by Selva Almada
Why not?
Because, my dear, a mother couldn’t kill her daughter like that.
Eduardo was also a suspect in his girlfriend’s murder. The first suspect.
Andrea’s sister admits, in her court testimony, that when she heard her sister had been killed, she thought right away that it must have been Eduardo, because he was jealous and possessive. That’s why she went to his house herself to get him. But when she saw his reaction to her sister’s corpse, she realised she was wrong.
Paula also realised, that same night, that they’d try to blame her son. To this day, she insists that everything was set up to point the finger at Eduardo. That’s why the family got in touch with their lawyer as soon as possible. She never doubted his innocence, of course. But Eduardo’s father did. There was a hesitation, a moment of uncertainty Eduardo noticed when his dad went out to check his motorbike, looking for traces of who knows what. But he doubted him, and although it was more than twenty years ago, and although there are some things Eduardo can’t remember after his stroke, he’s never forgotten that. And it still hurts.
He’s always carried that with him, Paula tells me, unnecessarily.
As well as having the best lawyer in the city, Eduardo’s family hired a private detective. They were sure the police would want to lock the boy up as soon as possible and wash their hands of the case. But the detective failed to provide any new information or firm leads. The police and the judge hounded Eduardo for months, before eventually leaving him in peace. The investigation was dissolving, in spite of the silent marches he organised with Andrea’s friends, and which the dead girl’s family never attended.
I tell him I vaguely remember seeing a photo of him on one of those marches, and people saying he wasn’t going to cut his hair until his girlfriend’s murderer was found. I tell him I was a teenager at the time and fell in love with that declaration – and with him, of course.
He laughs. He says he doesn’t remember, but it’s possible, he might have promised that. But now I can see he didn’t keep his word, he adds.
About six years later he met the woman who’s now his wife and the mother of his children. One way or another, he understood that life went on.
When I tell him I went to Andrea’s tomb, he asks me if his plaque is still there. Yes, it’s there. It’s a simple plaque and it says:
My love for you is eternal.
Your boyfriend, Eduardo.
10
The violent death of a young person, in a small community, is always a shock. The news of María Luisa Quevedo’s murder was covered, almost from the outset, with fantastical flourishes by the local press. It took a couple of days to appear, as a tiny piece in Norte, the biggest newspaper in Chaco province. Headlined Mysterious Death of Underage Girl, it sat alongside another: Underage Boy Missing.
At first, the so-called Quevedo Case had to compete with matters taking up the agenda of the new democratic government and its citizens’ attention: the theft of babies and children during the dictatorship, the discovery of unidentified bodies in the Sáenz Peña cemetery, the first summons of military leaders to give evidence in court over kidnappings and disappearances in the period 1976-1982.
But it soon gained space and prominence, becoming the number one mystery and horror series of that 1984 Chaco summer. A tale of intrigue, suspicion, red herrings and false testimony, which people followed in the papers and on the radio as if it were a soap opera or a serialised novel.
There were no immediate results, the court recess was coming up, the investigating judge in charge, Dr Díaz Colodrero, was a commercial judge with no criminal experience, one of the policemen involved was tainted by the vices of the dictatorship – all this meant the case got bogged down over the summer and became fuel for the press, which, in the absence of fresh developments, covered rumours, gossip and neighbours’ suppositions.
María Luisa’s death turned into a witch hunt and people were going in and out of the court, showing up to testify of their own accord and naming guilty parties left, right and centre. Every day these accusations were amplified by the press and taken as firm leads which, by the next day, had crumbled due to lack of concrete proof.
Two employees of Don Gómez, the septuagenarian bus magnate who the family still identify as the sole culprit. Gómez himself. María Luisa’s two new friends, one of whom was even nicknamed Foxy. Two boys from respected families in the city. A young woman who lived in the same neighbourhood as the victim. An indigenous man with the surname Vega who, according to the newspaper, was found in a terrible state, wandering through the same waste ground where the girl’s body had been left, and who died in hospital a few days later. They all had their share of newsprint as the coverage rolled on.
