Requiem for a Killer (20 page)

“What do you want?”

“My name is Joaquim Dornelas, I’m a police
inspector,” he said, showing the woman his badge through the bars
on the gate.

She drew close to the badge and studied the
policeman from head to toe: the running shoes, the shorts, the
T-shirt. Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“Please excuse me. It’s Saturday and I’ve
been out fishing,” added the inspector.

The woman remained stock-still, racking her
memory. Dornelas waited until he saw a small light go on in the
woman’s eyes and she became immediately helpful.

“Inspector Dornelas! Now I remember. I saw
you on TV dragging a body out of the bay. How brave, Inspector!
What can I do for you?”

“Can I come in for a minute?”

From inside the house came a deep roar that
sounded like a bear inside his cave.

“Who is it Matilde?”

“The Inspector,” she shouted from the
garage.

Dornelas put his index finger on his lips,
asking the woman to lower her voice. He didn’t want Maria das
Graças to know he was there.

“I’m sorry. Please, come in.”

She opened the gate and he went in,
following her down the driveway towards the car parked in the back,
and came upon a man in boxer shorts, sleeveless undershirt and an
open checkered bathrobe standing in the doorway. His big body, tall
and wide, his tousled hair, his three-day beard, and the thick,
black hair covering every visible inch of his skin gave him a truly
fearsome look. A remarkable figure, superhuman, the lost link the
archeologists had always searched for.

He scratched his balls with his left hand
and stuck the other out to shake the inspector’s hand.

“So what do you want with us?”

Visibly intimidated by the caveman, and
sorry he had kept ringing the doorbell, Dornelas held out his hand,
scared the man might rip his arm off.

“I just want to take a peek over the wall at
your neighbor Dona Maria das Graças’ house.”

“Are you up to some dirty stuff, Inspector?”
asked Dona Matilde, raising her right hand as if she were going to
slap him in the face.

Bigfoot gave a lewd grin and disappeared
into the house.

“No, not at all. I need to check on
something regarding her murdered brother. I’ll be gone in two
minutes.”

“Then why don’t you go over there and ring
the doorbell?”

“I don’t want her to know I’m here.”

Dona Matilde looked at him suspiciously. Her
husband came back carrying a chair that in his hands looked like it
was a child’s, and put it on the ground against the wall.

“Thank you.”

Dornelas took off his shoes and under the
woman’s stern look got up on the chair. His suspicion was
confirmed. The wall under Maria das Graças’ bedroom window had been
coated with cement and plaster. Dark, damp spots indicated that the
work had been done recently. It was only missing the spackling and
a paint job to look exactly like the rest of the house. He got
down.

“Thanks a lot.”

“That’s it?” asked the husband, clearly
disappointed.

“That’s it. Like I said, I only needed to
check something.”

Dona Matilde relaxed when she realized the
inspector had no evil intentions.

“Would you like some coffee?” she asked.

“I’d love some.”

“Please come in,” said the man, standing
aside for him to enter.

Contrary to what he was expecting, the bear
cave was bright and pleasant. Everything was in its place,
perfectly arranged, with no sign that a savage beast had raged out
of control. Dornelas even caught the scent of pine, as if the house
had been thoroughly cleaned just before his arrival. The only thing
out of tune was one of the cushions on the couch in front of the
TV, sunken by excess weight and overuse. It didn’t take much to
guess that the man spent his days sitting there, because that’s
where he went as soon as he stepped into the room.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” said Dona
Matilde, disappearing into the kitchen.

“You have a very nice house,” Dornelas said
to the husband.

“Thanks. Matilde takes good care of it.”

“And what do you do?”

“Nothing,” he said without hesitation. “I
took disability retirement last year.”

“What did you do before?”

“Power line maintenance. I fell off a ladder
and hurt my back. It still hurts a lot to walk.”

“Did you see or hear anything the night your
neighbor’s brother was killed?”

