Grave Secrets (14 page)

“Describe the medulla,” Minos directed.

I focused on the hollow center, the region analogous to the marrow cavity in a long bone.

“Resembles a ladder.”

“Excellent. Medullar form is extremely variable. Some species have bipartite, or even multipartite medulla. The llama group is a good example of that. Very distinctive. Llamas also tend to have large pigment aggregates. When I see that combination, I immediately think llama.”

Llama?

“Your samples have a single-ladder medulla. That’s what you’re seeing.”

“Which means cat?”

“Not necessarily. Cattle, goats, chinchilla, mink, muskrat, badger, fox, beaver, dog, indeed many forms can have a single-ladder medulla in the fine hairs. Muskrat has a chevron-scale pattern, so I knew it wasn’t muskrat.”

“Scales?” Galiano asked. “Like fish?”

“Actually, yes. I’ll explain scales shortly. Cattle hairs frequently have a streaky pigment distribution, often with large aggregates, so I eliminated cattle. The scales didn’t look right for goat.”

Minos seemed to be talking more to himself than to us, reviewing verbally the thought process he’d used in his analysis.

“I also excluded badger because of the pigment distribution. I ruled out—”

“What could you
not
rule out, Señor Minos?” Galiano broke in.

“Dog.” Minos sounded wounded by Galiano’s lack of interest in mammalian hair.

“Ay, Dios.”
Galiano puffed air out of his lips. “How often would dog hair turn up on clothing?”

“Oh, it’s very, very common.” Minos missed Galiano’s sarcasm.

“So I decided to double-check myself.”

He walked to a desk and pulled a manila folder from a slotted shelf.

“Once I’d eliminated everything but cat and dog, I took measurements and did what I call a medullary percentage analysis.”

He withdrew a printout and laid it on the counter beside me.

“Since cat and dog hair is so frequently encountered at crime scenes, I’ve done a bit of research on discriminating between the two. I’ve measured hundreds of dog and cat hairs and set up a database.”

He flipped a page and pointed to a scatter graph bisected by a diagonal slash. The line divided dozens of triangles above from dozens of circles below. Only a handful of symbols crossed the metric Rubicon.

“I calculate medullary percentage by dividing medullar width by hair width. This graph plots that figure, expressed as a percentage, against simple hair width, expressed in microns. As you can see, with few exceptions, cat values cluster above a certain threshold, while dog values lie below.”

“Meaning that the medulla is relatively wider in cat hairs.”

“Yes.” He beamed at me, a teacher pleased with a bright student. Then he pointed to a clump of asterisks in the swarm of triangles above the line.

“Those points represent values for randomly selected hairs from the Paraíso sample. Every one falls squarely with the cats.”

Minos fished in the folder and withdrew several color prints.

“But you asked about scales, Detective. I wanted a good look at surface architecture, so I popped hairs from the Paraíso sample into the scanning electron microscope.”

Minos handed me a five-by-seven glossy. I felt Galiano lean over my shoulder.

“That’s the root end of a Paraíso hair magnified four hundred times. Look at the outer surface.”

“Looks like a bathroom floor.” Galiano.

Minos produced another photo. “That’s farther up the shaft.”

“Flower petals.”

“Good, Detective.” This time Galiano was the recipient of the proud smile. “What you’ve so aptly described is what we call scale pattern progression. In this case the scale pattern goes from what we call irregular mosaic to what we call petal.”

Minos was what we call a jargon meister. But the guy knew his hair.

Print number three. The scales now looked more honeycombed, their margins rougher.

“That’s the tip end of a hair. The scale pattern is what we call regular mosaic. The borders have become more ragged.”

“How is this relevant to cats and dogs?” Galiano.

“Dogs show wide variation in scale pattern progression, but, in my opinion, this progression is unique to cats.”

“So the hairs on the jeans came from a cat.” Galiano straightened.

“Yes.”

“Are they all from the same cat?” I asked.

“I’ve seen nothing to suggest otherwise.”

“What about the Specter sample?”

Minos leafed through his folder.

“That would be sample number four.” He smiled at me. “Cat.”

“So everything comes up feline.” I thought a moment. “Is the Paraíso sample consistent with any of the other three?”

