Yucatán Is Murder: A Ben Candidi Mystery

By Dirk Wyle

Yucatán Is Murder, sixth in the Ben Candidi Mystery series, is a hard-boiled science-driven mystery-thriller set in Mexico and featuring science- and tech-savvy amateur sleuths.

In the coastal scrubland of Yucatán, Mexico, circling vultures lead vacationing scientist, Ben Candidi, to a corpse. As in an ancient Maya

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rainbow Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 8, 2015
• ISBN: 9781568251905

Dirk Wyle

Dirk Wyle is the pen name of Duncan H. Haynes, Ph.D., a 30-year veteran of biomedical science. Commercial success of his drug microencapsulation technology enabled an early retirement from the laboratory and medical school lecture hall, allowing him to focus on his passion for literature. Believing there are no stone walls separating the realms of popular science, serious literature and mystery/thriller fiction, Dirk Wyle creates exciting but realistic stories that play out in all three arenas. Dirk does not regard work and play as necessarily separate activities. Scientific reading and travel to exotic locations inspire new stories. Visit www.Dirk-Wyle.com.

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Rave Reviews for the Six Books

in the Ben Candidi Mystery Series

Pharmacology Is Murder

ISBN 978-1-56825-038-0

First-time novelist Dirk Wyle skillfully pairs the tone of the hard-boiled mystery with the intricate scientific detail common to the medical thriller. The result is an excellent whodunit . . . a first-class mystery that combines elements of Michael Crichton, Patricia Cornwell, and even Edna Buchanan.

— Booklist Mystery Showcase

American Library Association

When the chairman of the pharmacology department of a Miami medical school is murdered, Dade County medical examiner Geoffrey Westley recruits Ben Candidi to infiltrate the department as a student and gather information. Candidi’s venturing forth from his houseboat may be more hazardous than he thinks.

— Publishers Weekly

Wyle demonstrates a breezy style, a flair for drawing vivid and memorable characters with just a few deft strokes . . . I’ve found myself thinking about it and admiring it in retrospect over and over again.

— Best First Detective Novel — 1998

Lofgreen's Detective Pages

Biotechnology Is Murder

ISBN 978-1-56825-045-8

Dirk Wyle . . . is a sure winner. His character Ben Candidi is just finishing his Ph.D., but Ben packs more punch per square inch than most veteran detectives . . . a timely plot with larger than life characters with which the reader has immediate affinity. Ben Candidi is the young Jack Ryan of the biotechnological world.

— Shelley Glodowski, Midwest Review

Nifty, light-hearted and deadly.

— Edna Buchanan, Garden of Evil

Medical School Is Murder

ISBN 978-1-56825-084-7

Wyle creates Ben as the playful idealized man: Mensa member; looks like Frankie Avalon; can fight like a pit bull; has as steady relationship with the beautiful Rebecca while tossing off adversaries with stumbling panache and outwitting the evil administration.

—Shelley Glodowski, Midwest Review

Amazon Gold

ISBN 978-1-56825-095-3

Scientist Ben Candidi would like nothing better than to escort his soul mate, Dr. Rebecca Levis, on her Amazon expedition to provide medical care to a nearly extinct tribe . . . But Ben needs to return to his laboratory in Miami to complete his project of studying how new technology can aid in drug development. You would think that his research would be mundane compared to the Amazon, but when it comes to Ben, who’s starring in his fourth adventure, excitement is never far away. All the while, transmittals from Rebecca come less frequently . . . and his research leads to startling conclusions that have him fearing for both their lives. Wyle has given the hard-boiled thriller a scientific twist, making his novels pleasing for both their intrigue and their intellect.

— Booklist Mystery Showcase

American Library Association

Bahamas West End Is Murder

ISBN 978-1-56825-100-4

Wyle . . . blends scientific smarts with quirky characters in another fine outing . . .

— Booklist Mystery Showcase

American Library Association

Yucatán Is Murder

ISBN 978-1-56825-189-9

From traces of Mayan glyphs, wisps of their history and mythology, and from the fiber of their present-day culture, Dirk Wyle has spun an incredible yarn.

— Steve Glassman

Cities of the Maya in Seven Epochs, 1250 B.C. to A.D. 1903

D i r k W y l e

YUCATÁN

IS MURDER

A Ben Candidi Mystery

Rainbow Books, Inc.

F L O R I D A

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wyle, Dirk, 1945-, author.

