Effigy (15 page)

He was considering his next move when he passed Officer Gomez carrying a tower of boxes into headquarters. Diego noticed one of them labeled D14—a light security prison cell.

“What’s this?” Diego asked as Gomez relieved his load onto a nearby table.

The officer caught his breath. “Personal possessions of those New Agers we brought in. Escaban wants to go through them one last time before we kick them out.”

Diego popped the lid of the D14 box. “Looking for anything special?”

“Anything out of the ordinary, I guess.”

Diego casually sifted through the box. There wasn’t much inside. One pair of men’s oversized blue jeans, a white t-shirt with the serpentine snakes centering the front and back, one pair of sneakers, a cheap digital watch, and a money clip that had no doubt been relieved of its contents shortly after the New Ager received his cell assignment.

Beige paper protruded from the back pocket of the jeans, which Diego curiously retrieved, discovering two sheets of stationary folded into each other. His thumb found the edge and unfolded them. It was obviously a newsletter of some sort and when he snapped it open to its full length, the title nearly shocked him speechless. There, in bold letters printed across the top of the front page was the name Sanchez had uttered in the farmhouse, the name Diego had assumed belonged to the Equinox Killer.

ACATZALAN.

Diego crushed the newsletter with a curse. Acatzalan! It was the name of a goddamned newsletter! He’d been fooled by a treacherous little man.

“Something wrong?” Gomez asked.

Diego quickly composed himself. “I’m going to borrow this,” he said, swiftly rolling the newsletter and tapping it against his palm.

“What for?”

“Reading material.”

Gomez frowned. Diego sighed impatiently at the dimwit and glanced over at the men’s restroom. Gomez finally caught his drift and smiled.

“Sure,” he said. “Why not?”

Diego escaped to the restroom and spread the newsletter onto a dry corner of the counter. Curiously, its entire length was printed in English. Thankfully, Diego knew enough to translate the gist of it. He stood there in that open silence, the air smelling of wet paper towels and dank urinal disks, searching for the name of the newsletter’s printer, an editor—even a writer. There were none so he scanned through the paper until he came across the title of a small article on the inside page.

THE TIME OF TRANSITION IS HERE!

The words were printed in bold, the font slightly larger than the other article titles, designating importance. Diego read on.

I hope you have all prepared for the equinox. As a reminder, our place of worship for this holy event will be atop the Pyramid of the Sun in the birth city of our hallowed guardian. For those planning to attend, be sure to purify yourselves on the 20th. Members of the
Hidalgo
chapter have agreed to assist all new comers around
Mexico City
during your stay.

Do not forget your shirts!

I look forward to seeing everyone there and wish you peace and harmony into the coming age.

The article was left without an author. Another dead end. The newsletter was just as frustrating as the interrogations. This time, however, it felt as though the Equinox Killer was speaking directly to him. Mocking him.

But Diego wasn’t beaten yet. Folding up the newsletter again, he decided it was time to pay a visit to cell D14.

* * * *

The guards of cell block D were easy enough to distract. Three thousand pesos of Zedilla’s money split five ways was a little spendy, but well worth free access to cell fourteen. Within a matter of minutes he was standing inside, alone with the New Ager who had an annoying habit of wringing his chubby hands in his lap.

“I told you guys everything,” the New Ager implored from the edge of his cot.

“Relax,” Diego said, holding up the newsletter. “I won’t hurt you as long as you tell me who wrote this.”

The New Ager sat still, his eyes glued to the newsletter. The dumbfounded look on his face was all the more aggravating. Diego shoved the newsletter closer to the prisoner’s nose. He opened it to the middle section.

“Tell me who wrote this article or you’ll find yourself in a lot smaller box than this cell.”

The New Ager trembled. “No! Please!”

“Who wrote it?”

“The shaman.”

“What shaman?”

Sweat began to bead on the man’s pasty face. “Shaman Gaspar. He founded the New Age Followers of Quetzalcoatl.”

Diego smiled. It was about time he made a breakthrough. He was impressed with the tight-lipped New Agers. None of them had dropped the slightest clue about Shaman Gaspar, but then again, the interrogators had assumed Citlalpol was the top of the New Age chain. Impressive for a large group, yet annoying, for it gave Diego all the more reason to despise secret societies.

“Why haven’t I heard of this Shaman Gaspar before?”

The fat man wrung his hands even faster. “Nobody talks about him. He’s nearest to the gods. He’s like an angel or something.”

“Gaspar isn’t some bogus alias, is it?”

“No! The shaman’s real.”

