The Xibalba Murders

IX

Our champions, the hero twins, after entering the realm of Xibalba by climbing down into a deep abyss and crossing a river of blood, are set a series of tests by the Lords of Darkness, any one of which would appear to mean certain death.

The first night they must spend in the Dark House, given one lit torch and a lighted cigar each, and told that the torch and the cigars must be returned in this same condition when the night is over. The crafty twins substitute a bright macaw feather for the torch flame, and fireflies for the cigar tips, and are able to return the objects as requested.

Next they enter the Razor House, but are able to persuade the knives not to cut them by promising them the flesh of animals. As a little added joke, they send an army of ants to take the flowers of One and Seven Death, two of the nastiest Lords of them all.

The next night’s trial is the Cold House, with freezing drafts and falling hail. With their powers, they simply shut out the cold.

Next is the Jaguar House, where ferocious animals are diverted by a pile of bones the twins give them to fight over.

The last, and worst of all, is Bat House, where monstrous snatch bats are sent to kill them. They survive by sleeping inside their blowguns. Hunahpu, however, sticks his head out a little too soon, and loses it to a nasty bat, his body still inside the blowgun. This will call for real ingenuity on the part of his brother, Xbalanque, but once again our twins win the day.

The test the twins never had to endure was trial by media.

Major Martinez’s face was much in evidence on the front page of every newspaper and relentlessly, every hour, it seemed, on television.

The way Martinez told it, Alejandro Ortiz and Ricardo Vallespino were key members of a terrorist group that stole works of art to support its nefarious activities. This group had its headquarters at the university, a place, Martinez noted often, that was always known for its subversive activities.

Three professors had also been arrested and charged as ringleaders of the terrorist group. The bewildered expressions on their faces, as they were shown being herded into police vans, spoke volumes.

Luis Vallespino, apparently, had also been one of the terrorists, but he had broken from the group and had tried to warn Dr. Hernan Castillo that “he had been marked for death”, Martinez said, because Don Hernan had, through his connections in the art community, figured out who the robbers were. Luis had been intercepted at the museo and had been murdered, possibly by his own brother, his body left on the roof.

The terrorists had then waited in ambush for Dr. Castillo and had murdered him, too. More arrests, Martinez hinted, were imminent.

It was all very neat, except for the fact that Don Hernan—as I knew and Eulalia Gonzalez could confirm—had not been murdered in the museo. I tried calling her at the morgue, but was told she had asked for, and been granted, an extended leave of absence from her job. I wondered if she had done this voluntarily and if she was okay.

Equally outrageous was the media coverage of the event. This was big news. The Children of the Talking Cross had captured the imagination of the public immediately following the theft of Itzamna from the bar. Many local pundits had voiced their opinions on the subject, many of them supporting the cause, if not the theft itself.

With the latest developments in the case—the allegations of murder of the young Luis Vallespino and one of Merida’s most distinguished citizens—these champions of the downtrodden were distancing themselves very quickly from their former proteges.

To ensure maximum coverage of the event, the local television station had set up a mobile unit right outside the Casa de las Buganvillas, the van, the satellite dish, and the cables making it almost impossible for vehicular traffic to get down the little street.

Every time anyone was audacious enough to leave or enter the hotel, the lights came on and cameras rolled. Not to be outdone, the local newspapers and radio stations also had reporters on the spot. Food carts moved in to supply them.

No effort was spared to plumb the depths of human misfortune. Reporters, in the absence of any real facts, desperately sought out details of Ortiz family life. Santiago’s diplomatic career was dissected, as was Isa’s business. Shots of her little factory in Merida were prominently featured.

Neighbors willing to parade themselves in front of the cameras were asked about the hotel, the Ortiz family, and most particularly Alejandro. One neighbor, a blousy woman by the name of Carmelita Chavez, was shown saying she had known Alejandro would come to no good ever since he had stolen an orange off a tree in her garden when he was eight.

The absolute depths were reached, I thought, when a prominent local psychologist was interviewed on a daytime talk show. Alejandro, he said, was suffering the effects of being the youngest son of a very successful man. He was probably the victim of paternal neglect, since his father was undoubtedly never home and therefore never gave his son the discipline and care he needed.

It was appalling.

We held a council of war about noon. Jean Pierre, Isa’s partner, flew down from Mexico City to be with the family. I called Jonathan. Both men ran the gauntlet of reporters and curious passersby to get into the inn.

Acting on the assumption that action was better than waiting, we assigned ourselves tasks. First we hired a security company to maintain order outside the inn, and to keep the reporters off the property. There was nothing we could do to keep them off the street.

Next we polled all the guests at the hotel to ascertain their wishes. For the temporary guests we found accommodation at nearby hotels. Some of the permanent residents chose to stay; others were able to lodge with relatives and friends. By late afternoon, all who wished to leave had done so.

Santiago’s condition, always exacerbated by stress, worsened. A doctor was called, but there was little he could do except tell him to rest.