Yucatán is murder : a Ben Candidi mystery / by Dirk Wyle. -- First edition.

1 online resource. -- (Ben Candidi series ; book 6)

Summary: A hard-boiled, science-driven mystery-thriller set in Mexico and featuring science- and tech-savvy amateur sleuths.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

ISBN 978-1-56825-190-5 (epub) -- ISBN 978-1-56825-189-9 (softcover)

1. Candidi, Ben (Fictitious character)--Fiction. I. Title.

PS3573.Y4854

813'.54--dc23

2015023351

Yucatán Is Murder

A Ben Candidi Mystery

Copyright © 2015 Dirk Wyle

Dirk-Wyle.com

Print ISBN 978-1-56825-189-9

EPUB ISBN 978-1-56825-190-5

Published by

Rainbow Books, Inc.

P.O. Box 430

Highland City, FL 33846-0430

Telephone: [phone]; [e-mail]; RainbowBooksInc.com

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This is a work of fiction. Any similarity of characters to individuals, living or dead, or of enterprises to existing enterprises is purely coincidental.

All illustrations are by the author. Author photo by Gisela Haynes. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (except as follows for photocopying for review purposes). Permission for photocopying can be obtained for internal or personal use, the internal or personal use of specific clients, and for educational use, by paying the appropriate fee to

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Cover

Reviews of the Ben Candidi Mystery Series

Title Page

Copyright Page

Synopsis

Dedication and Two Maps

Chapters:

1. Blame It On the Vultures

2. One Coincidence Too Many

3. A Mother's Tears

4. Hydrotherapy

5. Learning the Ropes

6. Comes A Moment To Decide

7. Around the Stone Wall

8. Straddling the Gap

9. Dubious Police and Trusty Vultures

10. A Glyph In Time Can Interpret Nine

11. Fathoming Evil

12. A Little Hydrology With Our Hydration

13. Game Changer

14. Saline Hydrotherapy

15. Stash

16. Lose Some, Win Some

17. Saline Hydrotherapy II

18. Paperless Calculations

19. New Perspectives

20. Social Network

21. Hot Chick

22. Mountaintop Revelation

23. Media Strategy

24. And Saturday to Market

25. Consultancy

26. Sounds Like a Plan

27. Road Trip

28. Yucatán Farewell

Acknowledgements

About the Author and Author Photo

Titles in the Ben Candidi Mystery Series

SYNOPSIS FROM THE BACK COVER OF

YUCATÁN IS MURDER

Vultures circling over the Yucatán scrubland lead vacationing Ben Candidi (Ph.D.) to an ugly sight — a young peasant with his heart cut out, draped over a boulder. Rebecca Levis (M.D.) recognizes the peasant as B’alam Chuc, an engineering student at the university in Mérida. He had been interested in her medical outreach project. Although handwritten hieroglyphs found on the body offer clues, the police insist the motive was robbery. The parents — Maya villagers who speak no Spanish — have their eight-year-old Ichik ask Ben to investigate. B’alam’s professors describe him as a brilliant student — but a loner. Armed with a glyph dictionary and a cultural tourist’s knowledge of Mayan history, rites and superstition, Ben searches for what lured B’alam to the scene of his death. He assembles clues from haciendas, Maya villages, archaeological sites and even the coral bedrock. As the picture of an evil and debauched criminal conspiracy emerges, Ben and Rebecca are faced with two questions: Was B’alam truly innocent? And is it time to get out of Yucatán?

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Betty Lou Fallot Wright (1924–2013), magazine journalist, novelist, airplane pilot, founder of Rainbow Books, Inc., and a tall Florida landmark on the national publishing scene.

Yucatán (Mexico) and Environs

1. Blame It On the Vultures

Blame it on the vultures riding a thermal updraft powered by the Yucatán sun. If they hadn’t aroused my curiosity, Rebecca would have kept on driving down the gravel road and I wouldn’t have discovered the corpse. She would have met her Yucatec-Mayan speaking interpreter at the next Maya village. She would have completed three more family planning interviews. Then we would have gotten an early start on our sailing weekend, and our only involvement in the murder would have been maybe reading about it in the newspaper. But I’d never seen a Yucatán vulture at close range. I had been wondering how they differ from the turkey vultures that fly down to Miami in the winter. So blame it on me.

