With a gesture, Rosa dismissed the thought. “I’d work even if all of my needs were provided for. Most prisoners vegetate. Many retired people do the same. But I abhor idleness. That’s why I’d like to work with you.”
“Not for the money? You don’t need it, is that it?”
“Money is always nice. But it’s the intellectual challenge that appeals to me. What brings you back this time?”
“The ransom has been paid.”
“Has it now? How did they arrange for delivery?”
“Carrier pigeons,” Silva said and went on to explain.
When he was done, Rosa pushed back from the table and applauded slowly. “Bravo,” he said. “A tour de force. I seem to have seriously underestimated the intelligence of those people.”
“Put your thinking cap on, Professor. I really need your help.”
“And I really want to give it, believe me I do. Here’s one thought: they would have known, even before they started, that this would be the high-profile kidnapping of the year, perhaps of the decade.”
“Yes. Go on.”
“They would have anticipated that Juraci’s face would make the front page of every newspaper in the country; they would have expected her kidnapping to be the lead story in every newscast. She’d be transformed from someone that almost no one recognized into someone that virtually everyone recognized. And it would have occurred within a matter of hours.”
“Which leads you to postulate… what?”
“It would have been inadvisable to take her far from the scene of her abduction. This neighborhood of Juraci’s, Granja Viana?”
“What about it?”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s not the country, but it’s not the city either. Semi-rural, the occasional horse farm, that sort of thing.”
“Then that’s where she is. They’re holding her in Granja Viana, or somewhere close to it. Think about it. Every hour, every minute that she was in transit would have augmented their risk. It wouldn’t matter if she was well concealed. It wouldn’t matter if she was sedated. Traffic accidents, documentation blitzes from the Policia Rodoviaria, things like that, can always interfere with the best laid plans. They would have wanted to get her into a place of security as quickly as possible. That place is unlikely to be one that’s recently rented or acquired. That attracts too much attention. People get curious about their new neighbors. It’s likely to be a place that the kidnappers have been visiting for some time, a place where they’ve achieved invisibility through familiarity. It would be best, too, if the place had some land around it, a garden, or a field, where they can bury her once they’re finished with her.”
“Makes sense. Other thoughts?”
“I assume your estimable Mara Carta is already looking into the bird angle?”
“She is. But she’s come up blank. Breeders, she tells us, sell them for between forty and sixty Reais each. Even at the lower price, sixty birds would have cost twenty-four hundred, a major purchase in that business. No breeder she’s spoken to, and she’s spoken to a lot of them, recalls making a sale of that magnitude. Ever. We’re extending our area of inquiry, but our current hypothesis is that the kidnappers have been doing their own breeding.”
“I’m not talking about acquiring the birds. The kidnappers would have expected you to try to track the birds back to their source. They would have done everything they could to prevent you from doing so.”
“What are you talking about then?”
“Alternative profiles for the people who came up with the idea of using carrier pigeons.”
“Such as?”
“An ex-convict, for example. Such birds are used in places like this, you know.”
“We know,” Arnaldo said.
“Or someone who might have read about carrier pigeons in a newspaper, or seen a documentary on television.”
“Which would lead us nowhere.”
“Not necessarily.”
“How so?”
“Turn it around. Mara and her people can, quite quickly, do a media search. If they discover that there hasn’t been a television program or an article in a consumer publication in the course of the last six months, what would that suggest?”
“That the kidnappers didn’t get their information from one of those sources.”
“Exactly. If the people who used those carrier pigeons didn’t get the idea from a prison experience, or by talking to ex-convicts, or from the media, where did they get the idea from? That could narrow the search considerably. Maybe, just maybe, this brilliant idea of theirs, the idea to use carrier pigeons, wasn’t so brilliant after all.”
Silva stroked his chin. “My gut feeling,” he said, “is that they wouldn’t make a mistake that elementary. It’s likely the brilliance remains.”
“Perhaps. But my core argument stands. If I were you, I’d be looking for people who keep, or know someone who keeps, carrier pigeons, who had access to a key that would get them into Juraci Santos’s house, and who have a hideout in or near Granja Viana.”
“You make it sound simple, Professor.”
“I’m not saying it’s simple. But when you get to the end of it, you’ll find someone there who fulfills all three of those characteristics. I guarantee it.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
One of the prime requisites in Nelson Sampaio’s former profession, corporate law, was obfuscation. Sampaio was an expert at it, and he quickly recognized it in others.
He was recognizing it right now, seventeen minutes into the briefing he’d requested on the Santos case.
“Let’s cut right through the crap,” he said, looking around the table. “You people don’t know where the birds came from, you don’t know where they went, the diamonds are gone, and you’ve got no line on where Juraci Santos might be. You’ve got zip.”
“I think that’s a fair summary, Director,” Silva said.
The director snorted. “What about that postman? You interrogate him?”
“We did. It led nowhere.”
Sampaio referred to his notes, raised his head to lock eyes with Silva.
“You think Jordan Talafero had anything to do with it?”
“We did once. Not anymore.”
“That bicheiro? Captain Miranda?”
“No.”
“Cintia Tadesco?”
“It’s possible.”
Sampaio made some check marks on the yellow legal pad in front of him. The tip of his pencil slid further down the page.
“And that ex-agent of hers, whatshisname?”
“Tarso Mello.”
“Yeah, him.”
“Also a possible suspect.”
“You interview Juraci’s former servants? The ones she had before the two who got shot?”
“We did,” Mara said. “We went back two years. We’re satisfied they’re all clean.”
“How about professional enemies? People like Joaozinho Preto? The Artist broke his leg. That must have pissed him off.”
“Joaozinho’s mother is Italian. She got him a passport, and he bought himself a villa in Tuscany. He’s been living there for six months.”
More check marks.
“And that other striker? Whatshisname? The guy who’s convinced himself he’s as good as the Artist is?”
“Romario de Barros?”
“Yeah, him. If the Artist is out of the picture, he’s the logical replacement, right?”
“Right.”
Sampaio drew a circle around something. Then he put a big asterisk right next to it.
“Well there you go. That gives him a motive. Without the Artist, bingo, Romario is the star of the Cup.”
“The Argentineans have got Dieguito Falabella,” Arnaldo said. “Dieguito can run circles around Romario de Barros.”
Sampaio refused to be sidetracked.
“You didn’t talk to him, did you?”
“We didn’t think it was necessary,” Mara said.
Sampaio turned on her. “Why the hell not?”
Mara stood her ground. “Every year at this time, Romario earns a bundle doing a football clinic for rich kids. He was in Campos do Jordao, doing just that, on the night of the kidnapping. He’s got more than a hundred witnesses to prove it.”