Another day, another murder. It was very early in the morning. The sun was just coming up. Pereira was standing near the body, making notes, when a young patrolman touched him on the shoulder.
“A telephone call, Senhor, patched through on the radio.”
“Who is it?”
“Chief Inspector Silva, Federal Police.”
Pereira went to his car and grabbed the microphone. “It’s not a good time, Mario. I’m busy.”
There was a crash of static, then Silva’s voice. “This will only take a minute. Can you hear me okay?”
“I can. So can half the cops in Brasilia.”
“I’m aware of that. You recall your remark about airborne pigs?”
Pereira thought for a moment, and then said, “Yeah. What about it?”
“I’ve found others in the database.”
“Others? As in more than one?”
“Four. All with the same characteristics.”
“Four? Jesus Christ! Where are you?”
“In my office.”
“I’ll come to you. Give me half an hour.”
“Ask for Arnaldo.”
Pereira groaned. “Not Nunes again! What a crummy day this is turning out to be.”
Arnaldo met Pereira in the reception area at Federal Police headquarters and led him to a windowless conference room. The furnishings consisted of a round wooden table, four chairs, and nothing else. There was a hole in the ceiling where some kind of repair had taken place to the pipes or conduits. A notebook computer was plugged into a socket halfway up one of the walls. The only other objects on the table were an overloaded ashtray and a pad of paper with a few notes. The stench of ten thousand dead cigarettes hung in the air.
“Christ,” Pereira said, “what a dump.”
“This is the VIP room,” Arnaldo said. “You should see the new one.”
“Worse than this?”
“It will be. The coffee staining of the carpet and the filling of the ashtrays are scheduled for tomorrow.”
“Why aren’t we meeting in your office, Mario?”
“Security reasons.”
“Hiding from your boss?”
“Exactly.”
“So you’re still keeping him in the dark?”
“If Sampaio was a portobello,” Arnaldo said, “he’d be the size of this table.”
“Have a look at this,” Silva said. He moved the mouse, and the computer’s screen came to life. It showed the image of a horribly mutilated corpse.
“Jonas Palhares,” Silva said, “petroleum engineer, thirty-four years old, divorced, no children, lived alone.”
“Lived where?”
“Rio de Janeiro.”
Silva clicked the mouse. The next photo was also of Palhares, taken from a slightly different angle.
“When did it happen?” Pereira said.
“About two weeks before Christmas.”
“Suspects?”
“One. His girlfriend, Chantal Pires.”
“You sound like you doubt it.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
Silva pointed at the screen. “Look at him. Women are into poison and pistols; they don’t do things like that.”
“Depends on the woman.”
“For once,” Arnaldo said, “I agree with Pereira. Take my mother-in-law.”
Pereira ignored him. “No chance it could have been a robbery?”
“No,” Silva said. “Palhares’s wallet was still in his pocket, his watch was still on his wrist. There was no sign of a break-in.”
“Just like Rivas.”
“Just like Rivas.”
“That girlfriend you mentioned. She live-in?”
“No. And she’s one of the few people he knew in Rio. He’s from Belo Horizonte originally, only been in Rio for about a year.”
“She a local?”
Silva nodded. “They met on the beach.”
“She have a key to his place?”
“Yes.”
“And this guy… what’s his name again?”
“Palhares.”
“Palhares was also shot in the gut?”
“He was.”
“Who called it in?”
“The girlfriend. And long after the murder.”
“Another reason to believe she didn’t do it.”
“Exactly.”
“You guys going to talk to her?”
“We are. I sent a man from Sao Paulo.” Silva glanced at his watch. “He should be arriving there as we speak.”
“Why? You’ve got a field office in Rio, haven’t you?”
“Yeah,” Arnaldo said. “But we haven’t got Babyface.”
“Babyface?”
“Haraldo Goncalves,” Silva said. “We call him Babyface.”
“I’ll bet he loves that.”
“Hates it,” Silva said. “But that’s beside the point. When it comes to females, he’s our secret weapon. Women open up to him.”
“In every way you can imagine,” Arnaldo said.
“You got a dirty mind, Nunes.”
“It comes,” Arnaldo said, “from excessive association with homicide detectives.”
Silva chose another file on the computer’s desktop and opened it. The image on the screen showed the body of a young man. His blond ponytail looked like a mop used to soak up blood. The blood was his; it had dried and was more brown than red.
“Victor Neves,” Silva said, “twenty-six years old, exporter of leather goods, lived in Campinas, engaged to the same woman for over three years. Murder was”-he checked his notes-“almost a month ago. The vic’s mother found the body. He was her only child. She’s been under sedation ever since.”