No, blame us both for that. For the last two weeks Rebecca and I had been making a game of comparing the wading birds on Yucatán’s northern coast with the ones we know from South Florida. If hummingbirds can migrate from the U.S. to Central America, then couldn’t vultures migrate along the Gulf coast, down from the Florida Panhandle to the Yucatán Peninsula?

We were migratory, too. I had sailed the Diogenes down from Miami to meet Rebecca. We were half-way into a month-long vacation piggy-backed on her public health work. The first two weeks had been enjoyable, riding shotgun while my good-looking physician soul mate drove us from one Maya village to the next. We had squeezed in a lot of regular tourist destinations along the way. On the Peninsula’s east side, we had done the Mayan Riviera, visiting Cancún, Cozumel, Playa del Carmen and scuba diving on some of the best reefs. We had also delved into the Mayan past, visiting major pyramids scattered over the northern tableland — Tulum, Ek’Balam, Chichén Itzá and Xumal. We had also visited a lot of sacred cenotes — the water-filled holes in the coral and limestone bedrock that had made it possible for the Classic and Post-Classic Mayan civilizations to exist here. We would visit the older sites in the southern highlands next week, when Rebecca’s itinerary moved us in that direction. But my decision to stop and check out the vultures put an end to all that.

The timing of this vacation-stopping event would be a Mayan astrologer’s delight. We discovered the corpse on the meridian hour of the longest day at summer solstice of the last year of the Mayan calendar. Expressing this less esoterically, it was high noon of June 22 of the year whose completion was supposed to bring the end of the world. The location was also significant. It was several dozen miles northeast of the ancient city of Mérida. There, about 500 years ago, the Spanish had burned almost every last document written in the Mayan hieroglyph language.

We had driven 48 miles eastward from the harbor where the Diogenes was docked, passing the beach town of Progresso and driving past scattered fishing villages, pulling off for a short break at the last one. The little seaside town of Dzilam de Bravo is a sprawl of do-it-yourself cinderblock shacks set along a curious patchwork of mangrove backwater and steep sandy beaches. Rebecca parked the rental car along the seawall and we got out for a stroll in the direction of the lighthouse. We didn’t go far because the sun was strong, the sea breeze was weak, and we were heavily dressed for this latitude. You can’t interview traditional Mayas wearing a T-shirt and shorts. They wouldn’t take her seriously, and my bare legs would be considered an insult to the women’s chastity. I wore a blue golf shirt, gray Alfani jeans and tan-colored boat shoes from West Marine. Rebecca wore a full blouse and a long skirt, combined with leather sandals. The abundance of cloth obscured the charming features of Rebecca’s svelte body.

My total-package soul mate smiled when I stopped and swept aside her long, black hair with a finger. She tilted her head as this over-sexed, dark-haired, Italian-American guy moved in for a kiss. I whispered one of the dozen endearments that Rebecca inspires in me. Then we turned to look at the brightly painted wooden fishing boats sitting high on the beach.

Off to the east, the tidal flats and estuaries provide habitat for pink flamingos and a host of shore birds. That was the eastern edge of a nature preserve, the Reserva Estadal de Dzilam de Bravo, which forms the outer border of the much larger Parque Natural San Filipe. The Park supports large flocks of colorful birds, thousands of alligator-like caiman and a small population Morelet’s crocodiles. It also contains a vast expanse of wild and dense forest extending several dozen miles to the south. It also provides habitat for jaguar and many unique species of herbivorous mammals. Its entrance is far to the south and we had not yet had the full day required for a visit.

We returned to the car and Rebecca drove us on. The coastal highway turned south and inland, in deference to the national park. My gaze alternated between the delicate features of Rebecca’s face in profile and the scrub wasteland that we were passing through. After several miles, I noticed the entrance to a gravel road on the left. The map showed it as a ten-mile loop road. I asked Rebecca if she wouldn’t mind giving it 20 minutes. We might see the edge of the park, and we’d get a better idea of the native vegetation in the undisturbed state.

Good idea, she said. It looks pretty barren here. I’m wondering if this isn’t abandoned farmland.

Agricultural use of this rocky, dusty, coral-bottomed land had been one of our topics of ongoing discussion. If irrigation water is available, they can grow maize, beans, squash and chili. Otherwise, they could set up watering troughs and put out cattle to forage for the occasional clumps of grass.

