“I see,” Silva said, hoping that Boceta was finally getting to the point.
“I’m sure you’re aware that serial murderers, people who have a compulsion to kill, tend to demonstrate a lack of affect, often take trophies, and tend to specialize in certain kinds of victims. By certain kinds of victims I mean little boys, little girls, women, young men if the killer is a male and has homosexual tendencies.”
“Yes.”
“There are always exceptions, of course. Most serial killers are men, but there have been women, notably a prostitute in the United States named Aileen Wuornos, a lesbian who demonstrated a distinctly masculine approach to homicide.”
Arnaldo stood, looked as if he were going to say some-thing, but didn’t. He walked to the credenza and poured himself a glass of water. Boceta waited until Arnaldo had resumed his seat before continuing.
“The expression, I might almost say artistic expression, of serial killers often extends to the way they bury their victims. Sometimes they pose them, as if for a photograph. Most commonly, they don’t bury all of them in one central loca-tion. If they do, it’s generally in their home, under the porch, for example, or under the floor.”
“But there are cases where they set up their own little cemeteries?” Silva asked, his interest awakening.
“Indeed there are. And in most of those cases, the first victim is buried at the apex of a triangle with the other vic-tims radiating out from there.”
“Most cases?” Arnaldo might as well have said what help is that, because that’s the way it came out.
Boceta bristled. “This isn’t an exact science,” he snapped. “We’re dealing with statistical probabilities. Every serial killer is insane in his own insane way. There are always exceptions. Always. But they’re always insane. That’s why the Americans’ criminal trials of serial killers are so ludi-crous. Serial killers don’t belong on their death rows. They belong in institutions. Their legal definition of insanity, and the aberrations that stem from it, are an abomination. Any fool can plainly see-”
“Conclusions, Godo?” Silva interrupted, trying to get the profiler back on track.
“Yeah, and sometime within the next twenty minutes, if you please,” Arnaldo said.
Boceta sniffed, as if Arnaldo emitted an odor that offend-ed him. “Alright, here’s what we know,” he said, addressing himself exclusively to Silva. “The killer shows no apparent preference for sex or age; he buries his victims side by side, indicating he doesn’t give particular importance to any one victim; sometimes he buries them in a mass grave, adults and kids all heaped in together, not taking any care to arrange them, just disposing of the corpses. My conclusion is that he doesn’t attach any aesthetic value to what he’s doing, that he isn’t milking it for a vicarious thrill, that he is, in short, not acting out of any inner compulsion. He’s not your stan-dard serial killer. I say he, but only to avoid repetition. I don’t want to waste your time.”
“Perish the thought,” Arnaldo said.
Boceta narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to reply, but Silva deftly cut him off. “So we could be dealing with a her, or a them, instead of a him?”
Boceta kept looking at Arnaldo. He looked so long that Silva was arriving at the conclusion that he’d have to repeat his question. But then the profiler said, “Exactly.”
It was probably the most succinct answer that Godofredo Boceta had ever given to anyone.
Silva pressed his advantage. “Okay, but I’m not sure I get it. What you’re saying is-”
“I’m saying that I sense some utilitarian purpose here.”
“Utilitarian purpose? What do you mean by a utilitarian purpose?”
“Well. . genocide, for example.”
“Genocide? You call genocide a utilitarian purpose?”
“In the mind of the perpetrator, or perpetrators? Of course it is. Haven’t you heard the term ethnic cleansing? The people who practice it actually believe that they’re making a posi-tive contribution to their societies. Think of the Turks and the Albanians, the Hausa and the Ibo, the Bosnians and the Serbs, the Nazis and the-”
“Enough. I take your point.”
“In all the cases I’ve cited, and many more that I could cite, the killers attached no great significance to the dispos-al of the bodies. Burning, dissolving in acid, burying, tossing into rivers, it was all the same to them, a simple problem of disposal where ritual played no role. There are consistencies between what they did and the behavior we see here.”
“So you’d rule out ritual killings?”
Boceta waved a finger in Silva’s face. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I merely suggested a hypoth-esis. There are, of course, other explanations.”
“Ones in which ritual might be involved?”
“Of course.”
“Give me an example.”
Boceta thought for a moment. Then he said, “A use for body parts, perhaps.”
“Like what?”
“Some believe that the eating of human flesh conveys benefits. That, by consuming another human being, you take on some of their life force.”
“Now we got cannibals in Sao Paulo?” Arnaldo said. “Fat chance.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Agente. Whether cannibals are active in Sao Paulo or not is no concern of mine.”
“No? So why are you suggesting it?”
Boceta shot Arnaldo a beady-eyed stare before turning back to Silva.
“You might want to inquire, Chief Inspector, if the skele-tal structures of the victims were intact.”
“Why?”
“In ritual killings, the murderers often go after specific bones or body parts containing those bones. If the skeletal structures are incomplete, that could tell you something. Mind you, it would only be significant if the same mutilation took place in every case.”
Arnaldo turned to Silva. “Remember when Dr. Couto cut that assistant of his short? Maybe she was gonna say some-thing about missing parts.”
“Maybe,” Silva said. “And I’m sure Hector would be de-lighted to call her up and ask her.”
Chapter Nine
Sergeant Lucas knew Tanaka was not a man to be moved by the disappearance of a family of nobodies from a favela. There had to be something else driving him, and in Lucas’s experience, one of Tanaka’s principal motivators was money. Lucas, too, was not averse to earning a few reais on the side. If he hung around and kept a close eye on his boss, he hoped some of the crumbs might fall to him.
When he heard Tanaka’s door open, he kept his head down, picked up a pile of paperwork, and dropped it on top of the newspaper he was reading.
“Sergeant?”
Lucas looked up. “As ordens, Delegado.”
“Get me a car.”
Lucas repressed a smile. Tanaka drove himself to and from the office. On all other occasions, he took advantage of his seniority and had himself driven. The person who normally did the driving was Sergeant Lucas.
Lucas stood up. “Right away, Delegado.”
Tanaka looked at the surface of Lucas’s desk. The paper-work didn’t quite cover the sports pages of the Diario Popular.
“And since your hands are so full this morning,” he said dryly, “I’ll dispense with your services and drive myself.”
The shop was on a crowded street in Bom Retiro, a place of broken and narrow sidewalks, rumbling trucks, and crum-bling facades. Once, years ago, it had been a residential neighborhood, lower-middle class even then, going downhill ever since. The shop’s proprietor had moved a number of his bulkier and cheaper pieces into the open air, completely blocking the space between the shop and the curb. Tanaka had no doubt that the man was slipping a few reais to the cops on the beat to get away with occupying so much of a public thoroughfare.