Effigy (38 page)

Unsuccessful in finding reception, Derek reluctantly turned off the cell and joined Lori at the wall. As they loosened the earth around the root, Peet gave it a hearty pull. A sudden jolt of pain pierced his hand and with a surprised groan, he released the root and stepped back to inspect his red and swollen palm.

“What is it?” Lori asked.

“It’s nothing.”

“Let me see.”

She led him closer to the light of the fire where they settled onto the floor. There Peet dug into the wound and pulled out a thorn that had been embedded within the meat of his hand.

“I guess I got a little carried away in the agave,” Peet said, feeling rather foolish for having drawn attention to the throbbing wound.

“You should probably wrap that,” Lori said, untying the white shirt from around her waist.

Peet grinned half-heartedly. “It’s been a long time since a woman’s taken her clothes off for me,” he joked, but it was dry and Lori must have sensed it. She didn’t bother to respond. Instead, her attention was drawn to two lumps of agave that had fallen out of the folds of her shirt.

“You’re in luck,” she said, picking up one of the pieces. She squeezed the agave until a sticky goo began to seep out of the flesh.

“What are you doing?” Peet asked.

Lori took his hand and smeared the balm over the wound. “Derek once told me that the sap will take out the sting.”

Amazingly, the throbbing did begin to subside, though Peet wondered if it was due to the agave sap, or the soothing effect of Lori’s fingers caressing it into his palm.

“I didn’t know Derek was into herbal remedies,” he said.

Lori smiled. “I don’t think he is. I think it came up when he was drunk on tequila.”

With his hand good and sticky, Lori took her white shirt and, with some difficulty getting started, tore off a strip of the tail. “We better wrap this up before you get dirt in it.”

“So you and Derek are close?”

The question lost its innocent intent somewhere before it even fully escaped his mouth, dropping the inquiry between them like an intruding lead weight. Lori was visibly surprised by it. Peet found himself floundering beneath it.

Her eyes shifted to Derek who was still slaving away at the root. Then her head bowed back to the wrap she was applying to Peet’s hand, trying to conceal a demure grin. “What gave you that idea?” she asked.

Peet’s tongue thickened. “I just thought maybe…”

Lori’s smile widened with more confidence. The embarrassment was clearly not hers. “We’ve gone out a couple of times. Nothing serious.” She tapped his barren ring finger. “What about you?”

Peet’s eyes met hers. He could feel the surprise written all over his face.

In an effort to clarify, Lori added, “I mean, how long has your wife been gone?”

This time it was Lori’s abruptness that had a shocking effect. “Uh, well, it’s been a while now.”

Lori sat back, resting her buttocks on the back of her heels. “Divorce?”

“I wish it were that simple.”

“What happened?”

Peet hesitated.

Lori backtracked. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“It’s all right,” he said though, in all honesty, he wasn’t so convinced himself. He hadn’t talked about Cathy in years. Not that he hadn’t wanted to. There just wasn’t anybody around genuinely interested.

“It was our second anniversary,” he began hesitantly. “I was in
Chaco
rushing to finish a geophys survey on a segment of Anasazi roadway.”

The words felt heavy in his mouth. He could see it all in his mind, but the story was rough and unrehearsed upon his lips.

“I had intentions of coming home to celebrate but the study wasn’t moving along as well as I’d hoped. I was running out of time and grant money, so Cathy compromised and came out to the site instead.

“We were miles out of the canyon,” he continued, “in this area where the roadway takes a nose dive straight down a cliff. I had to rappel down to take measurements of the footholds that had been carved in the vertical wall. So, being the adventurous creature that she was, Cathy decided to take a look with me.”

Peet was easing into the story now, though his voice still seemed to reverberate with uncertainty. He glanced down at his bandaged hand. The painful throbbing had simmered down to a shallow pulse, but he wasn’t thinking about that. His mind had escaped to that bright desert day. He recalled how beautiful Cathy looked with the sun radiating through her golden hair. She’d had on that encouraging smile that never failed to stimulate him both in the field and in bed, and he remembered thinking as they eased down the cliff just how lucky he was to have found a partner who enjoyed every part of his life—even if it meant dangling sixty feet in one hundred degree heat just to dig in the dirt.

“We’d just reached the Anasazi footholds when something went wrong with her harness. The latch didn’t catch or her rope slipped—it happened so fast that I didn’t realize there was anything wrong until she was several feet below me and falling fast.”

Peet closed his eyes as Cathy’s terrified scream pierced his memory. He swallowed hard.

“By the time I got down to her, she was hurt badly. I couldn’t move her.
Chaco
is a hundred miles from nowhere and we were a few miles further than that. So I just sat out there, in the middle of that big quiet trying to comfort her, all the while knowing that she was slipping away. By the time the rescue chopper lifted her out of the desert, she was gone.”