After several miles of eastward travel, the gravel road took a bend to the south. On the eastward side to the left, we noted that the land was a lot greener, with lots of tree cover. On the right, the scrubland continued as a hard-scrabble mixture of chest-high bushes, scraggly trees with sparse leaves and occasional clumps of low grass. That’s where we noticed the circling vultures. They were soaring high and probably had the Gulf of Mexico in view.

Rebecca noticed them, too, and let up on the accelerator to allow for a better look. Just like in Miami in the winter, she said.

That’s when we started wondering whether they were migratory. That’s when I said, "If we could get a better look at the markings on these foul-mouthed zopilotes, we might be able to rule them out as Ohio ‘snowbirds.’"

We were abreast of them, now. They were loitering in a tight spiral over a spot 100 yards to our right.

As if reading my thoughts, Rebecca said, Sure, Ben. Go identify the vultures. She flashed me a smile. And maybe you’ll be able to add a Yucatán potbellied pig to our list of quadruped species.

She delivered her quadruped quip glibly from behind her aviator sunglasses. Call it office humor between a research savvy physician and her biomedical scientist fiancé.

Rebecca pulled over and stopped. A layer of cane, six feet wide, was growing along the side in the shallow drainage trench that had been scraped in the porous coral rock. The trench probably didn’t hold any water longer than ten minutes after an occasional rainstorm, but that was a definite advantage for the cane. I pushed through and entered a dry jungle of chest-high bushes. I used the compass function of my Timex Expedition watch to take a bearing on the vultures’ ground zero, which was in line with a tall, scraggly tree.

The ground reminded me of the pocked coral bottom along the edge of the Florida Everglades after a two-month-long winter drought. It was a challenge to my rubber-soled shoes. The pocks were little craters with sharp edges, which often broke off under my weight. Protruding stones also made things difficult. Walk between them and you risk scraping an ankle. But step on them and you run the risk of spraining the ankle when the stone dislodges under your weight. The best footing was on patches that were filled with sand or coral dust. Moving from one to the other was like a game of hopscotch. All the while, bushes menaced my face. Worse still was the occasional agave plant, whose saber-like leaves had needle-sharp tips that could puncture denim and inflict a nasty leg wound.

Eventually, I came under the elegant spiral of vultures and my scientific curiosity was rewarded. The lower-flying ones gave me a good view of aerodynamic principles in action. The bird’s elegant array of black feathers is mounted on wings that can be locked into place for hours while maintaining a shallow forward glide. And only the slightest movement of tail- and aileron feathers is needed for the bird to steer itself into gently rising columns of air that can lift it to great heights. Vultures are the ultimate drones. They can patrol vast areas all day without expending energy on a single beat of the wing.

And yes, they had the wing profile of the Ohio vulture.

Nearing ground zero, I realized that their center of attraction was not just a black patch of sun-warmed earth that happened to be creating a pleasant thermal updraft conducive to an afternoon of social flying. There had to be a large quantity of food here, as evidenced by the protesting squawks and reluctant takeoff of two birds from a tree a couple dozen yards before me.

On the ground below them was a horrible sight — the body of a young man in peasant garb, draped over a large coral rock. His rear end was planted firmly on the ground, with his legs stretched forward. His back was contorted by the curvature of the rock, with his head and shoulders leaning backwards at a perverse angle. A large straw hat lay at his side. The coarse linen fabric of his white shirt and three-quarter length pants was stained with blood. The shirt was unbuttoned and the left side was flapped open to reveal a wide expanse of bronze chest, which was slit open between the ribs below the left nipple. It was a twenty-first-century reenactment of the ancient Mayan ritual of human sacrifice. And it was every bit as real as the flies buzzing around the body and the vultures circling over my head.

My stomach heaved, filling my throat and mouth with semi-digested tortilla. I swallowed the sour mash back down. A crime scene must be left undisturbed. I forced my brain to interpret the horror that my eyes were reporting.

The flies told me that he had been dead for hours, but not for days. They were crawling over his large, handsome face, entering his mouth, nostrils and the chest opening, but there were no maggots.

His bronze skin and prominent cheekbones left no doubt that he was a Maya. His white shirt, square-cut pants and leather-sandaled feet left no doubt that he was a traditional Maya. Yet, somehow it was hard to imagine him as a peasant. It was easier to imagine him as the young, fearless hero in one of those telenovela soap operas produced in Mexico or Colombia. His heavy brow, large eyes, ample nose and full mouth stood in perfect proportion. A broad forehead and widely spaced eyes suggested strength and wisdom. A full head of thick-stranded black hair glistened in the sun, bespeaking health and vigor. His chest was big. His bones were heavy and well supplied with muscle. He was perhaps the most perfect example of young Mayan manhood that one could choose.

