Dear Reader
The events in the following story are loosely based on a real-life event that occurred in the 1990s. The names of the characters and institutions have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike.
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The hot Honduran sun beat down on the excavation site while the group of diggers toiled. The group consisted of a dozen students from the University of Tallahassee and they were supervised by Zach Turner, a doctoral candidate who had been put in charge of the day to day management of the excavation. The excavation itself was chosen in an area of the ruins of the ancient citadel of Copan believed to have been a residential compound for the city-state's affluent elite. Zach had brought his fiancé Linda along to join the group dig.
Zach and the group were managed by Professor Hal Jaylor from Tallahassee's Department of Archaeology and Dr Phillpe Duponte a French expert in Maya pottery who had been a resident of the nearby village of Copan Ruinas for over a decade. Duponte seemed to have a influential finger in a lot of pies within the Copan village community.
As the daily temperature rose, each of the diggers began to sweat profusely as they attempted to free their spades from the clay that had been saturated by the previous night's rainfall.
Pieces of broken pottery were rescued from the gluey mud and set aside for preliminary cleaning and recording. Each layer uncovered was plotted and photographed. This process was repeated throughout the working day when the excavation was covered with protective sheeting and the finds were gathered up and deposited in the research facility that lay directly opposite the ruins themselves. The diggers were exhausted with their labour and each longed for a hot shower to rid themselves of the caked clay that clung heavily to their boots and clothes. This was the second week of the scheduled six week project.
Zack too was tired but he kept reminding himself that all the painfully slow progress would be worthwhile and that his PhD thesis would depend on the evidence they uncovered. However, he was somewhat perplexed by the more frequent absences of his fiancé Linda from the daily digging team efforts. She had initially participated eagerly for the first week, but then begged off to do some sight-seeing around the village. Her absences during the day seemed to be getting longer and longer. Late afternoon, the day's dig ended and the group of diggers disbanded to head to their respective hotel rooms. Zach reached his small hotel room that he shared with Linda and took off his mud-caked boots before entering. He found his fiance sitting on their bed wrapped in a towel, combing her wet hair, obviously following a shower. After trying to engage in conversation with her, Linda seemed to Zach somewhat distracted. Puzzled, Zach hit the shower and felt the hot water revive him. He kissed Linda and began to rub her body, undoing her towel in the process. Linda firmly pushed his hands away and said "Zach, I'm just not in the mood tonight...I just need to sleep". Zach was taken aback by her rejection. This was so unlike the Linda he knew who was normally as keen on sex as he was. He decided not to push the issue but instead climbed naked into their shared bed and attempted to sleep. Unfortunately it did not come easy to him and he spent a large part of the night staring at the ceiling and the overhead fan as it rotated noisily above his head. After several hours exhaustion got the better of him and he slipped into sleep.
The following morning, Zack climbed out of the bed careful not to wake his fiancé. He got dressed into his work clothes and boots and headed out to the excavation site. The digging team had already arrived and were setting up for the day's routine activities. Zach pushed the previous night and Linda's rejection of his amorous advances to the back of his mind and immersed himself in the excavation.
