

  “Sí,” murmured the policemen in unison.

  Alton and Vasquez descended the ladder first. The musty aroma of centuries entered Alton’s nostrils, reminding him of the cellar of his grandparents’ house.

  Rather than turning right towards the archeological activity, they turned left and traveled down an unlit tunnel heading in the direction of the warehouse. Vasquez activated her pocket flashlight, then switched over to its red filter. Alton nodded to himself. This setting would be the least likely to be detected by their adversaries.

  The police entourage crept down the tunnel, surprisingly quiet for such a large group in an otherwise noiseless space.

  Within minutes, they encountered the branching tunnels. Vasquez motioned with her hand to Garcia and Ramirez, who peeled off to investigate the side passages.

  The rest of the group continued down the larger, central tunnel.

  For the most part, Vasquez and the other officers kept their flashlights trained low, illuminating only a yard of floor in front of them—a better approach to maintaining the element of surprise. At times, the soft, red glow of a flashlight would pan over crumbling walls.

  Nothing—no signs of either drugs or illicit artifacts.

  One of the policemen bringing up the rear sneezed.

  The procession came to a halt. Everyone froze, scarcely breathing, waiting to see if their presence had been betrayed. Two full minutes brought no response, so the investigators resumed their trek down the passage.

  The passage’s moldy aroma began to change, transforming from the usual ancient scent to a more pungent, sickening odor.

  Vasquez turned to Alton with questioning eyes. Although he harbored a suspicion, Alton had no proof to back it up. Besides, speaking—even in a whisper—carried too much risk. So he merely shrugged.

  After another minute of walking, the stench grew stronger.

  The most distant arc of the flashlights’ red beams illuminated a bundle on the floor. The team moved closer and halted.

  Colorful suspenders and white whiskers confirmed Alton’s suspicions. The decaying corpse of Dr. Harold Miller lay sprawled on the ancient floor.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Careful,” Vasquez instructed her team. “Don’t disturb the body. We’ll need forensics to scrub for clues.” She directed one officer to return to ground level to call in reinforcements and two to remain with the body.

  She turned to Alton. “You knew, didn’t you?”

  “Once the smell hit us, I suspected.”

  “Ay,” she exclaimed. “I hate to tell the rest of the archeologists, especially Adriana Mura.”

  “And Dr. Cornick,” added Alton. “Really, it’ll be hard for all of them—another senior researcher murdered. But that’ll need to wait a bit longer. For the moment, we’ll keep exploring this tunnel, right?”

  The lieutenant nodded. She, Alton, and the rest of the team continued down the passage.

  “Can I use your flashlight for a second?” Alton asked a portly officer huffing behind him.

  Receiving the device, Alton trained it on the tunnel’s floor and leaned close to inspect the surface. “Rock. It’ll be impossible to tell if anyone has traveled through here recently.” He returned the flashlight.

  They traveled down the passage for another twenty minutes before reaching an intersection of tunnels.

  “I remember this from the map,” whispered Alton, drawing the paper from his pocket. Vasquez illuminated it with her flashlight’s red glow.

  Alton pointed to crossing lines on the left side of the page. “Here’s where we are. And see this rectangle just to the left? That’s the warehouse. We’re only twenty or thirty yards from its exterior wall. If we take a right on this new tunnel, we’ll be underneath it.”

  “Let’s go,” said the lieutenant.

  They crept forward, all senses trained on detecting hostiles before falling under observation themselves. All but Vasquez and another policeman switched off their flashlights.

  The color of the floor beneath their feet began to change, from the rock’s grey to a darker, nearly black color—starting with the occasional spots of black but eventually filling almost all of the floor’s porous surface.

  Alton leaned down and wiped a hand across the floor’s ebony surface. “It’s slick…like grease.” He looked forward. “Probably tracked in from above, from the warehouse.”

  Ten more steps brought the investigators to a square of light shining from the tunnel’s ceiling.

  “A trap door, leading down here,” said Alton.

  Vasquez played her flashlight over the floor. The grease lay at its thickest directly underneath the trap door. “Whoever killed Dr. Miller could have been back here in minutes. And no one would ever see them.”

  “And there’s not enough accumulation of oil to hold footprints,” said Alton, leaning down again. “The grease soaks right into this rock.”

  “I’ll send the forensics team over here, just in case they can make something of this,” said Vasquez. “For now, let’s return to the cathedral. I don’t want Cruz to know we’ve spotted his secret access point until we’re ready to move against him.”

  An hour later, Alton and Vasquez met up with Mallory at the Zapopan Basilica. Dr. Cornick had been called from his dig site under the building and now sat at the folding table with the others in front of the altar.

  “We’ve found Dr. Miller,” said Vasquez.

  “Wonderful!” said Cornick. “Where…?” Observing the lieutenant’s grim expression, he trailed off. “He’s not dead, is he?”

  “I’m afraid so. I’m sorry.” After waiting a moment to let Cornick absorb the news, Vasquez spent a few minutes describing the tunnel search.

  “Poor Harry,” said Cornick. With watering eyes, he shook his head. “It’s fitting in a way. He loved dig sites like the Chapalas one. If he had a choice, I think he would have picked it as the place to draw his last breath. And there’s one other good side to your discovery:”

 
; “What’s that?” asked Alton.

  “You asked me if Dr. Miller could be involved with stealing the artifacts. His murder proves he wasn’t.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Mallory: “If he was involved in artifact theft, the perps could have killed him to eliminate anyone who could testify against them. It happens all the time back home.”

  Cornick shrugged. He didn’t look convinced.

  “He also could have been killed for the original reason we thought,” said Alton. “He got too close to the gang’s drug activity, and they decided to silence him. The tunnel he was in was closer to Cruz’s warehouse than the dig site.”

  Vasquez drummed her fingers on the table. “An attack on a well-known American is a little unusual for the narcos this far south. But it’s not out of the question. Whether it’s because of drugs or illegal artifacts, they’d need to get rid of him either way. But it’s funny that we didn’t see any drugs or artifacts in the tunnel.”

  “They probably only use it to store items in transit,” said Alton. “Maybe they don’t have anything to store at the moment.” He ran a hand through his hair, pondering. “Perhaps you should send your people into the tunnels to check once or twice a day. If some illegal merchandise appears, we’ll know exactly what it is they were trying to keep secret.”

  “Yes, I will do this. Then we’ll be ready to move against Cruz.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The sun had dipped below Panama’s verdant fields hours ago, swallowing the evening sky’s fuchsia clouds into the inky shadows of night.

  O’Neil slipped the plastic pistol into the rear waistband of his shorts and covered it with his untucked aloha shirt.

  “Ready?” he asked Jess.

  She nodded.

  They exited their cabin and traveled down a long hallway to a midships bank of elevators. Exiting on deck five, they moved to the ship’s starboard side and passed through automatic doors onto the outdoor running track. A mild breeze carried the tangy scent of seawater and the fecund aroma of the port’s lush foliage.

  As he and Jess marched towards the ship’s fore section, O’Neil eyed a series of overhead signs indicating muster stations, assigned lifeboat meeting points in case of an emergency at sea.