But who had chosen him? And why for this?

Posed with his face and violated chest turned up to the sun, he looked like a sacrifice to pagan gods. But Cortés and his fellow conquistadors had put an end to that practice 500 years ago. Were there people living today who would do such a thing?

Acidified tortilla mash came up again, stinging my throat. I swallowed it back down and worked my tongue in my mouth to make saliva to dilute it.

I had gotten my start in science working in a medical examiner’s laboratory. Forensics is no mystery to me, and I now had serious work to do. I leaned over the body to inspect it. The only visible wound was the one in the chest. I crouched to inspect that wide, horizontal slit. Yes, the heart had been removed. The gap was wide enough to see in, and the heart was simply not there. The aorta, to which it should have been attached, was visibly severed. The incision must have been a quick horizontal stroke from a very sharp knife crossing the sternum and severing all connective tissue between the two ribs, going half the way around the body. And to keep the slit open and display his evil handiwork, the murderer had inserted a piece of Y-shaped stick between the ribs.

My mouth was dry and my throat felt like it was packed with cotton. I worked my tongue over my salivary gland and swallowed.

His shirt and pants were bloody but there was no pooled blood around him. Opening up a living chest would release a large quantity of blood. Thus the murder had not been carried out at this spot.

Where, then?

The walkable area in front of the victim was a five-by-eight foot oval with no sandy surface big enough to show a footprint. Looking behind me, I could find no footprint of my own, either. I examined the victim’s feet. The straps were in place on his native-crafted leather sandals, and there were no abrasions on his heels to indicate dragging. Similarly, his clothes didn’t show any rips, smudges or thread damage that would be expected for having been dragged over such rough ground.

Thus his dead body had been carried here, by at least two men.

A closer examination of his neck and the whites of his open eyes told me that he had not been killed by strangulation. A second look at his face and hair confirmed my conclusion that he was a full-blooded Maya, age between 18 and the mid-20s.

Rebecca signaled me from the distance with a single high-pitched hoot. It is our invention, useful for signaling over long distances or locating each other in noisy crowds. You draw a lungful of air and apply the same abrupt force from the diaphragm that you use for a terrifying karate kiai. But you don’t engage your vocal chords to make a monster tone. You leave them open, positioning your airway like a Swiss yodeler. The result is a single, short, clear tone in the soprano range. You can bounce it off mountains.

I answered Rebecca with two hoots to say that I would be right back. As I had guessed, my rented cellphone wasn’t picking up any signal out here. I made my way back as fast as possible.

Rebecca read bad news off my face the instant I broke through the cane. She had been standing beside the car, staring at her cellphone and shaking her head.

No, mine doesn’t work, either, I said.

Ben, I can see you’ve run into something serious. What is it?

Terrible thing . . . A murder victim . . . Lack of decomposition says it happened less than twenty-four hours ago . . . Twenty-year-old Maya male . . . Peasant . . . Ritual act . . . Heart removed.

Stress lines grew on her face with every word I said. The last two words hit her like a slap. Helping to bring the Mayas into the modern world was a big part of her world health work. This was inconceivable. In reflex, she brought the cellphone to her face. Her appointment would be lost. The day would be ruined. I held off for several seconds to give her time to think.

Rebecca, one of us has to get the police. The other has to stay here to keep the vultures away from the body. That one has to be me because I can’t leave you out here alone.

But my Spanish isn’t good enough to convince them on the phone.

"Yes, it is. Just speak slowly and insist that they reply to you slowly — despacio. Tell them that you are a doctor — doctora de medicina — and that you are reporting — estoy reportando — a murder — un homicidio. Give them your location — mi ubicación — and say you will wait for their arrival — esperaré a su llegada. When the police officer comes, make him follow you — sigame."

I gave her the emergency number to call. "If you are lucky, you will get cellphone service at Dzilam de Bravo. You can wait at the curve, en la curva, in the Highway 27. Otherwise, the village has a small hotel, which probably has a land line. If that doesn’t work you can take the highway west to that luxury hotel we noted."

Okay.

