“You saw it?”
“Only the aftermath. I was at the other end of the shower room, and I had soap in my eyes. I heard a commotion, washed out the soap, saw him lying on the floor, bleeding from the head.”
“So you didn’t see him being struck?”
“No, but I saw the rape. They propped him up on all fours. Two men held his thighs so they wouldn’t collapse. Another pushed the nape of his neck so his head went down to the concrete floor. Then he buggered him.”
“ Who buggered him? Joao Girotti?”
Spadafora shook his head.
“Girotti was in line. He would have been third. Except…”
“Except what?”
Spadafora winced, the memory painful. “He never got a chance. Somebody said the guards were coming. Girotti gave it up. He turned around, went under one of the showers, turned on the cold water to get rid of his erection.”
“So who was it raped the kid?”
“Castor Salles; Big Castor, they call him. And it’s an apt description. When he saw Arriaga, the first thing he said was, He’s mine. I heard him say it. The boy did too. He backed up against the wall. I went to the other end of the cell and turned my face away. Five minutes later, they were herding us into the shower. Less than five minutes after that, the boy was dead.”
“You think Delegado Bittencourt is aware of what he’s got in Castor Salles?”
“How could he not be? You know, before I went to prison, I was against the death penalty. I used to look down my nose at primitive societies that execute people.”
“Primitive societies, huh? Like the Americans?”
Spadafora smiled a thin smile before he went on. “But now I think differently. People like Castor Salles, they’re… purely evil.”
The bookkeeper shivered, as if he could see Big Castor Salles right there in the room with him. Then he looked Hector full in the face. “You’re a cop. You must see people like Salles all the time, primitives with no regard for other people and no respect for human life. What do you think should be done with them?”
Hector didn’t answer, not because he didn’t have an answer. He did. He had very firm convictions about what, in a land with no death penalty, should be done with animals like Big Castor Salles.
But he’d never share those convictions with a man like Ubaldo Spadafora.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gilda’s house keys rattled when she tossed them onto the counter. She hung her purse on the back of one of the kitchen chairs and sank heavily into another.
“Sometimes,” she said, “people make me sick.”
Hector had a spare glass waiting. He filled it from the open bottle of Chilean red and handed it to her.
She took a healthy gulp, sighed, and leaned back in her seat. After a moment, she went on.
“I know you were annoyed when I wouldn’t talk to you,” she said, “but when you called everybody was standing around, waiting for me to cut.”
“I wasn’t annoyed,” he said, “I just-”
She continued as if she hadn’t heard him.
“It was a double autopsy, a married couple, murdered in their bed. They’d been asleep when the killer came in. The husband died instantly, one shot to the temple. His wife took two in the chest. Neither shot hit her heart.”
She took another sip of wine. For a moment, Hector thought she was finished. But she wasn’t.
“She must have awoken in pain,” she said, “awoken to see the person who was killing her.”
Hector put down the spoon he was using to stir the spaghetti sauce and leaned against the sink. “And that was?”
“Her daughter. Fourteen years old. Because her parents wouldn’t let her go to a party.”
Gilda took another swallow of wine, put down the glass, and rubbed her eyes. She’d been crying.
“Where did she get the gun?” Hector asked.
“Does it matter?”
“No. No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“It was her father’s. That Arriaga case, the one you called about, that makes me sick too.”
Hector picked up his spoon. She took a paper towel from the roll and blew her nose.
“The boy didn’t fall,” she continued. “Not unless they held him on their shoulders so he could fall from a height of at least two and a half meters. There was semen in his rectum. The rape was postmortem.”
Hector poured himself another glass of wine and sat down.
“Postmortem? How can you tell?”
She looked at the sauce bubbling on the stove. “You really want me to tell you that? Before dinner?”
Hector shook his head. “You didn’t, by any chance, bring me a copy of the autopsy report?”
“It isn’t finished.”
“After all this time? Why not?”
“The mother came to the morgue and wanted to know all the details. Paulo didn’t have the heart to tell her. And he didn’t want her getting her hands on any report. But he wouldn’t falsify it either. So he put off finishing it until the cops could complete their investigation. He told the mother her boy died from a severe cranial trauma, which was true, and he put a sample of the semen out for DNA analysis.”
“In order to provide evidence for the homicide guys? So they could bust someone before the report became available?”
“Exactly. But without that report, there was no justification for DNA analysis. Paulo asked the lab to do him a favor. They said they would, but not as a priority.”
“So it’s still not done?”
“Oh, it’s done, all right. It arrived the day before yesterday. One rapist only. Paulo briefed the civil police. They’re getting samples from the men who were in the shower with Arriaga.”
“Has the delegado in charge of the jail been informed?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
Hector topped up his glass. “He reported it as an accident.”
“He must have known otherwise.”
Hector got up to stir the sauce. “Probably did, probably saving himself the trouble of investigating. I doubt he would have done it if he’d known there was semen in the kid. He’ll get a reprimand at the very least.”
“The bastard should be fired.”
“True. When is Paulo going to finish his damned report?”
She raised an eyebrow at the adjective. “Paulo will finish it,” she said, “when they identify the rapist. He believes it will bring the mother some degree of closure if she knows that the man responsible for her son’s death is going to pay for it.”
Hector put down the spoon and returned to his seat. An image of Aline Arriaga’s tear-stained face popped into his mind. There would be no closure for her. Not ever. He took a sip of wine, looking at Gilda over the rim of his glass. “You agree with what Paulo did?”
Gilda crossed her arms across her chest. “I wasn’t consulted.”
“I didn’t ask you if you were consulted. I asked you if you agreed.”
“Don’t use that tone of voice with me, Hector Costa.”
He put down his glass. “I’m going to call Paulo right now.”
“If you pick up that phone,” she said, steel in her voice, “you can sleep on the couch.”
“Goddamn it, Gilda-”
“Paulo Couto is a kind, caring man. He did what he did to spare that woman grief. Can you get that through your thick skull?”
“So you do agree with him.”
“I’ve had just about enough of this. I didn’t come home to subject myself to an interrogation. Go question some criminal and leave me alone.”
Gilda got to her feet, stormed into the bedroom, and slammed the door.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“You need anything else?” Rosa asked. Mondays were slow days, and this Monday had been even slower than usual. It was only 7:00 P.M., not late as far as Mansur was concerned, but Rosa was already wearing her tennis shoes, a sure sign that she was on her way out the door.
Mansur shook his head, didn’t respond when she wished him a good evening, and waited until he heard the ping of the elevator before opening his refrigerator. The damned thing wasn’t big enough for more than a couple of six-packs, and the ice cubes were tiny, tinier still when Rosa didn’t fill the trays as, once again, she hadn’t.