by Aaron Elkins
“I don’t know,” Gideon said, getting interested. “How do we know?”
“That’s the question. Did it just get pieced together after the fact—everybody saying, ‘Well, she’s gone, and he’s gone, and the payroll’s gone, and we know they had a thing going, so they must have been in on it together.’ Well, maybe yes, maybe no. There’s a lot we need to find out, Gideon.”
“No, there’s a lot Marmolejo or whoever he puts on the case needs to find out,” Gideon corrected. “Let’s not stir the pot any more than I already have.”
“And another thing,” Julie continued placidly on, “what makes us so sure Manolo really left? What makes us think he wasn’t killed too?”
“Why would we think he was?”
“For the same reason Blaze was—the money. Maybe somebody killed them both for the money.”
He shook his head. “Well sure, maybe, but that’s about as hypothetical—as speculative—as you can get. There’s nothing at all that points to it that I can think of.”
“Okay, I grant you there isn’t. But half an hour ago you could have made the same point about Blaze: there wasn’t a shred of evidence to suggest she hadn’t taken off with Manolo.”
“Except for that little matter of her skeleton.”
“But until Mr. skeleton Detective came along and stuck his nose in, everybody assumed it was some little girl, which made it impossible for it to be Blaze. How do we know there might not be some other unidentified skeleton out there that will turn out to be Manolo’s?”
“Because there isn’t. These were the only unidentified skeletal remains Marmolejo’s office had. Nobody’s found any others.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they’re not out there. The fact that something hasn’t been found hardly proves its nonexistence, does it? What evidence is there that he hasn’t been killed?”
“That he hasn’t been killed? Other than having him walk in the door, how can there be evidence—whoa, this is getting pretty deep. Are we getting into epistemology here?”
“Look, nobody found what’s turned out to be Blaze’s skeleton either, until just last year, and Blaze has been dead almost thirty years. How can we be sure someone isn’t going to find another skeleton out there in the desert a month from now, or a year? Or tomorrow?”
“We can’t, of course. But are you suggesting that the possibility that something as yet unfound should be considered probable evidence of its existence?”
Why, they weren’t sure, but they both started laughing. “Let’s call it a draw,” Gideon said.
“All right, but I’m going to mention my theory to Javier when I see him. He can do what he wants with it.”
“No reason not to, but you don’t have a theory, Julie. A theory requires at least some observed facts from which to draw reasonably reliable inferences that can then—”
“Okay, my hypothesis.”
“You don’t have a hypothesis, Julie. Even a hypothesis has to be founded on observed phenomena that—”
She was rolling her eyes. “Okay already, my speculation! All right?”
“You don’t h—”
“My conjecture! My supposition! My unverified supposition? My blind guess? My shot in the dark?”
Gideon stroked his chin contemplatively. “I would accept blind guess, yes.”
She made a face and threw a balled-up napkin at him, and they broke into laughter again. “Oh, the joys of being married to a pedant,” she said.
Below, Carl, Annie, Tony, and Jamie were speaking rapidly in a tight, earnest little cluster near the horse.
“I sure hope they’re not putting their heads together to cook up some kind of story to protect Carl,” Gideon said. “Marmolejo will see right through it. Besides which, I’ll have to tell him whatever I’ve heard about it.”
Julie nodded. “I know you will. When are you going to see him?”
“I think I should head over there now. I gather you can’t come with me after all; Jamie said the two of you needed to finish up whatever you were doing this afternoon.”
“Well, I should be free all day tomorrow. How about if we go into Oaxaca then?”
“You’re on.”
“Gideon,” she said thoughtfully, “do you really think Javier will be interested enough to pursue this? I know, cold cases are what he’s working on, but this one’s positively freezing. It was almost thirty years ago.”
“Julie, if I know Javier as well as I think I do, he’ll be after this like a fox goes after a rabbit. He lives for this kind of thing.”