I reached into the car and emptied a white plastic bag onto the back seat. I’m going to tie this to a tree to help you find this spot. I’ll also lay a couple of cane stalks across the road. And you can use the odometer to measure the exact number of kilometers from here to where the road bends west.

It was about two and one-half miles. We didn’t think in kilometers, but we were always ready to multiply miles by 1.61 to get them.

At that moment Rebecca thought of two things that I had forgotten. She handed over my Swarthmore College ball cap and water bottle. She drove away and I tied the bag to the tree. While pulling out cane stalks to mark the highway, I thought of another coincidence related to this murder: I had read all its gory details the night before. I had bought the book, An Account of the Things of Yucatán, at a museum shop. It was written in 1566 by Friar Diego de Landa, the guy who had put the torch to all the ancient Mayan manuscripts to be found around Mérida. The passage read:

If his heart was to be taken out, they conducted him with great display and concourse of people, painted blue and wearing his miter, and placed him on the rounded sacrificial stone, after the priest and his officers had anointed the stone with blue color and purified the temple to drive away evil spirits. The chacs then seized the poor victim and swiftly laid him on his back across the stone, and the four took hold of his arms and legs, spreading them out. Then the nacon came, with a flint knife in his hand, and with great skill made an incision between the ribs on the left side, below the nipple. Then he plunged in his hand and like a ravenous tiger tore out the living heart, which he laid on a plate and gave to the priest. He then quickly went and anointed the faces of the idols with that fresh blood.

This reminded me that I must quickly return to the victim before the vulture lords had their way with him.

2. One Coincidence Too Many

I didn’t get back a minute too early because a two-bird advance party had already staked out the scene. One vulture was perched atop the tree and the other was on the ground in front of the body. I could understand why the ancient Mayas had used the vulture as an icon for lord or nobleman. This bird’s quiet, insistent presence evoked mental images of the mythological Egyptian Ibis, the god who judged souls of the deceased. I also remembered that it was a vulture that had pecked away at Hercules’ liver when he was chained to the mountain. With a loud, percussive clap of the hands and a sudden onrush, I was able to make the red-faced bandit jump in the air, flap his wings and fly off.

The other vulture stayed on his perch, regarding me with pointy, black, recessed eyes. That was okay because he was giving me the information I had originally sought: Red-skinned, featherless legs; feathered necks; face and bill covered with a bumpy layer of red skin or bone; and with a smooth white hook on the end of the bill. The featherless legs made the difference. They were a different species from the turkey vultures in Miami.

Meanwhile, the flock kept on circling as if they were the ones who knew best how things worked around here.

I used the waiting time to double-check everything that I had seen and to take photographs. Although my smart phone from Miami did not function as a cellphone here, it was useful for the Internet where Wi-Fi was available, and was very handy for snapping pictures. I documented all my conclusions with photos, taken from many angles. The only new thing I could make out was a ballpoint pen and a folded sheet of paper in the victim’s shirt pocket. These were on the flapped-back portion of the shirt, which it would be wrong to touch.

Carrying pen and paper did not fit with a Mayan peasant, and I was reminded that he had the face of a telenovela hero. Inspecting him again more closely, I saw that his hands and the soles of his feet were smooth. There was no ground-in dirt. Moreover, his face had none of the hardness that I had seen in people who do repetitive, mind-deadening physical labor, day in and day out. His face seemed to express intelligence and curiosity, even in death. True, the absence of a wristwatch would fit with a peasant, but a wristwatch could just as easily have been taken away by the murderer.

Murderers. Yes, there had to have been more than one because he was not dragged but carried here. From which direction? I surveyed the immediate area for changes in the lay of the plants or positions of the stones. I looked for indentations in the occasional patches of sand. I found an indication that the killers brought the body in from the north: Several knee-high stalks of cane were bent toward the south.

Why had they done it? Was this an attack of a Charles Manson-like gang of deranged hippies? Did Yucatán harbor this kind of tribe? Would they be expatriate Americans?

Or had a gang of drug smugglers done this to make an example of a competitor or a turncoat. Had they added heart removal to give it a Mayan twist?

Or were there indigenous religious cults around that practiced such evil? That was hard to imagine.

It was easier to imagine this as the act of a single psychotically deranged person. But the absence of dragging seemed to rule out a solitary psychotic.

