An Inconsequential Murder

by Rodolfo Peña

  Lombardo weighed the chances that maybe David had called the good Doctor during the ten minutes he had had to wait. He decided not to lie.

  “No, actually he did not. I just said that to the girl to save time.”

  David nodded and lowered his head to hide a half smile. “So, what makes you think I could help you with what happened to poor Victor? I assume that that’s why you are here—to ask me about Victor.”

  Lombardo nodded and asked, “I supposed I can’t smoke in here?”

  “No,” said David simply.

  Lombardo sighed, “Well, I don’t know that you can help in any way at all. I just want to know more about Victor, and about his job. If I’m to find whoever killed him, I have to know more about him. That’s the only way I can find a motivation or reasons for his murder.”

  David nodded and said, “Well, his job was much like mine but although I am in charge of system management for the computers in this center, he was my boss; he was in charge of system management for the entire campus, all five faculties.

  “Doctor Delgado described briefly what Victor’s job was but can you give me your description of it?”

  He squirmed in his seat like a doctor who is asked to describe in laymen’s terms a complicated neurosurgical procedure. “Uh, system management is not one thing; it is many things, many jobs and tasks. For example, we have to determine not only what the University needs as an institution but also what users need, or certain groups of users, like the Math Department for instance. Then, when we buy stuff for them we have to set it up, keep it running, you know, maintain it, get upgrades and enhancements as needed. On top of that, we have to manage the network and the databases, make backups, copies that is, of the data, and so on.” He sighed, “Lots of stuff.”

  Lombardo smiled wryly and said, “I suppose you’ve had to answer that question a thousand times. It probably bores you to have to explain yourself to non-technical people, but as I said, since we don’t know why he was killed, we have to look everywhere for a possible motive.”

  “I understand, Captain, and I am willing to cooperate as much as I can if it will help to find the people who killed Victor.”

  “Hmm,” said Lombardo and took out a little notebook and a pen. Lombardo had noticed early in his career as a cop that people took questioning more seriously when they thought their answers were being recorded. So he wrote something in the notebook and then he asked, “Were you on good terms with Victor? You know, were you more than just colleagues? Were you friends?”

  David shrugged, “I guess so; you know, as much as you can be friends with someone you see at work every day.”

  “But, outside of work: did you ever, you know, go out for a beer or something?”

  “Sure, plenty of times, and when somebody in the Department had a birthday we would all go out to lunch together, to some restaurant, you know.”

  “Did he seem worried lately—as if he had problems?”

  “We are system engineers; we always have problems,” said David with a bemused smile.

  “I meant personal ones, the kind that would make you notice that something was wrong, or that he was worried about something.”

  “No, not particularly. Victor is not, or, uh, was not the kind of guy to go around moping or crying about something. He was very quiet, and just did his job. He was a good boss, not the kind to interfere too much or be looking over your shoulder all the time. He only came around when there was a big problem or there was something special that needed to be done.”

  Again Lombardo wrote something down. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Yesterday afternoon, before I went home.”

  Lombardo’s phone started to vibrate. He fished it out of his coat pocket and flipped it open. He had a call from the Director’s office. He turned the phone off and said, “How did you come to see him? Just casually? Did he come by here?”

  “No, he called me and asked me to come to his office.”

  “What about?”

  “Oh, nothing special. He just wanted to know some technical stuff.”

  “Technical stuff? What do you mean by technical stuff, David?”

  “He wanted to know the schedule for backing up some files. He said he had to start writing up next year’s budget and that he wanted me to give him the schedules and space requirements for certain system files.”

  “Was this an unusual request, David?”

  “Not at all. It’s part of my job. We go through this capacity planning every year, sometimes twice a year.”

  “You said that these cards,” Lombardo lifted his security badge, “keep track of where you are in the building. Do you record the movements of people, you know, keep tabs on them?”

  “Yes, we keep general logs of most everything.”

  “Would you mind giving me a copy of just his movements, where he was at a certain time and such? Just for that last day, of course.”

  “Sure, I’ll ask the log manager to get that for you. He’s not here now but I can have it for you tomorrow. Is that ok?”

  “Yeah, that’s fine.” Lombardo made another pause then asked, “Do you have any idea why anybody would want to hurt Victor, David?”

