A Vine in the Blood (19 page)

“Third wife. Eight and six, both girls.”

Nothing affected Silva so much as the murder of children.

“You figure this is business related?” Hector said, breaking a short silence. “Some rival trying to take over Miranda’s bank?”

“Maybe,” Silva said. “But …”

Arnaldo caught his meaning and shook his head. “A job like this,” he said, “takes time to set up, lots more time than just a few hours. Besides, who knew Miranda was going to talk to us?”

“Cintia Tadesco,” Silva said. “Cintia Tadesco knew Miranda was going to talk to us.”

“She couldn’t have done it on her own. She would have needed help.”

“Five million dollars buys a lot of help. How about access to the garage from the outside?”

“Two sets of gates, on tracks, motor controlled. You go down the ramp and honk your horn. They check you out on the TV camera and open the first gate. Then they close it behind you before they open the second.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

The doormen in the lobby.”

“Is that the only switch?”

“It is.”

“Can both gates be opened at once?”

Gonçalves shook his head.

“Do they issue remote controls to the residents?”

“No, and they don’t open the gates to anyone but them—or people they authorize—in person.”

“Other entrances?”

“The social entrance faces the street. The service entrance faces a parking lot in the rear. Access to the lot is via a driveway that runs along the side of the building.”

“The tapes?”

“I looked at the ones of the front door and the service entrance. I haven’t had time yet for the garage.”

“Anything suspicious?”

“Not yet. The images are lousy. The recorders are VHS devices, older than my grandmother. They run on a twentyfour hour loop. I shut the system down as soon as I got here, but by then it was hours after the explosion.”

Silva glanced at his watch. “It’s time. Let’s go back and hear what that fire examiner has to say.”

E
LISABETH
C
ORREIA
had a smudged face and looked to be in her mid-thirties. Her heavy yellow coat was two sizes too big. When she took off her helmet, spiky black hair protruded in all directions.

“A bomb,” she said. “Almost certainly.”

“What kind?” Silva asked.

“I can’t tell you without chemical analysis. You want a guess?”

“Please.”

“Ammonium nitrate and fuel oil, or maybe kerosene.”

“A fertilizer bomb?”

“Yes. The fruitcake’s weapon of choice. They’re bulky, but they’re oh-so-easy to make. The detonator would have been the most sophisticated part of the package. If I’m lucky, I’ll find some trace of it.”

“In that mess? Seriously?”

“Seriously. Something else: they used an accelerant, probably gasoline. Liters and liters of the stuff. They poured it all over the place.”

“Did you find the children?”

“Yes.”

“Were they—”

She put up a hand, as if to fend him off. “Please, Chief Inspector,” she said. “I’m a mother, and I’m very close to losing it, and if I talk about what I just saw, I
will
lose it. That wouldn’t do either one of us any good, now would it?”

“I understand.”

“Do you?” She was looking up at the building.

“Believe me, I do. I once had a son.”

She met his eyes. He could see, now, that she had tears in hers.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

Commiseration or apology, Silva wasn’t sure which.

“Any idea how they got the bomb into the penthouse?” he asked.

“They
didn’t
get it into the penthouse.”

“How so?”

“The bomb was
under
the penthouse. It was set off in the master bedroom of the apartment below.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

T
HE DOORMAN ON DUTY
at the time of the explosion was in his fifties. He was still in a state of shock.

His relief man, recently arrived on the scene, was much younger, probably well under thirty. He was smiling, talkative and seemed to be enjoying all the excitement.

Silva positioned them side-by-side on a couch in the lobby.

“Who lived on the floor below the penthouse?”

“Atilio Nabuco, Senhor,” the younger man said.

“Married?”

“Married, Senhor.”

“Children?”

“Two.”

“Boys? Girls?”

“One of each.”

“Ages?”

The younger man shrugged and looked at the older one.

“Vanessa was eighteen last week,” the older one said.

“And you know that because …”

“She was excited about getting her driver’s license. She kept talking about it.”

“How about the boy?”

“You think he’s dead, Senhor?” the younger man asked.

“If he was in his parents’ apartment at the time of the explosion, he is. How old?”

“Older.”

“Twenty-one,” the older man said. “Lito was twenty-one. A nice kid. Always polite.”

“My understanding,” Silva said, “is that you don’t open the garage gates to people you don’t know, people who aren’t residents of the building.”

“Correct, Senhor,” the younger man said.

“What happens if there’s a delivery of some kind, furniture or some such?”

Silva looked from one to the other. The older man seemed to tune out, stared at the wall, let his younger colleague answer the question. “It has to be brought upstairs in the freight elevator, but before that happens, a resident has to okay it. Nobody’s allowed in the garage otherwise.”

“There’s a TV camera down there, right?”

“There is, Senhor.”

“Where?”

“To the left of the ramp.”

Silva was concentrating, now, on the younger man. “Does it capture the faces of the drivers?”