“Where do I find him?”

The New Ager hesitated.

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

Diego couldn’t stand there watching those ceaseless chubby hands any longer. He grabbed the New Ager’s finger and wrenched it until the fat man fell to his knees in pain.

“I’m not in the mood for games,” Diego growled.

The prisoner whimpered with panic. “I’m telling you the truth! I’ve never met him.”

Diego pulled harder. “Surely you know the base of his operations!”

The fat man began to hyperventilate. “I think…I think I heard he lives in
Utah
.”

“
¿En los Estados Unidos?
”

“That’s what I heard!”

Diego released the finger which immediately plunged into the New Ager’s mouth. A heavy weight finally lifted off of Diego’s weary shoulders. His luck had just taken a turn for the better.

He smiled at the New Ager cowering at his feet. “
Gracias, amigo
.”

As Diego sauntered out of the cell, he was feeling much better. Hell, he was like a new man. Finally! He’d found the name of the Equinox Killer and it was completely out of his hands to track him down. Bartering with the
United States
was far beyond his scope of employment. If Escaban wanted his killer, he’d have to do the legwork himself and with the
United States
keeping the regional director occupied with international protocol, as no doubt they would, he’d be too busy to notice the affairs of the Zedilla cartel.

Perhaps Diego would catch his siesta after all.

Salt Lake City

The skies had cleared and the pavement was drying by the time Lori pulled into the parking space in front of her apartment. It had been a long twelve hours and the thought of curling up in her own bed sounded like heaven. She was worried though. She was worried about Dr. Peet.

Just as he’d feared, the stop at Dr. Friedman’s house had been a dead end, and with no other options to turn to, he decided it was time to go to the police. Lori thought she should go along, but Dr. Peet insisted that he’d take care of it.

“The less involved you are,” he said, “perhaps the less likely you’ll be expelled. I’ll just tell them I was working in the lab. Nobody has to know you were there.”

The entire situation didn’t feel right, and she could tell Dr. Peet didn’t like it any better than she did. “There’s no reason for both of us to get thrown out of the university over this,” he’d reasoned. “Besides. You need to go home and take care of that ankle.”

Lori felt like a criminal. They’d done nothing illegal, but she knew the university wouldn’t look at it that way. A priceless artifact had been stolen while they were in the very building it was taken from and at a time when they shouldn’t have been there in the first place. They were mere victims of unfortunate circumstances.

She was contemplating their desperate situation when she buried her key into the doorknob of her apartment. The lock clicked free, allowing the door to swing open and that’s when something caught her eye. She glanced up and there, taped over the peephole, was a note.

She pulled it off the door and recognized Derek’s handwriting scribbled across it. There were only two words: “Find me.”

Lori groaned.
I forgot about our date!
Spinning on her heel, she swung the door shut and started back down the sidewalk.

How
am I going to explain this to Derek?

* * * *

Derek Riesling had just thrown a box of dirty laundry into his car when he spotted Lori approaching along the sidewalk. She’d nearly broken into a run at the pace she was going, but he sensed she was holding back.

Was she limping?

“Derek!” she called, as he turned back toward his apartment. “Derek, wait!”

He obliged, unsure if he should be angry, or if he just shouldn’t give a damn at all.

“I see you finally found my note.” He glanced at his watch for emphasis. “Took you long enough.”

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. “I just lost track of time”

“Please,” he said. “Save it. I’m sure you have a good reason for ditching me.”

“I didn’t mean to,” she said, almost breathlessly.

“You have a cell, don’t you? Why didn’t you call if you couldn’t make it?”

There was a detectible coloring of her cheeks, likely from the exertion of her walk. However, when combined with her downcast eyes it gave her face an ashamed appearance rather than a tired one, but Derek easily read through that. The dark lines under her eyes gave her weariness away. It must have been a very long night
,
he snarled to himself.

“I forgot,” she admitted in a low voice.

Derek crossed his arms. “It must have been real important, whatever it was that made you forget.”

“I was in the lab and—”

“I know where you were,” Derek snapped. He didn’t have the patience for this. “I saw you in there with good ol’ Quickie Peet. He give you that sweater, did he?”

Lori looked stunned. She glanced down at her sweater as though she’d forgotten she had it on. But when she looked back at him, Derek could tell that her clothing was the last thing on her mind.

“You were in the building last night?”

“Yeah, right,” he sneered. “I saw the two of you through the window. It’s a good thing the doors were locked because I might have just come in and pounded a mud hole out of the son-of-a-bitch.”