Aaron Elkins - Skull Duggery

“Do you know who you are?” he asked quietly.

“Quien sabe?” he said, sounding too weary to care. Who knows? Then his eyes rolled up and his eyelids fluttered a few times and closed.

“Tony?”

No reply. Gideon put a hand on his chest to make sure he was still breathing. He was, but raggedly. The trickle of blood from his ear now ran all the way to the back of his head and dripped slowly onto the ground. The blood at his eyes and nose was about the same as before.

Gideon settled down on the ground to wait with him, his mind whirling. What the hell just happened? Several groups of visitors had arrived by now and although everyone else kept well clear of the two men, a Mexican tour guide came up to ask if there was anything he could do.

“Not unless you’re a doctor,” Gideon said.

The man had seen the entire terrible incident, however-how the other man had tried to push him off the platform-and he offered his name and telephone number if a witness were needed. Gideon, realizing for the first time that a witness might indeed be a very good thing to have, gratefully accepted his business card: Vicente Abelardo: Tours Arqueologicos, City Tours, Bike Rides y Otros.

The ambulance, a brand spanking new orange-and-white van from the hospital in Tlacolula, came bouncing up to them, right onto the edge of the playing field, spraying dust and gravel. At almost the same time another one of the Hacienda vans pulled up, with Annie at the wheel and Julie in the passenger seat.

The two ambulance attendants were professional and quick. A few brief questions that he was able to understand and answer in Spanish: How long has he been unconscious? Was he conscious at all after the fall? Has he vomited? Convulsed? Shown evidence of pain? Shown any movement below the neck? Gideon answered them all and added his observation about the difference in pupil size.

They glanced at each other, saying nothing (what could they say?), then got swiftly down to work, while Gideon moved off to the side with Annie and Julie to watch. Tony’s head and neck were immobilized in a plastic cradle with head and chin straps, and then he was expertly slid onto a board, strapped to it, and hauled into the back of the ambulance. Tony’s lips were moving as he was lifted, but his eyes stayed closed. The doors slammed shut, and they were gone in another explosion of dirt and gravel. When the ambulance had gotten there, most of the other visitors to the site came to gawk, but now they rapidly dispersed, murmuring among themselves. It had turned into an exciting day for them, after all.

“Julie, would you mind driving back with Gideon?” a distracted, lip-biting Annie asked. “I want to go to the hospital to be with Tony.”

“Of course, go ahead.”

She started to leave, then stopped and took Gideon’s hand. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

He smiled weakly but said nothing. In fact, everything had happened so quickly since they’d arrived that Gideon hadn’t told them what had really happened. He said nothing now, either, as he and Julie walked to the van, other than to ask her to drive.

She looked at him curiously-he generally enjoyed driving more than she did-but got into the driver’s side and turned on the ignition. They followed the ambulance and Annie’s van down the dirt road until they came to Highway 190, where the ambulance flicked on its siren and raced south toward the hospital, with Annie closely following, like an airborne bird sheltering in the “wake” of the leader of the flock. Julie and Gideon turned north, toward Teotitlan. Only then did either of them speak.

“It must have been pretty bad,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you so… I don’t know… it’s like you’re in shock. Are you all right?”

“Sure, I’m all right. Look, when you get to the Teotitlan turnoff, don’t take it. Let’s keep going. I need to talk to Javier about this.”

She looked doubtfully at him. “I don’t understand. Why would Javier-”

“Julie, it wasn’t an accident. Tony tried to kill me up there.”

“He tried to-” She swerved rapidly to the side of the road and pulled up on the shoulder. “Did you just say what I think you said?”

“I’m afraid so. He tried to shove me off the platform. He wound up going over the edge instead.”

“But why? That’s crazy!”

He spread his hands. “I don’t have a clue.”

“My God. Tell me what happened.”

“There’s not much to tell. I was answering one of his questions about the ball court, and I had my back to him, and I heard-I don’t know what I heard-a sob, maybe, and I’d been worried about him anyway because he’d been acting strangely.”

“Strangely how?”

“Tense, nervous, preoccupied…” He gestured at the ignition. “Could we get going again, please?”

“Gideon, at this point, I think I’m more shaky than you are. I mean, if you hadn’t been turning around… if you…” She let out a breath. “Do you feel up to driving? I think it’d be safer.”

“Yes, I’m okay. The adrenaline rush is over, and so is the knees-like-jelly follow-up. I’m me again.”

“I never had the pleasure of the adrenaline rush, I’ve gone straight to the knees-like-jelly phase. When I think what might have… whew.”

They switched seats, and then Gideon turned the engine on once more and edged out onto the highway.

For the next few miles there was only silence, and then Julie picked up the conversation where they’d left it. “Okay, so you hear what sounds like a sob behind you…”

“And I turn, and as I turn, here he comes at me, full speed ahead. I-well, I’m not sure what I did. I guess I sort of stepped out of the way and backhanded him-you know, a swipe with my arm to keep him off me-and over he goes, without a sound. Hit the landing on the stairs, bounced off, and fell the rest of the way down.”

“And hit his head, obviously.”

“I couldn’t be positive at the time, but yes, obviously.”

“And?”

“And nothing. I called Annie, and you know the rest.”

She nodded. “How serious do you think Tony’s injuries are?”

“Serious,” Gideon said. “Put it this way: if he’s lucky, he’ll die, because I don’t think his brain’s going to be of much use to him from now on.”

Another quiet nod, followed by a soft sigh.

“How are you feeling about this, Julie? I know you liked him. You must feel-”

“What I’m feeling,” she said firmly, “is relief, enormous, overwhelming relief that you’re still here.” She reached across to put her hand on his thigh. When he covered it with his own, he could feel it trembling. He curled his fingers gently around it. “What I’m feeling,” she went on, and now the tremble was in her voice as well, “is thank God you acted the way you did, as quickly as you did. If something had happened to you… I can’t even…”

He squeezed her hand, not trusting himself to speak, thinking for the thousandth time: How fantastically lucky I am to have her, to be loved by this beautiful, marvelous woman.

“What I’m feeling about Tony?” She continued after a moment, in a steadier voice. “I haven’t sorted that out yet. Disbelief. Incomprehension. Bewilderment. What could he have been thinking? Was he crazy? What possible motivation could he have to do that to you?”

“Oh, I think I know what his motivation was.”

She looked sharply at him. “I thought you didn’t have a clue.”

“Not to his reason, no, but to his motivation, I think so, yes.”

“You’ll have to explain that.”

“His motivation was to prevent my seeing that skull this afternoon. What else could it possibly be?”

“Well-almost anything. I don’t know, maybe it had something to do with your identifying Blaze’s skeleton.”