Boceta had more to offer, but as usual, he was going to make them work for it. If people didn’t listen to him around the watercooler, they sure as hell had to sit still when they asked him for an opinion-no matter how long it took. He settled back in his chair.
“Remember Villasboas?” he said.
“Oh, Jesus Christ, here we go again,” Arnaldo said.
Boceta took off his glasses. “You are becoming tiresome, Agente.”
“Me? Tiresome? You should have to listen-”
Silva put a hand on Arnaldo’s arm and squeezed. “Villasboas,” he said. “I was working in Sao Paulo then. I remember, but I’m a little foggy on the details.”
“Who the hell is Villasboas?” Arnaldo said.
“Not who,” Boceta said, taking his usual satisfaction at the opportunity to correct someone. “Your question should have been what. Villasboas is a what. More specifically, it’s a town in Para.”
Para was the state that embraced the mouth of the Amazon River, a huge area, much of it remote jungle.
“Alright,” Arnaldo said, letting out a long sigh of defeat. “You got me. I’ll bite. What happened in Villasboas?”
Boceta’s smile was more like a smirk. He took his time about answering. “Some bodies were found,” he finally said, “probably only a small percentage of the victims, but enough to excite interest. They were all young, all male, and all of them had their genitals removed. One of the perpetrators confessed. He was a medical doctor. The other people he implicated, another doctor, a few lawyers, some prominent local businessmen, denied involvement. It appears that he and his coreligionists all signed an oath in their own blood: lifelong obedience, secrecy about the rituals-”
Arnaldo tried to hurry things along. “Coreligionists? So they were members of some kind of cult?”
Boceta, running true to form, refused to be hurried. “Can you imagine any other reason why I might call them coreli-gionists?”
Arnaldo sighed. “No,” he said.
“Of course you can’t,” Boceta said. “Yes, it was a cult, a satanic cult. They believed that the devil wanted anyone with certain characteristics. .” He paused and looked at the ceiling.
“What’s the matter?” Silva said.
“I forgot some of the characteristics. I’ll go to my office and look them up.”
He started to rise. Arnaldo put the heels of his hands over his eyes.
Silva motioned the profiler back into his chair. “That won’t be necessary, Godo. Look them up later. Put them in your written report.”
“Ah, yes, my written report. Alright. Where was I?”
“The devil wanted everyone with certain characteristics. .” Silva prompted.
“To die. And the members of the cult were to be his instrument. To reward them for their obedience, he’d send a spaceship to rescue them from the destruction of the earth.”
“And they truly believed that crap?” Arnaldo asked.
“Enough to murder at least fourteen people,” Boceta said.