I should have been drinking more water. The sun was murderous and I had been here for a long time. Why were the police taking so long? My mind drifted to our general situation. I was here because I was in love with a certain Rebecca Levis, MD, who was an assistant professor at a medical school in Miami and was making a career of eradicating disease and ignorance in the Third World by studying ways to improve their health care delivery. I share Rebecca’s interest in this. But where my personal effort is required, my inclination is to go to the source and attack ignorance. Yes, I was interested in ancient Mayan civilization, but not as a source of wisdom for the modern world. I was interested in it as an example of what people in this hemisphere were able to accomplish over the last 5,000 years, versus what the continents of Africa, Asia and Europe were able to do together in the same time. The Eastern Hemisphere won the race. Basta! As far as I know, the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere never developed any political philosophy comparable to Aristotle’s.

Now it was interesting to be learning more about their counting systems, their calendars and astronomy, their spoken languages, and the method they developed for writing stuff down. That had been my main interest during this vacation. But I was not enamored with it enough to give the Mayans any unearned credit for philosophy. And I would never pay lip service to the gods they thought up.

This was becoming a mental rant. My mind was succumbing to heat exhaustion.

Actually, it was impossible to assert that the Mayans had never produced a philosopher. When the Spanish took over Mérida in 1542, they killed all the Mayan leaders and banished their devil-worshiping religion. They decapitated Mayan high culture by burning all the Mayan language books.

Another thing that interested me about this 200-mile-square patch of coral rock — this piece of Mexico called the Yucatán Peninsula — was the Mayan people living on it today. About one-third of the inhabitants speak a Mayan dialect as their primary language. Many speak no Spanish at all. A large fraction of these traditional Mayas live by subsistence farming and crafts. They live together in small, closely knit communities. And although they live close to modern highways and Spanish-speaking towns, their way of life differs little from what it was one thousand years ago. Their communal bonds are strong and their languages have remained stable. Scholarly books have informed me that traditional Maya communities are held together by tight patriarchal bonds, and by a strong but voluntary system cooperative agriculture. Sitting in on Rebecca’s interviews allowed me to experience this first hand.

The sound of a distant police siren roused me from these thoughts. I looked up and saw that the vultures were gone. The sun was at a much lower angle. My watch told me it was after four. I ran out to the road, arriving in time to wave my hands over my head and guide the two cars to the spot. Rebecca was driving in fast and a police car was following closely with siren screaming and strobe lights flashing. I gave Rebecca thumbs up as she pulled onto the shoulder, coming to a stop one car length beyond me. The black highway patrol car came in more dramatically, skidding to a dusty stop a dozen feet in front of me. It was a lane surfer’s delight — a sporty, shark-nose, midsize American-style sedan with a swept-back windshield, wraparound headlight assembly and high fenders designed to emphasize spinning rims and rubber on the road. Along its side was a pair of broad yellow bands that narrowed, front to back, to suggest a high-speed airstream. An eight-point badge enclosing a green Yucatán emblem covered the front door. The word Policía was written on the fender arch, as if an afterthought.

The policeman lost no time getting out and rounding the car to approach me. His uniform was solid black but trimmed with yellow, like the car. Cut to fit his muscular body and barrel chest, his short-sleeved uniform was well-designed for the athletic demands of police work. His rubber-soled, black-leather shoes would be just right for this terrain, and the low brim of his black ball cap would protect his eyes from the low sun. He matched me in height — five foot, nine — but carried more weight. He also carried a lot of equipment: a walkie-talkie in one hand, a clipboard in the other, a holstered automatic clamped to the right side of his belt, and a heavy-duty flashlight hanging from the left.

I must have looked a mess with my golf shirt sweated through. I took off my aviator sunglasses for the sake of eye contact and gave him a nod of acknowledgement, which he returned. His black hair, oval face, bronze skin tone, obsidian black eyes and absence of a moustache suggested that he was of Maya ancestry, but his name tag read Pérez.

I addressed him in Spanish.

"Señor, I have found the cadaver of a homicide victim about 100 meters in the brush."

"Yes, the señora doctora told me that."

It is a horrible murder with ritual aspects. You will need here a forensic team, and the body will require a thorough autopsy.

He frowned for a second. A team has been called. It should be arriving from Mérida in approximately forty-five minutes. He paused for a couple of seconds, as if considering the choice of his next words. "Is la señora doctora practicing medicine here?"