There were days when the María Luisa murder case appeared as a short article in between other, more important stories, days when it filled a quarter of a page, and others when it had a full page, complete with a photo. Or if not a photo, a pencil sketch of the suspect, or even of María Luisa herself. This gallery of presumed murderers and accomplices went on to include the police officers accused of beating witnesses to obtain false testimony, who were swiftly sent away on leave until it all blew over.
María Luisa’s relatives have a constant, central role. The absent father, an ex-boxer, demanding the mystery of his daughter’s death be resolved immediately. An extremely young Yogui Quevedo, leaning against a shelf of televisions and looking straight at the camera; the photo was probably taken in the appliance repair shop where he worked at the time.
Some articles claimed the murder happened on the same patch of wasteland where the girl’s body was found. Others, that her body was dragged there and marks were visible on the ground. Another, that she was killed in the shack where Vega the indigenous man lived: in this scenario, his death soon after the crime, from Chagas disease, would be a kind of divine punishment. Another, that she was strangled but not raped. Another, that she was thrown into the reservoir when she was still alive and then drowned. Another, that she wasn’t raped, but already had an active sex life. And, of course, the romantic version, which claimed that María Luisa had been seeing a married man, who’d ended things that very day, leaving the girl, devastated by the break-up, wandering the streets in the centre of Sáenz Peña at the mercy of her captors.
The media frenzy around the case infected the parents of teenage girls with paranoia. In a piece published almost a month after the crime, the newspaper Norte wonders: Do parents have no awareness in a community like this one, which claims to be organised? We know we can’t expect anything from the murderer or murderers, after what they did. But are the different sectors of the population not capable of raising their voice in protest and finding a more effective way to respond? Will our children no longer be able to walk the city’s streets with an easy mind?
The story of Yogui Quevedo, María Luisa’s brother and spokesperson, also strays, at points, into telenovela terrain. The perfect murderer will always be Jesús Gómez, the rich, powerful man who held parties to lure in young girls and seduced them with his wealth. Yogui’s sister, the honest, hard-working girl, the maid from Monseñor de Carlo, a poor neighbourhood in Sáenz Peña, who spurned Gómez’ romantic advances and ended up dead, sullied by the lecherous tycoon. And Yogui the avenger, the incorruptible man who refused the briefcases of cash he was sent by Gómez’ messengers. For a while after my sister died I went around like a madman, a gun in my belt the whole time. I’d sworn to my baby sister, to my baby sister’s memory, that I was going to shoot Don Gómez. A woman I was with back then came up with a plan. She was stunning, and since she knew the old man liked girls, she was going to pick the old codger up, take him to a motel, and then, when they were both in bed, I could burst in and blow his brains out, simple as. But it never happened. I was totally up for it. It seemed so simple. And it was the only way of justice being done, because meanwhile Do
n Gómez was going around using money to cover everything up, buying witnesses, lawyers... What stopped me was La Doña, the Paraguayan psychic we went to see when my sister disappeared. I carried on seeing her after that, consulting her about everything to do with my baby sister’s death, and I really started to believe her because I had to hold onto something. And she convinced me to let go of the idea of killing someone. She convinced me that I was the only one who’d suffer, because I’d end up rotting in jail. That it wasn’t worth getting my hands dirty, that the guilty people were going to pay. And pay they did. Two of them, in the end. Don Gómez died poor and alone, his family all disowned him after what happened and he lost his entire fortune, the lawyers walked away with everything. And the other guy I think was behind it, the one who chatted up my baby sister, Francisco Suárez, the guy she was talking to on the pavement the last time I saw her alive, he died too. In an accident. Some people were travelling in a truck that overturned and he was the only one who died. So at least divine justice did me right.
