Grave Secrets

“A gringo intermeddler bucking local authority in a system known for massacring dissidents. There’s good thinking.”

“I should have examined them on site.”

“Wasn’t everything coated in shit?”

“I could have cleaned it.”

“And possibly done more damage than good. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this one. Besides, you’re down there for another reason.”

But lose sleep I did, tossing and turning, captive to uninvited images from the day. Downstairs, traffic receded to a hum, then to the sound of individual cars. Next door, a TV went from the muted cadence of baseball, to a talk show, to silence.

Over and over I chastised myself for failing to examine the bones. Was my initial impression of the skull correct? Would Xicay’s photos be adequate for establishing a biological profile? Would I ever see the bones again? What was behind Díaz’s hostility?

I was troubled by thoughts of how far from home I was, geographically and culturally. While I had some understanding of the Guatemalan legal system, I knew nothing of the jurisdictional rivalries and personal histories that can impede an investigation. I knew the stage, but not the players.

My misgivings went beyond the complications of policework. I was an outsider in Guatemala, with a superficial grasp of its inner soul. I knew little of the people, their preferences in cars, jobs, neighborhoods, toothpaste. Their views toward law and authority. I was a stranger to their likes, their dislikes, their trusts, their lusts. Their reasons for murder.

Their nicknames.

Bat? Bartolomé Galiano? Bat Galiano? Bat Guano?

On that note I finally drifted off.

Saturday morning began as a replay of the day before. Galiano picked me up, shaded and bearing coffee, and we drove in silence to police headquarters. This time he led me to a second-floor office. Though larger, it was decorated in the same style as Thursday’s conference room. Mucous-gray walls. Bile-green floor. Fluorescent lighting. Engraved wooden desks. Duct-taped pipes. Institutional folding tables. Nouveau cop.

Hernández was removing boxes from stacks at the back of the room and placing them on a dolly. Two men were stapling items onto bulletin boards on the left-hand wall. One was slight, with curly black hair that shone with oil. The other stood six foot six and had a shoulder span the size of Belize. Both turned when we entered.

Galiano introduced the pair.

Two faces scanned me, as though worked by one puppeteer. Neither looked thrilled with what it saw.

What did they see? An outsider cop? An American? A woman?

Screw it. I would make no effort to win them over.

I nodded.

They nodded.

“Pics here yet?” Galiano asked.

“Xicay says they’ll be ready by ten,” Hernández said, tipping the dolly and pushing it toward us.

“Taking these to the basement,” he puffed, steadying the load with his right hand. “You want the bags?”

“Yeah.”

Hernández wheeled past us, face raspberry, shirt damp as at the septic tank.

“The space was being used for storage,” Galiano said to me. “I’m having it cleared.”

“Task force?”

“Not exactly.” He gestured to one of the desks. “What do you need?”

“The skeleton,” I said, tossing my pack onto the blotter.

“Right.”

The men finished at the first board, shifted to the next. Galiano and I moved in. In front of us was a map of Guatemala City. Galiano touched a point in the southeastern quadrant.

“Number one. Claudia de la Alda lived here.”

He shook a red-tipped pin from a box on the board’s ledge, pushed it into the map, and added a yellow pin beside it.

“De la Alda was eighteen. No police record, no history of drugs, doesn’t profile as a runaway. Spent a lot of time working with handicapped kids and helping out at her church. She left the family home for work last July fourteenth, and hasn’t been seen since.”

“Boyfriend?” I asked.

“Alibies out. Not a suspect.”

He pushed a blue pin into the map.

“Claudia worked at the Museo Ixchel.”

The Ixchel is a privately owned museum dedicated to Mayan culture. I’d been there, remembered it looked vaguely like a Mayan temple.

“Number two. Lucy Gerardi, age seventeen, was a student at San Carlos University.”

He added a second blue pin.

“Gerardi also had no prior arrests, also lived with her family. Good student. Aside from a lousy social life, she appears to have been a normal college kid.”

“Why no friends?”

“Father kept a tight rein.”

His finger moved to a small street halfway between the Ixchel and the American embassy.

“Lucy lived here.”

He added a second red pin.

“She was last seen in the Botanical Gardens—”

He inserted a yellow pin in a green-shaded space at the intersection of Ruta 6 and Avenida la Reforma.

“—on January fifth.”

Galiano’s finger hopped to Calle 10 at Avenida la Reforma 3.

“Familiar with the Zona Viva?”

A stab of pain. Molly and I had eaten at a café in the Zona Viva the day before I left for Chupan Ya.

Focus, Brennan.

“It’s a small enclave of upmarket hotels, restaurants, and night clubs.”

“Right. Number three. Patricia Eduardo, age nineteen, lived just a few blocks away.”

Red pin number three.