Jonathan, I have to admit, was terrific in this situation. It was he, along with Jean Pierre, who got us all mobilized, and he was tireless in carrying guests’ bags to the end of the street, since it was almost impossible for taxis to make their way down the little street to the inn.

At one point in the afternoon, he pulled me into the empty drawing room for a hug and a little conference.

“Look, Lara,” he said. “We have to do something here. You must know more about all this than you are telling me. Why did Don Hernan call you down here anyway?”

“I really don’t know for sure, Jonathan,” I replied. “I’ve been trying to piece it all together myself, but really, he never told me anything, except that he was seeking what the rabbit writes.”

Jonathan looked at me as if I had lost my senses, of course.

“As I’ve been able to piece it together so far, I think what the rabbit writes must be a hieroglyphic codex, but where it is, I have absolutely no idea.”

“Interesting idea. Maybe Dona Josefina knows,” he said.

“I don’t think so. I’ve been to see her, and we’ve tried to communicate by a sign language of sorts.”

“Have you indeed?”

“Yes. She was able to confirm it is a codex Don Hernan was looking for, but not where it is located. I don’t even know if Don Hernan knew where it is.”

“Interesting,” was all he said.

Twilight arrived soon enough, and with it the relief I felt every day now when the sun went down. During the brightest hours of the day I found myself seeking out the shade and the darkened rooms of the inn, just waiting for the darkness.

Jonathan left after a light supper, and we all retired early, exhausted from the ordeal. Francesca, I knew, would not sleep until Alejandro was back at home, but she was persuaded to try to get some rest.

I had hidden Don Hernan’s diary in a plastic bag behind a panel in the bathroom that allowed access to the pipes. I took it out now and, climbing into bed, started to read through it.

Other than several references to meetings with Gomez Arias, the most recent a week before my arrival in the Yucatan and Don Hernan’s subsequent disappearance, there was little of any note. He’d missed a dentist appointment and a meeting with his banker. My arrival date was also noted. Nothing very unusual here.

Don Hernan was a doodler, and the margins of every page were covered with his scratchings. Most were just geometric designs, the kind lots of people do while sitting in boring meetings or talking on the telephone. On the last page, however, Don Hernan had made three very detailed and intricate drawings.

One was of a woman in a mantilla holding a child. The second was of a Maya warrior wearing a costume complete with feather tail and a large ballooning headdress topped by a bird with elaborate tail feathers. The warrior carried a spearthrower and a club. Above the warrior was a Mayan hieroglyph that I took to be the warrior’s name.

The third was even more elaborate. It looked like two serpent or dragon figures joined at the tail, rather like a great gaping jaw hinged at the bottom to form a U.

I believed I could identify both of these drawings, given a chance, either from the books in Don Hernan’s office or in Antonio’s library. I wondered whether the museo key I had would get me into the library, since it was not possible for me to go during normal business hours.

I took a piece of hotel notepaper, which was of the airmail variety and therefore perfect for my purposes, and traced the last two drawings carefully. I then put the diary back into its hiding place and tried to sleep.

I must have fallen asleep almost immediately, but awoke about two a.m., as I had begun to do almost every night. I lay in the darkness for a while, and then once again felt the impulse to go out in the dark.

I dressed, then slipped down the stairs to the front and looked outside. The television van was still there, but all the lights were out, and I could see two people in the front seat of the van, silhouetted against the streetlights.

Both appeared to be sound asleep. The other reporters seemed to have left for the night, although I had no doubt they would be back in the morning. There was, however, a police car on the street, and its occupants were very much awake, reading newspapers by the car light.

I returned to my room, and went out again through the bathroom window. I waited for several minutes, hidden in the tree, until the security officer we had hired completed his patrol of the perimeter of the property and disappeared around the corner.

Then I was off and running away from the hotel, down the darkened residential streets toward the museo. Once again I waited in the darkness of the little garden at the back, and then went in through the back door. This time I went down to the basement, trying in the darkness to retrace the route I had taken with Antonio Valesquez a few days earlier.

Even the emergency lighting was not on down here at night. I switched on my flashlight and made my way past the storage shelves that lined all the hallways. As I turned the corners grotesque faces and figures of Maya gods seemed to leap out at me, caught in the beam of my flashlight.

I remembered that this was Ix, day of the night sun, the Jaguar God, that passed through the underworld each night. It felt as if the museo came alive at night, and these statues really were the gods of the underworld, waiting for their human victims. I’ll admit I was terrified, but I pressed on.

Antonio had said that the last time he had seen Don Hernan, he had been greatly excited or agitated about something, and he had been leaving the fragments room. It was there that I headed, although I had no idea what to look for.

I let myself in, and found the little desk in the middle of the room where, I knew, in the daylight, someone was cataloging the collection on the computer.

I pulled down the blind that covered the glass in the doorway and taped it into place, then I turned on the little desk light. I was reasonably sure that the security guard would do little more than take the elevator to this floor and shine his light around from there. It was too creepy a place for him to do much more than that.

