Avram Davidson - The Avram Davidson Treasury - a tribute collection

But the body was gone.

Everything whirled around and around, and Carlos whirled with it, staggering along the road with arms outstretched to keep from falling. He had slept, he had slept, after the hours of keeping awake to guard the body in the darkness, he had fallen asleep in the earliest daylight! Now he was worse off than ever, for now Don Juan Antonio knew there was a body — and how would Carlos be able to account for its loss? Weeping, sobbing, cursing, stumbling along, he knew that he could account for that no more than for the loss of his revolver. He was certainly doomed.

Unless — Unless — he provided another body, so no one would know the difference.

Below him he saw the railroad tracks. Half-sliding, he descended the slope and ran along the rails. He knew who had, who must have done this to him! Who else but the woodcutters, those thieves and sons of harlots? Why else but to take revenge upon him for his intended capture? — and to prevent his ever doing so! But he would show them, now and forever. They had incited the entire poblacion against him, but he would show them… He came to a switch and just a short distance away was the equipment shed of the maintenance crew, with its weathered inscription: This Edifice And Its Entire Contents Is The Property Of The Republic . With his shoulder skewed around he burst it open, seized up the first grass-machete he saw, and rushed out again. He had time? Would he be in time? Would Don Juan Antonio have been awake? Been elsewhere? How soon would he start out? Carlos prayed for time to stand in between Don Juan Antonio and the barbarous plot of the woodcutters.

And luck was with him. The mists parted as he came back over the slope and there down below was a man leading a burro laden with wood. Cautiously and carefully, so shrewdly that he was obliged to smile to himself and to stifle his own laughter, Carlos approached bent over and on crouching knees. The burro approached, the burro passed, Carlos rose to his feet and darted forward on his toes. The machete swung. The body fell, spouting blood. Carlos kicked the fallen head like a football, watched it drop into the underbrush. He threw the body over his shoulder and ran and ran and ran and ran.

“Carlos,” said Don Juan Antonio. “Carlos! Do you hear me? Stop that! Stop that and listen to me! Do you hear—”

“No use, jefe ,” said his assistant, Raimundo Cepeda. “It’s the shock — the shock. He won’t come out of it for a while.”

Don Juan Antonio wiped his face with an impeccably ironed and cologne-scented handkerchief. “Not he alone… I am also in such a situation. Dreadful. Horrible. People do not realize—”

“Poor young man,” sighed the elderly jailor, Uncle Hector, shaking his head. “Only consider—”

Don Juan Antonio nodded vigorously. “By all means let us consider. And let us consider the whole case. Thus I reconstruct it:

“We have the precious pair, the coarsely handsome cousins Eugenio and Onofrio Cruz. Ostensibly and even occasionally woodcutters. On the side — drunkards, when they had the money; thieves…and worse…when they had the chance. Partners against the rest of the world, fighting often between themselves. Last night they go out to cut wood, illegally. And on the way back a quarrel breaks out. Who knows why? For that matter, perhaps Eugenio merely decided on the spur of the moment to kill Onofrio. At any rate, he does kill him, with a blow of his axe. Then, to conceal the identity of the corpus, with the same axe he decapitates it. And returns to his hut, carrying the head. Also, the defunct’s wallet.

“Once there, the thought occurs to him that he should not have left the body. With daylight coming, it will soon be found. So he prepares a pile or pyre of wood. With all the burning of fields and thickets, one more smoke will hardly be observed. Should anyone smell anything, they will assume it to be a trapped deer. And he goes back to gain the body. But meanwhile the police have not been idle. Officer Carlos Rodriguez Nuñez is not only up and around, but he has also located the corpus and is guarding it. Eugenio conceals himself. By and by the sun begins to rise, the little brothers Santa Anna approach, and Carlos sends one of them with a message to me. But the child is, after all, only a child; he doesn’t go to the right place, wanders around, time is lost. Meanwhile Carlos, content that all will soon be well, sits down and falls asleep. Erroneously,” he added, with emphasis, “but — understandably. Understandably.

“Out from his place of concealment creeps the criminal murderer Eugenio Cruz. He steals both Carlos’s service revolver and the corpus, loads it on the horse which he had brought with him and also concealed at a distance, returns to his hut. There he decides that he has not enough wood to incinerate the victim. So he conceals the corpus inside the hut and goes out for more wood. Meanwhile the unfortunate and valiant Carlos awakens, discovers his loss. By dint of the faculty of ratiocination so highly developed in our police, he deduces who the killer must be and where he must have gone. He tracks him down, securing, along the way, a machete. He confronts the arch-criminal. He kills him. Again, I must say: erroneously. And again I must say: understandably. Doubtless the murderer Cruz would have attempted to escape.

“At any rate, this second slaying is witnessed by the much respected citizen and veteran of the Revolution, Simon-Macabeo Lopez—”

The much respected citizen and veteran of the Revolution, Simon-Macabeo Lopez, snapped his sole remaining arm into a salute, and nodded solemnly.

“—who had risen early in order to go and cultivate the piece of land granted him by the grateful Republic. Veteran Lopez immediately and properly proceeds to inform me, arriving at the same time as the little brother Santa Anna. The police at once move to investigate, and we find — that which we found. A body here, a body there, here a head, and there a head, Carlos in a state of incoherent shock. So. Thus my reconstruction. What do you think of it?”

There was a silence. At length the assistant head of the police said, “Masterful. Masterful.”

“Thank you.”

“It is such a reconstruction, so neat, so lucid, so full of clarity, as is usually to be met with only in the pages of criminal literature. But… señor jefe …it is not the truth. No, I must say, it is not the truth.”

Don Juan Antonio snapped, “Why not?”

Cepeda sighed, gestured to the unfortunate Rodriguez. “Because, señor jefe, you know and I know and almost everybody in town knows why. That bitch, that strumpet, Lupe de Rodriguez, was cuckolding poor Carlos with the cousins Eugenio and Onofrio Cruz, too. One man was not enough for her. And Carlos was blind to all.”

“Truth,” said the jailor, sighing.

“Truth,” said the veteran, nodding.

“Truth,” said the other policemen, shaking their heads, sadly.

Don Juan Antonio glared. Then his expression relaxed, and he lowered his head. “It is the truth,” he said, at last. “Ay, Carlos! ¡Woe of me! ¡Hombre! The husband is always the last to learn. For weeks, now, I have scarcely been able to look him in the face. Why, the very honor of the police was imperiled. How the railroad men were laughing at us. Mother!

“So, my poor Carlos — You finally found out, eh? Nevertheless! ” Don Juan Antonio all but shouted at the others. “It is my reconstruction which must stand, do you agree? Carlos has suffered enough, and moreover, there is the honor of the police.”

“Oh, agreed, agreed, senor jefe, ” the other officers exclaimed, hastily and heartily.

“We may depend upon the discretion of the Veteran Lopez, I assume?”