Tears of the Jaguar by A.J. Hartley Page B

leisurely around the lab that Aguilar told him to get out from under his feet, he bolted back to the van and hit the road.
    Bowerdale’s Spanish was so-so and he had only a few words of Yucatekan, but he could tell the village was already buzzing with the news. He asked for Eustachio, but his son—a fat, lazy-looking guy called Juan—kept dodging. Didn’t know where he was. Hadn’t seen him leave. Assumed he was at the site. In fact, said Juan, not quite looking at him, he probably was. It was a big place.
    “Isn’t that his bicycle?” said Bowerdale.
    Juan stared stupidly at it like he’d never seen it before, and shrugged. He guessed so.
    “So an old man with a limp walked over to the site?” said Bowerdale.
    “Guess so,” said Juan, his eyes flashing over to his wife. She was too old to be pretty exactly, but she had a stillness and thoughtfulness Bowerdale liked. Maybe later he could find a local girl to bring back to his hotel.
    “You seen him?” he asked her, in English.
    “
No hablo ingles
,” she lied, her eyes returning to the pot she was stirring.
    “Where’s your motorbike, Juan?” he said, splaying his arm and miming revving the throttle with his right fist. “Your
motocicleta
. That big black thing you have.”
    Juan lied fluently, but too fast. Among the stream of Spanish, Bowerdale caught “
taller de reparación
.”
    “Oh, it’s in the shop,” he said, smiling. “And where’s that?”
    Another half glance flicked toward his wife, then Juan told him it was in Valladolid. They couldn’t fix it in the village. It needed parts.
    “Yeah?” said Bowerdale. “What’s up with it? Clutch? Carburetor? Cam cover gasket?”
    Juan smiled and shrugged. He just rode it, he said. He didn’t know how it worked.
    “I guess you can explain all this to the police,” said Bowerdale. “
La policia
, yeah?”
    Juan’s smile flickered, then held.
    Bowerdale gestured to a cabana across the street. “That where he sleeps?”
    Juan nodded.
    Bowerdale walked over to the dirt-floored structure and peered inside. The old man’s son seemed happy to let him look, so Bowerdale didn’t bother. He took a couple of steps back toward Juan and his wife, giving them one last look. He thought she smiled slightly, before going back inside. Now Bowerdale had Juan to himself. He met the man’s eyes and raised a crooked finger, beckoning. The Mayan hesitated, glancing behind him, then crossed the street to where Bowerdale stood.
    “You find out where your father went,” said Bowerdale. “Then you let me know, OK?”
    As he spoke, he plucked out his wallet and unfolded several hundred-dollar bills. Juan glanced around nervously, but his eyes were hungry, and he took the money, pocketing it quickly.
    “Good man,” said Bowerdale.
    He got back in the van and drove down to Valladolid, but before he reached the lab his cell phone rang. It was Miller.
    “Where the hell are you?” she demanded. “I’ve been calling for an hour.”
    “Couldn’t get a signal,” he said.
    “I thought you were in Valladolid?”
    “I had to take the van in,” he said. “The brakes needed adjusting. Maybe new pads.”
    “They seemed fine to me.”
    “I only noticed on the road back.”
    “It doesn’t matter,” she said, steamrolling him—luckily. “You need to get back here. Rylands has found something.”
    She hung up, and Bowerdale threw the phone onto the passenger seat feeling caught out and no further forward.

Chapter Nineteen

     
    “It’s a stingray spine,” said Krista Rayburn. “Where did you find it?”
    “On the floor by the door,” said Rylands, his eyes on the video monitor.
    Krista didn’t much like Rylands yet, which bothered her. She was, she thought, usually so accepting of other people, liking them for the idiosyncrasies others found off-putting, but the man was more than just rude. He was hostile, and Krista, who was unused to not being liked, felt disoriented.
    Everyone assumed that being