Aaron Elkins - Skull Duggery

“I guess so, but that‘’s already done; he couldn’t do anything to change that. Also, he found out about that yesterday, at dinner. He’s had all kinds of time to cook up some more subtle, less risky way to do me in between then and now-I don’t know, poison, an accident, whatever. But he didn’t. Then at, what was it, about eight o’clock this morning, he finds out I’m going to look at the skull this afternoon, and two hours later he’s shoving me off a wall in a public place. I can hardly imagine a more desperate, clumsy, dicey way to try to kill somebody. Why was he in such a hurry?”

“Because he had no time to plan anything fancier,” Julie said, nodding. “Because we were going into Oaxaca at noon.”

“That’s the way I see it.”

“Yes, you’re right, I think. But why was he so afraid of your seeing the skull?”

“Ah, see, that”s what I meant about the reason part. That”s the part I don’t know.”AS usual, Marmolejo didn’t seem to be doing much of anything when they got to his office. He was standing at one of the big mullioned windows, demitasse cup and saucer in his hands, tranquilly contemplating the peaceful scene in the plaza below. As always, he had on an embroidered white guayabera worn outside crisply pressed pants. His eyes lit up when he saw Julie, for whom he had a soft spot, and they quickly embraced, with the top of Marmolejo”s head coming up to the level of her nose. He called for more coffee at once, and pastries as well, sat them down in the cozy grouping of leather armchairs in one corner of the big room, and started chattering happily about old times.

“Javier, this isn’t exactly a social call,” Gideon said.

Marmolejo”s eyebrows rose. “I grieve to hear it.” He waited expectantly.

Telling him about what had happened at Yagul took five minutes. Explaining to him who Tony Gallagher was, and the whole twisted story of the Gallaghers and their Byzantine history, took half an hour, most of it provided by Julie. Corporal Vela had brought in coffee and a plate of chocolate wafers. Only Gideon, suddenly ravenous, had eaten any of the wafers, wolfing down four of them, when Marmolejo called a pause to ask Vela to contact the hospital in Tlacolula about Tony”s condition. The coffee had been drunk, and Vela had brought in another serving in fresh demitasse cups.

“And so you believe this attack occurred because he was afraid of what you might find when you looked at the skull?” Marmolejo asked as he spooned in his usual two teaspoons of sugar. “There was no history of animosity between you?”

“None. It’s got to be the skull.”

Marmolejo stirred, tapped the tiny spoon elegantly against the cup’s rim, and laid it soundlessly down in the saucer. “And of what do you think he was frightened?”

“We talked about that in the car,” Julie answered, giving Gideon a chance at another couple of wafers. “All we could come up with was that he was afraid that the skull would turn out to be Manolo’s-at breakfast this morning, we told him that we thought it might be.”

“And if it was? Why should that cause him concern?”

“Well, if he murdered Manolo-and if he killed Blaze as well-and wouldn’t it make sense that the same person killed them both?-then…” She shrugged.

“Then what? Let’s say he did kill them. Why should identifying the skull as Manolo’s, if indeed it should turn out to be, bring suspicion down on Tony Gallagher in particular?”

“We couldn’t come up with any reasonable answer for that either, Javier,” Gideon said, swallowing a slug of coffee to wash down the wafers. “We also couldn’t think of any reason for Tony to kill them in the first place. He wasn’t a betrayed husband or a jealous lover, after all; he was Blaze’s brother.”

“I wonder if we’re barking up the wrong tree altogether,” Julie said thoughtfully. “Maybe your going to look at the skull doesn’t have anything to do with what happened in Yagul. Maybe it is just an old Zapotec skull after all, and not Manolo’s.”

“That could be,” Gideon said. “But my intuition’s sure telling me otherwise. In any case, we’ll find that out this afternoon.”

At this point Corporal Vela came in with a sheet of paper for Marmolejo. “ Gracias, Alejandro,” he said, and scanned the few typewritten lines on it. “It’s about Mr. Gallagher. The hospital says his condition is critical but has stabilized. He is in a coma designated as a five on the Glasgow scale.” He looked at Gideon. “Is this something with which you’re familiar?”

“Yes, a little. The Glasgow Coma Scale-”

“Wait, start at the beginning,” Julie said. “What is a coma? He was already unconscious when they took him away. When does being unconscious turn into a coma, exactly?”

“Well, there is no ‘exactly.’ A coma is just a state of protracted unconsciousness. A boxer who’s knocked out and gets up a few seconds later wasn’t in a coma. If he’s still unconscious at the hospital an hour later, that’s a coma. If he’s still in it a month later, they usually reclassify it to ‘persistent vegetative state.’ If he’s still in it a year later-well, then he’s almost certainly never going to wake up.”

“And this Glasgow scale of five, what does that tell us?” asked Marmolejo.

“Not anything good, I’m afraid, as far as Tony is concerned. It’s based on a bunch of basic tests: you know, can he answer a simple question with a yes or a no? Can he move a limb or nod his head if he’s asked to? Does he react to being stuck with a pin? The scale runs from a three, I think, to a fifteen, with three being the lowest you can get.”

“So a five,” said Marmolejo, “would not be a very good sign.”

“A terrible sign. If I remember correctly, three to five generally means the person has probably suffered a brain injury that’s going to wind up killing him. Never going to regain consciousness.”

“Can he live a long time like that?” Julie asked.

“Not likely, but it happens. Comas aren’t very well understood.”

“So,” said Marmolejo, “wherever we find our answers to our questions, they are not likely to come from Mr. Gallagher himself.”

“I think you can count on that,” Gideon said. “Listen, Javier, I want to ask you something. You said nothing could be done about Blaze’s murder because the statute’s run out.”

“Correct.”

“And if this skull at the museum does turn out to be Manolo’s, the same would apply to him.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Well, doesn’t what happened today change things?”

“I don’t see how. Yes, of course we will look into it, but it’s a completely separate matter.”

“Is it? Here’s this peaceful little village, Teotitlan, that supposedly hadn’t had a homicide in umpteen years-umpteen decades -and now we find out that Blaze Gallagher, or rather, Blaze Gallagher Tendler, was killed ten years ago, only no one knew about it. And today, one day after I identify her body, and only hours before I go to look at a museum specimen that might be her lover’s skull, Tony Gallagher, Blaze’s brother, tries to murder me. And what about that mummified guy I looked at the other day-”

Julie shook her head. “Where does he come into it? I thought he was just a drifter who happened-”

“Who happened to be seen heading up toward the Hacienda Encantada, and who was found dead, murdered, a few months later out in the desert. That adds up to two certain murders-Blaze and the drifter-one possible murder-Manolo-and one attempted murder-me.” He had ticked them off on his fingers and now he held up his hand. “Four. Count ’em. Wouldn’t you say that’s quite a lot for this ‘peaceful’ little village? And wouldn’t you say the Hacienda connection runs rather distinctly through them all?”