This could have been anyone who worked at the museo, Ernesto and Antonio among them. It could be anyone with research privileges. I wondered if there was a logbook of visitors, other than staff, who had been in this room.
I searched the desk, and found it. The visitors’ book. I scanned the names of people who had been there in the days surrounding the time that Don Hernan’s body had been found. Most of the names meant nothing. Two of them I knew.
Jonathan Hamelin and Lucas May.
tears in my eyes, i close the drawers and the cabinet, log off the computer, and turn off the desk lamp. Stumbling in the darkness, I find the door, remove the tape, and roll up the blind, then make my way back to the main floor and the street.
Now even the darkness is dangerous. I believe I can find sanctuary with Dona Josefina, amid the whiteness and the silence and the calm of the hospital. But when I get there, a police car is outside, its blue light flashing directly in my eyes.
I run back to the hotel, shadows lunging at me as I go. I do not know who the enemy is, only that there is one, and he is close to me.
As I near the hotel the shadows take human form and grab me from behind. I am choking. The world becomes very, very dark and I fall. I hear a whirring sound, a shout, and the shadows move away.
I sit, my back to the stone wall of the inn, and fight for breath. Don Santiago, also gasping from exertion, sits in his wheelchair. Unable to sleep, and seeing that the reporters are all gone, he has chosen this time for some solitude on the street outside the hotel.
He has saved my life.
I find I am still holding the knife. I am very frightened.
MEN
I spent the next day jumping at shadows and trying to pull together the tatters of my self-confidence so that I would be able to do what I knew I must.
Santiago had wanted to call the police, of course, but both of us soon realized that since I was not supposed to be out of the hotel at all, this would not be helpful for me.
He was unable to tell me anything about my attacker, other than that he wore a cape, black gloves, and a black mask, hardly unusual for Carnaval. Santiago promised me he would not tell the rest of the family about the attack. They had enough to worry about as it was.
I returned to my room and tried with limited success to get some more sleep. I had my recurring dream again, chasing the rabbit, this time through the streets of Merida, then falling through space, watched by a black-hooded creature with the face of an owl, the death bird. Once again the voices of the Lords of Xibalba surrounded me as I fell. It was not a restful night.
Late in the morning Isa brought me coffee and toast, plus, as a special treat, she said, the International Herald Tribune and one of the large Mexico City newspapers. Jean Pierre had apparently braved the crowds of reporters outside to get these for me.
The Herald Tribune was a gloomy edition. The main feature was about the sorry state of the world economy. Falling oil prices, unstable currencies, and plummeting stock markets seemed to be the order of the day.
There was a special feature about Mexico that talked about the efforts, so far unsuccessful, to prop up the nose-diving peso and restore confidence in the Mexican economy and its political leaders. One of the factors contributing to the lack of confidence in Mexico was more guerrilla activity in Chiapas and the government’s inability to reach an agreement with the rebels that would end the fighting. Much was made of the fact that the rebel forces appeared to enjoy the support of the church, an interesting reversal from earlier times, I thought.
The Mexico City paper contained coverage of the Children of the Talking Cross affair, as it had come to be known, but not, mercifully, as much as the local media, which is probably why Jean Pierre had picked it instead of the local rag. The article, which I read despite my growing aversion to this kind of coverage, also referenced the trouble in Chiapas, speculating that there might be a link between the Children and the Zapatistas, an idea I found quite ludicrous, considering that it was probably just Alejandro and his friends playing at being rebels.
The Mexico City paper also carried very gloomy economic news. The stock market in Mexico City was extremely volatile, but the trend was by and large down, and hysteria reigned as fortunes were being lost almost daily.
I began to think about Gomez Arias, and wondered how all this would affect him. An unstable currency wouldn’t help any of his businesses, which seemed to be exclusively Mexico-based. Maybe an increase in tourism due to the low peso would make his hotel the big moneymaker of his portfolio, although I had never heard of the hotel business being the sure way to financial security. Hotels seemed to be changing hands and closing all the time. He was certainly still giving extravagant dinner parties.
Francesca and Isa, in an effort to keep busy while they waited for news of Alejandro, undertook the sad task of packing up the belongings of Don Hernan, and I elected to join them to keep my mind off my own situation. The knife was stashed in the bathroom wall with the diary, but its presence was burning a hole in my psyche and I could hardly wait to unburden myself of it.
The police had returned the suit Don Hernan had been found in, and that as well as his other belongings were being packed up to send to a charitable organization.
Once again I felt the cuffs of the trousers. Traces of dust still remained. Then, when Isa and her mother were occupied clearing out the closet and bathroom, I searched through the pockets.
I could only find one item. Stuck in the bottom of an inside pocket was a stub of a ticket of some kind. It didn’t look like a ticket to a film or an attraction. Bus or train ticket, I would guess, although I wasn’t sure. The last letters—o-l-i-d—were all that was left of the destination, if a transport ticket it was.
“Did Don Hernan travel much, outside of Merida, I mean?” I asked the Ortiz women in what I hoped was a casual tone of voice.
“Not much lately, I don’t think,” Francesca replied. “He used to, of course, all over the world. He was always disappearing on us. But when I think of it, the only trips I can recall his taking in the last couple of years are buying trips with you, and a trip to Mexico City a month or two ago to receive some kind of award from the university there.
“Otherwise, he stuck fairly close to home. He occasionally stayed overnight at the museum. He’d fall asleep in his office, and when he woke up in the middle of the night, he would sleep on the couch in the staff room rather than come back here in the dark.”
Digesting this information, I stuck the stub in the pocket of my jeans and went on helping clear out the room. It was a very sad task for Francesca, who broke down often while we worked.
Later that day Isa came to me and said, “We’re thinking of getting this all over with at once. Are you up for helping us clear out Dona Josefina’s room, too? The hospital has said it is unlikely she will ever return here.”
I said I thought I was. Still, Dona Josefina’s room was a shock. First off, it was very dark. The shutters were closed. Isa said they always were. It also seemed like a little museum, somehow, a room from a different era. Dona Josefina had brought a few items of her own to furnish the room, a small chair with embroidered cushions, a lady’s writing desk.