SIXTEEN
IT appeared, however, that Gideon did not know Javier as well as he thought he did. Marmolejo heard him out with patient interest, but when it was done, he sat back, engulfed in his enormous chair, rolled his brown thumbs over each other, and said: “Well, my friend, I can’t deny that you’ve produced your usual rabbit, but I’m afraid I don’t see what I can do about it.”
“What you can do about it?” Gideon exclaimed. “How about an investigation, for starters? Obviously, there’s never been one, at least not on the right track, since no one even knew she was dead. And the people who were closest to her are all still right there, they’ve never been questioned about it. Surely, there’s information to be gotten.”
“I don’t doubt it. Still—”
“What do you doubt? Do you think my identification might be wrong?”
“No, but—”
“I thought cold cases were what you were here for. What, is this too cold for you?”
“Yes, exactly. There would be no point. You see—”
“No point?” Gideon was having a hard time understanding Marmolejo’s reticence. This was utterly unlike the man, whom Gideon knew to be the most dogged and resourceful of policemen. “How can you possibly say there’s no point?” he said in exasperation. “I don’t understand you.”
Marmolejo merely sat there, quietly smiling at him, not with his mouth but with those exotic Mayan eyes, opaque and strangely piercing at the same time.
“What?” Gideon said.
“I’m permitted to speak now?”
“Go ahead.”
“An entire sentence? Perhaps even two?”
“Who’s stopping you from—” Gideon stopped, laughed, and relaxed back into his chair. He’d been propped tensely on the front edge of it. “Sorry about that, Javier. I apologize. Sure, go ahead. What the heck, take three if you really need them.”
Marmolejo soberly leaned forward, elbows on the desk. “I gather you aren’t familiar with our statute of limitations.”
Gideon shook his head. “No, but surely there’s no statute on murder.”
“Ah, but there is: fourteen years. After fourteen years, cases cannot be prosecuted. This death would seem to have occurred thirty years ago.”
“That’s crazy. Every . . . country excludes murder from its limitations statutes.”
“Every country but Mexico,” Marmolejo said bleakly.
Gideon had almost said “every civilized country.” Now he was glad that he hadn’t. “But Javier, statute or not, surely you want to look into this—a brutally killed young wife and mother, a—”
“Of course I want to, Gideon,” Marmolejo said with just a tinge of exasperation himself. “Unfortunately, I am bound by the parameters of certain policies and procedures. How can I justifiably devote public resources to the pursuit of an investigation that can have no legitimate juridical outcome?”
Gideon nodded. “Okay, you’re right. I can see that.”
Marmolejo looked at him suspiciously, closing one eye as if he were studying him through a microscope. “If you can see that, may I ask what that small, secretive smile is about?”
“That small smile—I didn’t realize it was secretive—is strictly in admiration of your English. I mean: ‘How can I justifiably devote public resources to the pursuit of an investigation that can have no legitimate juridical outcome?’ I don’t know a lot of native English speakers that would put it quite so
eloquently. In writing, maybe. Not talking.”
“I take that as a compliment, and I appreciate it, but I would appreciate it still more if you attended to the substance of my words.”
“I’m sorry,” Gideon said, clamping down on the smile. “And what, pray tell, is the substance of your words?”
“The substance of my words—of the words that I was about to utter—is that I would greatly prefer that you don’t look into it either. I wouldn’t want to see you put yourself at risk, especially for something that is beyond prosecution.”
“Me? What can I do? I’m only going to be here a few more days anyway.”
“Even if you were to ferret something out, even if you were to identify her murderer, nothing could be done about it, you understand?”
“Sure.”
Marmolejo peered at him with narrowed eyes. “Gideon, I would rest easier if I had your explicit promise to refrain from investigating the matter on your own. No good can come of it.”
He was right, Gideon knew. If the murderer were identified, what good would it do? Nothing could be done about it, or at least nothing legal. And what if it should turn out to be somebody close to the Gallaghers, or even in the family? That would be horrible, an impossible situation, impossible to remedy satisfactorily.
