Colonel Ferraz's private line rang a little before six.
"That you, Palmas?"
"Yes, Colonel. Mission accomplished."
Ferraz grinned.
"I'm on my way."
The colonel hung up, took his holster from the hook on the wall and went out to his car. His driver opened the rear door, but Ferraz shook his head.
"I'll drive myself. Get a patrol car to take you home."
"As ordens, Coronel."
Corporal Sanches showed no sign of surprise. It was a badly kept secret that the boss had frequent romantic engagements with a certain married lady of the town. On those nights, he drove himself.
Ferraz's tobacco shed was more than a kilometer from the main road, well removed from the other buildings on his fazenda.
The colonel no longer grew tobacco; he'd switched over to sugarcane. So the building was seldom visited. It was an oblong, wooden structure with a peaked roof and a fading coat of white paint.
Darkness had fallen by the time Ferraz arrived. His headlights illuminated the figure of his deputy, a dark silhouette against the white wall. Palmas stood with his hands on his hips and stared into the glare.
Ferraz didn't waste any time with pleasantries. "How did you nail her?"
"Stroke of luck, really," Palmas said, somehow managing to convey that it wasn't luck at all. "One of the guys I posted saw her get out of a taxi on Republic Square. He called me, and then followed her over to the Rua Garibaldi. I got there in three minutes flat, just in time to see her get into another taxi. I flashed my badge, waved the driver down, and told him to come here."
"Where's the cab?"
Palmas shot a thumb over his shoulder. The double doors behind him were wide enough to admit a truck.
"Inside."
"The driver?"
"Taken care of. Watching me do it scared the shit out of her. You'll find her less bossy than usual."
"You question her?"
"Not yet. Waiting for you."
"Good. Let's see what the bitch has to say."
Rede Mundo led the eight o'clock news with the story of Vicenza's disappearance. Silva's cell phone rang at seven minutes past 8:00, while the program was still underway.
"Hello. Who's this?"
"Who the hell do you think it is?" the director said. "Is this our private hotline, or not?"
"It's supposed to be, but-"
"Mario, if anything has happened to that woman, so help me God-"
"I assume, Director, that you're referring to Vicenza Pelosi."
"You're goddamned right I am! Did you hear what they said?" The director didn't wait for an answer. "They said she was involved in `research that could have led to a solution of at least one of the murders.' She goes off to a so-called `secret meeting' and poof, she's gone."
Poof? Silva thought, but he didn't interrupt.
"How come you didn't get the information she got? How come you weren't off to a `secret meeting'? Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how this is going to look? First it was the bishop, then the son of one of this country's most prominent citizens, then the daughter of a press mogul, and now it's the country's leading telejournalist. For Christ's sake, Mario, when is it going to stop?"
"She was acting, Director, on information that I-"
"I don't want to hear it. You're always trying to bog me down in details. That's not my job. My job's the larger picture. What am I supposed to do now?"
Silva was tempted to suggest that Sampaio perform an anatomical impossibility.
But he didn't.
The inside of Ferraz's shed smelled of old tobacco leaves and fresh blood. The leaves themselves were long gone, but the blood was very much in evidence. It streaked Vicenza's naked body, stained the upright wooden chair they'd bound her to, and pooled on the dirt floor around her feet. There were drops of it on Palmas's uniform and traces of it on Ferraz's still naked torso.
The last few hours had started out with some fun for the two cops, but had, by now, degenerated into something else. The rape was fun. What they'd done with the pliers and the icepick had been fun, but she'd pretty much given up after that. It wasn't fun at all when she didn't resist, wasn't fun at all when the fear in her eyes turned to resolution and acceptance. And now it had become work. She was repeatedly passing out, and they had to keep throwing buckets of water in her face to make her come around.
I could use some of that water myself, Ferraz thought. It was hot in the shed. Perspiration had soaked his hair and was rolling down his face.
Palmas was feeling it, too. He had sweat stains on his chest and under his arms, darker gray against the gray of his uniform.
"I think that's it, Colonel. She's done."
His deputy lifted Vicenza's chin and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed. He pried one lid open, snorted, and went to fill the bucket.
Ferraz thought about it while he was gone. Palmas was right. She was done. There was nothing left to get out of her.
Palmas came back with the bucket and threw the contents into her face. The water wasn't cold. It was lukewarm, but it did the job. Ferraz waited until she blinked, then he said, "Finish her."
Palmas pulled his knife out of its scabbard and showed it to her. Her eyes were dull and listless.
"She doesn't even give a shit anymore," Palmas said, and casually cut her throat from ear to ear. He didn't seem to enjoy the act as much as he usually did. He was obviously tired from lugging all that water.
She started to bleed out. Even then she didn't react, just kicked out with one of her feet. It was more of a spasm than a conscious movement. Air bubbles appeared around the wound in her throat and frothed down her neck. For a while, the two of them watched her dispassionately. Then Palmas went over and picked up Vicenza's discarded panties. He'd laughed when he'd seen them for the first time. They were of white cotton, stamped with little brown teddy bears. He started using them to clean his knife.
"What do you think we should do about the kid?" Ferraz asked.
Palmas looked mildly surprised. The colonel seldom asked for advice.
"I don't think we have to do anything," he said. "One of his little friends will turn him in sooner or later."
Ferraz shook his head. "I don't like loose ends," he said.
"How about I have another chat with his mother? Maybe put a couple of guys to watch her house?"
"Good idea. Do it."
"How about her?" Palmas pointed at Vicenza's body. "You want me to bury her?"
"Not good enough. She's too well known."
"So?"
"So we've got to take the heat off and to do that we've got to blame somebody else. Finish cleaning the handle of that knife, stick the blade into her a couple of times to pick up some more of her blood, and we'll go harvest some fingerprints."
"Where?"
"Where do you think?"
"You want to use the team?"
"Yeah. And tell them to bring their hoods."