It is amazing what you can learn about people from their desks. The owner of this desk was a woman by the name of Maria Benitez. That much was easy to ascertain: there was a nameplate on the desk. Senora Benitez had four lovely children, three boys and a daughter, their photographs all lined up where she could see them while she worked. She doted on her youngest, the little girl. A crayoned stick drawing of a house, a mother, and child—the tree in the yard, the people, and the house all exactly the same scale, in the style of children everywhere—was given a prominent place on the desk. For Mommy, love, Frida, it said.

Maria Benitez was a very neat and organized person, and the orderly desk reflected that. I turned on the computer and logged on using her name. Then there came the prompt I was dreading: password. I tried the usual stuff, first name spelled backward, Merida, the name of the museo. Incorrect password, the screen flashed. Try again. I wondered how many tries you got before you got locked out entirely.

I looked around the desk again. My eyes fell on the child’s drawing. Frida, I typed.

I was in.

It took me a while to figure out how the collection was being cataloged. In time I realized that objects were coded by type, but also by location. I kept running back and forth between the computer and the drawers that I had opened by taking the key from the desk drawer as I had seen Antonio do when we were last here. I found I could list by type of object—tools, weapons, pottery fragments, etc.—but also by drawer. I could, I found, punch in a drawer number, and a list of its contents would appear. This would be useful in assisting someone doing research who wanted to know what a particular object in a particular drawer was, I guessed.

I opened one drawer, checked the contents, then went back to the computer and typed in the number. There were twelve objects in the drawer, I counted, and twelve items appeared on the screen.

I tried another drawer number. Ten objects, ten names on the list. I scanned the list to see if anything looked unusual.

I then tried the objects themselves. Terra-cotta, I typed, and several drawer numbers showed up on the screen. I ran to the drawers, and indeed, the drawers listed did contain pottery fragments. A couple of pieces were marked out on loan.

I kept looking. I had no idea what I was looking for.

Something out of the ordinary. I tried typing codex. Nothing.

I tried stela. Several drawers held fragments of stone stelae.

I tried typing weapons. Two drawers contained weapons. I looked at the first. There were bits of flint spear points. Fifteen items listed, fifteen in the drawer.

I checked the second drawer’s listing. Nineteen items. I checked the drawer. I counted, then counted again. Twenty items. Maria Benitez had made a mistake.

I looked at the contents. They were various fragments of flint and obsidian blades.

Hardly breathing, I tried to reference the descriptions to see what had been missed. I printed off a copy of that drawer’s list and went to the drawer to check it item by item.

But I knew which one was extra. It was the beautifully carved blade at the back. There will be nine, Lucas had said. Nine blades for the nine Lords of Darkness. Only eight had been found in the cave. This had to be the ninth.

What did this mean? Perhaps someone exploring the cave a long time ago had found it and had given it to the museo, not realizing there were more treasures to be found at the site. Maybe it was from a different place entirely, which I couldn’t know because it had not been cataloged properly.

At first I could not bring myself to pull the thought that was forming in my unconscious and examine it carefully. Senora Benitez was a meticulous cataloger, and it would be unthinkable for her to miss the biggest and most beautiful object in the drawer.

I lifted the blade from the drawer and looked at it very carefully. When you have spent so much time in the darkness, color vision is not good, and eyes need time to adjust to the light from a flashlight, but in my imagination I saw the blade drenched in blood.

I knew, as well as I would know if I had examined the blade under a microscope, that this was the weapon that had killed Don Hernan. Someone had hidden it in plain sight. Someone who had access to the museo and the curatorial and storage spaces. Someone so ruthless that they could kill a man, bring his body to the museo, and place it in his office, and then calmly hide the murder weapon in the fragments room.

This could have been anyone who worked at the museo, Ernesto and Antonio among them. It could be anyone with research privileges. I wondered if there was a logbook of visitors, other than staff, who had been in this room.

I searched the desk, and found it. The visitors’ book. I scanned the names of people who had been there in the days surrounding the time that Don Hernan’s body had been found. Most of the names meant nothing. Two of them I knew.

Jonathan Hamelin and Lucas May.

tears in my eyes, i close the drawers and the cabinet, log off the computer, and turn off the desk lamp. Stumbling in the darkness, I find the door, remove the tape, and roll up the blind, then make my way back to the main floor and the street.

Now even the darkness is dangerous. I believe I can find sanctuary with Dona Josefina, amid the whiteness and the silence and the calm of the hospital. But when I get there, a police car is outside, its blue light flashing directly in my eyes.

I run back to the hotel, shadows lunging at me as I go. I do not know who the enemy is, only that there is one, and he is close to me.

As I near the hotel the shadows take human form and grab me from behind. I am choking. The world becomes very, very dark and I fall. I hear a whirring sound, a shout, and the shadows move away.

I sit, my back to the stone wall of the inn, and fight for breath. Don Santiago, also gasping from exertion, sits in his wheelchair. Unable to sleep, and seeing that the reporters are all gone, he has chosen this time for some solitude on the street outside the hotel.

He has saved my life.

I find I am still holding the knife. I am very frightened.