Elmer said to the assembled group, “Let’s go in and see her.”
Ben reached for the back of his neck and shook his head.
The room was dark. The nearest bed, a cage-like structure, held a young toddler who was sleeping, his diapered bottom protruding into the air. In the far bed, a young girl was sitting up, working the knobs on a handheld gadget that adjusted the tilt of the bed and controlled the TV hanging from the ceiling. She scrupulously ignored the white coats and stethoscopes encircling her.
Ben tried a whispered shout. “Elmer, I need to talk with—”
“Good morning,” a woman moaned from the dormitory-style day bed located just under a window. The vinyl covering groaned as she brought herself upright and showed the group her wingspan with a slow stretch.
The young girl was now using the controller to sample TV channels, taking in a two-second glimpse of each station, then moving on to the next.
“Sorry to wake you,” Elmer said. “Are you Lisa’s mother?”
Nodding, she asked, “Is everything okay?”
“Everything’s fine. In fact, we’re thinking of sending your daughter home today.”
“Mommy, the hop-sital,” the girl announced.
“Yeah, honey, we’re at the hospital,” said the mother.
“No, Mommy. Look. The hop-sital,” the girl insisted, pointing at the TV.
Heads turned casually to the TV, which showed a reporter standing on the grassy lawn in front of University Children’s. The girl feverishly worked the volume control.
“…and when paramedics arrived at Lloyd Erickson’s home last night, they pronounced him dead at the scene from a gunshot wound to the head.”
The in-studio announcer asked, “Any word on suspects at this time? Have the police said anything about a possible motive?”
The reporter in front of the hospital said, “Our viewers may recall a bizarre incident that occurred here at this hospital a few days ago. One of the doctors allegedly attacked Mr. Erickson, and we’ve since learned that the doctor involved in that incident was Luke McKenna, an emergency room specialist here at University Children’s Hospital. The police will say only that Dr. McKenna is a person of interest in the shooting death of Mr. Erickson.”
Ben shot a glance at McKenna.
Elmer’s eyes were trying to blink away his confusion.
“Does the hospital have any comment about this?” the announcer asked.
“As you know, we’re still working to get the details on this breaking story. So far, no comment from the hospital. As soon as we get any more information, we’ll let our viewers know. Jane, back to you in the studio.”
“Now let’s go to our Sky-Seven unit, which is flying over the victim’s home in the Hollywood Hills…”
“Wonderful,” Megan muttered. The lower third of her right leg had just disappeared into a mud-filled rut.
The trail they had followed for the past four hours was nothing more than a vague strip of thinned vegetation. Clefts and crevices pockmarked the path and it was still soggy from a midday rain shower. Runnels of red clay coursed around slickened rocks and settled into what were, for the most part, shallow puddles. The depression her leg had sunk into was more like a sinkhole.
Joe Whalen, the other resident, turned around. His cherubic face looked as if it was about to explode in laughter. A half second later it did just that, which was probably why he lost his footing, rolled down a small embankment, and landed face first in a mud pit. He emerged looking as if he belonged to a tribe of Aborigines.
Steve Dalton, the third member of their team, eyed Megan with an impish smile.
Megan twisted her foot, felt some give, and yanked up with all her strength. Her leg reappeared, but with only a wet sock on the foot.
“Oh, that’s just great,” she said. “My shoe’s still in there.”
Eddie, their Mayan guide who had a mule-like capacity for carrying things on his back, knelt down and dug both hands into the pit where Megan’s foot had been. He came up with the truant footwear, poured out a quart of wet clay, and handed the shoe to her.
The guide smiled at Megan. It was a happy, contented smile in which his entire face participated.
She reseated her shoe and asked in Spanish, “How much farther to the village?”
Eddie stared up the hill. “A little while more.”
It was almost three hours and five water bottles later that they finally reached Ticar Norte, the first of four Mayan villages they would visit over the next three days. No one had spoken for the past hour. Only Eddie looked as if he had the energy to talk, though it seemed his habit was to speak only when asked a question.
She counted over twenty huts as they climbed the hill and entered the village. Most were thatched-roof dwellings. The sidings were made of crooked branches bound together with twine, and there were no doors or glass-pane windows — just bare openings.
Several sets of large dark eyes peered between gaps in the sides. An older woman stood placidly at the entrance of a hut, her bare feet as cracked and callused as tree bark. Two small children, one with a swollen belly that probably held parasites, peeked out from behind the woman’s brightly colored skirt. Neither had a tattoo.
Chickens and roosters roamed the area freely. A pig scurried past with a stiff-legged gait while a pack of mangy dogs studied the new arrivals. They were the scrawniest dogs that Megan had ever seen, their eyes darting nervously in every direction, with their backs arched as if poised against some unseen threat.
Eddie disappeared into a large wood-plank structure at the center of the village. It looked like some sort of meeting hall. Even from a distance of over twenty feet, Megan could hear the men speaking in a guttural language. She didn’t understand a word.
“What language are they speaking?” she asked.
“Q’eqchi. It’s one of the Mayan dialects,” Steve said. “A lot of the villagers can’t speak Spanish, or don’t care to. That’s where Eddie comes in handy.”
Steve Dalton picked at the bark of an enormous tree under which the three of them were standing. “The ancient Mayans used the sap from these things to make chewing gum. It’s called a sapodilla tree.”
Megan was more interested in the villagers. A young boy, naked except for a pair of black rubber boots, stood like a stone in front of one of the huts and studied her. Standing next to him was a teenage boy wearing a Terminator III T-shirt. Inside the dwelling, she could see a tiny woman stirring the contents of an enormous black kettle over an open fire. Thick smoke billowed all around her.
For the most part, the villagers kept their distance.
“So when do we go to work?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Steve said. “This is a bit strange. The villagers usually come out to greet us, give us something to drink…that sort of thing.” He pulled at his shirt. Like hers, it was drenched in sweat. “But I’ve never been here before. Maybe their social customs are different.”
Eddie emerged from the wooden structure. A pair of old men remained at the doorway, watching them.
“The village elders want us to leave,” Eddie said in Spanish when he reached them. “They say that you have upset the spirit of the dead.” He looked at each of them in turn, his expression telling them nothing. “I will show you.”
He led them to the far side of the village, then down a gentle slope to a cluster of five huts. “There is an angry spirit in that hut,” he said, pointing to a structure on the far right.
The small thatched dwelling looked no different from the others at first glance, but the disparity became evident as Megan studied it. The other huts had signs of life: the sporadic movements of children staring back at her through gaps in the siding, curls of smoke escaping from their doorways, small animals foraging for food.