Aaron Elkins - Skull Duggery

“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 Procuraduria plaza, he drove not to one of the area’s archaeological sites, but back to Teotitlan. 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 arqueologica, 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 medico 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?”