Requiem for a Killer (2 page)

He was right next to the body now and
noticed that it didn’t stink; the stiff was fresh, as they said at
the precinct. The stench from the mangrove and his clothes was so
strong that he needed to lean over the body to smell it more
closely on the forehead and confirm his suspicion: it smelled of
salty and acid sweat, but not of rotten meat. At least not yet.

Looking up, he squinted against the sun and
saw little black dots circling in the sky. His gaze shifted to the
opposite side of the narrow canal, where there were more little
dots sitting motionlessly on the mangrove trees, waiting patiently
for Dornelas to go away so they could land on the corpse and enjoy
the feast.

The inspector was momentarily irritated by
all the attention he was getting: the crowd on one side and the
vultures on the other. He decided to speed up his review of the
body.

He first took a mental picture of the scene
and stored it in the back of his mind. He counted on his intuition
– a precious tool in his work – to soon provide him with a complete
and total analysis. In the meantime he stared reverently at the
corpse, becoming intrigued by it. He looked for the signs that had
caused his first impression and wondered if it could be the
position of the body, the slight smile, or the open eyes, glassy
and inert, that gave it the appearance of a cherub in a state of
devotion. Or maybe it was all three taken together.
‘What would
make someone die with a smile like that on his face,’
he
wondered.

He observed the bare feet and the legs bare
up to the knees. From there on up they were hidden under a pair of
white or beige striped shorts, so dirty you couldn’t tell which. He
found no signs of violence, no recent marks or scars.

His eyes continued up to the naked torso.
The prominent belly was beginning to become distended, stretched
like a drum, and its skin was beginning to dry up in the sun, the
result of the decomposition now underway. He moved on to the
hairless, unmarked chest, then up to the neck that bore no signs of
strangulation, and finally to the shaven head, where there was also
no sign of injury.

He looked at the arms and the only thing
that caught his attention was a small, round band-aid stuck to the
inside fold of the left arm. The skin around it was slightly
bruised. Other than that everything seemed normal. If there was
anything on his back it would show up in the autopsy later. He
didn’t want to turn him over here.

He studied the mud surrounding the body,
looking for signs: blood, footprints, signs of a boat, or of
something being dragged. Nothing. Taking his cell phone out of his
pocket Dornelas quickly took pictures of everything that caught his
eye. The tide was coming in quickly and any clues would soon
disappear beneath the water. A picture here, another there, an
angle, a detail – anything that might help him in the ensuing
investigation.

He knew the people from forensics wouldn’t
use any of this. They couldn’t, even if they wanted to, at least
not in an official capacity. Each agency involved – Military
Police, Fire Department, Forensics, Medical Examiners and Civil
Police - of which Dornelas was the Chief Inspector – has its own
specific duties and the structure is set up so that each organ is
allowed to do only its pre-determined part in an investigation. But
sometimes things overlap and toes get stepped on.

Before noticing that the incoming tide was
already lapping at his thighs and the corpse was beginning to
loosen itself from the mud, a red light lit up in his head. He
focused his attention more closely on the band-aid. He would have
to get back to it later. He had to move quickly or the body would
soon float away to God knows where and the vultures would attack it
voraciously.
‘To hell with the fire department and
forensics,’
he thought.

Dornelas took off his belt, tied it to the
body by the right wrist and began pulling it towards the bank. In
the meantime, the Military Police had arrived and were already
cordoning off the perimeter and dispersing the crowd.

As he glanced at the curious people lined up
on the shore, Dornelas lamented mankind’s morbid enjoyment of
death. He had never understood why humans delight so in seeing
their own species’ misfortune turned into a spectacle. Perhaps it
was some sort of inherited animal trait, raising its ugly head when
faced with a calamity. Maybe it was pure thirst for blood; or maybe
it was just the lack of something better to do.

The fact is, however, that at times like
these the human race lowers itself to a bovine-like mental state,
watching impassively as a lion devours one of its own in broad
daylight.

