Skull Duggery

SEVEN

There were only two restaurants in the village, both on the main street, Avenida Juarez, and Sandoval took Gideon to the Restaurante el Descanso, the smaller and simpler of the two, a clean, plain place-in the United States, it might have been called a deli-bakery-where Sandoval had a hamburger and Gideon got a bowl of creamy Oaxacan-style gazpacho, made with eggs and sour cream, and garnished with jicama and cumin-coated tortilla chips. When asked, he said, truthfully enough, that it was delicious. Sandoval made a show of insisting on picking up the tab, but if any money changed hands, Gideon never saw it.

From there, they walked the two blocks to the Palacio del Gobierno, a stuccoed one-story building where police headquarters, consisting of two currently empty jail cells, a hallway with two desks jammed side-to-side against the wall, and the chief’s “private” office (doorless), were housed. One of the hallway desks had a fairly new Dell computer on it, and Gideon was seated there to write up his report. A baby-faced police officer offered him a cup of coffee from the countertop coffeemaker, but Sandoval, standing behind him, made head-shaking, throat-cutting motions warning him otherwise, and he politely declined and got to work. AN hour later, Gideon was done. Most of the time had been wasted in trying to put together something close to his usual forensic report, covering all the typical bases: age, sex, condition of the body, old broken leg, and so on, but all of this wound up being deleted. In the first place, he hadn’t been asked to do, and hadn’t done, anything approaching a thorough examination. In the second, the state police, the policia ministerial, were sure to pursue this more thoroughly on their own, with their own experts. Third, and most important, they hadn’t asked for his help and weren’t anticipating it. Gideon, sensitive from long experience to issues of turf, decided it would be less than tactful to unexpectedly dump a formal, jargon-loaded case report, written by a prying, meddlesome Yanqui, into their laps. Sandoval would surely take the heat for it, and Sandoval was worried enough already.

With reason, Gideon thought. From what he’d heard and read about them, the Oaxacan state police were, or were alleged to be, a belligerent, thuggish bunch with a reputation for being easy to irritate and quick to anger. In the end, he boiled it down to a single unvarnished paragraph with a minimum of inferences:

On December 14, 2008, I was requested by Flaviano Sandoval, chief of police, Teotitlan del Valle, to examine a mummified body found in the nearby countryside. This brief examination was made after an earlier partial autopsy by Dr. Ignacio Bustamente, medico legista, Tlacolula District. It is my opinion that the deceased was stabbed at least three times with a Phillips-head screwdriver (un desarmador de cruz), the entry wounds clustered in the left axilla. One of these thrusts left a diagnostic, X-shaped perforation in the vertebral portion of the left seventh rib. The deceased also suffered massive trauma to the thorax in the form of severe compression of the rib cage, resulting in numerous injuries, one of which was a compound fracture that punctured the chest wall below and medial to the left nipple.

Respectfully submitted,

Gideon Oliver, Professor

Department of Anthropology

University of Washington

If I can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact me through Chief Sandoval. I will be staying at Teotitlan for the next several days.

He leaned back in his chair, read it over, considered deleting those last two sentences-if they wanted his help they could find him, so why push it?-but finally decided to let them stand, and hit the print button. ANNIE threw back her head and laughed. “You asked him where the guy’s comoda was and he didn’t know what you were talking about?”

“That’s right,” a still-puzzled Gideon said. “Doesn’t it mean ‘chest’?”

“Yeah, it means “chest”-only like in ‘chest of drawers.’ You know, comoda… commode?”

“Is that right?” Gideon said, also laughing. “So what’s my kind of chest? I mean-”

“ ‘ Pecho,’ ” Carl supplied with a smile.

“Ah, pecho,” said Gideon with his usual ineffective snap of the fingers. “Of course. Like ‘pectoral.’ ”

With Julie, they were having predinner drinks in the dining room, at the table in the rear that was kept for the Gallagher clan, separated from the others by a waist-level bookcase. It was a beautiful late afternoon and Gideon had initially wanted to have drinks out on the terrace, but two of the four close-together terrace tables were occupied by the feminist professors’ group, which was in the midst of extremely heated discourse, from which Gideon thought it wise to keep a safe distance. He was brave about many things, but he was not brave about this, and he had thought it was a good idea to take the prudent course and go inside. Carl had seconded the motion after hearing some of what they were saying. “Sounds like fightin’ words to me,” he’d said.

Over tongue-stinging but wonderfully refreshing micheladas -bottles of Tecate beer spiced with lime and chile sauce-Gideon had been telling them about the day’s events and they had been listening with interest.

