Skull Duggery

by Aaron Elkins

  Wordlessly, Bustamente stuck his finger into a dark hole not far from the middle of the slab. “You see?”

  “From a bullet?” Sandoval asked. If he squeezed his eyelids together, leaving just a slit, he could see it without really seeing it.

  “Without question.” He removed his finger. “You see how the borders of the perforation appear to have been eroded or eaten away? So that the hole is ‘cratered,’ as we might say?”

  “Yes,” said Sandoval queasily, although all he could make out through his squint was a roundish hole with blackened edges. There was no denying, though, that it was the right size for a bullet hole. He had shot enough rabbits to know as much.

  “This eroded area is what we refer to as an ‘abrasion collar,’ ” Bustamente continued, in the manner of a teacher talking to a not-too-bright pupil. “It is the result of scraping from the rotating motion of the bullet as it penetrates the skin. Being unique to gunshot wounds, it leaves no doubt as to the source of the penetration. Judging from the size of the hole, I would guess the bullet was .32 caliber, but I leave that to the experts.”

  “I see. And it would have killed him?”

  Bustamente uttered a croaking, incredulous laugh. “Certainly, it would have killed him. Imagine if it had happened to you.” To illustrate, he jabbed a bony forefinger into Sandoval’s chest at about the same spot. “It would have exploded your heart, devastated it.”

  “Ah,” said Sandoval, whose heart was, in fact, feeling more than a little devastated. Murder. Tumult. Inconvenience. The State Procuraduría de Justicia taking over his office, taking over the whole municipal building, all four rooms of it. The policía ministerial giving him orders, making clear their contempt for him, swaggering and bullying their way through the village. Detectives . . . judges . . .

  It was only what he’d expected, he thought with a resigned sigh. Expect the worst, his stern, cheerless father had counseled him on many an occasion, and you will get what you expect. Only it will be worse. Sandoval had quoted it to one or two people and they had laughed. But his father hadn’t meant it as a joke, and the message had sunk in.

  “And if by a miracle that were not enough,” continued Bustamente, “the fall would have finished the job.”

  “He had a fall too?”

  “A long one. There are many broken ribs. Was he perhaps found at the foot of a cliff or mountain, a height of some kind?”

  “Yes.”

  Bustamente was pleased. “You see?”

  Sandoval heaved a forlorn sigh. “This means I will have to report the matter to the policía ministerial, doesn’t it?” he said glumly, already knowing the answer.

  “The sooner the better, I would say. I would not waste any time. They don’t like delays.”

  “And what happens to the body? Do you take it away with you?”

  “Not me!” exclaimed Bustamente. “”I submit my own report. That’s the end of my responsibility.”

  “So what do I do with him? We can’t just leave him here.”

  “I suggest that is precisely what you do. Lock the place up securely and await the attentions of the policía, who will not be long in coming, I promise you.”

  Sandoval nodded soberly. If only old Nacho had stayed on the regular paths like anyone else. Or if he had to stray sometime, couldn’t he have waited a few measly weeks longer? Sandoval would no longer have been the jefe by then; he would have been safely, agreeably, delightfully engaged in the administration of the village council’s affairs, with no responsibility for corpses or murders or—

  “You have a problem on your hands, Chief Sandoval,” Bustamente observed.

  “You’re telling me.”

  “No, I mean an additional problem. I found no bullet. I searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly. It’s not there.”

  Sandoval frowned. “But why should you expect to find the bullet? It might be anywhere. Do you expect to find the bullet when you shoot a rabbit or a deer? Bullets continue on their way—”

  Bustamente shook his head. The problem was, he said, that there was no exit wound. The mummified skin on the back and sides of the body was intact. Ergo, the bullet had never exited. But he had searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly and it was nowhere to be found.

  “I don’t understand. How can that be?”

  Bustamente twisted his skinny neck, working out the kinks. “Shall we go outside now? I want some fresh air.”

