Free 12.21 by Dustin Thomason Page B

Living here in Los Angeles, commingling of Spanish, Mayan, and English was common. But where Volcy had come from, it was reasonable to doubt a Maya church with such a word in its name.
    “
Fraternidad
cannot know,” Volcy continued. “I will never lead the
ladinos
to Janotha and Sama.… 
You are ajwaral!
”
    There was no single English word for it. It meant literally,
You are a native of here
. But Volcy intended it as an indigenous slur. Even though Chel had been born in a village like his, even though she devoted her life to studying the ancients—to men like him, she would always be an outsider.
    “Dr. Manu?” said a voice from behind her.
    She turned and found a white-coated figure standing in the doorway.
    “I’m Gabriel Stanton.”
    CHEL TRAILED THE new doctor past the masked security guard and out into the hallway. His voice was full of purpose, and his height gave him a commanding presence. How long had he been watching? Had he sensed the uncomfortable direction her conversation with Volcy had taken? Stanton turned. “So Mr. Volcy says he was sick before he got to the States?”
    “That’s what he told me.”
    “We have to know for sure,” Stanton told her. “We’ve been looking for a source here in L.A. If what he says is true, we need to be looking in Guatemala instead. Did he say where in the country he was from?”
    “Based on his accent, I have to assume he’s from the Petén,” she told him. “It’s the largest department—the equivalent of states. But I haven’t gotten anything more about the village he’s from. And he won’t say how he got into America.”
    “Either way,” Stanton said, “we could be talking about Guatemalan meat as our vector. And if he’s from some small indigenous village, then it has to be something he would have had access to. Far as I understand, thousands of acres of tropical forest have been cut to make way for cattle farms down there. That right?”
    Chel nodded. His knowledge was impressive, and he was clearly a smart guy, if intimidating.
    “Volcy could’ve been exposed to tainted meat from any of those cattle farms,” Stanton said. “We need to know all the meat he ate before his symptoms began. Far back as he can remember. Beef especially, but also chicken, pork—anything.”
    “Villagers can eat meat from half a dozen different animals at a single meal.”
    Dr. Stanton appeared to be studying her. She noticed that the doctor’s glasses were crooked and felt an unaccountable urge to fix them. He was at least a foot taller than she was, and she had to crane her neck to gaze at him.
    “I need you to get him to dig as deep as he can,” Stanton said.
    “I’ll do my best.”
    “Did he say what he’s doing here? Did he come looking for work?”
    “No,” she lied. “He didn’t say. He was fading in and out by the end and not really answering my questions.”
    “People with this kind of insomnia can wax and wane by the minute. Let’s try it another way.”
    Inside the room, Volcy now lay with his eyes closed, his breathinghard and labored. Chel was afraid of how he would react when he saw her, and for a split second she considered telling Stanton the truth—coming clean about the codex and Volcy’s connection to it.
    But she didn’t. She was too worried about ICE or the Getty finding out. She was too afraid of losing everything she’d worked for
and
the codex at the same time.
    “We’ve learned from Alzheimer’s that patients with this kind of brain damage sometimes respond better to questions if there are triggers,” Stanton said. “The key is to go one step at a time and lead them from question to question.”
    Volcy opened his eyes and looked at Stanton before turning his gaze to Chel. When they locked stares, she waited for his hostility to surface.
    Nothing.
    “Start with his name,” Stanton said.
    “We know his name.”
    “Exactly. Tell him: Your name is Volcy.”
    Chel turned to the patient.
“At, Volcy ri’