Grave Secrets (10 page)

“Dónde está Mateo?”

“He’s out back,” Nordstern answered from behind me.

I circled Elena’s desk, walked down a corridor past offices and a kitchen, and exited to a walled courtyard. Nordstern trailed me like a puppy.

The courtyard was roofed around its periphery, open in the center. A swimming pool took up the left front, looking as out of place as a Jacuzzi in a homeless shelter. Sunlight shimmered off the water, tinting everything and everyone with an eerie, blue glow.

Workstations filled a covered patio at the rear of the courtyard, each with an empty box below, contents articulated above. Unopened boxes lined the stone walls. Tropical plants peeked from behind the stacks, survivors of the once lush Mena gardens.

Luis Posadas and Rosa O’Reilly were examining remains at the far end of the front row. Rosa recorded data as Luis worked calipers and called out measurements. Juan Corrales was consulting a hanging skeleton, bone fragment in his left hand. He wore a puzzled expression. The skeleton wore a porkpie hat.

When I came through the door, Mateo looked up from the lab’s single microscope. He was dressed in denim coveralls and a gray T-shirt with the sleeves razored off. Moisture beaded his upper lip.

“Tempe. Glad to see you.”

“How’s Molly?” I asked, crossing to him.

“No change.”

“Who’s Molly?”

Mateo’s eyes shifted past me to Nordstern, then back, and narrowed as Galiano’s had done at the Paraíso. The signal was unnecessary. I intended to ignore the little twerp.

“I see you two have managed to connect,” Mateo observed.

“I told Mr. Nordstern today was impossible.”

“I was hoping you might persuade her otherwise,” Nordstern wheedled.

“Could you excuse us?” Mateo smiled at the reporter, took my arm, and propelled me toward the house. I followed him upstairs to his office.

“Call him off, Mateo.”

“A feature story can be good for us.”

He gestured me to a chair and closed the door.

“The world needs to know, and the foundation needs money.”

He waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, he added, “Exposure can mean funding. And protection.”

“Fine. You talk to him.”

“I did.”

“Elena can do it.”

“She spent yesterday with him. Now he wants you.”

“No.”

“Toss him something and he’ll go away.”

“Why me?”

“He thinks you’re cool.”

I gave him a look that could freeze Death Valley at midday.

“He’s impressed with the biker stuff you did.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Thirty minutes?” Now Mateo was wheedling.

“What does he want?”

“Colorful quotes.”

“He doesn’t know about Molly and Carlos?”

“We thought it best to leave that out.”

“Crack reporter.” I flicked a speck from my pants leg. “The septic tank bones?”

“No.”

“All right. One half hour.”

“You might enjoy it.”

Like ulcerating boils, I thought.

“Fill me in on the septic tank case,” Mateo said.

“What about Jimmy Breslin down there?”

“He can wait.”

I told him what I’d learned at police headquarters, leaving out only Chantale Specter’s last name.

“André Specter, the Canadian ambassador. Heavy.”

“You know?”

“Detective Galiano told me. It’s why I let him ambush you the day we returned from Chupan Ya.”

I couldn’t be annoyed. In truth, I was relieved Mateo understood the implications of what I would be doing in the days to come.

I withdrew the vial from my pack and set it on the desk. He read the label, squinted at the contents, then looked at me.

“Fetal?”

I nodded. “I spotted cranial fragments in some of the photos.”

“Age?”

“I have to check Fazekas and Kósa.”

I referred to a volume titled
Forensic Fetal Osteology,
the anthropologist’s bible on prenatal skeletal development. Published in Hungary in 1978 and long out of print, copies were jealously guarded by those lucky enough to possess them.

“There’s one in the collection.”

“Done with the scope?”

“Almost.” He stood. “I should finish about the time you wrap up with Nordstern.”

My eyes rolled so far back I feared they might strike my frontal lobe.

“Missed you yesterday.”

“Uh huh.”

“Señor Reyes said you’d be tied up until Saturday.”

