Effigy (4 page)

Setting Dr. Peet’s looks aside, Derek had his own attractive qualities that came with his athletic solid build. He wasn’t bulky like a football player, but lean and hard as a middle-weight wrestler. He even carried the arrogant posture of a high school jock, the type that wouldn’t normally give Lori the time of day. Derek found his share of dates all right, but on the occasion when there was no one else to turn to he came looking for her.

“Actually,” he said, flipping a chair around and straddling it across the table from her. “I came to congratulate you on this.”

He reached behind him and pulled out a folded issue of
Modern Archaeology
from his back pocket. He slapped it on the table so that the dramatic picture of the effigy snarled at them from the glossy cover.

“Your first public recognition as an archaeologist, Lori. Out on newsstands last week. There’s a picture of you on page twenty-three.”

Before Lori could turn the cover he took the liberty himself and flipped straight to the article. The leading picture was another shot of the effigy, and in the bottom corner of the next page there was a picture of Dr. Peet standing at the podium before a lecture hall crowded with reporters, archaeologists and students. The professor didn’t look comfortable there with his hands braced against the podium, but then, he never looked as comfortable in a classroom as he did in the field.

Dr. Peet was lean and upright in his faded denim shirt with the sleeves rolled just past his wrists. The angle of the picture revealed his distinctive jaw line while the camera lens captured eyes sharply weathered by the sun. No doubt about it, Dr. Peet was a handsome man.

“See?” Derek said. “What’d I tell you? Your mug’s in every major archaeological publication in the country. How does it feel to be a world-famous archaeologist?”

Lori glanced at the picture again and thought she might have blushed had Derek’s praise hit a truer mark. Just as he said, she was there, sitting next to the elder Dr. Friedman near the edge of Dr. Peet’s picture.

“That’s not much of a recognition,” she said, finding the whole thing silly. “Besides, I’m not an archaeologist yet. And I’m not famous.”

Derek pushed her stack of books aside. “You
are
an archaeologist and you
will
 
be famous. You’re going to be on the covers of
National Geographic
and
Modern Archaeology
, and I’ll be the one to put you there! The whole world’s going to know who Lori Dewson is!”

“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a bit?”

“Not at all.”

Lori felt herself caught by Derek’s relentless eyes. She had to admit he could be convincing when he wanted to be. If she wasn’t careful, she might give in to all his talk of celebrity and fame.

“I’m not into archaeology for publicity,” she said. “I just want to find the Anasazi.”

Derek remained silent a moment. She became acutely aware of him studying her. His grin faded as he leaned forward, his elbows lighting on the table.

“You know, for an archaeologist who just made headlines, you don’t seem very excited.”

Lori reached for her material, feeling like an open book herself. She didn’t like the fact that people tended to read so much without her ever saying a word. It made her feel exposed, like there were no secrets she could hide.

“Oh, it’s just this dissertation,” she said in a moment of cornered frustration. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get my Ph.D. at the rate I’m going.”

“Maybe it’s not you,” Derek said. “Maybe your work’s being sabotaged.”

Lori brushed the idea aside with a dismissive grin. “Who would do a thing like that?”

Derek merely grinned while his finger tapped the magazine.

She frowned. “Dr. Peet?”

“Maybe he wants to take all the credit for finding the effigy.”

Lori straightened in her chair, shaking her head. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Read the article,” Derek insisted. “Peet seems to be getting all the credit for that effigy while your name was reduced to—how’d they put it…” He spun the magazine around and quickly scanned the article. “Here it is: ‘a student who assisted with the recovery.’”

Lori rolled her eyes. She couldn’t care less about who was given credit for finding the effigy. She’d been there at the dig and she was there among the conference panel with Dr. Peet and Dr. Friedman. That was enough for now.

“You of all people should know they were just looking for someone with credentials to put in that article,” she argued.

There were benefits to media attention, but as Lori quickly learned, there were also downsides. The magazines may have given Dr. Peet credit for finding the effigy, but it was therefore Dr. Peet who the protestors targeted as the grave-robbing archaeologist.

“Besides,” she continued, “Dr. Peet doesn’t sabotage his students’ work. He likes to see us succeed.”

Derek snorted. “That’s not the only way he wants to
see
his students. Remember
Quickie
Peet?”

Lori remembered and the very suggestion shocked her. Dr. Peet’s turn as the featured professor in the
Faculty Roast
column of the school’s newspaper had sparked fraternizing rumors across campus. The article was intended to be a lighthearted jab at the faculty’s contribution to campus life, but the writers took freedoms with Dr. Peet’s name and found the subject of archaeology a wealth of material from which to draw their humor. One line even dared to suggest that Dr. Peet, when unable to attract the attentions of his students, resorted to bouts of necrophilia with the museum’s mummies.

“There’s nothing to those rumors,” Lori said. “I’ve taken a lot of classes from Dr. Peet and I never noticed him flirting with the girls.”