Annie had just begun to ask a question when her telephone played the opening bars of “ La Cucaracha.” She took it from her bag, flipped it open. “Hello?” She broke into a smile. “Are you, really?… Both of you?… Well, that’s great, everybody’ll be pleased… Yes, they got here yesterday… No, I won’t be here, but I should be back in a few days… Sure, you too.” She flipped the phone closed.

“Guess what? Tony’s driving down early. He’ll be here tomorrow.”

“Hallelujah,” said Carl with absolutely no expression. Not exactly a shout of joy, Gideon thought. Wonder what that’s about.

Julie was considerably more animated. “Really?” she said, grinning. “Oh, it’ll be great to see him. I was afraid we might miss him.”

“And I have better news for you than that,” Annie told her. “Jamie’s coming down with him. The knee’s doing better than expected, so he’s flying down to Mexico City in the morning and he’ll drive down with Tony. He’s raring to get back to work.”

At this news Julie really lit up. “Jamie’ll be here tomorrow? I can leave the bookkeeping to him? I don’t have to do that horrible stack of accounts payable, and bank reconciliations, and God knows what else? I’ve been scared to death to touch them, I don’t know anything about QuickBooks or-”

“Fear no longer,” said Annie. “You’re off the hook. Leave all that stuff for the man. Jamie thrives on it. Hey, look who’s here. Greetings, jefe.”

Chief Sandoval, who had just entered, was approaching them somewhat tentatively. After a round of greetings and an introduction to Julie, he stood there looking undecided.

“Have a seat,” Carl said, pulling out a chair for him. “Gideon was just telling us about your mummy.”

Sandoval remained standing, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “Well, that’s what I came about. I e-mailed my report-also your report, Gideon-to the police in Oaxaca, and they want me to come in to speak with them.” A despairing sigh. “I have to go tomorrow morning to the offices of the-I don’t know how to say it in English-the Procuraduria de Justicia -”

“It’s like the state attorney general,” Annie contributed, and to Gideon: “The police here report to them.”

“Yes, attorney general,” said Sandoval. I am to meet with Sergeant Nava. I remember him from before, from the little girl. Not such an easy man to get along with.” He turned a pleading, apologetic look on Gideon. “I was wondering if… I was wondering…” He paused encouragingly, as if wanting Gideon to finish the sentence for him. “Wondering if…”

“Yes?” Gideon was at a total loss. “Wondering if?”

“Wondering if…”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Annie burst out, “he’s wondering if you would go with him.”

“To talk to the police?”

“Yes.” Sandoval launched into an excited flood of words: “I’m afraid if he asks me things, how will I answer? I know about traffic accidents, about people who drink too much mezcal and get in fights. What do I know of bones, of wounds? What if they want to know more? What if they want to know how-”

“Sure,” Gideon said, “I’ll go with you.”

“ Thank you!” Sandoval, practically going limp with relief, sagged into the chair that Carl had pulled out for him.

“Have yourself a michelada, Chief,” Annie said. “You look like you could use one. Stay for dinner, why don’t you?”

“But already I come here three times this week. I don’t like-”

“Oh, break a rule for once, it’ll do you good. Come on, we’d like to have you.”

Sandoval grinned and relaxed a little more. “Well, okay, maybe this one time.” After a swallow, he looked curiously at Julie and wagged his finger at her. “Hey, wait a minute, I know you. Didn’t I used to see you…”

Julie smiled. “You have a good memory, Chief. You used to see me right here. I was Julie Tendler then, Carl’s niece, just a teenager helping out for the summer.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember.” He smiled fondly at her. “And I was Memo Sandoval, Dorotea’s dumb big brother, still thinking I had to be a weaver, only I stunk at it.”

“Well, I’m sure you’re a good police chief.”

“From what I’ve seen, he is,” said Gideon gallantly.

Sandoval responded with a modest shrug and changed the subject. On his way in, he had passed the women’s group on the terrace. “You know, maybe it would be better for me to join your guests outside?”

“Well, now, I don’t know that I’d-” began Carl.

But Sandoval was already heading for the terrace. “Tonio, he likes that I do this. The ladies especially, always they are impressed to know the chief of police. To meet me,” he said complacently, “makes them feel protected. I answer the questions.”

“You wouldn’t think so to look at him,” Annie said, watching him go, “but our timid little chief has quite an eye for the ladies. He does seem to get along with them too.”

“I don’t know about these particular ladies, though,” Julie said, seeing the women turn as one toward the lone, innocently approaching male. “Hm, I wonder why the phrase ‘lamb to the lions’ leaps to mind.”

Gideon concurred. “They’ll eat him alive.”

Twenty minutes later, as they were starting on their dinners, the chief was back, shell-shocked and staring.

“Madre de Dios,” he mumbled as he sat down with his tray. “Those ladies.”

Mercifully, the others refrained from pursuing the subject.