“A hell of a racket in the middle of the
night. I got out of bed to look out the window. I saw a car parked
in front of her house. Then three men put what looked like her
brother in the back.”

“A black pick-up truck?”

“That’s right.”

“Do you know who it belonged to?”

“Of course. Everybody on the island knows.
It belongs to the Doorman, Monkey Island’s drug king. You know
him?”

“No, but I know what he does to his
enemies.”

“That’s right. I’ve done some installations
near his house in the past.”

“What do you mean?”

“Hotwire power hook-ups. I’ve hooked up
illegal power for lots of people in the city, especially here on
the island, for ten, twenty bucks.”

“But didn’t you work for the company that
supplies the power?”

“I did. But for what I made... besides,
who’s man enough to deny a favor to friends of the Doorman? Poor
people can do without food and are willing to drink dirty water,
but they can’t do without their soap opera, sir.”

Silently Dornelas lamented the poverty, the
slums, the lack of security throughout the city, and especially the
drug business with its medieval system for controlling the
distribution points. He felt helpless knowing that the police were
way behind organized crime, and at the same time hated that there
were cops involved in the dirty business from top to bottom.

“Let me ask you a more direct question,
then: knowing the Doorman as you do, do you believe he killed Dona
Maria das Graças’ brother?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not his style... stuffing the guy in a
car and killing him with an injection? No way. That only happens in
the movies. The Doorman is pure evil, sir. If he doesn’t like a
guy, he has him picked up and beaten in the public square and then
parades the man, practically dead, back to the hole he lives in so
everyone can see. Only then does he finish the guy off, shoots him
in the face or turns on the microwave oven.”

‘
Another suspicion confirmed’
,
Dornelas thought to himself.

Dona Matilde returned to the living room
with a tray and two full cups of coffee.

“Sweetener or sugar, Inspector?”

“Sugar, please.”

She put in sugar and passed him the cup. She
drank black coffee from the other.

“You don’t drink coffee?” the inspector
asked the husband.

“I can’t. I have a sensitive stomach.”

‘
At least this man is sensitive to
something’
, thought Dornelas, then drank the coffee, thanked
his hosts and went out into the street.

*

“What time can we talk?” Dornelas asked
Marina on his cell phone.

“In an hour. Is that okay?

“Yes. Where?”

“Have you had lunch?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“With you.”

“Good. Come to my house, I’ll make some
pasta. That way we can talk more comfortably. Do you have the
address, sir?”

“Not sir, just Joaquim. And no, I
don’t.”

He memorized the address Marina gave
him.

“See you in a bit then.”

“See you.”

And they hung up. Dornelas went home. He
needed a shower and some clean clothes.

*

When he knocked on the door it creaked open
a few centimeters.

“Marina?”

He waited a bit. There was no answer. Hoping
to hear some movement coming from inside he waited a few more
seconds. Nothing. He cautiously opened the door a bit more and
glanced around a part of the room. Nobody.

“Marina?”

He decided to go in.

Suspicious, Dornelas took a few steps into
the house and heard a meow. A spotted cat emerged from behind the
TV cabinet, its tail waving back and forth; a sure sign in cats
that they’re upset.

It was a small and narrow two-story house:
from the ample living room on the ground floor he could see a
colorless patio in the back that occupied half of the long
property. The glass door that led to it was open. Through it he saw
very high walls and two birds chirping in a cage hanging on the
wall. The other half of the property held an American-style
kitchen.

Two steps from where he was a staircase led
to the upper floor.

Not wanting to let his presence be known, he
quickly closed the door without letting it creak. He didn’t want
the cat to get out. He put his hand on his waist and regretted
leaving his gun at home.

He took off his shoes and walked along the
burnt cement floor in his socks towards the kitchen. He stopped
next to the dining room table, listened carefully and heard the
sound of water coming from upstairs, the shower maybe. He decided
that Marina, not wanting to keep him waiting outside, had left the
door ajar. He relaxed.