He thought of the programs on TV, with their
rich menu of options: the reconstitution of crimes, scientific
crime scene investigation methods, people being killed in front of
the camera.
‘This is what the press lives for,’
he
decided.

Standing there, Chief Inspector Joaquim
Dornelas looked up at the crowd and what he saw was a swarm of
flies hovering over fresh manure.

Chapter 2

D
ornelas reached
the foot of the seawall sweaty and panting. He raised the belt tied
to the corpse as high as he could so Solano and Lotufo could grab
it and haul it out of the mangrove. He got out further along, where
the wall was lower, and told Solano he needed to go home to change
clothes before heading to the precinct.

Lotufo wrapped the body in a black plastic
sheet on top of the wall. It would now be safe from the vultures,
but not from the scorching sun. Two hours in this heat and the body
would be baked like a snook wrapped in banana leaves.

On the way home, filthy and stinking, he
decided to first stop at the gas station two blocks ahead to shower
in the car wash. If he left his filthy clothes for Neide to wash
she would surely quit and he couldn’t afford the luxury of losing
her. The day maid was trustworthy, took care of the house, his
clothes and occasionally even the dog, all with a certain amount of
affection. She wasn’t great in the kitchen, but did she okay with
the basic stuff. And for a recently separated man, with little time
and less experience in taking care of a home, her help was not only
welcome, but necessary.

*

He gave himself up to a long shower,
scrubbing himself with soap and a sponge more than once. Even so
the smell of mud that had sunk into his soul took a long time to
disappear. The dog watched him curled up on the bathroom rug, the
same place he slept every night.

He was a rangy dog, plain and amiable, that
always looked dirty even after occasionally showering with
Dornelas, who would wash him with liquid detergent – a recipe from
a childhood veterinarian friend who considered it the best remedy
against fleas. For lack of a better idea the inspector followed the
prescription every time Lupi began to smell too much.

*

The corpse had brought the police station to
life. The sight of people milling around and the sound of the
phones ringing pleased the inspector as he walked through the
door.

Marilda, the receptionist, leaned over her
desk and gave him his messages while talking on the phone. She was
a sexy big-breasted woman, fortyish, extremely efficient and who
usually dressed like a flight attendant: tight clothes, hair in a
bun and tortoise shell glasses. She no doubt was part of the
fantasies of many cops in the precinct, but as she was not only
married, but happily so, as they say, to a local tough guy who was
strong as an ox, nobody dared hit on her.

Solano appeared around ten.

“Did forensics and the medical examiners
show up?” asked Dornelas while reading the messages and skimming
through his correspondence.

“No. I left the body to the vultures and
rushed here.”

Dornelas lifted his head and looked him
straight in the eyes.

“They’re there. Lotufo is with them,” he
said, realizing that this was not a good day to kid around with the
inspector. “They want to talk to you about your interfering with
the crime scene.”

“Did you explain where the body was?”

“What’s the difference? You know how uptight
they are about procedures.”

Chagas, the head of Forensics with his nasal
voice,
‘that pain in the ass’
thought Dornelas, would pop up
any moment now on the phone complaining about the damn procedures,
never considering the possibility of the imponderables linking a
body, the sun, the tide, the bay’s dry mud and a flock of vultures.
Impulsively he threw the correspondence on the desk and barked
out:

“I’ll take care of Chagas. Just remind me to
put it all in the report. I don’t want them giving me a hard time
about it later on.”

“I’m on it boss.”

As he was preparing to leave the room he
asked:

“Have they identified the body yet?”

“We’re working on it.”

He disappeared. Dornelas took the phone off
the hook and dialed three numbers.

“Marilda, send flowers to Peixoto’s wife at
the maternity ward.”

“What should I say on the card?”

A
‘thank you very much’
immediately
came to mind.

“It’s up to you.”

“I’ll say something nice.”

“Ask Lotufo to come see me as soon as he
gets here.”