  They went to a stone memorial bench in the cemetery, where they sat awkwardly side by side. Sandoval himself felt a little better there; the air was fresh and he was among family. It seemed sometimes that half the population of Teotitlán was either a Sandoval or related by marriage to a Sandoval. Bustamente offered him a cigarillo, was turned down, and lit one for himself.

  “So then where is it, this bullet?” Sandoval asked. “If not inside the body, then where?”

  “There is only one possible answer.” Bustamente got his cigarillo going, shook out his match, and emitted twin streams of blue smoke from his nostrils. “It could only have fallen back out through the perforation by which it entered.”

  That didn’t sound right to Sandoval. “But can a bullet do that? Come out through its own wound?”

  “I don’t see why not. It’s not usual, that’s so, but—”

  “And you said it was a problem for me. Why is it a problem for me if you found no bullet?”

  Bustamente dropped the barely smoked cigarillo onto the concrete pad that supported the bench and ground it out under his sole.

  He arched his scant eyebrows. “Do you want to turn in a report to the Procuraduría de Justicia in which you tell them you were not capable of finding a bullet that probably lies within a meter of where the corpse was discovered? Would you prefer the policía ministerial to find it for you?”

  “I would not,” Sandoval said softly, but with feeling.

  Bustamente uttered a short laugh. “I should think not. You had better return to where he was found and locate it. And if you do not find it there, you must search every millimeter of earth on the way back. That is my considered advice. It may well have come out while the body was on the burro.”

  Sandoval blew out his cheeks and exhaled. What a job this was going to be. “I’d better get started now.” They both stood up. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”

  “Nothing that would interest you,” Bustamente said curtly. “I will have my own report for the police next week. And now if you’ll excuse me—”

  Flaviano Sandoval was by nature a mild, even a timid, man, given to diffidence and conciliation, as opposed to temper outbursts, but at this he bristled. “I am the police,” he said forcefully. “If you have additional information, I wish to know it.”

  But Dr. Bustamente was not a man to be intimidated, least of all by Flaviano Sandoval. “I meant the real police,” he said drily, but it was beyond him to resist demonstrating his expertise. “If you must know, however, I can tell you that it is my judgment that to become desiccated to this extent, he had to have been lying out in the open for at least eight months, more likely ten.”

  “And I would say no more than six months,” Sandoval said, still bristling.

  Bustamente stared at him. “Chief Sandoval, I have twenty-two years of experience in these matters. I have certificates in forensic medicine, in clinical pathology, in maxillofacial pathology . . .”

  Sandoval let him rattle on. It was Bustamente’s fault he was in this mess—well, in a way it was—and he owed the officious, self-important old man a comeuppance.

  “Six months,” Sandoval repeated when Bustamente paused for breath. “No more.”

  Bustamente smiled a lipless smile. “Oh yes? And perhaps you would care to tell me on what premise you base this learned conclusion?”

  “On the fact that I know who this man is, and he was most certainly alive six months ago.”

  That very satisfactorily took the wind out of Bustamente’s sails. “You know . . . you saw . . . well, who i
s it—was it?”

  “He claimed his name was Manuel Garcia. A vagrant. I had him in the jail for a night in May. Then I sent him on his way. I myself put him on the bus to Oaxaca. I watched the bus leave.”

  Bustamente leaned back, narrow-eyed, reassessing him. “And why did you not bother to tell me this earlier?”

  “Because you didn’t bother to ask me,” Sandoval said spitefully, but a moment later he felt a stab of guilt—well, a prick of guilt—partly because he knew he was being petty, but mostly because he knew it wasn’t the truth.

  Why then had he kept it to himself? Because he’d been hoping that Bustamente would conclude that there was nothing sinister about the man’s death, that it had been the result of exposure, or a simple fall, or a heart attack, or best of all that the cause had been impossible to determine. Then Sandoval would have had Garcia quietly buried in a nameless grave at the far corner of the cemetery, an anonymous, unmourned death with no follow-up required. To have supplied his name would only have complicated things, and to no useful end. That far he’d been willing to go to preserve his and the village’s tranquility. But homicide? Murder? No, duty required otherwise, and for Sandoval duty was paramount.