“That’s where it gets interesting.”

Minos selected another page, scanned the text.

“In sample number two, the average length of the hairs was greater than in any of the other three samples.” He looked up.

“Over five centimeters, which is quite long.” Back to the report.

“Also, the hairs were more consistently of the fine variety.” He looked up again. “As opposed to coarse.” Back to the report. “And the surface architecture of each hair showed a mixture of smooth-edged regular mosaic and smooth-edged coronal scale types.”

Minos closed the folder, but offered no explanation.

“What does that mean, Señor Minos?” I asked.

“Sample two derives from a different cat than the other three samples. My guess, and it’s only a guess, won’t go into my report, is that cat number two is Persian.”

“And the other samples are not from Persian cats?”

“Standard shorthairs.”

“But the Paraíso sample is consistent with the other two samples?”

“Consistent, yes.”

“How was sample two labeled?”

Again Minos consulted the folder.

“Eduardo.”

“That would be Buttercup.”

“Persian?” Minos and I asked simultaneously.

Galiano nodded.

“So Buttercup wasn’t the donor of the Paraíso hairs,” I said.

“A Persian cat wasn’t the donor of the Paraíso hairs,” Minos corrected.

“That puts Buttercup in the clear. What about the Gerardi or Specter cats?”

“Definite candidates.”

I felt a sudden surge of optimism.

“Along with a million other shorthairs in Guatemala City,” he added.

The optimism plunged like an elevator in free fall.

“Can’t you determine if one of the other samples matches the hairs from the jeans?” Galiano asked.

“Both display similar characteristics. Individualization is impossible based on hair morphology.”

“What about DNA?” I asked.

“That can probably be done.”

Minos tossed the folder onto the counter, removed his glasses, and began cleaning them on the hem of his lab coat.

“But not here.”

“Why not?”

“There’s a six-month backlog on human tissue cases. You’ll have a birthday waiting for results on cat hair.”

I was wrapping my mind around that when Galiano’s cell phone sounded.

His face tensed as he listened.

“¡Ay, Dios mío! Dónde?”

He was silent a full minute, then his eyes met mine. When he spoke again he’d gone back to English.

“Why wasn’t I called sooner?”

A long pause.

“Xicay’s there?”

Another pause.

“We’re on our way.”

AT 3 P.M. THE STREETS WERE ALREADY IN GRIDLOCK. LIGHTS FLASHING

Shotgun Spanish crackled over the radio. I couldn’t follow, but it didn’t matter. I was thinking about Claudia de la Alda in her plain black skirts and pastel blouses. I tried to remember her expression in the photos, came up blank.

But other images flooded back from the past. Shallow graves. Putrefying bodies rolled in carpets. Skeletons covered with fallen leaves. Rotten clothing scattered by animals.

A sludge-filled skull.

My stomach knotted.

The faces of distraught parents. Their child is dead, and I am about to tell them that. They are bewildered, stricken, disbelieving, angry. Bearing that news is an awful job.

Damn! It was happening again.

My heart tangoed below my ribs.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

Señora De la Alda had received a phone call about the time I was heading out to learn more about cat hair. A male voice said Claudia was dead and told her where to find the body. Hysterical, she’d called Hernández. He’d called Xicay. The recovery team had located bones in a ravine on the far western edge of the city.

“What else did Hernández tell you?” I asked.

“The call was placed at a public phone.”

“Where?”

“The Cobán bus station in Zone One.”

“What did the caller say?”

“He told her the body was in Zone Seven. Gave directions. Hung up.”

“Near the archaeological site?”

“On the back steps.”

Zone 7 is a tentacle of the city that wraps around the ruins of Kaminaljuyú, a Mayan center that in its heyday had over three hundred mounds, thirteen ball courts, and fifty thousand residents. Unlike the lowland Maya, the builders of Kaminaljuyú preferred adobe to stone, an unwise choice in a tropical climate. Erosion and urban sprawl had taken their toll, and today the ancient metropolis is little more than a series of earth-covered knolls, a green space for lovers and Frisbee players.

“Claudia worked at the Ixchel Museum. Think there’s a connection?”

