The firefighters hadn’t arrived yet, nor had detectives Flores and Villalta. The wailing sirens, the thick smoke, the crackling of the flames, the bodies, the charred cars, and the people running around crazed: they’d never seen a situation like this, not even during the war.
Then Handal saw the manager run out into the street, his back to the gas station, as if he were being followed by the devil himself. He did the same, but didn’t get very far. The explosion threw him to the ground. Dammit! He felt the heat of the flames at his back. He saw how they lit up the sky. He stayed on the ground, afraid there’d be another explosion. This was the hell a madman named Jacinto Bustillo had dreamed up. He raised his head. The manager was on his feet, looking fearfully at the gas station. The Deputy Commissioner was getting up and dusting off dirt and pieces of pavement when he heard someone asking him a question.
“Are you okay, boss?”
It was Flores and Villalta. They’d arrived just before the explosion and saw the moment their boss had turned away and run.
“Ask that man if there are any more gas tanks!” he ordered Villalta, pointing at the manager. A fire truck and more ambulances arrived on the scene. It was going to be hell finding the right witness in that confusion, Flores said, still open-mouthed, watching the spectacle.
“No, boss, that was the last tank left,” said Villalta.
Handal was a mess: hair dishevelled, face sweaty, shirttails out, and the knees of his pants and the elbows of his jacket torn. The case had gone beyond all reasonable limits now. Furious, the Deputy Commissioner grabbed the first witness he could find. The gas station attendant, whose uniform was spotless, said he hadn’t realized what was going on until he saw the stampede of cars trying to leave the parking lot and the terrified girls screaming that snakes were attacking left, right and centre.
“But how did the explosions start?” asked Handal. He had the attendant by the arm and was shaking him as if he’d been responsible for the disaster.
He just ran without thinking or trying to see anything, as fast as his legs could carry him. He was terrified of snakes. He hadn’t come back after that. He was still trembling.
“Which way did the Chevrolet go?” Handal asked, shaking him again.
Villalta clenched his big jaw and gritted his teeth menacingly.
“Talk, you son-of-a-bitch, or you’re going to have problems,” he threatened.
Suddenly, another explosion threw them to the ground. A gust of heat, shards of glass and pieces of metal mingled with the stench of gasoline in the air. The flames had reached a car. The attendant took the opportunity to clear off to where the manager was standing. Flores approached a group of onlookers to ask if anyone had seen the yellow Chevrolet.
The gas station’s manager and assistant manager told the Deputy Commissioner that when the snakes appeared, dozens of cars tried to escape and one of them crashed into a gas pump. That’s how the explosions started. But as far as they understood, most of the deaths were caused by the snake attack and not by the explosion.
A short guy with chubby cheeks had seen the yellow Chevrolet.
“I threw up all the rum I’d drunk when I realized that was the car they were talking about on TV,” he told Flores. “But then it was every man for himself because it was like the snakes were coming out of nowhere. I managed to lock myself in my Volkswagen.”
He told Flores and Handal that the yellow Chevrolet had been at the entrance of the parking lot and then left for the boulevard, towards Jardines de la Sabana, a nearby neighbourhood. The Commissioner ordered Villalta to ask headquarters to set up a perimeter and search the area. They had to catch this crazy son-ofa-bitch no matter what. All units should be on red alert. Handal, Villalta and Flores knew they’d better get back to the Black Palace. Bustillo would surely attack again and they needed to try to predict his next move.
Then the gas station owner’s eldest son arrived. His father, a filthy-rich Lebanese guy, was out of the country. The kid was dressed like he was on his way to a party and told them that neither he nor his father had any connection to someone called Sofía Bustillo.
“Shit!” Handal shouted. The theory that Jacinto Bustillo just wanted to hurt his wife was crumbling. It looked like the suspect had gone insane.
He walked over to the Nissan and radioed a request for units to be stationed at all the bars, nightclubs and gas stations in the area. It was crazy to try to do this on a Friday night, but Bustillo liked to let his snakes out in a crowd.
He was getting ready to start the car when someone told him the Commissioner was on the line. His voice was shaking with either rage or astonishment. He’d just been informed that one of his nieces, the most beautiful one, the one he loved the most, had been killed by snakes that attacked her while she was hanging around with her high-school friends at the Esso station near the exit to the harbour. What the hell happened? He wanted an explanation right away, and it better be convincing, because his niece’s body, his sister’s eldest daughter, was lying there in the parking lot! What the hell had he been doing since he’d been put in charge of stopping that lunatic with the snakes?
“Sir, it’s been awful,” Handal stammered. “We’ve been working non-stop, but this guy’s crazy, he’s a psychopath — totally unpredictable. We know where he went. We expect to find him in the next few minutes.”
The Deputy Commissioner got out of the Nissan and headed for the gas station. He walked with his head down, his hands in his pockets. He felt useless. Not just because of his appearance, but because this piece of shit was slipping away from him much too easily.
And there was the Commissioner’s niece. She was easy to spot: two officers were already guarding her corpse. The girl was lying on her back. Her little miniskirt showed off her perfect but now lifeless body. A fat guy with a look of terror frozen on his face lay next to her.
Handal went to look for the man in charge of the Red Cross unit, a small guy with a bulbous nose who moved like a robot.
“How many bodies?”
He said there were thirty-one killed by snakebites, and another thirteen burned by the explosion, although that wouldn’t be the final number. They still had to search through the flames. Crestfallen, Handal was getting back into the Nissan when Flores radioed him to say Bustillo and his snakes had attacked again.
“Where?” Handal asked, his adrenaline pumping. He looked at his watch — it was ten-oh-seven. In a residential area called La Primavera, about five minutes from the gas station, said Flores, in a DICA agent’s home. They were almost there.
“Godammit!” the Deputy Commissioner shouted.
The case was getting more complicated. Now another department was involved. There was a possibility he’d be replaced as head of the investigation. He needed to come up with a plan to surround the area immediately. The suspect probably hadn’t slipped away yet. He made a mental calculation — if he attacked the gas station at a quarter after nine, he must have reached the detective’s house by nine-thirty at the latest, so by now he could have left the area.
Villalta was waiting for him in the driveway in front of the DICA agent’s house.
“He’s turned into a real bastard, boss,” he said while they walked to the house. “There are seven dead DICA agents in there. All of them killed by snakebites.”
This was going to turn into a maelstrom soon. As the head of the Criminal Investigation Unit (DIC), Handal understood the rivalry between his men and their DICA counterparts only too well — bureaucratic disputes over leadership, over the allocation of resources. The narcotics agents were the golden boys, arrogant and spoiled by the gringos. The case was heating up.
“They aren’t here yet?” Handal asked, picturing Chele Pedro, the chief of DICA, appropriating the evidence and trying to take over the investigation. Villalta said no. They went inside. The scene was grotesque. There were bodies lying all over the living and dining rooms, as though victims of a gangland execution. The Deputy Commissioner checked the bodies, saw what was left of the cocaine and marijuana on the table, and went to the bedroom to have a look at the body of Raúl Pineda, the leader of the group.