“Who cares about a damned wall, boss lady?” He trailed after her, dodging a thorn-covered branch. “I’m more worried about the pile of skulls.”
Chapter Five
“By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.”
“New rule, Shakespeare,” Angélica told Quint. “No more quotingMacbethon my dig sites.”
“How about Edgar Allan Poe?”
She looked up, meeting his troubled frown with one of her own. “Only in the darkest of night when we’re alone with the monsters.”
“Right. Okay. But don’t you think this is disturbing enough to rate a quote or two?” He indicated the skulls piled in front of them. “I mean, who the fuck does something like this?”
“I don’t know.”
Walking around the stack, Angélica held her hand to her chest, as if she could stop her heart from running away from so much death. The possible motives behind piling up a bunch of skulls in front of a wall left her scratching her head.
As an archaeologist, she was no stranger to macabre dealings and mortal misfortune. Studying the remains of the dead came with the job. She enjoyed trying to piece together the puzzles of the past to give a clearer picture of those who’d lived long ago, so others could be amazed by their achievements and maybe learn from their follies.
Over the years, she’d seen—and carefully handled—her fair share of human bones, including skulls and teeth. Once, during her undergrad years, she’d helped clear a mass burial site in Guatemala that had contained both adults’ and children’s skeletons, as well as a jaguar’s. Talk about heart-aching work. The lives of those in that grave had been sacrificed during some sort of large-scale rain ritual at a time of devastating drought, an explanation determined by theglyphs found on a nearbystela. But the thousands of sunsets since that dark period in the past hadn’t hushed the echoes of tragedy that had filled her dreams for weeks after she’d returned home.
She squatted next to the pile of lichen-spotted skulls stacked haphazardly upon each other, many bearing toothy grins full of fashionable gemstones. There had to be thirty—maybe forty—people here. What the freaky-ass fuck?
“It’s no wonder KuTu warned us about this,” her father said, standing over her. His crinkled brow mirrored her inner confusion. “These poor folks all look to have suffered some sort of head trauma.”
Bronko slowly circled the pile, shining his bright flashlight onto the skulls. “Or were the cracks and holes made after they were dead?”
Quint lowered onto one knee next to Angélica, taking pictures of the scene per her request upon reaching KuTu’s grisly find. “Remind me of the way to tell if a bone was broken post-mortem?”
“Damage occurring after death should show no signs of the bone healing,” she said, pointing out a clear example of this on one of the skulls.
“And the fractures are more jagged,” her father added. “The breakage often appears in more of a haphazard form.”
“Make sure you get some closeups of the damage, Parker. We’ll want to investigate this further after we return to the lab and your pictures will really help.”
“On it, boss lady.”Click click.
“Bronko, can I borrow your flashlight?”
“Sí.” He handed it to her.
She peered closer at the holes in the skulls, smelling the usual mustiness of forest decay but nothing more. Some of the damaged areas had definite post-mortem scarring, like something had chewed on them. “Raul, what did they teach you at the Biosphere Reserve about a jaguar’s bite?”
“You mean like the strength or the bite radius?”
Angélica sat back on her heels. “Both.”
“Well, the jaguar has the strongest bite force of any of the wild cats.”
“Any?” Quint lowered his camera, turning to look back at thepark ranger. “What about a lion?”
“Relative to its weight, the jaguar’s jaw muscles are stronger.”
“So, don’t get bit by a jaguar this trip.” Quint pushed to his feet. “Duly noted.”
Her father eased carefully around the pile, his cane creaking slightly as he walked. “I once read that a jaguar can bite clear through the skull of its prey.”
Bronko pulled out half a cigar from his pocket, which was probably what was left of the one she’d smelled earlier. “I have watched one easily bite through a thick hide and rip out the muscles below.”
