The question had plagued Diego through the night until the answer came to him early this morning. The strangely familiar boy finally connected to a face he’d often wondered about since the investigation in
Teotihuacan
. Derek’s face matched that of the American gringo who’d driven the silver rental car up to the road blockade in
Teotihuacan
.
He
was the one who first mentioned the equinox that day. He hadn’t been among the New Agers who were arrested because Diego had turned him away from the road blockade.
The Equinox Killer had driven right into his hands and Diego let him go!
The very thought was aggravating. To compensate, Diego formulated scenarios to make sense of Gaspar’s murder. Slowly, the pieces began to fall in place. Derek had the build of a killer and Eva lacked the remorse of a suffering family member. Derek must have driven Gaspar to
Teotihuacan
, murdered him on the spot and then abandoned him and the pickup with Eva behind the wheel of their getaway car.
But the timing of the murder conflicted with their airline tickets. Another missing piece until…
Enter three newcomers to the group: an older gentleman, a healthy middle-aged man who could also pass for a killer, and a nice-looking young woman.
Who in the hell are these people?
Diego had followed Eva and her partner to the airport where he half-expected them to catch a flight out of the country. He was preparing to arrest them at the ticket counter but to his surprise, the couple parked in the short-term parking where Derek left for the terminal, leaving Eva alone in the car.
The pair had split up, making his plans for arrest that much more difficult. But as he debated over who to snag first, Diego looked up to find Derek running from another man and by the end of the chase, the two were joined by the old fart and the girl. The entire scene had been noteworthy if not completely baffling.
The three newcomers didn’t appear to be any sort of relation to the Gaspars—they were too white for that. Perhaps they were Derek’s accomplices. That made sense. Considering the ruthless and elusive manner in which the four murder victims had been sacrificed, Derek must have had accomplices, especially while he was accompanying Eva Gaspar from the states. If that was the case, given the scene at the airport, there were apparent tensions within his ranks.
The whole group was a curious mix of characters, but it was still Derek who held Diego’s focus. He’d been the consistent factor in all of this, and now that Diego knew who Acatzalan was, he was willing to sit back and let the pieces fall into place. He was going to prove that Derek Riesling aka Acatzalan was the Equinox Killer, and finally rid himself of this case. Any accomplices he took down with him would be mere notches in Diego’s belt.
Sunstone
A monolithic statue of the rain god, Tlaloc—as Dr. Friedman was quick to explain—greeted Lori and the group near the entrance of the
Museo Nacional de Antropología
. After a brief inquiry inside, they were directed to curator, Frederico de Gala Espanoza, who genuinely welcomed them into his office, obviously curious about the five Americans who’d requested his assistance.
Espanoza cautiously regarded them as he explained that the only donation made to the museum within the last week had been monetary in nature, of an undisclosed amount. That was before he laughed in a polite, almost apologetic, way when Derek asked about hiding an artifact behind the Aztec sunstone.
“It is impossible to hide anything of such size you are describing behind the sunstone,” the curator said, pressing the tips of his discreetly manicured fingers together. Then, as if to dispel all doubts, he added, “See for yourselves.”
Dr. Friedman obliged, but instead of cutting through galleries where terra cotta figurines, stone-encrusted funerary masks and mystical Mayan stellas might distract them, he whisked them through an outdoor patio covered by a large concrete canopy, past decorative flora adorning bronze statues and a concrete pond, and finally entered straight into the Aztec hall of the museum. He didn’t stop until they came to a massive basalt disk illuminated beneath the golden beams of the museum’s track lighting.
Lori had seen the weathered stone with its intricate mosaic-style glyphwork before, from textbook photographs of course. But its incredible twelve-foot diameter was even more impressive from only five feet away. The circular pattern of glyphs within glyphs was almost mesmerizing, like a psychedelic dream. It was a busy work of art focusing the eye on the only thing that seemed recognizable—an eerie round face at the heart of the overlapping rings of glyphs.
It was easy to see why the curator had laughed. Mere inches stood between the giant sunstone and the back wall it was displayed against. The effigy couldn’t possibly have fit within the space, and even if it had, it would have been easily viewed by the public passing into the adjoining room. The other side of the wall didn’t produce anything either—that was the first place Derek looked.
“I don’t get it,” Eva said, glancing around the surrounding exhibits. “The sunstone is Aztec, not Toltec. Why would my father send us here?”
“The Aztecs were a Nahuatl-speaking culture,” Dr. Friedman explained, “as were the Toltecs. In fact, the Aztecs considered themselves to be descendants of the great Toltecs.”
“Yeah, but Shaman Gaspar never referred to the Aztecs before,” Derek said. “There must be a different Toltec sunstone somewhere.”
“I don’t believe such a thing exists,” Dr. Peet said. “If memory serves me correctly, the Aztec sunstones were adaptations of the turquoise mirrors, or disks, of the Toltecs.”
“Precisely,” Dr. Friedman said. “The turquoise disks and the sunstone were often used as a base for fire drills which started ceremonial fires.”
“Hold on,” Derek said. “I don’t recall Shaman Gaspar mentioning anything about ceremonial fire disks.”
“I’m sure in this day and age, he had no use for them.”
