“Was she, by any chance, also shot?” Goncalves asked.
Setubal did a double take. “Once. In the lower abdomen. How did you know?”
“She’s not the first,” Goncalves said. “You already take the body temp?”
Setubal shook his head.
“Can’t. Not until Janus Prado gets here. He gets antsy if we start messing with the bodies before he’s had a look. I can tell you a couple of things, though.”
“What?”
“Rigor is diminishing, so she’s probably been dead for at least twenty-four hours. And some of those wounds are postmortem. The guy who did it just went on beating her and beating her.”
“After she was dead?”
“You have another definition of postmortem?” Setubal said.
Twenty minutes later, just when Goncalves was concluding that there was nothing to be learned by hanging around any longer, Bruna’s friend showed up. Her name was Lina Godoy.
They put her in a vacant room, and Goncalves went to talk to her. He knew Janus Prado wouldn’t like his questioning her alone, but Prado, Sao Paulo’s head of homicide, was one of those people who’d been spreading the “Babyface” nickname around. Goncalves delighted in irritating him.
Lina was sitting on one of the beds, staring at the wall and clutching a handkerchief. She looked up when he opened the door, started talking even before he’d introduced himself.
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”
Lina was pretty, a brunette, his type. But then, most women were Goncalves’s type.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and told her he was a cop.
“Who did it?” she said. Her eyes were a grayish green.
“We don’t know. Not yet.”
“Was she… raped?”
“We don’t know that either. I’ll have to ask you some questions.”
“Anything. Anything I can do to help.”
He took a chair from in front of the desk, placed it against the wall, and sat down. There wasn’t much room on that side of the bed. Their knees were only centimeters apart, which suited Goncalves just fine. He took in a deep breath of her perfume. Something floral.
In a few short minutes, she took him through the events of her last morning with Bruna: the coffee shop, the copilot’s clumsy advances, and her departure for the country. Then she asked a question of her own. “Have you told her parents?”
“I don’t handle that end of it, but I’m sure someone is trying to get in touch.”
“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t want to be the one to tell them, so I’m scared to call. But if they already know, and they know that I know, and I don’t call…”
“Best to give it a while,” Hector said. “When we’re done here, I’ll give you the name of someone to talk to, someone from the civil police. They’re in charge of notifying relatives.”
“I thought you said you were from the police.”
“I am,” he said. “But I’m federal. We do… other things.
Did Bruna have a romantic interest? A boyfriend?”
“Yes. A new one. He lives on St. Barts.”
“The island?”
“Yes.”
“He’s there now?”
“As far as I know.”
“Name?”
“Henri, with an i.”
“Henri what?”
Lina shrugged. “She always just called him Henri. His number must be in her address book. The book is red. It’s about this big.” Lina held up a thumb and forefinger. “It’ll be in her purse if…”
“If what?”
“If her killer didn’t take it. My God, I don’t believe all of this. It’s like some bad dream.”
“I wish it was, Senhorita. What can you tell me about your copilot?”
“Horacio?”
“Him.”
“He’s a creep.”
“But harmless?”
“How can you ever be sure about anyone?”
“True. Look, the guys from the homicide squad are going to be here any minute, and they’re going to ask you all the same questions. Just be patient with them and run through it again, okay?”
She wiped her eyes and nodded. “Okay,” she said.
“Something else,” he said. “I was trying to get in touch with Bruna to ask her a few questions about another case we’re looking into. Maybe you can help.”
“If I can. Sure.”
“Bruna was on the 8101 on the twenty-second of November.”
“That’s our usual run.”
“Were you aboard as well?”
She reached for her purse and took out a diary with a black plastic cover. “The twenty-second of November, you said?”
He nodded.
She turned pages, found the date, looked up. “Yes,” she said.
“On that flight,” he said, “she was, initially, one of two flight attendants assigned to business class. There were only eleven passengers in there, but the economy class cabin was full. The chief steward changed the assignment-”
“I remember,” she said. “That was me. I got pulled out of business and put into economy.”
“Can you recall if Bruna told you anything about that night? Told you anything unusual that might have happened to her?”
Lina frowned, remembering. “She mentioned a couple of things,” she said. “First of all, there were some unwelcome advances.”
“Unwelcome advances?”
“That’s the training manual talking. It means someone coming on to you. She had two of those. One was from this creep who came up behind her when she was making coffee. He put his hands around her waist. She had to brush them off.”
“You don’t, by any chance, remember the man’s name?”
She shook her head. “He told Bruna he sold lubricants, and that he traveled back and forth from Sao Paulo to Miami all the time. Maybe so, but…”
“She didn’t recall having seen him before?”
“Neither of us did.”
“So you saw him?”
“Bruna pointed him out, told me to watch out for him, but… well, it was a while ago.”
“Would you recognize him? In a photo?”
She frowned. “I’m not sure. I could try.”
“A couple, you said, a couple of unwelcome advances. Tell me about the other one.”
“Bruna was dozing. Someone touched her hair and she woke up with this character breathing bad breath into her face. He was only a few centimeters away. Can you imagine?”
“Must have given her a start,” Goncalves said.
“It did. He claimed he wanted to know where the ice was, but you don’t have to get right into somebody’s face to ask a question like that.”
“No, you certainly don’t. Did she point him out as well?”
“She did. And that one I’m sure I’d remember. He had a brown mark right here.”
She touched her cheek.
“Brown mark? Like a liver spot?”
“Yes, like a liver spot. This whole business is right out of a crime novel. What did you say your name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Haraldo. Haraldo Goncalves.”
“Call me Lina.” She extended a hand and Goncalves took it. Her palm was moist, no surprise after the shock she’d been through.
“Lina,” he said, “you suggested that something else happened as well, aside from the… what did you call them?”
“Unwelcome advances.”
“Unwelcome advances. What was it? What else happened?”
“In the middle of the night, Bruna heard somebody moving around in the cabin. She was on her guard by then. She stuck her head around the corner of the galley, and there he was, the one with the mark on his cheek, messing around in one of the overhead compartments. When he spotted her looking at him, his eyes got all round, and his mouth dropped open. It was like she’d caught him with his hand in the cookie jar, she said.”
“Did she speak to him?”
“She did. Asked him, sarcastic like, if he needed any help.”
“And he?”
“And he told her no. But she could see he wasn’t happy.
Looked furtive, was the way she put it.”
“Furtive?”
“That’s the word she used. Furtive. Bruna was always using words like that. She had two years of university, you know.”
“No, I didn’t. Did she report the incident?”
“Right away. She went to first class and talked to Leandro, the chief steward.”
“And?”