Peet steeled himself against a wave of emotion, against the feel of Cathy’s soft hair spread across the hot sand as he tried to stroke some sort of relief into her broken body. He could still feel the sun relentlessly scorching his back as he sat over her, shading her, all the while wishing there was something he could do. He recalled how her skin had turned rosy just beyond the reaches of his shrinking shadow. The heat radiating from the rocks and the smell of her blood roasting into the sand still turned his stomach. He could still feel the empty silence as the desert held its breath.

“You can’t blame yourself, Dr. Peet.”

He bowed his head, half-thankful for Lori’s voice pulling him back to the observatory. “It’s not me that I’m worried about,” he said. “It’s John. He’ll never forgive me.”

“John?”

“He hates me. He said he couldn’t work with me. That’s why he retired later that year. He wasn’t even going to look at the effigy until I agreed to step away from the research. Snead still had to talk him into it.”

“My God,” Lori gasped. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice this before.”

Peet cocked his head. “Notice what?”

“Dr. Friedman’s your father-in-law!”

Captivity

John rested his head back against the cold adobe wall and closed his eyes. Beside him Eva was huffing and groaning as she struggled to find a comfortable position on the floor. After what seemed like hours with their hands tied behind their backs, there were no comfortable positions to be found. John had lost all track of time, and the police officers had relieved him of his Rolex. Not that he could have read it anyway being bound in the dark, windowless room.

It wasn’t clear where they’d been taken. From what John could tell, they were trapped in a sort of root cellar of an abandoned farmhouse. It wasn’t a jailhouse by any manner of speaking, which caused him to doubt the legality of their arrest.

Eva huffed irritably and finally settled back into her previous position. A scratching at the far corner echoed across the room.

“Great,” she pouted. “We’re stuck down here with rats, and who knows what other kind of vermin.”

“It helps not to think about it,” John said, concentrating on keeping his tired eyes closed.

“There could be spiders down here. And scorpions. I might get stung by a scorpion.”

“Well, don’t make any sudden movements that would prompt a stinging if you feel anything crawling across you.”

“My skin’s already crawling.”

Eva sighed and the darkness took over with its silence. Even the rat scratching in the corner gave a momentary pause.

“These aren’t real cops, are they?” she finally asked, her voice slightly echoing through the room.

John opened his eyes but he could see no more than he had with them closed. “I’m afraid they’re the real thing,” he said. “I judge they’re with the Federal Agency of Investigations.”

“We’ve been arrested by
federales?
”

“If you prefer slang.”

There was an agitated shuffling as she ground her heel into the compacted dirt floor.

John smiled. “It’s funny,” he said. “Some of my fondest memories come from
Mexico
.”

“You’re kidding,” Eva said sourly.

“Not at all. Martha and I frequented
Puebla
for their Cinco de Mayo celebrations. The atmosphere there is such a treat. If anyone knows how to throw a party, it’s the Mexicans.”

“Yeah, I’m really enjoying this little shindig they’re throwing us now.”

The cellar door swung open, admitting a dull yellow light from the hallway outside. Two men rushed into the room, the last—the man in charge earlier addressed as Agent Diego—remaining like a shadow at the door. John was yanked to his feet. He groaned as his stiff joints retaliated. His knee began its steady throbbing once again.

Diego took another step inside. He raised an arm and tugged on the small chain to a naked incandescent bulb that flicked on above his head. He was a harsh-looking man, a disciplinarian who’d no doubt taken care of a lot of hard cases comparable to himself. He certainly didn’t look like the sort to be bought off by a few hundred dollars.

“May I ask why you’ve confined us?” John dared to inquire.

“I will be asking the questions,
se
ñ
or
.” For a Mexican, his English wasn’t half bad. “Tell me what you and your friends were doing at the pyramids?”

John would have shrugged if his shoulders didn’t ache so much. His arms had gone numb. “Nothing in particular,” he said.

In a movement too swift for John’s eye, the agent sank his fist into his abdomen. John doubled over as the air escaped him in a long, mournful groan.

“Stop it!” Eva demanded, her voice trembling with fear.

Diego paid her no mind. “I’ll ask again. Why were you at the pyramid?”

John gasped, still doubled over in pain. “I’m a…anthropologist. Check…with the
Museum
of
Anthropology
. I’ve worked with them in the past.”

Diego swiped a hand sharply across his face.

Eva whimpered. “I wanted to see where my father died,” she said.

John wished she’d kept quiet for Diego turned his attention to her. The officer holding her tightened his grip, pulling her into his chest.