Derek lifted his hands in mock defense. “Fine. Have it your way. All I’m saying is be careful. Don’t let anyone take credit that belongs to you. And for crying out loud, take a little time to celebrate your accomplishments.”

Lori liberated a relenting grin. “I guess I have been hitting the books a little hard.”

Derek reached across the table and took her hand. There was a sudden warmth in his green eyes. “Don’t apologize for hard work. That’s one of the things I really like about you.”

Lori watched his hand fold around hers. She liked the warm feel of his palm; the secure grip in his fingers.

“So, how about it?” he asked. “Are we on for tonight?”

She smiled. This time she knew she was blushing. “Fine,” she said. “You win. But not before I hit the lab.”

Mexico City

Agent Armando Diego of the
Agencia Federal de Investigaciones
took a sip of his lukewarm coffee and nearly gagged on the acrid taste. He’d all but sweated through his white broadcloth shirt and his throat felt parched like a wool serape in July, but he was bored off his ass and in desperate need of a caffeine jolt.

Moments like these made him long for the good old days of the
Policía Judicial Federal
—those profitable days in the field along the border, far removed from regional directors and this dank closet jammed behind one way mirrors. The PJF had suited him well. That was, before the government restructured them into the stuffy AFI.

Director Escaban stood beside him with arms crossed against his burly chest. “Do you think he’s the one?” he asked, staring through the glass at the man anxiously sitting behind the interrogations table in the adjoining room.

Diego took a moment to dissect the lone man himself. He was small—small head, small hands, with slight and sloping shoulders and a pencil-thin neck. Everything about him was contrary to anything Diego thought a killer should be.

“
Es peque
ñ
o
,” he said.

“Hmmm.”

Escaban couldn’t have sounded less convinced. It chafed Diego’s pride, but only for a moment. He decided the regional director was just frustrated and more determined than ever to find his man. At this point, Diego would have been satisfied taking anyone who’d pass as the Equinox Killer, but that wasn’t Escaban’s style.

Diego hated that name—Equinox Killer. It had not only jerked Diego off his drug investigations, but Escaban’s nickname for the killer made it sound like they were on the hunt for some science nerd gone
loco.
Diego couldn’t tolerate the thought of being outwitted these past two months by an astronomy buff.

The AFI became involved in the case when the killer’s third victim was discovered. The body of an eighteen-year-old boy had been found at the base of a pyramid in the archaeological ruins of
Teotihuacan
, some forty kilometers northwest of the federal district. The victim had rolled down all sixty-five meters of the massive pyramid some time
after
 
the sadistic killer had already carved his heart out. The heart was later found deposited atop a statue in
Tula
, a smaller archaeological site further north where the first two victims had been found.

Despite the gory details, Diego wouldn’t be interested in the Equinox Killer at all had Escaban not taken him off the drug cases and assigned him to the murders.

Homicides of all things!

Diego had bigger fish to fry, but Director Escaban wasn’t backing down from his decision. And to prove his point, the son-of-a-bitch had assigned him to
Tula
that night after they collected the eighteen-year-old’s body.

“I want you to nail him,” Escaban had ordered. “Catch the sick bastard that murdered my nephew.”

The director’s nephew. Of all the teens who habitually sneak into
Teotihuacan
for their late-night parties, the killer just had to take Escaban’s goddamned nephew. That explained why the director was throwing all his resources into the hunt. But the aggravating fact remained that Diego suffered a long and ineffective stakeout in
Tula
for nothing. The Equinox Killer never returned and there hadn’t been another homicide since.

That last fact seemed to be the true mystery—a killer of such nature doesn’t stop killing unless there’s a reason. Someone suggested Diego’s stakeout had been spotted and scared their man away. Regional Director Escaban preferred to believe the killer was already in custody, they just didn’t know it yet.

During the investigation in
Teotihuacan
, a crowd had descended upon the crime scene. Each person within the mob wore a blanched white t-shirt with a glyphic design of a writhing snake printed on the front and back, and they all demanded access to the pyramid where the murder had taken place. Escaban wouldn’t have given them a second thought had they not threatened to impede the investigation with their damned persistence. At the end of his rope, Escaban ordered the mass arrest of the entire crowd. The intent was simply to get them out of the way, but when the murders suddenly stopped that night, the regional director decided the Equinox Killer might have been among the crowd, and therefore delayed the release of anyone.

It had become a long delay, wrought in an endless parade of interrogations. Fifty-three people hauled in one-by-one to be questioned. Some were brought in two, three, even four times, bogging Diego down in endless hours of lukewarm coffee and mind-numbing boredom.

It would have been one thing to be in the interrogation room face-to-face, pulling information, but no—Escaban had assigned him to the box behind the mirrors to listen, observe, and evaluate. So far, little had been worth even noting. If Escaban’s intent wasn’t to initiate him into a new field of investigations, then he certainly intended to try Diego’s patience.