“We have thirty minutes, sir. What can I help you with?”

I’d swapped sides of Mateo’s desk, and Nordstern now sat where I had been.

“Right.” He pulled a tiny recorder from a pocket and waggled it.

“Do you mind?”

I looked at my watch while he played with buttons.

“O.K.,” he said, leaning back. “Tell me what went on down here.”

The question surprised me.

“Didn’t you cover that with Elena?”

“I like to get different points of view.”

“It’s historic record.”

He raised shoulders, palms, and eyebrows.

“How far back do you want to go?”

He gave the same annoying shrug. O.K., asshole. Human Rights Abuses 101.

“From the sixties to the nineties, many Latin American countries were gripped by periods of violence and repression. Human rights were trampled, with most atrocities being committed by the reigning military governments.

“The early eighties saw a shift toward democracy. With that came a need to investigate human rights violations of the recent past. In some countries those investigations led to convictions. In others various amnesty proclamations allowed the guilty to skate prosecution. It became clear that outside investigators were essential if real facts were to be unearthed.”

Nordstern sat there like a student not interested in what the teacher is saying. I shifted to something more concrete.

“Argentina is a good example. When Argentina returned to democracy in eighty-three, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP, determined that close to nine thousand people had been ‘disappeared’ during the previous military regime, the large majority kidnapped by security forces, taken to illegal detention centers, tortured, and killed. Bodies were either dumped from airplanes into the Argentine Sea or buried in unmarked graves.

“Judges began ordering exhumations, but the doctors placed in charge had little experience with skeletal remains and no training in archaeology. Bulldozers were used, bones were broken, lost, mixed up, and left behind. Needless to say, the identification process did not go well.”

I was providing the ultra-condensed version.

“In addition, many of these doctors had themselves been complicit in the slaughter, either by omission or commission.”

An image of Díaz flashed into my mind. Then Díaz and Dr. Lucas at the Paraíso.

“Anyway, for all these reasons, it was deemed necessary to establish a more rigorous scientific protocol and to utilize experts not subject to the influence of suspected perpetrators.”

“That’s where Clyde Snow came in.”

“Yes. In eighty-four, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, AAAS, sent a delegation, which included Clyde Snow, to Argentina. The Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, EAAF, was founded that year, and has been active ever since.”

“Not just in Argentina.”

“Hardly. The EAAF has worked with human rights organizations in Bosnia, East Timor, El Salvador, Guatemala, Paraguay, South Africa, Zimbabw—”

“Who picks up the tab?”

“Team members are paid from the EAAF’s general budget. In most of these countries human rights institutions have very limited resources.”

Knowing Mateo’s goal, I pursued the topic.

“Money is a chronic problem in human rights work. In addition to worker salaries, there are expenses for travel and local arrangements. Funding for a mission may come entirely from the EAAF, or in Guatemala, the FAFG, or from a local or international organization.”

“Let’s talk Guatemala.”

So much for the funding pitch.

“During the civil war here—which lasted from 1962 until 1996— one to two hundred thousand people were killed or ‘disappeared.’ It’s estimated that another million were displaced.”

“Most being civilians.”

“Yes. The UN Guatemalan Commission for Historical Clarification concluded that ninety percent of all human rights violations were committed by the Guatemalan army and its allied paramilitary organizations.”

“The Mayans really took it in the pants.”

The man was revolting.

“Most victims were Mayan peasants, many with no involvement in the conflict. The military swept through the countryside killing anyone they even suspected of being a guerrilla supporter. The highland provinces of El Quiché and Huehuetenango contain hundreds of unmarked graves.”

“Strictly scorched earth.”

“Yes.”

“And then they played innocent.”

“For years successive Guatemalan governments denied that these massacres ever occurred. The current government has abandoned that charade, but it’s unlikely anyone will go to jail. In 1996, a peace accord was signed between the Guatemalan government and a coalition of the main guerrilla groups, formally ending the conflict. That same year immunity was granted to persons accused of committing human rights violations during the war.”