Although he put down his gun, swayed by the Paraguayan, he still ended up with a bullet in his leg. He says he was going home one morning in the early hours and a stripped-down car, all chassis, drove past him on a corner and the people in it fired some shots at him. One bullet wounded him in the leg. Years later, working as a refuse collector, he saw the same car abandoned in a garage. He’s sure it was the same one, but he has no proof, and even though he reported it to the police, nothing ever came of it.
But the fantastical events in Yogui Quevedo’s tale don’t end there. After the attack, the threats, the extortion and his plans to liquidate Gómez, there was something else. The story he tells me could be a scene from a Raymond Chandler novel.
One day, a beautiful woman turns up at the house where he still lives with his mother and younger sister, asking for him. He comes to the door and the woman says she’s an undercover agent from the police force in Resistencia. She introduces herself as Leo. She says she has a taxi waiting, and there is indeed a taxi in the street outside. She says she wants to talk to him, that she has information for him about his sister’s murder, but that right now she’s due back in Resistencia and can she come the next day. They arrange to meet in the late afternoon. She’ll come and pick him up.
The next day, Leo shows up just as they’d agreed. She asks if they can go to his room, where they’ll be more comfortable. They close the door behind them. It’s a scorching day, and the woman says she’s very sweaty and would he mind if she gets changed. She has a fresh outfit in her bag. He says of course, that’s fine, he can show her to the bathroom if she likes. She says there’s no need, she can change right there while they talk. Soon she’s standing naked in front of him. He says she had a beautiful body. All of her was beautiful. And he lets her do it. Take all her clothes off, end up naked, completely naked, he clarifies, then get dressed again. After that, he suggests they go to the cinema.
Going to the cinema is part of another plan. A plan Yogui has to foil the woman’s plan.
After Leo’s first visit, Yogui can’t relax, so he goes to the local police station and tells the officers working on his sister’s case that this woman came to see him, claiming to be an undercover agent. They check with the police in Resistencia, but there’s no officer with that name. Leo is an impostor. He tells them they’d arranged to meet the next day. So they plot her capture. Yogui will take her to the cinema and the police will ambush them, then drive them both off in separate police cars on the pretext of checking their records. He’ll be let go, and she’ll be taken to the police station for questioning.
And that’s what happens. After having her naked in his room, Yogui takes her to the cinema and the police spring into action.
Eventually he learnt she was the secretary at a major law firm in Resistencia. They sent her to find out how much I knew, because they were Don Gómez’ lawyers. One time, back then, I called the firm and asked for her. I said I was her cousin. But they told me she didn’t work there any more, he says.
The murder of Andrea Danne, too, has a second chapter that’s clearly straight from fiction. An event that leads, ten years after her murder, to the case being reopened.
In August 1995 in Concepción del Uruguay, the nearest city to Andrea’s town, a girl of eighteen, María Laura Voeffray, is detained on drug charges. When this happens, the girl announces that she knows who killed Andrea Danne.
And she tells this story.
At the time of the murder, she was ten years old. She lived in a little house in El Brillante, a small town just outside San José, almost a suburb of the city. That night, when her parents are asleep, María Laura sneaks out through a window, grabs her bicycle and goes off with three other girls her age to ride around the centre of San José. At some point her bike gets a puncture, so she decides to leave it at a petrol station, in the area for pumping up tyres. She leaves it propped against a wall and splits off from the group, ending up alone. She carries on walking around and her aimless wandering takes her to where Andrea lives, just as the storm is breaking. When she passes the Dannes’ house, she sees a big maroon car parked outside. There’s a man in the driver’s seat but the car isn’t moving, and the lights and engine are turned off. For some reason, she has a bad feeling about this car and hides in some bushes at the front of the house. From her hiding place, and in spite of the rain and wind, she hears the sound of something like cardboard being slashed with a knife, and a muffled scream, a moan. Then she sees two men emerge from the back of the house, down a passage between it and the house next door. One is wearing a dark suit. It’s a clear night, she says, in spite of the storm. She recognises the man in the suit, it’s Jim Shaw, a shopkeeper of Chinese descent, very well-known in the city. Behind him is a blonde guy of around twenty, who she doesn’t recognise. Jim Shaw and the blonde guy pause a moment some five yards from her hiding place. Then she clearly sees the Chinese man hand the blonde guy a knife covered in blood. She remembers it was very thin and long, like a dagger. The blonde guy wraps the weapon in a handkerchief. Come on, come on, says Jim Shaw, getting into the car next to his companion. The blonde guy looks for a branch then retraces his steps, using the branch to sweep the ground and hide his tracks. He opens the back door of the car and gets in, rubbing away the tracks he’s just left. The car starts and they disappear.