  Besides, Pompeo was sure to find out.

  “And what else do you know about him that you neglected to tell me?” Bustamente asked coldly.

  “Nothing at all.”

  Nothing beyond what he knew within ten seconds of setting eyes on him: Manuel Garcia was going to be trouble.

  ALL the rest of that day, Sandoval, Pepe, and Pompeo searched diligently, twice walking the two kilometers that the burro had carried the body, and then back; four times altogether. The chief’s back locked up with an audible click after two hours of bending and stooping, so that he was reduced to prodding at objects on the road with a stick. Young Pepe began complaining of neck and knee pains not long after that, and even the granite face of the indestructible Pompeo wore a look of suffering by the time they were done. In all, they retrieved sixty-five pesos in small coins, five shotgun pellets (collected, just in case), and a Belgian five-cent Euro coin. But of anything even vaguely resembling a .32-caliber bullet? Not a sign, not a hint.

  TWO or three times a week—the number was left to his discretion—Sandoval had his dinner up at the Hacienda, a familial perk that went along with his being the brother of their award-winning cook Dorotea; a delightful arrangement as far as he was concerned. He had eaten there the previous evening, and being conscientious about presuming upon the Gallaghers’ courtesy, he would ordinarily have avoided dining there twice in a row. But after the day he’d had, he was in sore need of the restorative powers of Dorotea’s cooking. An exception was in order.

  He parked his car in the lodge’s lot and made his way, somewhat more stiffly than usual, to the buffet table in the dining room. Sometimes he would eat with the guests to keep up his English skills—necessary because on summer weekends the village overflowed with American tourists—and because it pleased Mr. Gallagher to show off his relationship with the jefe de policía. But Tonio Gallagher wasn’t in residence this week and Sandoval was in no mood to sharpen his English. Instead, he carried his food to a separate nook at the back of the dining room that was kept for the various Gallaghers. He sat himself slowly and carefully down, with something between a groan and a sigh. As always, the smell of Dorotea’s thick, smooth mole sauce went a long way toward reviving his spirits.

  After a while he was joined by old Josefa Gallegos, who supervised the housekeeping staff, and Annie Tendler, the receptionist. Josefa was Mexican and Annie was American, but both, he knew, were somehow related to Mr. Gallagher, as was everybody else in a management position at the Hacienda. From the beginning it had been a family affair.

  As usual, Josefa had little to say. Elderly and increasingly deaf, she gave him a grunted buenas tardes and immediately set to attacking her enchiladas de pollo con mole poblano. Annie, also as usual, was more talkative.

  “You don’t look your usual cheerful self, Chief,” she said in her perfect, idiomatic Spanish.

  Sandoval had always found Annie easy to talk to—always a smile at the corners of her mouth, that one; never grumpy or taciturn, a good talker and a good listener both—and before they’d gotten to their coffee and flan he’d told her the whole story.

  “We looked and we looked. It’s nowhere to be found, Anita. You don’t know how I hate to turn in my report without having found it. The policía ministerial will find it, I know they will—they have so many resources at their disposal—and we will look like bumbling incompetents. I will look like a bumbling incompetent.”

  “You’re positive it’s not still in the body somewhere?”

  “Yes. Well, not positive, no, but that is what Dr. Bustamente says. And I’m afraid to poke around in that thing myself. I wouldn’t know how to do it. I don’t want to do it.” He shuddered. “And then on top of that, there is the report I am required to file with the policía ministerial . How do I do that, what do I write? I know nothing of such things. The last time this happened, everything I did was wrong, but did they tell me how to do it right? They did not.”

  “Couldn’t Dr. Bustamente help you with that?”

  “Bustamente,” he said scornfully and drew himself up. “I refuse to give him the satisfaction.”

  “Chief Sandoval,” Annie said slowly, “I have an idea.”

  He looked at her with a modest upsurge of hope. An idea was one idea more than he had. “Yes?”

