His rudeness surprised Dominic, who was used to sunny, Honduran graciousness and hospitality. With a friendly voice he introduced himself, explaining about the clinic and his work there.
“I see, señor Harte,” the director said, his tone more conciliatory. “Then I need to thank you for helping doctora Palomares. This event has us all upset.” He turned to Elena. “Doctora, you should rest. I will see what is to be done. I am sorry you had to be involved in this terrible event.”
Dominic took Elena’s arm before astonishment had a chance to register on her face. With a firm grasp on her elbow, he pushed her ahead of him before she could say anything else and steered her to the police to see if they could leave.
“Sí,” the inspector said. “You may go now, doctora. I will come later to interview you. By then you will have had time to recover, and the events of this morning will be clearer.”
“I’m staying at doña Carolita’s. You’ll find me there.”
Dominic led the way to the Jeep and helped Elena into the front passenger seat.
“I can’t believe that miserable man was nice to you. I didn’t know he had it in him,” she said, as they drove across the Park toward the exit.
Dominic glanced over. Her jaw was still set in a tight line, her eyes straight ahead. She fumbled in her vest pocket, pulled out a cigarette and lit up.
“I only do this when I’m really upset,” she said. She blew out a long plume of smoke to underscore her pronouncement.
Dominic smiled. “Whatever it takes. I was surprised as you by the director’s sudden change of attitude. It might have something to do with his wife. She does volunteer work at the clinic. I know her pretty well. A nicer person you couldn’t find.”
“You’re kidding?” Elena said, turning to look at him. “A nice person married to that horrid man?”
Dominic shrugged. “It’s a mystery. Would a cup of coffee at the tourist center restaurant help?”
Elena shook her head. “If you don’t mind, would you drop me at doña Carolita’s? I’m not feeling well at all.”
“Sure. I’ll bring the doctor by later to give you something. You’ve had one helluva morning.”
Inspector Oliveros arrived while Elena was resting in the room that she rented for her summer stay in the town of Copan Ruinas. Doña Carolita, a widow who took in boarders, showed him to the small living room furnished with plastic covered chairs. Not a mote of dust was evident on the gleaming terrazzo floors. Pink and yellow plastic flowers bloomed on a wall table under a colorful picture of the Virgin of Suyapa, the patron saint of Honduras.
Lying on her bed, Elena had been drifting in and out of a dream state filled with ghostly images twisting around pyramid shaped objects. The knock on the door startled her.
“Doctora,” doña Carolita said in a hushed whisper, standing at the end of the bed. “It is the police inspector to see you. Do you feel well enough to see him or should I ask him to come back later?
“No, I’ll see him. Will you bring us some coffee? Maybe it will help my headache.”
“Sí, cómo no, hijita,” doña Carolita said, expressing her affection for Elena with the diminutive name of daughter.
Elena ran a brush through her hair, downed a few aspirins she fished out of a vest pocket and slipped into a pair of sandals.
The inspector rose when Elena entered the living room.
“I’m sorry to keep you waiting.”
“Not at all, doctora, it is I who am sorry to disturb you. This has been a trying day, but I have some important questions to ask.”
“Sí, sí. I will help in any way I can,” said Elena, sitting down across from him.
The inspector hardly looked ruffled from a morning spent at the scene of a crime. His short sleeved uniform shirt was neatly pressed. His unlined face no doubt belied his age. People of Mayan descent often looked younger than they were.
Doña Carolita arrived with two mugs of café con leche and a small plate of vanilla sandwich cookies on a tray, which she left on the carved Honduran coffee table between them.
“Gracias,” said Elena. She helped herself to a mug.
“Would you, doctora, go over finding the man in as much detail as possible?” The inspector settled back into the seat with his mug of coffee and a cookie to munch on.
As Elena recounted her story, he interrupted with polite questions from time to time and made notes on a small, spiral ring pad he had pulled from his shirt pocket. He had a funny way of squinting one eye when he spoke that made her feel like he was skeptical of everything she said. Or maybe she was being paranoid.
“Did the director mention the theft of the artifacts?” she asked.
“Sí, sí,” said inspector Oliveros. “But, please, tell me what you know as you are the one who is studying the hieroglyphs, no?”
“Yes. That’s right. Three have disappeared so far. The latest was yesterday. It was gone when I arrived at the site.”
“What time was that, doctora?”
“I arrived about 7:00 A.M. my usual time.”
“And this morning?”
“I arrived about 6:00 A.M. I came earlier as the director asked me to watch the site until extra guards from Tegucigalpa could arrive. I wanted to be on site before the workers.”
“Had the night guard already left?”
“He was at the front gate as I came in, getting ready to leave.”
“Did he say anything unusual to you?”
Elena shrugged, trying to remember, but she had detected nothing out of the ordinary. “No, he wished me a pleasant day, as is his custom.”
“Do you normally go to the Hieroglyphic Staircase by way of the back of the Temple of Inscriptions?” His squint deepened and his tone took on a sharp edge that Elena didn’t like. Her headache made it difficult to think, and the inspector’s squint and tone was grating like fingernails across a blackboard.
She shook her head. “No, I don’t usually go that way. But the morning was lovely, and I wanted to see the view from the top of the temple without climbing the narrow stairs in front. The back path is easier. The man I found must have thought so, too.”
“Do you have any idea why someone might use that back path?”
“The obvious answer would be the thief who was stealing the glyphs.”
“Describe for me how the victim looked when you found him. Do not leave out any details, no matter how trivial they may seem.”
Elena tried to see the scene again in her mind, tried to filter out all her judgments of the horror of the dead man, tried to see the scene as a scientist. How exactly had it looked?
“I remember I was thinking about the theft of the hieroglyphs. I had my head down, watching the trail because that part of the path is rough with loose stones and bumps from the tree roots. First, I saw the feet.” She thought of the odd, laid-over angle of the ankles and how large the shoes looked.
“I thought, why would anyone leave their running shoes on the path? I stopped and got that queer feeling people talk about when they say the hair stands up on the back of their necks. I knew something wasn’t right. Then I connected the feet with the rest of the body, and I thought, oh, someone’s sleeping here.
“I turned to the right and took a step to go around the body because I didn’t want to disturb him. But I stopped. It was the way, I think, that his head was turned on his cheek. It was at an odd angle, lifted a little too high, his chin pointed up, because I remember his Adam’s apple protruded sharply.