“Okay, I promise,” he said. “Honestly.”
That seemed to satisfy Marmolejo. “All right then.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, it looks as if you must gird your loins and face up to the dreadful prospect of simply relaxing and enjoying yourself for the remainder of your stay. Go and see some ruins. They always please you.”
“I will, Javier.”
BUT not just yet. After a quick lunch with Marmolejo at one of the taco stands on the Procuraduría plaza, he drove not to one of the area’s archaeological sites, but back to Teotitlán. However, instead of continuing through the village and up to the Hacienda, he parked in the open area between the market and the church, where Samburguesas had been set up the evening before. On the other side of the church was police headquarters, in the plain, one-story, ochre-colored building that held the village municipal offices. PALACIO DE GO-BIERNO, the sign beside the one door somewhat grandly proclaimed.
That Sandoval himself was not in his office could be seen from the outer room, and a grizzled cop in uniform—dark blue trousers, matching T-shirt and lightweight blue tunic (no handgun tucked into the belt or anywhere else)—informed Gideon that the chief would be back soon, in ten minutes or so. Maybe twenty. Could be a little more.
Gideon didn’t mind waiting; he’d seen nothing of the village and this was an opportunity. He strolled the main street—almost every doorway opened into a weaver’s gallery—for ten minutes before he was driven indoors by the sun. Back at the police station, he found that Sandoval had not yet returned. He spent the next fifteen minutes visiting the old Spanish church, then checked back. No Sandoval. Then twenty minutes at the little community museum, looking at the weaving exhibits and the archaeological relics, and back to the police station to inquire again. No Sandoval. Maybe ten minutes, the old cop, who was starting to look irritated, told him. Maybe twenty, he yelled after the retreating Gideon.
Gideon decided to give him ten more minutes, enough to walk around the block that held the church. He was glad he did. On the church’s south side was a small zona arqueológica, a forty-by-twenty-foot swath of exposed excavation. Earlier, he had seen the Zapotec reliefs embedded in the white stuccoed wall surrounding the church plaza, but he hadn’t realized that the church itself had been built on top of a destroyed Zapotec temple. The archaeological zone made that beautifully clear, exposing a carved-stone corner from the base of the ancient temple, with the two bell towers and the twin red domes of the “new” church rising almost directly from it. It was marvelous, as perfect an example as he’d ever seen of the Spanish colonial practice of demolishing a native temple and using its ruins as the foundation for a Catholic church, thereby accomplishing two important purposes at once: making use of ground that was already sacred; and, more significant, demonstrating the power of the Christian deity over that of the native gods.
It was all interesting enough to keep him happily there for thirty minutes instead of ten, so that by the time he got back to the police station Sandoval had actually arrived. The chief, volubly apologetic over Gideon’s having had to call more than once, was stammering out his excuses: an important meeting with the mayor to discuss a critical traffic revision; then the weekly meeting of the village council, at which he was required to present a summary of police activities; then the troublesome matter—
“Flaviano,” Gideon said when Sandoval was forced to stop for breath, “didn’t you say the other day that someone had once found an old Zapotec skeleton in the same mine that they found the skeleton of the girl last year?”
At the unexpected question, Sandoval blinked. “Yes, that’s right.” A quick breath, expelled through his mouth, showed that he was relieved. Gideon wasn’t going to involve him in more complicated relations with the police. Those old bones had nothing to do with him. But just to make sure Gideon understood that, he added: “That was eight, ten years ago, long before I was the police chief.”
“You said it was quite old, maybe a thousand years.”
“Yes. Well, I’m not the one who said so. Dr. Ybarra, he said so.”
“Dr. Ybarra?”
“Sure, the médico legista before Dr. Bustamente. Oh, a very good man, much more easy to get along with than . . . well.”
“How did he know?”