“Suspects?”
“The cops in Campinas like Neves’s partner for it. He has no alibi, and they say there’s something shifty about him.”
“You sending someone?”
“I am.”
“Okay. Number three?”
Silva clicked the mouse. “Paulo Cruz.”
“ That Paulo Cruz?” Pereira said. “The guy who wrote the sex books?”
“That Paulo Cruz. He lived in Brodowski. It’s a little town near Ribeirao Preto.”
“I know where Brodowski is. Everybody does. Portinari came from there. You ever read any of Cruz’s stuff?”
“No. You?”
“Every single one.”
“There were only three,” Arnaldo said.
“So I read three.”
Again, Silva clicked the mouse. The upper part of Cruz’s body now filled the screen.
“Are those little white things what I think they are?”
“That, Walter, would depend upon which little white things you’re referring to.”
The next photo was even tighter. It framed the victim from the middle of his chest to the crown of his head. Some of Cruz’s teeth were lying on the rug. There were smaller objects as well, not quite as white.
“Maggots,” Silva said.
Pereira pinched his nose, as if the smell was there in the meeting room with them. “Yuck,” he said. “Took a while before they found him, huh?”
“Over a week. He was working on a book. His girlfriend was away in Bahia.”
“No maid?”
“He had one, but she was on vacation.”
“Live-in girlfriend?”
“She wasn’t live-in. But they did have three kids.”
“And he never married her? Betcha she did it. Hell hath no fury and all that.”
“She didn’t do it,” Silva said. “I told you. She was in Bahia.”
“She got any proof of that?”
“Plenty.”
“If it was me, I’d take a closer look at that proof. She’s a natural for it.”
“The cops in Brodowski thought so too. But her alibi is rock-solid.”
“No other suspects?”
Silva shook his head. “And Brodowski isn’t exactly an epicenter of violent crime. The locals are well out of their depth. They’d already filed a request for help.”
“You said four. Who’s the fourth?”
Silva frowned. “That one confuses me.”
He clicked the mouse. A black man in knee-length shorts was staring at the camera with one eye. The other was mashed to a pulp. His bloodstained polo shirt bore the Lacoste crocodile emblem.
“Nice shirt,” Pereira said. “Who’s he?”
“He’s The Man Who Doesn’t Fit. Joao Girotti, a thug with three convictions, one for armed robbery, one for burglary, one for auto theft.”
“A man still in search of his vocation,” Arnaldo said.
“Good riddance,” Pereira said. “Where did this punk end his days?”
“In an alley, in back of a bar, in Brasilandia.”
“Brasilandia?”
“A suburb of Sao Paulo,” Silva said. “A slum. Girotti lived there whenever he wasn’t a guest of the state.”
“Was he gay?”
“Not as far as we know.”
“And the other three you just showed me all had girlfriends. How do we tie four straights to a gay like Rivas?”
“I don’t think we can. I think we’re going to have to discard your original hypothesis of homosexual jealousy as a motive for Rivas’s murder.”
“I’m still gonna find out if Tomas Garcia was here in Brasilia when these people were killed.”
“And you should. But I’m now convinced he’s not our man.”
“Okay, okay, I have to admit, it’s looking pretty thin. But tell me this: what’s a lowlife like Girotti have in common with four respectable citizens?”
“Maybe they were only apparently respectable citizens,” Arnaldo said.
“Okay, so how do we connect Girotti to four apparently respectable citizens?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Silva said. “I don’t have an answer.”
“Any ballistics results on the bullets?”
“Not yet. But…”
“I know, I know, don’t even bother to say it. The MO is just too similar. It’s the same killer. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that the victims are connected. We could be dealing with some sick bastard who picks them at random.”
“That’s possible.”
“But you don’t think it’s likely?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Why?”
“Sao Paulo, Campinas, Ribeirao Preto, Rio, and Brasilia; one killing in each city. That’s almost too random to be random. I think the killer had a reason to go to those places, and I think that reason was that he wanted to kill those specific people.”
“Who was the first?”
“Girotti, the thug.”
“And when was that?”
“Back at the end of November.”
“So it’s been going on for over two months?”
“It has.”
“All right, Mario, I admit it. You were right, and I was wrong. You saved my ass, and I owe you one. Thanks.”
“ De nada.”
“What about that guy in Miami?”
“Gustavo Fernandez.”
“We rule him out?”
“Not just yet. I’ve got a friend, a cop in Miami. He’ll talk to Fernandez.”
“When?” Pereira said.
“Today, when he gets up. It’s three hours earlier in Miami.”