SAM AND REMI GATHERED their team around the worktable, and over the next few hours, and a pair of family-sized pies from Sammy’s Wood-fired Pizzas, they mulled over the mystery before them. The crux of the issue, they decided, could be summed up in two questions:
1. Did Blaylock’s apparent mental instability cast into doubt all they’d found?
2. Were Rivera and his people on a fool’s quest based on Blaylock’s influence, or on other evidence?
Clearly Rivera was either searching for something or trying to keep something hidden, something that was probably Aztec in origin.
Pete Jeffcoat said, “If you’re right about the tourists they murdered, then it seems clear they’re trying to hide something. It’s hard for me to believe they’d do that just because of Blaylock. Wouldn’t they have been asking the same questions about the guy that we are?”
“Good point,” Sam said.
“If that’s the case,” Wendy said, “then maybe Blaylock wasn’t insane; maybe he was just eccentric, and there was something to his Aztec obsession.”
“As well as his fixation on the ship,” Selma added.
Remi said, “Okay, let’s take that as a given. How and why we don’t know, but Blaylock became obsessed with the Shenandoah, or El Majidi; at some point after that, his mind turned to all things Aztec. Before we go any further, we need to find out when that happened and what caused it.”
Sam asked Pete and Wendy, “How’re we doing on Miss Cynthia’s letters?”
“Another hour or so, and we should have them all examined,” Wendy replied. “Another two hours to scan them and have the computer do an optical character recognition search. After that, we’ll be able to easily sort them by date and search by key word.”
Sam smiled. “Got any big plans tonight?”
“I guess we do now,” Pete replied.
ACCUSTOMED TO how her husband’s brain worked, Remi was not surprised to awaken and find him sitting up at the edge of the bed, Apple iPad propped on his knees. The nightstand clock read 4:12 A.M.
“Lightbulb moment?” she asked.
“I was thinking about chaos.”
“Of course you were.”
“And how most mathematicians don’t believe in it. They know it exists—there’s even chaos theory—but I think secretly they all believe in underlying order. Even if it’s not obvious.”
“I can buy that.”
“Then why would Blaylock go to all the trouble of randomly carving Aztec glyphs on the bell’s interior? And why the bell?”
Remi said, “I assume that’s a rhetorical question.”
“I’m working through it. Did you read this poem from Blaylock’s journal?”
“I didn’t know there was one.”
“I just found it. Pete and Wendy just uploaded it,” Sam said, then recited:
In my love’s heart I pen my devotion
On Engai’s gyrare I trust my feet
From above, the earth turns, my day is halved
Words of Ancients
words of Father Algarismo
“Not bad for a mathematician,” observed Remi.