“C’mon. The sunstone was used to start fires? That sounds pretty far-fetched.”
To Lori, the concept wasn’t far-fetched at all. In fact, it reminded her of a Navajo creation myth. According to the legend, a turquoise disk was used to generate a fire which ultimately gave rise to the sun. The similarities between the Navajo and the Toltec turquoise disks didn’t escape her either, nor might it escape mention among the trade theories explored by her dissertation.
Dr. Friedman smiled. “You must give heed to the Mesoamerican mind, Derek. The Aztec sunstone emphasizes the creation of the fifth sun, the last age if you will, which is depicted by the Four Ollin glyph in the center of the stone. Considering this fifth age was believed to have been born through fire, it’s easy to understand why sunstones, or the Toltec turquoise disks, were used for ceremonial fires. Four Ollin also refers to quakes, or earth movement, which might indicate the current age will be destroyed by earthquakes.”
“I don’t know how you read anything out of that mess,” Eva said.
“Don’t look at the sunstone as a whole,” Dr. Peet explained. “Just focus on the different parts of it.”
“Such as?”
“Such as the four glyphs surrounding Four Ollin,” Dr. Friedman said. He lifted an arm to point at four boxed glyphs clinging to the outside quarters of the innermost glyph. “They represent the four previous ages.”
“I see six glyphs surrounding Four Ollin,” Eva said. “What are the other two?”
“Those aren’t glyphs. Those are Four Ollin’s claws, each clutching a human heart.”
Eva scowled. “Sorry I asked.”
Dr. Friedman continued, unflinching. “Moving even further outward along the sunstone you’ll notice that the five ages are circled by the twenty day signs of the Calendar Round.”
Lori held her breath as she scanned over the familiar ring of day signs. She’d seen them all in the Calendar Round Dr. Friedman had printed off. Just as she expected, the serpentine sign for Coatl was there, just as it looked on the piece of newsletter Derek had taped to the effigy’s storage container.
“How were the earlier ages destroyed?” she asked.
Dr. Friedman smiled. “Interestingly enough, by Tezcatlipoca and Quetzalcoatl.”
“What?”
He cleared his throat and when he continued, he took on the tone of a museum tour guide. “According to Aztec mythology, the first age was ruled by Tezcatlipoca, who had assumed his throne in the sun. However, Quetzalcoatl couldn’t bear to allow his rival to rule the world, so he struck down his twin. Enraged, Tezcatlipoca transformed into a jaguar and destroyed the earth. Thus, the first age is said to have been destroyed by jaguars.
“However, while in control, Quetzalcoatl revived the world and thus began the second age, but then he was overthrown by Tezcatlipoca who ended the age with a tremendous wind. Their battle continued into the third age until Quetzalcoatl destroyed it with fire and then Tezcatlipoca countered by drowning the fourth age in a great flood.”
“Now it’s Quetzalcoatl’s turn to off the fifth age with earthquakes,” Derek observed solemnly.
“Then what?” Eva asked. “Will there be a sixth age?”
Dr. Friedman shrugged. “The stories only count five ages.”
“Maybe this constant battle will end the world once and for all,” Derek mused.
“Don’t get carried away,” Dr. Peet said. “This is only a story. We shouldn’t be any more concerned about it than the millennium bug.”
“Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca weren’t always enemies,” Dr. Friedman added. “In fact, there are other creation stories that describe them working together to create the earth, not to mention the fifth age.”
A crease developed between Dr. Peet’s eyes. “My Aztec lore is a little rusty, but wasn’t the fifth age created when all the deities threw themselves into a fire?”
Dr. Friedman nodded. “All of them gathered, but only two sacrificed themselves to the fire. According to mythology, this occurred in a Thirteen Reed year—marked by this solitary glyph situated at the very top of the sunstone. One of the sacrificed deities became the sun, the other the moon, and thus the fifth age began. The sunstone repeatedly commemorates their fiery self-sacrifice by the flames spiking the bodies of the twin snakes that form the outside border.”
“They look like butterflies to me,” Eva mumbled.
Lori leaned in for a closer look, careful not to touch the velvet rope strung before the exhibit. She spotted the two snakes. Their heads met at the bottommost part of the circle, mouths gaping toward their mirror images, their snouts curling like caterpillars toward the back of the head. The segmented bodies of the snakes, each segment marked by a flame or butterfly, created the outer circumference of the stone, the tails looping back to each other at the top where the Thirteen Reed glyph stood between their two triangular rattles.
“Is this Quetzalcoatl?” Eva asked.
Dr. Friedman shook his head. “No. This is Xiuhcoatl. There’s a lot of symbolism associated with this snake. For instance, each body segment represents the fifty-two year cycle of the Calendar Round, with the four year markers, Knife, Reed, Rabbit and House represented by the four bands near Xiuhcoatl’s rattle. And the seven stars of the Pleiades fringe his curling snout, making the sunstone more of a cosmological artifact.”
Lori frowned. “What are the Pleiades?”
John cleared his throat. “It’s a small cluster of stars located in the Taurus constellation.”
Lori drew a blank, which wasn’t missed by Derek.
“I’m sure you’ve seen them,” he said. “The Pleiades look like a tiny Big Dipper to me. The three stars of Orion’s Belt point directly at them.”