Aaron Elkins: Curses!

"Right, that's just what this case needs: a little cognac and a little cogitation."

From the outset Gideon knew that it wasn't going to be much of a day. There had been a little too much cognac the night before, and maybe a little too much cogitation too. Abe had joined them at about ten o'clock, and they had stayed up talking until one-thirty; then Gideon and Julie had overslept this morning. That was what had started him off in a grumpy frame of mind, eliminating as it did their usual slow, luxurious introduction to the day: fifteen or twenty dreamy, voluptuous minutes in each other's arms, drifting and dozing, nuzzling and stroking, slipping sweetly in and out of sleep until the warmth of the morning began to flow in their veins.

It was Julie who had to run off first, to the ceremonial staff breakfast with the people from the Institute. Gideon, with an hour before he was due to meet Marmolejo at the site, stayed in bed by himself for fifteen minutes (it wasn't the same) before snapping fully awake with the frustrating feeling of having dropped a stitch, of having been on the verge of figuring it all out if only he could have continued whatever train of thought had been going along almost independently in his mind. For a few moments more he lay still, trying to recapture it. Something about Howard, something Howard had said…but whatever it was, it melted into tantalizing wisps and evaporated before he could get hold of it.

He got up, yawning, ordered coffee and a couple of croissants from room service, and breakfasted while he shaved. His mind was still humming with the problems they had raised the night before. Once again it had been all questions, no answers.

Foremost, of course, was the question of who had killed Howard. The logical best guess, although it had been hard to take it seriously, was Worthy. He had been alone at the site with Howard that night. And it was only Worthy's word that Howard had taken the gun and crowbar and gone up to the temple. Maybe it had been Worthy who had taken the weapons and then tossed the crowbar on the ground near the path to make it look as if Howard had escaped that way. Worthy could easily enough have tried to steal the codex and wound up murdering Howard and accidentally triggering the cave-in when he was discovered.

But so could everyone else, and that was the problem. TlaIoc was less than a twenty-minute walk from the Mayaland. Any of them could have doubled back from the hotel after Howard had dismissed them. Certainly, Gideon was in no position to know; he had slept for an hour after dinner, getting ready for the night watch.

And what about the old question that had been nagging at them in one form or another since the first day, when they discovered the surreptitious digging in the stairwell: Why had the killer waited until now to come back for the codex, when it would have been so much easier and safer last year, or the year before, or the year before that? Why-

It was a relief to hear a tap on the door. That would be the officer who would walk with him to the site. Despite the removal of the codex, which was surely at the root of it all, Marmolejo had not relaxed security. Last night no one had camped out on the balcony, but two policemen had wandered the grounds and hallways. And this morning Gideon was under strict instructions to wait for his escort before going to the site.

"Un momento." he called, toweling the last of the shaving cream from his throat and taking a final gulp of coffee. On the way to the door, one more question struck him; odd that it hadn't occurred to him until now. He stopped at the writing desk and pulled his copy of the curse out of the center drawer. He ran his finger down it until he found what he wanted.

Fifth, the beast that turns men to stone will come among them from the Underworld.

He smiled faintly, Making that one come true would take some doing. Even if there weren't cops crawling all over the place.

The hot weather had returned. That was one more thing wrong with the day. Gideon glanced at his watch as they arrived at the site; 7:55 and already the air was like glue. Sweat dripped from the end of his nose. Under a lead-gray sky Tlaloc had the festering, derelict look of an abandoned garbage dump. The combination lock on the gate had been changed, but a guard materialized from behind the West Group to let them in. Inspector Marmolejo was already in the temple, he told them.

"Will you tell the inspector I'll be along in a minute?” Gideon asked his escort in Spanish. “I need to get a few things from the shed."

Against one wall of the work shed's storage area was a framework of wooden storage bins, doored and latched, but without locks, in which crew members kept whatever personal effects they liked. Gideon's was in the middle row on the right, and in it he kept his tools, tables, field guides, and osteological atlases, his thick, tattered old copy of Morris's Human Anatomy that had been around since graduate school, a glossier, rarely used copy of Gray's Anatomy, a poncho, a jacket for cool weather which he had wishfully bought when he arrived but had yet to wear, and a few fruits and sweets for snacking.

It was always a hodgepodge, but when had he let it get into this condition? Julie was right; he was getting sloppy. The front of the bin was literally plugged with the rolled-up jacket, the poncho, and the Morris. When he finished today, he would take twenty minutes to clean the whole thing out and straighten it, then keep it that way, the way a professional should. This was ridiculous.

It was also a little familiar. Wasn't it something he told himself most mornings? Well, maybe, but this time he meant it.

As he tugged at the stuff blocking the front of the bin, the train of thought that had eluded him earlier came suddenly back to him. He remembered what he'd been thinking-or dreaming-about. It had been that scene at the bottom of the pyramid in 1982, after they'd come out of the temple, when Howard had assigned shifts for guarding the codex.

"I'll take the first shift,” he'd told them, and Worthy would take it with him. “Be back at nine,” he had said to Gideon, and then with a smile: “Does that meet with your approval?"

Now what was it that was bothering him about that? There was something there, something he was overlooking, something that kept tickling away at him. He paused with his hand on the wadded-up plastic poncho. “Be back at nine…"

He shrugged and pulled. The poncho and jacket came loose abruptly; the heavy old volume of Morris thunked on the limestone floor, fortunately landing flat on its side. He reached into the bin only to find the interior stuffed with boxes, notebooks, loose tools, more clothing. What was all this junk anyway? Was that his hat? Had someone else run out of room and started using his bin? It was possible, he thought grouchily, but you'd think they'd notice it was already in use. There were other empty ones. He tossed the stuff out onto a work table and bent to peer inside, but the bins were awkwardly long and narrow-about eighteen inches high and wide, and almost three feet deep-and little light reached the back. Was that his instrument case wedged diagonally into the left-rear corner? Damn, he'd never have left it there like that; those things were delicate. And expensive. Somebody had been in here, fooling around with his things.

Puzzled and annoyed, he reached in with his left hand. His fingers brushed the pebbled leather of the case but couldn't quite grasp it. Who had designed these bins? With an irritated sigh he set his body, jammed his shoulder against the bin's opening and inserted his arm as far as he could, stretching, wriggling his fingers, trying to get hold of the case. And then froze.

Gideon was by no means slow-moving. He was athletic, his reflexes were sharp, and his mind was quick to react. Yet there were times when his analytical, left-brain-oriented intelligence outwitted him, using up precious milliseconds for thought or inquiry when he would have been better off letting his animal reactions take over.