Aaron Elkins - Skull Duggery

The building itself, coated in two equally repellent shades of green, was also seriously in need of a new paint job (in different colors, one would hope). Only the neat line of flowering shrubs along the foundation showed signs of loving, or at least painstaking, care.

All this Gideon had to take in on the fly as he and the heavily perspiring Sandoval walked rapidly-trotted, in the smaller Sandoval’s case-over the brick-paved front plaza and up the two flights of wide, curving stone steps to the entrance. From Sandoval’s point of view, the day had gotten off to a disastrous start. He had allowed what he thought was more than ample time for the drive from Teotitlan, but he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and had had a terrible time finding the place. Thus, instead of being fifteen minutes early for his two o’clock appointment, they were ten minutes late. They would have been only five minutes late had matters not been made worse when, having no convincing credentials to produce, he had been denied entrance to the official-business parking lot and had had to park on a side street two blocks away. As a result, Chief Sandoval, who had been a nervous wreck to begin with, was practically a moving puddle by the time they got there.

Once through the entrance they found themselves in a plain lobby that smelled of disinfectant, unadorned except for much-thumbed sheaves of official-looking documents hanging on cords from the walls. People moved in and out of corridors radiating from the lobby, the bureaucrats and civil servants (confident, decisive, focused) easily distinguishable from the ordinary citizens (apprehensive, uncertain, demoralized).

On one wall was a building directory, from which Gideon read aloud: “ ‘Director de la Policia Ministerial, planta sotano.’ Basement.”

“Dungeon,” Sandoval amended in a strained voice.

At the bottom of the stairwell they were blocked by a hulking giant with an imposing black mustache. He was at least a couple of inches taller than Gideon’s six-two, and a whole lot wider, dressed in black military fatigues and combat boots, with the blunt, squarish black handle of what appeared to be a 9-mm Beretta sticking out of his belt.

He looked them offensively up and down. “You’re in the wrong place,” he said dismissively in Spanish. “This is police headquarters.” With a jerk of his chin he gestured for them to get the hell back upstairs.

Sandoval instantly began babbling away with a stammering, apologetic explanation for their presence that got nowhere until Gideon interrupted.

“We have an appointment with Sergeant Nava,” he said in Spanish.

Until now, the cop had fixed his attention mostly on Sandoval. Now he turned it on Gideon and came a step closer; two steps. Whatever he’d had for breakfast, it had been heavily doused with cumin and garlic. “You’re not Mexican.”

“No. American.”

“American.” Disdainful, skeptical. “What’s your business here in Oaxaca?”

Gideon was quickly learning why the Oaxaca police, and to a lesser extent the police of Mexico, had the reputation they did. And it wasn’t simply the man’s size and attitude that intimidated, it was that gun stuffed so thuggishly into his belt. Was that meant to be intimidating (which it was)? What, could they not afford holsters?

“I’ve already told you why we’re here,” he said sharply, answering discourtesy with discourtesy. “Now where can we find Sergeant Nava, please?”

The cop narrowed his eyes, glared at him and opened his mouth to speak, at which point Sandoval started in again, grinning and wheedling and talking twice as fast as before. “Officer… sir… I’m the, the chief of police, you see-from, from Teotitlan del Valle? I have… there was… Sergeant Nava, he said to… he knows me, he told me-”

He was cut off by a weary bellow from down the hall. “Donardo, for Christ’s sake, will you put an end to that goddamn racket and bring them back here?” Gideon’s Spanish wasn’t up to getting every word, but following the gist was easy enough.

“Yes, Sergeant,” Donardo muttered with a roll of his eyes. Giving them a silent look that made it clear they had made no friend of him and would be wise not to cross his path again, he turned and led them down a linoleum-floored corridor bordered by a string of ramshackle office cubicles constructed from shoulder-high, building-grade plywood partitions that had been nailed together and covered over in watered-down white paint, the many knotholes, patches, and joints still plainly visible.

Sergeant Nava’s cubicle was no different from the ones they had glimpsed on their way: a cramped enclosure with an old metal desk and chair, a computer, a file cabinet, two unmatched metal chairs for visitors, and papers and files scattered over every available surface. There was nothing in it that wasn’t utilitarian in the extreme; not a photograph, not a coffee cup, not an ashtray. The Sergeant himself was cut in the Donardo mode, thickly built, blackly mustached, wearing black fatigues with the gun tucked into his belt. He was, however, marginally more polite than his subordinate-not polite enough to smile or say hello or get out of his chair, but enough to indicate with a wave of his fingers that they should take chairs as well, into which they squeezed, Gideon with some difficulty. With the back of the chair shoved right up against the wall to make some Space, his knees were still pressed against the desk.

Wordlessly, Nava watched them sandwich themselves in. Then, with a tired sigh, he leaned back-he had more room than they did-and addressed Sandoval.

“So. You again. This time a mummy.”

Sandoval giggled. “Yes, Sergeant, I’m afraid it’s me again. I’m sorry to bother you with this, but I knew that the proper action, in a matter such as this, was to inform you at once, so after Dr. Bustamente kindly-”

“This happy little village of yours-it’s getting to be quite a dangerous place, isn’t it? As bad as Mexico City.”

“Well, this didn’t happen in the village, Sergeant. Neither did the other one, the little girl. They were both found-”

Nava silenced him with a brusque motion of his hand. “All right, just tell me about it. And speak more slowly, for God’s sake. I already have a headache.” He jerked up the cuff of his shirt, grasped the face of his watch between thumb and forefinger, and studied it, sending a clear message: I am a busy man. My time is extremely valuable. I will allot a little of it to you, but be quick about it.

Still, he listened to what Sandoval had to say, or at least he allowed Sandoval to talk without interrupting him, other than the occasional finger-waving “Yes, yes,” to hurry him along-for almost five minutes. But he made it no secret that his mind was elsewhere. He asked no questions and jotted down only a couple of brief notes.

Obviously, he wasn’t much interested in the case, for which Gideon couldn’t blame him: a drifter, his body subjected to the depredations of the desert for half a year before anybody found it, with no apparent clues as to who had killed him or why-there wasn’t much the policia were going to be able to do about it, or, frankly, much impetus for them to try. Nava was doing pretty much what an American police Sergeant would do in his place: going through the motions for the record. But most American sergeants, or so Gideon hoped, would have done it a little more courteously.

Sandoval too was quick to spot the lack of interest, and it cheered him up perceptibly. His thoughts flowed across his mobile face as clearly as if he’d spoken them: maybe this wasn’t going to be as bad as he’d feared, maybe they’d just tell him to go ahead and bury the body and they’d get around to it when they could sometime, maybe Nava had been thumbing abstractedly through the thin folder that Sandoval had supplied, and his first question, interrupting Sandoval in mid-sentence, was directed at Gideon. He held up the report on Garcia’s body.