“So why this?” Nordstern waved a hand around the office.

“Survivors and relatives began to speak out, demanding an investigation. Even if they couldn’t expect prosecution, they wanted to cast light on what had taken place.”

I thought of the little girl at Chupan Ya. I felt like an apologist for the offenders to speak of their crimes in such a sterile and detached way. The victims deserved a more impassioned recitation.

“But even before that, in the early nineties, Guatemalan groups representing families of the victims began inviting foreign organizations, including the Argentines, to carry out exhumations. The Argentines, along with scientists from the U.S., trained local Guatemalans. That led to the operation you see here. Over the past decade Mateo and his team have conducted scores of forensic investigations and have established a degree of independence from the organs of government.”

“Like Chupan Ya.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me about Chupan Ya.”

“In August 1982, soldiers and civil patrollers entered the village—”

“Under the command of Alejandro Bastos,” Nordstern cut in.

“I don’t know that.”

“Go on.”

“You seem to know more about this than I do.”

Again the shrug.

What the hell. I’d had enough of this man. The massacres were just a story to him. To me they were more. So much more.

I stood.

“It’s getting late, Mr. Nordstern. I have work to do.”

“Chupan Ya or the septic tank?”

I quietly left the room.

BABY BUILDING IS A COMPLEX OPERATION, RUN WITH MILITARY

At first the embryo is an undifferentiated mass. An order is issued.

Vertebrate!

Segmented bones form around a spinal cord, jointed limbs with five digits each. A skull. A real jaw.

The embryo is a perch. A wood frog. A gecko.

The double-helix generals up the ante.

Mammal!

Homeothermy, viviparity, heterodonty.

The embryo is a platypus. A kangaroo. A snow leopard. Elvis.

The generals push harder.

Primate!

Opposable thumbs—3-D vision.

Harder.

Homo sapiens!

Gray matter to die for. Bipedality.

The human skeleton begins to ossify around the seventh week. Between the ninth and twelfth, tiny tooth buds appear.

I identified four cranial elements in the crime scene photos.

The sphenoid is a butterfly-shaped bone that contributes to the orbits and to the cranial base. The large wings arise during the eighth fetal week, the small pair follows a week later.

Using the scope and a calibrating grid, I measured length and breadth. Using the ABFO ruler for scale, I calculated actual size. Greater wing: fifteen by seven millimeters. Lesser wing: six by five millimeters.

The temporal bone also comes with some assembly required. The flat portion forming the temple and the most lateral part of the cheekbone appears during the eighth fetal week. This one measured ten by eighteen millimeters.

The tympanic ring begins life at approximately week nine, grows to three bony slivers during the next twenty-one days. The slivers join to form a ring around week sixteen. Just before baby checks out of the uterine hotel, the ring attaches to the ear opening

That first puzzling speck I’d seen in the pelvic photo was a tiny tympanic ring. Though lines of fusion were still evident, the three segments were firmly attached. The ABFO ruler indicated I was viewing the ring dead on. I measured diameter, corrected, added the figure to my list. Eight millimeters.

I turned my attention to the vial.

A miniature half jaw, with sockets that would never hold teeth. Twenty-five millimeters.

One collarbone. Twenty-one millimeters.

Moving through tables in the fetal osteology book, I checked each measurement. Sphenoid greater wing. Sphenoid lesser wing. Temporal squamous. Tympanic ring. Mandible. Clavicle.

According to Fazekas and Kósa, the girl in the tank had been five months pregnant.

I closed my eyes. The baby had been six to nine inches long and weighed around eight ounces when its mother was killed. It could blink, grasp, make sucking motions. It had eyelashes and fingerprints, could hear and recognize Mom’s voice. If it was a girl, she had six million eggs in her tiny ovaries.

I was feeling overwhelmed by sadness when Elena called out from the doorway.

“There’s a call for you.”

I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

“A Detective Galiano. You can take it in Mateo’s office.”

I thanked Elena, resealed the evidence in its vial, and climbed back to the second floor.