“I’ll definitely find out.”

A stench filled the car as we sped past the dump.

“Did Señora De la Alda recognize the voice?”

“No.”

As we flew through the city, the neighborhoods grew increasingly tired and run-down. Eventually, Galiano shot onto a narrow street with
comedores
and convenience stores on all four corners. We sped past ragged frame houses with clothesline laundry and sagging front stoops. Four blocks down, the street ended with a T-intersection which in turn dead-ended in both directions.

Turning left we faced a bleakly familiar scene. Patrol cars lined one side, lights flashing, radios spitting. A morgue van waited on the opposite shoulder. Beside the van, a metal guardrail; beside the rail, a steep drop into a
barranca.

Twenty yards ahead, the pavement ended at chain linking. Yellow crime scene tape ran ten feet out, turned left, then paralleled the fence on its plunge into the ravine.

Uniformed cops moved about within the cordoned area. A handful of men watched from outside, some holding cameras, others taking notes. Behind us, I could see cars and a television truck. Media crew sat half in, half out of vehicles, smoking, talking, dozing.

When Galiano and I slammed our doors, lenses pointed in our direction. Journalists converged.

“
Señor, esta
—”

“
Detective Galiano
—”

“Una pregunta, por favor.”

Ignoring the onslaught, we ducked under the tape and walked to the edge of the ravine. Shutters clicked at our backs. Questions rang out.

Hernández was five yards down the incline. Galiano began scrabbling toward him. I was right behind.

Though this stretch of hillside was largely grass and scrub, the grade was steep, the ground rocky. I placed my feet sideways, kept my weight low, and grasped vegetation as best I could. I didn’t want to turn an ankle or stumble into a downhill slide.

Twigs snapped in my hands. Rocks broke free and skipped down the slope with sharp, cracking sounds. Birds screamed overhead, angry at the intrusion.

Adrenaline poured through my body from wherever it waited between crises. It may not be her, I told myself.

With each step the sweet, fetid stench grew stronger.

Fifteen feet down, the ground leveled off before taking one final downward plunge.

A crank call, I thought, stepping onto the small plateau. De la Alda’s disappearance was reported in the press.

Mario Colom was passing a metal detector back and forth across the ground. Juan-Carlos Xicay was photographing something at Hernández’s feet. As at the Paraíso, both technicians wore coveralls and caps.

Galiano and I crossed to Hernández.

The body lay in a rainwater ditch at the juncture of the slope and plateau. It was covered by mud and leaves, and lay atop torn black plastic. Though skeletonized, remnants of muscle and ligament held the bones together.

One look and I caught my breath.

Arm bones protruded like dry sticks from the sleeves of a pale blue blouse. Leg bones emerged from a rotting black skirt, disappeared into mud-stained socks and shoes.

Damn! Damn! Damn!

“The skull’s farther up the gully.” A sheen covered Hernández’s forehead. His face was flushed, his shirt molded to his chest like the toga on a Roman sculpture.

I squatted. Flies buzzed upward, their bodies glistening green in the sunlight. Small round holes perforated the leathery tissue. Delicate grooves scored the bones. One hand was missing.

“Decapitated?” Hernández asked.

“Animals,” I said.

“What sort of animals?”

“Small scavengers. Maybe raccoons.”

Galiano squatted beside me. Undeterred by the smell of rotting flesh, he pulled a pen from his pocket and disentangled a chain from the neck vertebrae. Sunlight glinted off a silver cross as he raised the pen to eye level.

Returning the necklace, Galiano stood and scanned the scene.

“Probably won’t find much here.” His jaw muscles flexed.

“Not after ten months of ground time,” Hernández agreed.

“Sweep the whole area. Hit it with everything.”

“Right.”

“What about neighbors?”

“We’re going door to door, but I doubt we’ll get much. The dump probably took place at night.”

He pointed to an old man standing outside the tape at the top of the hill.

“Gramps lives one block over. Says he remembers a car prowling around back here last summer. Noticed because this is a dead end street and there’s usually not much traffic. Says the driver returned two or three times, always at night, always alone. The old guy figured it might be a pervert looking for a place to jack off, so he kept his distance.”