He pulled up a chair and sat down. She’d
taken the time to set the table. A pot bubbled on the stove. He was
sorry he hadn’t brought a gift, purely out of good manners.

The birds were chirping in the cage, the cat
was purring and rubbing up against his shins. The sound of the
shower continued and began to bother him. He decided to check it
out. He got up and stopped at the foot of the stairs.

“Marina?”

No answer. He decided to go up.

Staying near the wall, holding on to the
handrail, Dornelas went up slowly, trying unsuccessfully to prevent
the old wooden stairs from creaking. He stepped in something wet
and saw splatters of something on some of the stairs. Like an
animal stalking its prey, he opened his eyes wide and pricked up
his ears as he cautiously advanced.

He reached the upper floor where the
staircase ended in a small hall with only one door open, a bedroom.
Sneaking carefully forward, his field of vision widened as he
entered the room. He realized the shower was still running, and
that puzzled him.

“Marina?” he repeated, this time more
loudly.

There was no answer.

From the doorway he saw a spacious room, the
same size as the living room, decorated in Spartan fashion: a bed,
clothes thrown on an antique chair, a night table and lamp and a
few books. Across the room, a row of closets, a few pictures on the
walls and nothing else. He looked towards the bathroom and saw two
bare legs on the floor; they were moving. He rushed in.

Marina was lying on the cold floor, sopping
wet and completely naked, her eyes wide open staring at the
ceiling, her tongue sticking out of her mouth, her arms motionless
alongside her body and both legs twitching. On her neck the mark of
a thick and uniform bruise going all the way around.

Dornelas immediately placed his fingers
lightly on one of her carotid arteries for a few seconds. Her
irregular pulse made him anxious. He turned off the shower and then
ran to the bedroom, yanked the bedspread off the bed and went back
to cover her. Being warm would help. Her wide, staring doll-like
eyes frightened him.

With no way to know how serious her
condition was, he called the emergency ambulance service,
identified himself and requested that one be sent urgently. He went
back to the bathroom, knelt down beside her and while maintaining
light pressure on the carotid called the precinct and spoke to
Solano.

“Marina Rivera’s been strangled.”

“When?”

“A little while ago. I came to her house to
talk to her and found her on the bathroom floor, still
breathing.”

All of a sudden he heard a loud bang
downstairs.
‘The door,’
he thought.

“Hold on a second.”

Dornelas dropped his cell phone in the sink
and ran to the window. He lifted the lace curtain from the window
and saw no one. He decided to open the sash and leaned out. A
figure rounding the corner was all he saw. He slammed the sash
closed, ran to the staircase and stopped. If he left Marina alone
in her current state she would surely die. He decided to wait. He
ran back to get his cell phone.

“You still there?” he asked Solano.

“Yeah. What happened?”

“Whoever did this just got away. I couldn’t
see who it was.”

“Shit.”

“Get over here and call forensics. I’m going
to wait for the ambulance.”

He hung up.

While he waited he stroked her hair and said
in a soft voice:

“Oh my God, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

*

“How’s she doing, doctor?” Dornelas asked
the physician who had treated Marina as soon as she arrived at the
hospital.

“Not good. She was strangled long enough to
deprive her brain of oxygen... she had a cardiac arrest... she’s
alive, but she’s on life support...”

“What does that mean?”

“We did all the tests...”

He paused briefly.

“She’s brain dead, Inspector. I’m very
sorry.”

Dornelas wrapped his arms round his
shoulders and looked at the floor, totally crushed.

“Give me a minute, please.”

“Take your time,” agreed the doctor.

Feeling a sudden rage, he took his cell
phone out of his pocket and punched some numbers.

“Hello.”

“Get over to the hospital immediately.”

“What happened, Inspector?”

“Marina is brain dead.”

There was a long silence before Nildo’s
voice came back.

“When? Where?”

“This afternoon. I found her strangled on
her bathroom floor.”

“Who could have done such a terrible
thing?”