Leighton Gage - Blood of the Wicked

"No, Senhor Muniz, I'm not calling you anything. Cuff him, Arnaldo. Take him up to my suite."

"Cuff me? Cuff me? Don't you dare touch me, you fucking Neanderthal. I'll have your goddamned job."

Arnaldo walked up to the fazendeiro and kicked his ankles out from under him. Before Muniz had recovered from the shock, the big cop's knee was pressing on his kidneys, and Muniz's arms were being forced behind his back. As Arnaldo led him away, Silva started going through Father Angelo's pockets. He found a cigarette lighter (a cheap affair in pink plastic), a rosary, a few folded bills of low denomination, some small change, two more packs of cigarettes (one of them almost empty), and a single cartridge casing. He brought the casing close to his eyes for a better look. It was a. 22-caliber short. Other than that, there was nothing. No papers, no identification, no other personal effects. The priest's eyes were closed, his features composed, even content. There was no horror written there, no shock. He appeared to be sleeping.

Silva rose to his feet. As he did, someone touched his shoulder.

He turned and found himself looking into a pair of limpid gray eyes.

Merda! Silva thought.

His reaction had nothing to do with the eyes themselves or even the rest of what went with them: dark blonde hair, a flawless complexion, full, sensuous lips and a button nose.

No. His reaction had exclusively to do with the camera that some guy was poking over her left shoulder. There was a tiny red light on the front of that camera and the light was blinking.

"You were a witness to the shooting, weren't you Chief Inspector?" the blonde asked, holding a microphone up to his lips to capture his reply.

"No comment."

"Oh, come on," she said. "We were a couple of seconds too late, but you were right here in the room. You must have seen Senhor Muniz shoot the priest."

"No comment, Senhora…"

"Ferraz. And it's not senhora, it's senhorita, but you can call me Natalia."

"Ferraz. Any relation to-"

"The colonel? No. No relation. But, while we're at it, what's your comment about what happened to him?"

"Happened to him?"

"His murder."

Silva stared at her and blinked. She studied his expression.

"Hey, you didn't know about it, did you?"

"No," he said with a sigh, "I didn't."

She was going to make him look like an idiot. But then, to his surprise and relief, she let him off the hook.

"Cut it, Joao," she said to the cameraman.

The tiny red light gave a final blink and went out.

"To be fair," she said, "there's no reason why you should have known about the colonel. They only found him a little over an hour ago. Shot to death in his living room. Him and that adjutant of his, Major Palmas."

"How did you find out about it, Senhorita Ferraz?"

"Natalia," she said. And then, turning her gray eyes onto Hector, but still speaking to Silva, "Who's your friend?"

"Delegado Hector Costa," Hector said, before Silva could reply.

"Oh, yeah," she said, "you're the nephew, right?"

As Hector's smile faded, she turned back to Silva. "Heard it on the police scanner," she said. "His driver found the bodies."

"Whose driver?"

"The colonel's driver. He picks him up every morning. There's no sleep-in maid, so it's the driver who makes the colonel's coffee. He's got a key to the house. He called it in from the car radio. We picked it up. Got there just when everybody else did."

"And how did you get here so fast?"

"We got a tip somebody'd been shot."

"A tip? From whom?"

"Anonymous. He-it was a he-called it in to the network."

"When?"

She looked at her watch. "Maybe twenty minutes ago, which is at least fifteen minutes before it actually happened. Funny, huh? Maybe the caller was a psychic."

With the colonel dead, there was no reason not to use the local jail, so that's where they took Muniz.

He was entitled to one telephone call and he promptly made it. His personal judge, Wilson Cunha, got there in five minutes flat, called for an immediate arraignment, and assured Muniz that he wouldn't have to spend the night in a cell.

Silva told Cunha that he intended to file federal charges and that, by law, he had twenty-four hours to do it. In the meantime, Muniz wouldn't be going anywhere.

"What federal charges?" Cunha sputtered.

"I haven't decided yet. I'm still thinking about it."

"I protest."

"Protest all you want. Your patron is going to spend the night in jail and I intend to make sure he doesn't get a cell to himself. Who knows? Maybe he'll find love."

Silva waited until Cunha had stormed out, then called a friend at the revenue service in Brasilia and initiated an audit of the judge's last five years of income tax statements.

Half an hour later, a small crowd of the curious was still milling about in the lobby of the Hotel Excelsior. As Hector threaded his way through them, leading the way to the elevator, he spotted an unexpected figure: Father Francisco, the late bishop's secretary.

The priest's attire was rumpled, he was showing a day's growth of beard, and there were dark rings under his eyes. He tossed aside the newspaper lying in his lap, wearily pulled himself out of his armchair, and extended a hand.

Hector took it, introduced the priest to his two companions, and said, "I hope you'll pardon me for saying so, Father, but you look as if you could use a good night's sleep."

Self-consciously, the priest ran a hand over the stubble on his chin.

"I daresay I do, Delegado, but I'll have to put it off a little while longer. I've been waiting for you and the chief inspector. Have you time for a cup of coffee?"

"Of course. You heard about what happened to Father Angelo?"

"Yes. The desk clerk told me about it. He had it from some people who saw it all." The priest seemed neither scandalized nor surprised.

Hector glanced at the hotel's coffee shop. Yellow crimescene tape still sealed off the entrance, and people were leaning over it, staring at the bloodstains on the floor.

"No coffee to be gotten here," he said. "Let's go upstairs and order it from room service."

When he was seated on the sofa in Silva's suite and the coffee had been ordered, the priest said, "Shortly after two o'clock this morning Father Angelo called me."

"He called you at two AM?" Silva asked. "You were awake?"

"Asleep, but I have a telephone next to my bed. Last rites, you see. I'm often asked to give them in the early hours of the morning."

"So you weren't particularly surprised to get a call?"

"Not until I picked up the telephone and heard Father Angelo's voice."

"What did he want?"

"To talk to me, he said, about a matter of the utmost urgency."

"What matter?"

"He refused to discuss it over the telephone."

"Sounds familiar. He did the same with me. Only it was hours later. Just after eight-thirty. He woke me out of a sound sleep and asked me to meet him in the breakfast room downstairs. He was shot to death before we could talk. I'm still wondering what it was all about."

"Perhaps I can shed some light."

At that moment someone rapped on the door. It turned out to be room service with the coffee. Father Francisco waited until everyone had been served, and the man had left, before he resumed his story:

"Angelo asked me to come here, to Cascatas. There was something in his voice, something in the way he made his request. It was… well, I hope you don't find I'm being too dramatic, but his voice was almost funereal. I told him I'd come immediately."

"To his home?"

"No. That was something else I found strange. He told me to come to Santa Cecilia's. That's the old church, the one they're going to demolish to build a school. He said he had a key, and he'd leave a door open. He described how to find it."