“Okay, chief.”

He hung up, then lifted the phone again as
he picked up the message from the desk.

“And Marilda, how long ago did this
Councilman Nildo Borges call?”

“An hour. He was anxious to talk to you
about the mangrove crime.”

‘
The Mangrove Crime! So that’s what
they’re going to call this case’
, he thought. Even though the
body was not exactly in the mangrove, but in the mud in front of
it, at the back of Palmyra Bay, public opinion would quickly
appropriate the idea that the crime had occurred there. Dornelas
was impressed with Brazilian creativity: The Park Crime, The
Suitcase Crime, and now this.
‘Maybe they’ll make a documentary
about it one day!’
he concluded.

“Thank you.” He hung up, intrigued by the
fact that all it took was for a body to appear for the snakes on
the City Council to begin slithering around. Maybe the corpse
wasn’t just any poor sucker. Lotufo appeared at the door.

“You wanted to speak to me chief?”

“Make a round of the hospitals in town and
find out who had a blood test between yesterday and today.”

“Right away.”

He left. Dornelas picked up the phone again
and punched another three numbers.

“Anderson, Joaquim Dornelas, everything
alright?”

“So-so. The server went down again because
of the heat. When do you think we’re going to get an air
conditioner for this room?”

“Soon, soon,” answered Dornelas
mournfully.

It was an old request and the inspector had
not yet found a miraculous formula for multiplying the precinct’s
tight budget.

“What can I do for you today, sir?” asked
Anderson, realizing he had put his boss on the spot.

Anderson, the precinct nerd, didn’t have
much of a knack for social interaction, as is the case with all
good IT techs, and had nothing to talk about aside from his
specialty and he knew it, just like he knew that he only got calls
from Dornelas when his services were required.

“A small thing. I want you to download some
photos from my cell phone. Ask someone to print them up on
photographic paper. And do it ASAP, please.”

“Unloading the pictures is easy, sir. But as
to printing them, you know our printers can’t do that. Doing it
outside the precinct involves filling out an expense request, then
following the protocol…”

“I’ll do it myself then,” he said, cutting
him short. “Just download the pictures and give it to me all on a
CD please.”

“I’ll be by in ten minutes to pick up the
phone.”

Dornelas put down the phone, discouraged. He
knew all too well how the bureaucratic wheels of Brazilian public
agencies turned. The meander of forms, requisitions, receipts,
reports and stamps. Originally and obviously intended to intimidate
corruption, over time the bureaucracy gained such a monstrous and
suffocating aspect, nearly taking on a life of its own, that it
allowed even inept crooks to take advantage of the system with
their eyes closed. But the system was the system and it was not he
who was going to be able to change it. He got up to stretch his
legs and the phone rang. He answered it.

“Dornelas!”

“Inspector, it’s Councilman Nildo Borges,”
said Marilda. “He’s really anxious to speak to you.”

“Put him through.”

He squeezed his eyes with his fingers and
sighed.

“My dear Inspector Joaquim Dornelas,” he
heard an unknown man’s voice say on the other end of the line, in a
seductive and clammy voice, characteristic of politicians able to
turn someone they didn’t know into a long-lost best friend in a
matter of minutes.

“Good morning, Councilman. What can I do for
you?” answered Dornelas in a dry, flat voice that took the
councilman by surprise.

“Well Inspector,” he continued more
formally. “I heard you found the body of one of our dear citizens
stuck in the mud this morning.”

“We still haven’t identified him, so I can’t
tell you who it is or where he came from. But if you know it’s one
of ours, please help us with the identification.”

Nildo Borges realized he’d said too much
with his false friendliness.

“Well, I don’t know for sure if it’s one of
ours, but as we warmly welcome tourists to our city, you know we
embrace everyone like a brother.”

The councilman’s unctuous manner began to
irritate him.

“If you agree, let’s do the following: if
you know something we don’t, please tell us so that we can expedite
the course of the investigation.”