“Yes.”

“But only when they come in?”

“Correct, Senhor.”

“How do people signal when they want to leave?”

“It’s not necessary, Senhor. There are sensors. On the way out, the gates open automatically.”

“Do you keep a log of comings and goings in the garage?”

“Yes, Senhor.”

“Bring it, please.”

The older doorman seemed to snap out of his reverie. He got up, went into a room opening off the back of the reception desk and came back carrying a ledger. Resuming his seat on the couch, he made a gesture for Silva to sit down next to him. Then he opened the book and laid it across Silva’s knees.

“Here, Senhor, you see?” he said, leaning in, putting the tip of one of his index fingers on the book. “The times are on this side, and, here”—his finger moved to the right of the page—“the numbers of the apartments. Senhor Nabuco lives in Apartment 7.”

Silva raised a critical eyebrow.

“Times and apartment numbers? That’s all? You don’t identify the vehicles?”

“We used to have a camera that recorded them. But then the camera broke down, and we never had need of the recordings, so the owners decided not to replace it.”

“No 7A or 7B?”

“This is a luxury building, Senhor. Only one apartment to a floor.”

T
HE VIDEOTAPE
was time-coded. The times corresponded closely to notations in the log. That made it possible to fastforward between entries and quickly locate all of the comings and goings associated with Apartment 7.

They watched Nabuco leave for work, his wife leave and return with shopping bags, his son and daughter leaving and returning with books, and at 7:14, exactly, Nabuco returning home at the wheel of a white Volkswagen mini-van. It wasn’t the same vehicle he’d left in that morning.

Silva froze the tape. Nabuco, his eyes wide with fear, was looking directly at the camera.

“Look at that,” the older doorman said. “What a goddamned idiot.”

“Idiot is right,” his colleague agreed.

“Who?” Silva said.

“Antonio. The four to midnight man.”

“And the supervisor’s nephew,” the older man added heatedly, “or he would have gotten his ass fired a long time ago. Look at Senhor Nabuco. Anyone can see he’s scared out of his wits.”

“Call this Antonio fellow and get him over here,” Silva said. “Now.”

“H
OW THE
fuck was I supposed to know there was anything wrong? What am I, a mind reader?”

“Just look at him,” the older doorman said, pointing at the image frozen on the screen. “Look at Senhor Nabuco’s face. It’s obvious he’s frightened to death. How you could have missed it is a mystery to both of us.”

“The two of you ganging up on me again, huh? As usual? Assholes!”

“Asshole yourself,” the older man said.

“Shut up,” Silva said. “Both of you. Look at it again.”

He hit the rewind, then the play button. On the front seat next to Nabuco, seated well back, face in deep shadow, was a man. Or maybe a woman. It was impossible to tell.

Silva froze the image in approximately the same place he’d frozen it half a dozen times before.

“No good to keep playing it,” Antonio said. “I already told you. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Brought that little TV of yours along, didn’t you?” The older man said. “Watching it, weren’t you?”

“No,” Antonio said, but he flushed.

“You’ve been told not to do that,” his other colleague told Antonio. “And now look what happened.”

“Easy for you to talk,” Antonio said. “You weren’t here. If you were, the same thing could have happened to you.”

“Never. I’m like Cristiano here. I take my job seriously, I do.”

“That’s enough!” Silva said. “You recall what time the van left?”

“It didn’t leave,” Antonio said. “Not when I was here, it didn’t.”

“About three in the morning,” the older doorman said.

“And you didn’t find that strange?”

He shrugged. “Not particularly. Folks come and go at all hours.”

“When the van reached street level, could you see who was driving?”

“No.”

“Was it a man or a woman?”

“I couldn’t even see that. It was too dark and, besides, it turned right. It didn’t pass in front of the building.”

“Let’s have a look at it,” Silva said.

He put the tape on fast-forward. When the van appeared again, the time code read 03:19. Silva froze the image. They all leaned in for a closer look.

An indistinguishable shape sat behind the wheel. On the screen it was no more than a featureless blob.

“Have you ever seen Senhor Nabuco driving this van?” Silva said.

All three men shook their heads.

“People here don’t drive vans,” the older man said. “They drive BMWs and Mercs, stuff like that. I remember thinking a van was funny.”

“Funny, but you were too lazy to get off your fat ass and have a closer look, weren’t you?” Antonio said.

“Don’t try spreading the blame for your incompetence to me, you fuck.”

Silva’s phone rang. He left them sniping at each other and stepped into the lobby to answer it.

“Chief Inspector Silva?”

He didn’t recognize the voice.

“I’m Silva.”

“Chief Inspector, this is Warden Fuentes.”

Fuentes ran the penitentiary where Fiorello Rosa, the ace kidnapper, had been incarcerated for six of the last seven years.

“Rosa wants to talk to you, wants to know if it could be this afternoon.”

“Even sooner,” Silva said.