Leighton Gage - A vine in the blood

Gaspar would have liked a turn with that ball peen hammer, but he knew better than to interrupt Tony when he was exercising his professional skills.

Gaspar, therefore, confined himself to questions of the kind Talafero could respond to with movements of his head.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” he said, “did you, or did you not, plant that fucking bomb that killed the Captain?”

For the first time, Talafero nodded.

Gaspar took a step backward, looked at Tony and smiled. Then he turned back to Talafero.

“You shoulda come clean in the first place, admitted it right away, saved us all this trouble. Then you coulda been dead by now.”

Under normal circumstances, it wouldn’t have been much of a reward for honesty. But Talafero, at that moment, wanted nothing more than a quick bullet to his head.

Gaspar, however, wasn’t quite ready to give it to him. Some questions remained.

“There was something about diamonds,” he said. “The boss was gonna talk to the federal cops. You know anything about that?”

Talafero shook his head.

“And the Artist’s mother? You have anything to do with grabbing her?”

Again, Talafero shook his head.

Gaspar turned back to his colleague.

“Well, I guess that’s that.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, “that’s that.”

He took out his pistol.

“Hang on,” Gaspar said.

“What?”

“Lend me that hammer.”

Talafero’s body was found on the street in front of what remained of Captain Miranda’s building.

Silva was watching the TV coverage and sipping a coffee when Hector joined him in the conference room.

“I just got off the phone with Sao Paulo homicide,” he said.

“And?”

“They fingerprinted Talafero’s corpse. We got a match.”

“To the fingerprint on that fragment of electrical tape?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s it then. Talafero killed Miranda.”

Hector waved a sheet of paper.

“Additional confirmation,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“The contents of a note found pinned to Talafero’s body.” Silva patted the pockets of his jacket.

“I left my glasses in your office.”

“I’ll read it. ‘This canalha killed the Captain. He didn’t have anything to do with the kidnapping of Juraci Santos.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Must have been meant for us.”

“Must have been. But why would they bother?”

“Miranda wanted to help. My guess is they either honored his wishes, or feel the same way he did. For us, it doesn’t matter. What matters is we’ve got another dead end.”

“Appropriate choice of words.”

“Quite intentional.”

“The kidnappers have their diamonds. If they intend to release her, or kill her, wouldn’t they have done it by now?”

“Not necessarily. They’ll want to be sure about the worth of the stones, evaluate them before they take further action.”

“So what now?”

“I’m going to have another talk with our consultant, Professor Rosa. Call Arnaldo and ask him to order up a car.”

Rosa was waiting in the interrogation room. No handcuffs this time. He greeted them with a smile and a deep intake of breath, as if he was capturing a scent. “You bring with you the air of freedom.”

“All I agreed to do, Professor,” Silva said, “is to testify on your behalf. I don’t make the final decision, so don’t blame me if they don’t let you out of here.”

“You were the last impediment, Chief Inspector.”

“You’ve bribed all the members of that parole board? Is that what you’re implying?”

“Tut, tut, tut, Chief Inspector! You shock me. I’m not implying any such thing. Even if those sterling citizens were to accept bribes, where would I get the money?”

“More than half of the money you took from your victims was never found. You must have squirreled away a bundle.”

“Alas, if it were only true. In those, my halcyon days, I lived high off the hog. The best wine, luxury hotels, fine restaurants. I owned a Ferrari, you know, and a Porsche.”

“I know it very well. We confiscated both of them. But you could have done all you did, and bought all you bought, and still have a bundle left over.”

“Goodness, no, Chief Inspector. You have no idea how expensive luxuries are. But then, I wouldn’t expect you to, given your well-known incorruptibility. I admire you. I truly do.”

“You’re convinced you’re going to get out of here, aren’t you?”

“I am. And I shall go and sin no more. I’m reformed.”

“I daresay that, even after you’ve paid those people off, you’ll still have enough not to have to work ever again.”

With a gesture, Rosa dismissed the thought. “I’d work even if all of my needs were provided for. Most prisoners vegetate. Many retired people do the same. But I abhor idleness. That’s why I’d like to work with you.”

“Not for the money? You don’t need it, is that it?”

“Money is always nice. But it’s the intellectual challenge that appeals to me. What brings you back this time?”

“The ransom has been paid.”

“Has it now? How did they arrange for delivery?”

“Carrier pigeons,” Silva said and went on to explain.

When he was done, Rosa pushed back from the table and applauded slowly. “Bravo,” he said. “A tour de force. I seem to have seriously underestimated the intelligence of those people.”

“Put your thinking cap on, Professor. I really need your help.”

“And I really want to give it, believe me I do. Here’s one thought: they would have known, even before they started, that this would be the high-profile kidnapping of the year, perhaps of the decade.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“They would have anticipated that Juraci’s face would make the front page of every newspaper in the country; they would have expected her kidnapping to be the lead story in every newscast. She’d be transformed from someone that almost no one recognized into someone that virtually everyone recognized. And it would have occurred within a matter of hours.”

“Which leads you to postulate… what?”

“It would have been inadvisable to take her far from the scene of her abduction. This neighborhood of Juraci’s, Granja Viana?”

“What about it?”

“What’s it like?”

“It’s not the country, but it’s not the city either. Semi-rural, the occasional horse farm, that sort of thing.”

“Then that’s where she is. They’re holding her in Granja Viana, or somewhere close to it. Think about it. Every hour, every minute that she was in transit would have augmented their risk. It wouldn’t matter if she was well concealed. It wouldn’t matter if she was sedated. Traffic accidents, documentation blitzes from the Policia Rodoviaria, things like that, can always interfere with the best laid plans. They would have wanted to get her into a place of security as quickly as possible. That place is unlikely to be one that’s recently rented or acquired. That attracts too much attention. People get curious about their new neighbors. It’s likely to be a place that the kidnappers have been visiting for some time, a place where they’ve achieved invisibility through familiarity. It would be best, too, if the place had some land around it, a garden, or a field, where they can bury her once they’re finished with her.”

“Makes sense. Other thoughts?”

“I assume your estimable Mara Carta is already looking into the bird angle?”

“She is. But she’s come up blank. Breeders, she tells us, sell them for between forty and sixty Reais each. Even at the lower price, sixty birds would have cost twenty-four hundred, a major purchase in that business. No breeder she’s spoken to, and she’s spoken to a lot of them, recalls making a sale of that magnitude. Ever. We’re extending our area of inquiry, but our current hypothesis is that the kidnappers have been doing their own breeding.”