  “You know I’m going to the United States in a couple of days. Well, my cousin Julie is arriving tomorrow to take my place, and her husband is coming with her on vacation. I’ve never met him, but he’s a forensic scientist who works on such things all the time. He might be able to help you, to examine the body, maybe find the bullet, or at least give you some advice. Maybe he could help you with your report. I’m sure he would know about these things.”

  Sandoval considered. “But would he be willing to do that? A prominent man, on vacation, after all . . .”

  “From what Julie tells me about him, he’d like nothing better.”

  “He hasn’t seen that thing,” Sandoval muttered.

  “What have you got to lose by asking him?”

  “Indeed, nothing,” Sandoval said thoughtfully.

  “He’s supposed to be very famous, you know. They call him the Skeleton Detective.”

  “Skeleton detective.” Sandoval uttered a short laugh as he dug into the flan, then uttered what was for him a rarity: a joke. “I suppose you wouldn’t happen to know any mummy detectives?”

  “Not enough chiles in the flan,” Josefa muttered in her thickly accented English, possibly to them, possibly to the flan itself. “She’s supposed to be such a wonderful cook, how is it she don’t know to put enough chiles in the flan?”

  FOUR

  IT was a view of the ancient city that the builders themselves had never had, and had never imagined that anyone, not even the great birds of the air, could ever have.

  Julie had nudged him from an in-and-out doze to look at it.

  “We there? Already?” Gideon murmured, eyes not yet altogether open.

  “No. Almost. But look down there. I’m not sure if it’s Aztec, or Mayan, or what, but I knew you wouldn’t want to—”

  “If it’s near Oaxaca,” he said, yawning, “then it’d be Mixtec or Zapotec. Where exactly—” His eyes popped all the way open and then some. “Wow, that’s Monte Albán! I didn’t know we’d see it from the air. What a sight.”

  At twelve thousand feet the Mexicana jet had dipped its wings to afford the passengers a better view, and he hungrily drank it in. He’d been to Monte Albán before, but he’d never seen it from above, and from here, looming over a countryside of small, rectangular farms from its table-topped mountain setting, it was truly stunning, the second-grandest city in all of ancient Mesoamerica (only Teotihuacan, on the outskirts of Mexico City, was larger). Its creation was an accomplishment of unimaginable effort
. The mountain had not always been table-topped. In one of the great feats of antiquity, the Zapatecos had leveled it in about 500 BC and had then begun building their monumental terraces and plazas and step-pyramids and tombs. It had been a thousand-year project.

  “There, that’s the Grand Plaza,” he whispered, “and that’s the ball court, of course, and that’s the Observatory, although nobody knows if that’s really what it was used for. And—”

  “It’s gigantic,” Julie said. “How many people lived there? There must have been thousands.”

  “No, nobody. As far as we know, it was never used as a habitation center. There’s no water source, for one thing, unless you go down the mountain, and the mountain’s well over a thousand feet tall.”

  “So it was ceremonial? All that?” They were both craning their necks as the site disappeared behind the plane’s wing.

  “That’s the best bet. It’s in a great place for military purposes—you must be able to see for fifty miles in every direction—but there’s no evidence of its ever being used that way. There are a lot of theories, of course, but the one I buy, and this is really interesting . . .”

  As it is with many people, Gideon’s strengths were also his failings. An animated, witty lecturer, always among the university’s most popular professors, he did sometimes overdo it. Among his most endearing, most annoying traits—derived from the optimistic premise that everyone must surely be as fascinated, as mesmerized, by archaeology and anthropology as he himself was—was to treat the world as his classroom. “Launching into lecture mode,” Julie would whisper warningly to him when he got carried away among friends, or even simply “lecture mode.” In fact, just a murmured side-of-the mouth “launching” was usually enough to do the trick by now. The moment he realized he was at it he ceased, usually with some embarrassment. He knew enough droning old pedants to live in dread of turning into one. But when it was just the two of them, good sport that she was, Julie was disinclined to stem the flow.