Sandoval responded with a cautious smile. “Flaviano.” Self-consciously, very formally, they shook hands. “You know… Gideon… I must file a report on this. What you told me-the ribs, entry wounds, exit wounds-I don’t know if I can explain-”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I’ll write it all up for you to include with your report. It’ll have to be in English, though. My Spanish isn’t good enough for material like this.”
“Thank you. When do you think you could do this?”
“I can do it right now, if you like.”
“Ah, good. The policia ministerial, they won’t be happy if I wait too long.” He sighed softly.
Mention of the policia ministerial put an end to his relative good humor, which had been ebbing anyway over the last few minutes.
“Well, look at the bright side,” Gideon said, taking a page from Julie’s playbook.
“Yes? What is the bright side?”
“You have the satisfaction of knowing Dr. Bustamente’s findings are dead wrong.”
That earned a twinkle of the eye and a furtive little grin. “Well,” Sandoval said, cheered at least a little, “let’s go back to the police station now. You can use the computer there. But first, lunch.”
SEVEN
There were only two restaurants in the village, both on the main street, Avenida Juarez, and Sandoval took Gideon to the Restaurante el Descanso, the smaller and simpler of the two, a clean, plain place-in the United States, it might have been called a deli-bakery-where Sandoval had a hamburger and Gideon got a bowl of creamy Oaxacan-style gazpacho, made with eggs and sour cream, and garnished with jicama and cumin-coated tortilla chips. When asked, he said, truthfully enough, that it was delicious. Sandoval made a show of insisting on picking up the tab, but if any money changed hands, Gideon never saw it.
From there, they walked the two blocks to the Palacio del Gobierno, a stuccoed one-story building where police headquarters, consisting of two currently empty jail cells, a hallway with two desks jammed side-to-side against the wall, and the chief’s “private” office (doorless), were housed. One of the hallway desks had a fairly new Dell computer on it, and Gideon was seated there to write up his report. A baby-faced police officer offered him a cup of coffee from the countertop coffeemaker, but Sandoval, standing behind him, made head-shaking, throat- cutting motions warning him otherwise, and he politely declined and got to work. AN hour later, Gideon was done. Most of the time had been wasted in trying to put together something close to his usual forensic report, covering all the typical bases: age, sex, condition of the body, old broken leg, and so on, but all of this wound up being deleted. In the first place, he hadn’t been asked to do, and hadn’t done, anything approaching a thorough examination. In the second, the state police, the policia ministerial, were sure to pursue this more thoroughly on their own, with their own experts. Third, and most important, they hadn’t asked for his help and weren’t anticipating it. Gideon, sensitive from long experience to issues of turf, decided it would be less than tactful to unexpectedly dump a formal, jargon-loaded case report, written by a prying, meddlesome Yanqui, into their laps. Sandoval would surely take the heat for it, and Sandoval was worried enough already.
With reason, Gideon thought. From what he’d heard and read about them, the Oaxacan state police were, or were alleged to be, a belligerent, thuggish bunch with a reputation for being easy to irritate and quick to anger. In the end, he boiled it down to a single unvarnished paragraph with a minimum of inferences:
On December 14, 2008, I was requested by Flaviano Sandoval, chief of police, Teotitlan del Valle, to examine a mummified body found in the nearby countryside. This brief examination was made after an earlier partial autopsy by Dr. Ignacio Bustamente, medico legista, Tlacolula District. It is my opinion that the deceased was stabbed at least three times with a Phillips-head screwdriver (un desarmador de cruz), the entry wounds clustered in the left axilla. One of these thrusts left a diagnostic, X-shaped perforation in the vertebral portion of the left seventh rib. The deceased also suffered massive trauma to the thorax in the form of severe compression of the rib cage, resulting in numerous injuries, one of which was a compound fracture that punctured the chest wall below and medial to the left nipple.
Respectfully submitted,
Gideon Oliver, Professor
Department of Anthropology
University of Washington
If I can be of further assistance, please feel free to contact me through Chief Sandoval. I will be staying at Teotitlan for the next several days.
He leaned back in his chair, read it over, considered deleting those last two sentences-if they wanted his help they could find him, so why push it?-but finally decided to let them stand, and hit the print button. ANNIE threw back her head and laughed. “You asked him where the guy’s comoda was and he didn’t know what you were talking about?”
“That’s right,” a still-puzzled Gideon said. “Doesn’t it mean ‘chest’?”
“Yeah, it means “chest”-only like in ‘chest of drawers.’ You know, comoda… commode?”
“Is that right?” Gideon said, also laughing. “So what’s my kind of chest? I mean-”
“ ‘ Pecho,’ ” Carl supplied with a smile.
“Ah, pecho,” said Gideon with his usual ineffective snap of the fingers. “Of course. Like ‘pectoral.’ ”
With Julie, they were having predinner drinks in the dining room, at the table in the rear that was kept for the Gallagher clan, separated from the others by a waist-level bookcase. It was a beautiful late afternoon and Gideon had initially wanted to have drinks out on the terrace, but two of the four close-together terrace tables were occupied by the feminist professors’ group, which was in the midst of extremely heated discourse, from which Gideon thought it wise to keep a safe distance. He was brave about many things, but he was not brave about this, and he had thought it was a good idea to take the prudent course and go inside. Carl had seconded the motion after hearing some of what they were saying. “Sounds like fightin’ words to me,” he’d said.
Over tongue-stinging but wonderfully refreshing micheladas -bottles of Tecate beer spiced with lime and chile sauce-Gideon had been telling them about the day’s events and they had been listening with interest.
Annie had just begun to ask a question when her telephone played the opening bars of “ La Cucaracha.” She took it from her bag, flipped it open. “Hello?” She broke into a smile. “Are you, really?… Both of you?… Well, that’s great, everybody’ll be pleased… Yes, they got here yesterday… No, I won’t be here, but I should be back in a few days… Sure, you too.” She flipped the phone closed.
“Guess what? Tony’s driving down early. He’ll be here tomorrow.”
“Hallelujah,” said Carl with absolutely no expression. Not exactly a shout of joy, Gideon thought. Wonder what that’s about.
Julie was considerably more animated. “Really?” she said, grinning. “Oh, it’ll be great to see him. I was afraid we might miss him.”
“And I have better news for you than that,” Annie told her. “Jamie’s coming down with him. The knee’s doing better than expected, so he’s flying down to Mexico City in the morning and he’ll drive down with Tony. He’s raring to get back to work.”
At this news Julie really lit up. “Jamie’ll be here tomorrow? I can leave the bookkeeping to him? I don’t have to do that horrible stack of accounts payable, and bank reconciliations, and God knows what else? I’ve been scared to death to touch them, I don’t know anything about QuickBooks or-”
“Fear no longer,” said Annie. “You’re off the hook. Leave all that stuff for the man. Jamie thrives on it. Hey, look who’s here. Greetings, jefe.”
Chief Sandoval, who had just entered, was approaching them somewhat tentatively. After a round of greetings and an introduction to Julie, he stood there looking undecided.
“Have a seat,” Carl said, pulling out a chair for him. “Gideon was just telling us about your mummy.”
Sandoval remained standing, shifting nervously from one foot to the other. “Well, that’s what I came about. I e-mailed my report-also your report, Gideon-to the police in Oaxaca, and they want me to come in to speak with them.” A despairing sigh. “I have to go tomorrow morning to the offices of the-I don’t know how to say it in
