They knew. They knew everything. He felt as if he were floating to Pacheco's office. He wondered if he should hold out his hands for the cuffs. Pacheco was sitting with papers in front of him, and he too stood when he saw him come in.
“Chacaltana! Where the hell have you been? I've been looking for you all morning.”
Chacaltana tried to impose some order in his mind before explaining where the hell he had been. But the captain continued:
“They killed Father Quiroz. Damn, Chacaltana, you have to see him. They really fucked him up.”
“They” killed? Not “you” killed? Chacaltana had been so ready to confess that now he did not know what to say. He had even begun to convince himself that he was guilty.
“How …?”
“They found him at dawn. The neighbors reported shots. But he wasn't shot to death. It seems the killer wanted to announce what he had done. The only thing the motherfucker didn't do was set off fireworks.”
And the couple? And people who saw him leaving the house?
“Are there … witnesses … statements from neighbors?”
“Witnesses? You know how it is, Chacaltana. Nobody talks, nobody makes a statement, nobody wants any problems. Even the call that reported it was anonymous. This is a fucking mess. I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. You … you were right.”
He noticed that it was enormously difficult for the captain to apologize. It caused him pain. Chacaltana could not believe what he was saying when he said:
“Don't worry, Captain. I understand. We all have too much to worry about, don't we?”
The captain thanked him for his understanding with a gesture.
“The fact that people don't talk isn't so serious. By some miracle we've managed to keep the matter out of the press. Even though we're crowded with tourists and reporters. Sometimes I ask myself if all these people aren't blind.”
Prosecutor Chacaltana was asking himself exactly the same question. But the captain gave a military pitch to his voice and said:
“I want you to tell me everything you know about this case.”
Prosecutor Chacaltana told him slowly and in detail, as if he were reciting all his reports. He did not mention the detail that all the people who knew about his investigation had been killed. He thought the captain would discover that for himself. The police official was thinking about taking charge of the investigation. He seemed very interested. Perhaps they had called him from Lima, they always knew everything, if they had retired the commander it would be precisely because they were up to date on everything. In reality, the prosecutor was not concerned about any of that. When he finished his account, the captain said:
“Go see the pathologist and prepare a report to open the case.”
For a moment, Chacaltana wanted to say that he could not become involved in this matter quickly. That what they faced had been going on for centuries and would last for many more centuries. That they were fighting against ghosts, against the dead, against the spirit of the Andes. That he had just sexually violated the person who was probably the best woman he had ever known in his life. That according to the law he ought to marry her now. That he no longer wanted to deal with this case, that he preferred to get away with Carrión to some pretty beach on the northern coast. He opened his mouth and finally said, with all the conviction of which he was capable:
“Yes, Señor.”
On the twenty-first day of April, 2000, the priest of the Church of the Heart of Christ, Sebastián Quiroz Mendoza, was discovered dead in the environs of his basement, when neighbors requested the intervention of the police force to guarantee order and safety while the perpetrator fired his weapon in the streets adjacent to the parish house.
According to the reconstruction effected by the forensic pathologist, the aforementioned priest was first tied by the hands and feet and gagged, which is suggested by hematomas at his joints and the corners of his mouth, then subsequently subjected to the amputation of his lower left extremity while alive. Likewise serious wounds were inflicted with acid, and the trachea and larynx were perforated with a sharp cutting instrument through to the nape of his neck, until he was left in the interior of the crematory chamber located in his basement.
According to verification effected by police authorities, the perpetrator subsequently proceeded to open fire at the walls and doors of the property, after which he fled, carrying the amputated lower extremity and his instruments of mutilation in a clear demonstration of a lack of the mental faculties required for sanity. The shells discovered at the scene correspond to a regulation weapon, which suggests that the perpetrator could have been a terrorist with access to military arsenals, or had stolen a pistol, with premeditated treachery and a clear advantage over his victim, from a member of the nation's security forces.
It is important to note as well that the wounds inflicted on the aforementioned priest Sebastián Quiroz Mendoza could not have been perpetrated by a person older than forty, due to the fact that they required considerable physical strength, or by a functionary or person who works or carries out his assigned duties in an office, for example, the need having been demonstrated for training in either police or subversive operations, which the perpetrator displayed in his actions.
Further, the signatory, who at the time of the outrage was asleep in his own residence, suggests, based on his criminological experience, that the crime would have to have been committed by vandalistic elements or groups especially dedicated to the perpetration of homicides with the intent to commit larceny or robbery.
Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar looked again at the page he had just written, thinking about another way to cover his presence at the site. No. It was sufficient. He erased the word “police” to avoid arguments with Pacheco and considered the report concluded. He would not have to face the couple from the previous night, who were probably more terrified than he was, in a confrontation with witnesses, but he knew that sooner or later the authorities would get around to him. On the previous night he had not even been careful to avoid leaving prints in the basement. On that basis they would have sufficient cause to accuse him. The prints would have to go to the laboratory in Lima, they would take a while, perhaps enough time to find the real killer. A matter of days. God willing.
In spite of having to find a quick solution, he could not get the incident with Edith out of his head. He did not understand why he had done what he had done. He tried to remember and at the same time forget the episode that morning. He had not been looking for sex but for a kind of power, a kind of domination, the feeling that something was weaker than he was, that in the midst of this world that seemed to want to swallow him whole, he too could have strength, potency, victims.
Or perhaps he had simply wanted sex. In either case, he felt like a perfect imbecile. It would be very difficult to convince himself otherwise. Above all, it would be very difficult to convince Edith.
He decided to concentrate on his investigation in order not to think about her, although moments he had been beside her returned like flashes to flog his memory. Her closed eyes, squeezed tight like her clenched teeth, her legs trying to resist his attack. He would return to the archives of the Office of the Prosecutor. He wanted to know if Father Quiroz had been threatened or undergone earlier attempts on his life during the years of terrorism. Perhaps that would give him a clue. This time there had been no note from Sendero, but that must have been due to lack of time. Chacaltana had interrupted the killers in the middle of their work, who knows how they had proposed to end it.
For lunch he ate a chicken sandwich at a street stand and then went to the Office of the Prosecutor. The faithful were forming lines at the Church of Santo Domingo, holding pieces of cotton in their hands to clean the wounds on the image of the Lord of the Holy Sepulcher. The prosecutor imagined all those hands, one after another, touching the wounds of Christ. Without knowing why, that made him think of his mother and of Edith.