Unless, of course, Samir—
It cannot be.
He wouldn’t be such a bastard. Would he?
chapter seventeen. tying up loose ends
Samir Mounier is the only person who knows what has happened. And because nothing of what has happened has managed to betray his strategy, he proceeds on course.
He had invited his niece to visit him so she would bear witness to his grief at his wife’s infidelity, to help give him some solace, and to get under Maryam’s skin, since she disliked her immensely. And if she had minded her business and not offered to accompany Maryam, she would still be alive today to help him plan his father-in-law and wife’s funeral. That she has also gone up in flames doesn’t really change anything.
She will not be missed. With her parents Saleh and Hamsa in a nursing home in Tegucigalpa, and Verónica a spinster living alone, her disappearance from Honduras — the country with the highest homicide rate in the world — is sure to raise no suspicion. Tegucigalpa is a city where bridges lead to nowhere. Her incineration is only a minor occurrence — dozens of people vanish in Honduras every week and nobody cares.
The most Samir will be required to do is fly to Tegucigalpa and close up his niece’s apartment. If he were decent and had the time, he would also stop by and see his brother and his brother’s wife in their nursing home one last time. But what would be the point? They’d have no idea who he is, and if they end up being wards of the state in a hideous urine-infested facility, then so be it.
No one will miss Verónica . The thought makes him smile. The Guatemalan police have no idea what actually happened. They suspect absolutely no foul play. The only danger is if they discover any evidence pointing to a third person in the car. In truth, no one gives a damn about my niece. Certainly not me, Uncle Samir. And even Ibrahim and Maryam Khalil: they are today’s news and tomorrow’s old papers.
He had seen the mass of twisted metal that remained of Maryam’s Mercedes at the crime scene. He is no scientist, but he suspects there will be no forensic evidence to cull from, no DNA that could possibly prove three people had died. Guatemala is years away from genetic testing, but DNA cannot be recovered from cremated remains anyway. All the pieces of jewelry, the few chips of gold from fillings, will be traced back to Maryam because the truth of what happened is too complicated to investigate.
It was wise of him to give Hiba the morning off and ask her to come in at twelve thirty to make lunch. For some reason, he had assumed that Hiba’s presence would have inhibited conversation between Verónica and Maryam in the morning, thereby delaying his wife’s departure to pick up her father.
The fact that Hiba came in later in the day would awaken no suspicion.
Samir has no trouble faking his grief. He has lost his wife, his beautiful young wife, and the texture of his life will have to change in the eyes of the world. He can fabricate real tears just thinking of his dead mother or father, but to look at him, no one would know that he is feeling absolutely no grief as he cries. He doesn’t need to plaster gloom all over his face, it is naturally disfigured by a lifetime of disappointment and the distortions of age. Adding a heap more sorrow will not change things at all.
He calls home and tells Hiba matter-of-factly that the madam is dead, and to please go home. He is surprised by the maid’s display of sorrow over the phone. “There is nothing else you can do,” he snaps at her. “I will call you when I need you again.”
When he arrives back to his apartment, he unlocks Verónica’s door and gathers together her few belongings. He examines each piece for a label or marking that might identify them as hers, and finding none, he puts her clothes back into her suitcase. As he drives to the San Francisco Church downtown to make funeral arrangements with Father Reboleda, he stops by the edge of the small park bordering the Simón Bolivar Plaza on Las Américas Boulevard and places the suitcase on the sidewalk. Poor Indians are taking down their food stands for the day, and the contents of the luggage will easily find their way into a needy family’s hands.
The beauty of living in a country as corrupt as Guatemala is that evidence can vanish as easily as smoke. Scarcity creates a society in which the truth of any situation can be variable or even paradoxical, and very few people will care. It happens all the time.
Samir has a mordant smile on his face as he drives downtown. Everything has gone smoothly enough. The killers seem to have been as discreet as they were paid to be. He can’t imagine the explosion traced back to him. The detectives, God bless their souls, will come up with enough believable theories of who was behind the killings.
He is well aware that Ibrahim has at least three or four enemies who would want him dead. Crooked textile suppliers, fellow members of that idiotic presidential oversight committee he was on, and even Guillermo Rosensweig, if he felt the man was an obstacle to his plan to steal away his daughter.
No one will suspect Samir. As a former leader of the Lebanese community, his reputation is sterling. He is an ideal citizen. Yes, he knows he will have to get rid of his jovial smile before he meets the priest. It is, in the end, a small price to pay.
They are all such fools.
And he knows that with Khalil and Maryam gone, he may soon inherit another bundle of money, enough to keep him, his children, and his relatives in Lebanon going for many years. The money will come just in time, as he is planning to leave Guatemala and return to Sidon.
Everything is falling perfectly into place.
chapter eighteen. the dog chases its own tail
Ibrahim and Maryam’s ashes — or rather what is assumed are their ashes — are placed in two ceramic urns for burial. If the remains had been found in a mass grave in the Ixil Triangle, international forensic anthropologists would have been called in to lend their expertise to the prosecution of, for example, a former Guatemalan president for the genocide he undoubtedly committed. But this is just the explosion of a car on an abandoned street in a worthless neighborhood. If there had been remains beyond the small splinters of bones and a few chips of teeth, a postmortem might have been required, but the detectives on the case feel it is unnecessary to examine the ashes for organic matter; Fulgencio, the guard at Ibrahim’s factory, told detectives that he saw his boss get into his daughter’s Mercedes. Forensic testing would have proven that the ashes held human remains, but no proof as to who the victims were. And what would a chemical toxicology report reveal? The ashes were so contaminated by oil, gasoline, and burning hydrocarbons that the existence of drugs or poisons would never be found.
There is no reason to extend the investigation. The dead are the dead. It is an open-and-shut case.
The police know that Ibrahim is dead because they have found vestiges of his pacemaker. Guillermo knows that Maryam is dead because he phones her every day and his call now goes directly to voice mail. Still, he wonders why the police department or federal officials are unwilling to do a thorough investigation. Since Samir is the closest living survivor, he is the only one who can authorize an inquiry into their causes of death. For his part, Samir has told the authorities that he is consumed by such overwhelming misery that he wants the matter closed as soon as possible. He insists that sending the remains for examination and analysis in the United States would not bring his wife and father-in-law back to life. The only thing he claims to want is to be at peace, and to forget these horrid killings. In fact, Samir says that as soon as he can, he will travel to Honduras to see his ailing brother and sister-in-law. He is seriously thinking of returning to Beirut or Sidon, to spend the rest of his days with his children, surrounded by the only family he has left. In sum, he wants nothing to do with any further investigation. There are over 6,400 killings in Guatemala in 2009, and the few viable forensic teams are routinely sent all over the country by the president to examine the dozens of newly discovered mass graves, dating back to the early eighties. Confirming who perished in a car explosion is of little national interest.
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