For the space of several long breaths, Hunter tried to plug Jase’s new information into the framework of his own lifetime knowledge of the Texas borderlands. It didn’t fit. “Anything connect to cold cases?”
Jase drank some coffee, rinsed it around, and swallowed. “I don’t know. We handed the death house off to the sheriff’s department with the understanding that ICE wanted info on anything covered in our mission statement. All they told us was that something was taken off the wall, and there were signs that a table had been moved.”
“Or an altar?”
“I don’t like to think about that, but yeah, I wondered.”
“Okay. You busted artifacts and small-time coke. Followed an address to a bloody dead end. Cataloged the artifacts into the ICE warehouse.”
“With that Maya apocalypse 2012 all over the media, Brubaker was practically lap-dancing about the chance to add the artifacts to the pool of stuff that’s being repatriated to Mexico on the twenty-first. It’s a big-ass deal. Vice president, governor, senators, everybody under the Homeland Security umbrella will be there, shaking hands across the border and giving Mexico back pieces of its history as we walk shoulder to shoulder into the future, blah blah blah.”
“But the artifacts go poof from ICE storage,” Hunter said. “Then what?”
“I don’t have to tell you the theft has ‘inside job’ written all over it.”
“I remember the warehouse. Cameras, locks, finger pads, guards, everything but the ever-popular alien butt probes.”
Jase smiled faintly. “Brubaker was thirty-two flavors of pissed off. He looked around for an ass to pin the tail on. Must have been my lucky day, huh? He put me on paid leave, told me I had until the twenty-first to find those artifacts, then said if I even breathed the word ‘ICE’ in my investigation, much less showed my badge, I was roadkill. No word of the theft was to get out.”
Hunter stared at him. “That’s a joke, right?”
Jase looked back with hard, dark eyes.
“When did this happen?” Hunter asked.
“About two weeks ago. I tried to call you, but…”
“Cell phones don’t work where and when you want them to,” Hunter finished. “I was up to my pits in jungle and limestone scrub.”
“I hear those beaches on Riviera Maya are primo.”
“Didn’t get that far. You have pictures, file numbers, descriptions?”
“Of the artifacts?”
“What else?”
Jase reached for the manila folder on the counter. “You never saw these.”
“Saw what?”
Hunter opened the envelope and started looking at photos he never should have seen.
CHAPTER THREE
THERE ARE STILL MANY AREAS OF MAYA MYTHOLOGY THAT are wide open to interpretation,” Lina Taylor said clearly to her more-or-less attentive students. “This is to be expected, given that people are still fighting over the meaning of texts that have been widely available, translated from culture to culture, and practiced for more than two thousand years.”
Nobody coughed or stirred. The truly uninterested students were still asleep in various beds. Part of Lina envied them, especially if they were with lovers, but nothing of her simmering emotions showed in her face or voice.
“The fact that so much of Maya myth and lore was lost in one night, at the hands of Bishop Landa, means that we may never know the actual names of deities such as ‘God K’—suggested as Kawa’il by some—much less the subtle distinctions in their hierarchy and powers, religious and civil lives.”
An unlikely blonde who was dressing like her teenage daughter dutifully took notes from the front-center seat.
Does she ever look in the mirror? Lina thought. Does she need glasses?
“The nuances of the ancient Maya may be lost to us,” Lina continued, “but the broad strokes are reasonably clear. And in many ways, unchanged since the first glyph was chiseled into limestone.”
She clicked a remote and the room lights dimmed. Another button on the remote brought the overhead projector to life, displaying an image of jungle broken only by the reclaimed ruins of a Maya ziggurat in the distance. The ancient building was pale and jagged under a cloudy sky. In the foreground, several people were gathered at a bonfire, dressed in bright shawls worn over a variety of very colorful garments. Each person carried an offering of flowers, handmade crosses, or small glass bottles of liquor. When the people withdrew, the offerings remained behind at the feet of traditional Maya deities overlaid by a veneer of Christian names.
“Notice the syncretic nature of the celebration,” Lina said, using her laser pointer, “the mixing of elements of Christianity and indigenous deities. This picture was taken last year during the Días Perdidos celebration, not far from Chichén Itzá. The celebration roughly translates as their version of Mardi Gras—a syncretic festival which also mixes Christian and other religious elements—for a holiday directly before the season of Lent.”
The jungle image was replaced by that of a wooden cross, taller than the man standing next to it. The heavy beams were covered in cornstalks and leaves, as if the cross were living, growing.
“The question that this image begs is, Which is more important to the villagers living here? The cross or the maize? You could separate the corn from the cross, but without the corn to sustain them, there would be no worshippers for the cross. The two can’t be separated, but neither side is truly ascendant here.”
Immediately the reporter who had been allowed into the final class for a feature about “December 21, the End of the World” spoke up.
“The images of the cross and the corn you showed—aren’t you concerned about backwash from people who take their religion seriously?” the reporter asked.
“The Maya were, and are, very serious about their religion. They just don’t approach it in the typical Western Christian way. Understanding that is fundamental to understanding the Maya of any time or place.”
“Still, it’s not reassuring to mainstream religion,” he said. “Altars have been found everywhere along the border. It’s rumored that bloody sacrifices are made, just like in the old days.”
“Doubtful,” Lina said cheerfully. “Among the most important sacrifices a Maya king could make was his own blood, produced by piercing his foreskin with a stingray spine and slowly drawing knotted twine through the slits. Do you think men today have the belief to carry through with such a painful sacrifice?”
The reporter winced and shifted as though to protect himself. “I was thinking more of human sacrifice.”
“What could be more human than genital self-mutilation in the name of a god you hope to please?” Lina asked, just to see the reporter squirm.
“What about tearing out a victim’s heart?” the man asked hurriedly.
“Sometimes noble war prisoners were sacrificed—literally made holy—by having their heart removed while it was still beating. But those weren’t the most valued sacrifices.”
“What was?”
“When the life of ruling royalty itself was given. To the Maya, blood continuity was fundamental to their reality. The people’s safety, sanity, and soul depended on being led by a priest-king who could claim unbroken descent from his guiding deity, who was also his blood ancestor. To sacrifice someone of royal blood was a tremendous gift, a desperate gift, done only in times of extreme need.”
“What kind of need could drive people to tear out living hearts?” the reporter asked.
Lina told herself to be patient. The man was only doing what he thought was his job. Chasing headlines. Sensation.