"She is a physician and medical scientist who has a temporary guest appointment at the Universidad Atónoma de Yucatán. She does not treat patients here. She is studying your excellent health care system. She was traveling to meet one of their social workers at a village located about twenty kilometers south of here."

Rebecca was approaching, but she slowed her pace after hearing herself discussed.

I see, said Officer Pérez. That will explain why she asked to call a professor at the university.

"Yes, she needed to break the appointment. She has not seen the body. I have, but I have not touched it. I have not disturbed anything. I am Ben Candidi, the fiancé of señora doctora Rebecca Levis. I followed her here to make vacation with her. We are both citizens of the USA, with domicile in Miami."

A smile grew on his face. "You are americano-cubano?"

"No, but I have many friends among them in Miami, along with mexicanos and other latinoamericanos. My family origin is americano-italiano."

Well thank you, he said, for helping us. Turning to Rebecca, he said, "And I must make apologies to la señora doctora for my lack of ability in English."

Rebecca understood this and said quickly in Spanish that no apology was necessary.

While leading them to the crime scene, I exchanged a few words with Rebecca in English. She had made the call from the small hotel in Dizlam de Bravo. But she’d had a long wait because Officer Pérez was headquartered in Progreso. I told her to not look at the body because the murder was ugly and ritualistic.

No, Ben, I should look at it because I might see something that they don’t.

Fine, but we should not get you involved in this as a doctor. We should just give the police our professional observations and leave matters in their hands.

She agreed to that.

As the crime scene came into sight, we dropped behind the policeman. It was his case and I was interested in his initial reaction.

"Dios mío, he exclaimed. Drawing closer to the corpse, he crossed himself. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open as he stared at the bloody gap between the ribs. Brujería, he said under his breath. Locura. Una obra del diablo," he muttered.

Witchcraft. Madness. A work of the Devil.

He crossed himself again and turned his saddened face to me. "Que los ángeles lo lleven al cielo."

That the angels take him to heaven.

I nodded in agreement, adding, "Que así sea, y que el Señor lo mantenga para siempre."

That it be so, and that the Lord embrace him forever.

The policeman probed the victim’s trouser pockets and found nothing. Then he carefully lifted the right side of the shirt to extract the folded paper. That was when I noticed high-pitched sounds coming from behind me. It was Rebecca, and her face showed even more shock than the policeman’s.

Ben help me, she said in a shaky voice. She took a tentative step toward me, her right hand raised and extended. It came down on my shoulder. Help me. Tell him I need to come closer. I think I know the victim . . . from an interview.

"Caramba," exclaimed the policeman, staring at the paper.

Rebecca, I said, putting an arm around her waist, you’ve been interviewing people for two weeks. You must have interviewed four dozen people.

No, Ben, it wasn’t like that.

Now Officer Pérez was on the walkie-talkie, telling his counterparts that the victim looked like a Mayan villager and that he needed them to bring some elders from the neighboring villages because there was no identification to be found on the body.

Rebecca was holding on like she needed my support to stand. But she was also pulling me toward the victim. It was as if she were trying to peer over the edge of a cliff and needed a steady hand to assure that she would not fall off.

I shifted behind her and locked my hands around her stomach. Listen, darling. Their features are a lot different from ours. It’s hard to judge differences in people of another race. The chances are that you interviewed someone who just looks like him.

"I didn’t interview him. He interviewed me . . . about my work . . . at the university . . . for the news section of their website. His name is B’alam Chuc."

3. A Mother’s Tears

I told Officer Pérez what Rebecca had said. She pronounced the victim’s name for him. She popped the initial b with a full glottal stop, bringing that consonant’s sound to an abrupt halt before sliding through the second and third syllables of the first name. She pronounced the family name like chook. Her pronunciation must have been flawless because Officer Pérez didn’t ask her to repeat it or spell it out. He got on his walkie-talkie repeater unit and told his counterparts to try to find emergency contacts for a student named B’alam Chuc at the Autonomous University of Yucatán.

Then he started interrogating us. Had we ever been to this spot before today? No. Had we been in this area before? No, only when traveling through by road. Did we know

Reviews for Yucatán Is Murder

[welsh_eileen2 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This is a story that did not hold my interest at all. In fact I didn't finish it I regret to say.
I found the characters unbelievable.
Maybe if I read other books in the series I may understand a bit more.
I was given a digital copy of this book by the publisher via Netgalley in return for an honest unbiased review.