María Laura climbs out of the bushes, feeling curious and perhaps slightly uneasy about the whole situation. She walks round the house and goes in the back way. The window to the yard has its shutters half-open, so she peers through and sees Andrea Danne lying in bed, her hands on her chest, covered in blood and with blood on the sheets and the floor. There are no lights on in the house, but she can still make out the scene in detail because, she repeats, it’s a clear night in spite of the storm. Eventually, she sees a light go on in another room and runs away, afraid, and doesn’t stop running until she gets home and climbs in through the window she slipped out of several hours before.
She never told anyone because she was terrified. Or rather, she told a few police officer friends recently and they said she should present herself and testify, but she never wanted to. She admits to being romantically involved with Jim Shaw a couple of years ago. Faced with the judge’s incredulity – how could she have had a relationship with someone she suspected was a murderer? – María Laura explains that she’s a single mother and Jim gave her money, and that it’s not the only time she’s gone out with a man for cash. That she has no choice. At one point in that relationship, which didn’t last long, she told Jim people were saying he’d killed the Danne girl. She said it to test him, to see how he’d react. According to her, the Chinese man was taken aback and said that’s what folks get for talking too much. María Laura, unperturbed, answered that you hear all kinds of things about the place. And Jim Shaw ended the conversation by saying we’re slaves to the words we speak and masters of those we don’t, and that what would she know ab
out who killed the Danne girl.
The case was reopened after the girl’s statement. Jim Shaw was summoned, questioned, investigated and then let go.
The crime that, in 1986, hadn’t spread beyond the local press, caught the attention of national papers like Crónica and Clarín.
In characteristic style, Crónica used the headline: Chinaman Goes Down Nine Years After Murder. And when Shaw went free: Chinaman Victim of Scorned Young Lover.
Enrique Sdrech, the famous crime reporter, travelled to Entre Ríos and wrote a full-page piece for the Sunday edition of Clarín. He slipped in a possible motive: that Jim Shaw dealt drugs in the area and Andrea, aware what was going on, had threatened to report him. He also says the Chinese shopkeeper had a violent reputation, and that the neighbours recalled how once, annoyed with his fourteen-year-old daughter, he threw her out of her bedroom window, which was on the first floor.
The memory came back to life.
However, María Laura Voeffray’s story was no more than that: a story made up by a lying girl with an overactive imagination who just wanted to save her own skin.
María Luisa loved this brother very much, the Señora tells me. She’s happy to have him as her spokesman. She’s happy he found this role for himself after her murder. And I’ll tell you something else: she doesn’t want it to be resolved. The day it’s resolved is the day he’s left with nothing more to say.
The siblings, in these three cases, play a fundamental role. Yogui Quevedo is the spokesman for his murdered little sister, he’s become a public figure after María Luisa’s death and is consulted every time there’s a similar case in Chaco province. Mirta Mundín was Sarita’s confidante, her protégée, and the one who raised her disappeared sister’s son. She prefers not to speak in public, not to reveal her pain, which is hers alone, something intimate that she defends tooth and nail. And Fabiana, Andrea Danne’s sister, now prefers to remain silent.