Sandoval’s brow wrinkled. “How did he . . . ?”
“How did he know it was ancient and not modern?”
“I don’t know nothing about that, but Dr. Ybarra, he would know such things; a real scientist, an educated man, not like . . . well.”
“Would it be possible for me to get in touch with him?” Sandoval smiled. “Not before you enter the next world, my friend.”
“Ah. Well, do you have any paperwork on it?”
“No, why should there be paperwork?” He was starting to get nervous again. Mother of God, was he going to get dragged into this somehow, after all? “What is this about, Gideon?” he asked nervously.
“Well, I’ve been thinking about Blaze’s murder—”
Sandoval did another of his classic, pop-eyed double takes. “Blaze’s murder? You mean Blaze from the Hacienda? I thought she ran away somewhere!”
“So did everybody else,” Gideon said, realizing that of course Sandoval had no notion of what Gideon had only figured out for himself not much more than four hours ago.
So that took some explanation, and although the more he explained, the more stunned the chief’s expression became, Gideon thought that he had gotten the basic point through. The bones that had turned up last year were not those of some anonymous “little girl”; they were the earthly remains of wild, young Blaze Gallagher Tendler, sister of Tony and Jamie, wife of Carl, mother of Annie.
“I don’t understand,” Sandoval said.
“Nobody understands,” Gideon said. “Yet.” He was on the verge of asking another question about Blaze, but his pledge to Marmolejo held him back. He had promised not to investigate what had happened to her and, being a man of his word, he wouldn’t.
But he hadn’t promised not to look into what had happened to Manolo. Sure, at Marmolejo’s insistence, he’d agreed not to probe into “the matter,” but the matter under consideration at the time had been Blaze’s death, not Manolo’s. Marmolejo’s interpretation of this admittedly hairsplitting distinction might differ (would differ, he was pretty sure), but Gideon thought he could talk his way out of it. It was merely a question of semantics, after all, a “what the meaning of is is” kind of thing.
In any case, it was Manolo that he was interested in now. Julie’s conjecture this morning, her “blind guess”—“What evidence is there that he hasn’t been killed?”—had snagged itself a perch in his mind, had clamped there with birdlike little talons, a
nd had been nagging away at him ever since. What evidence was there that he hadn’t been killed, right along with Blaze? The only evidence, if you could call it that, was that his body had never been found, and there were no unaccounted-for remains anywhere in the area.
Except for one ancient Zapotec skeleton, which, as it happened, had been found in the same mine in which Blaze’s skeleton had turned up a decade later. But was it an ancient Zapotec skeleton? Did Dr. Ybarra, educated though he might have been, know what he was doing when it came to something like that?
The odds were that he did. And the likelihood that it was Manolo was pretty minimal, to say the least. Besides, even if it did turn out to be him, there was nothing to be done about it; the fourteen-year statute of limitations would apply. So there really was no point in looking into it. Still, since Gideon was here in Oaxaca anyway, and since he had nothing else on his agenda at the moment . . .
“This skeleton,” he said, “do you know where it is now?”
“Sure, the man who found it—I wasn’t the chief then, you understand, so I had nothing to do with it, but I remember—the guy who found it, he knew he couldn’t take it back to Canada with him, so he gave it to this guy, Beto, who has a bar in Tlacolula. La Casa Azul.”
“And that’s where it is now?”
“Yeah. Well, the skull is. He has it on a shelf behind the bar, with, you know, a candle on it, and all that candle stuff, all different colors, dripping down over it. I saw it once.”
“I’d like to have a look at it, Flaviano. Could you show it to me?”
Sandoval shrugged. “If you want, sure, but you don’t need me. La Casa Azul’s real easy to find. It’s right on the main street. And the skull, it’s right there on the shelf, where anybody who wants can look at it.”
“But I’m probably going to want to take it down, handle it. And I’d like to see the rest of the skeleton too. Could you at least give Beto a call and arrange that?”