  David’s face darkened, as if a shadow had passed over it. “No, not at all. He was just a simple, working guy. Never harmed anyone. Went about his job just like most of us here; he had a wife and a kid, like most of us, and not much money, like most of us.”

  “I haven’t seen his personal file yet; so he was married?”

  “Yes, and had a boy, about the same age as mine.”

  “Where did he live?”

  “In ‘La Florida’, I believe. I don’t know exactly where but I could find out.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll get his personal file sometime tomorrow.” Lombardo put his notebook away and got up. He extended his hand and said, “Thank you for your time, David.”

  “I’ll accompany you to the door.”

  “Don’t bother; I can find my way out.”

  “It’s not a courtesy,” said David, “it’s part of our security policy.”

  As they shook hands once again and he handed his security pass to the girl at the desk, Lombardo asked David, “By the way, these system files that Victor asked you to inform him about, what do they contain?”

  “Oh,” said David off-handedly, “mostly system logs, backup for system files, and things like that.”

  “System logs, eh? What do they record?”

  “Well, mostly activity of the various systems. What procedures are running, what databases are being accessed, security stuff, logins and logouts, you name it. As I said, we have logs for a lot of stuff.”

  “Would they show what Victor was working on that night?”

  “In a general way, yes.”

  “Did you know what he was working on, David?”

  “Not particularly but I assume he was working on one of the many tasks we have as systems managers. As I said, there’s lots of stuff we have to take care of.”

  “Well, thanks again.” Yet another handshake and Lombardo left.

  Once in the parking lot, Lombardo lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke into the cool night air. Having heard hundreds of persons give testimony, witness accounts, and sundry information to the police, Lombardo had become very sensitive to nuances in speech and to the choice of words people used when describing something or recounting an event.

  That had been the case when David had said that he hoped Lombardo would find the “people” who had killed Victor. Lombardo had written into his notebook two questions, “Why did David use the plural? What makes him think there was more than one?”

  He also recorded in his little notebook that David had blanched when he asked him if he knew of any reason why anyone would want to hurt Victor. Why? Was that a reaction to feelings of guilt? He had written down: “Must look into that. Pry much more next time.”

  The wind picked up and he closed his mackintosh against it. He starte
d to walk toward the University Avenue entrance to the campus.

  In the Investigations Department, colleagues had often criticized Lombardo for being “old fashioned” and “behind the times.” Lombardo had never bothered to counter the clichés people chose to describe him. He had often said that the less people thought he knew the more they revealed without knowing it.

  He reached the campus entrance and signaled the first taxi he saw. It didn’t stop.

  Lombardo had never told people at the office that he had a computer at home or that he often spent hours on it researching things on the Internet. He never commented or much less boasted how well read he was. Although he had a couple of hundred books in his studio at home, no one at the office ever saw him read anything, not even a newspaper.

  He had once startled a judge by quoting Horace’s words about a good judge preferring the honorable to the expedient.

  A friend had once described him as “a catalogue of missed opportunities” to which Lombardo had answered that he “had never wanted to live his life according to anyone’s expectations, least of all his own,” which was another quote.

  It was true that when he was a boy his teachers, amazed that a local newspaper had published a couple of his essays in the editorial page, thought he might become a writer or journalist and had encouraged him in that direction. But, of course, he had not. When he was a few years older, his ease with technical subjects and his ability to learn mathematics with little effort led his parents to think he might choose some sort of engineering career at University—again, he did not.

  At the University, he was so evidently brilliant during his studies in economics and political science that teachers and fellow students speculated he might end up in government or in some think tank in the U.S. Instead, he had joined the urban guerilla movement.

  Throughout his life he had dabbled in many things—photography, painting, computers, sports such as tennis and golf, and had become knowledgeable and even a good practitioner of most of them, but never mastered any and had eventually abandoned all. He often said that he was happy to know about things rather than be their master or slave—which to him were the two faces of the same coin.

  He signaled another taxi and this one screeched to a stop in front of him. “Take me to the Public Ministry building on Ruiz Cortines Avenue,” he said. The taxi merged quickly into the river of rush hour traffic as Lombardo huddled in the back seat and stared out the window at the thousands of cars streaming down the avenues and boulevards. “They’re going home,” he murmured, “home to dinner, with family and friends.”

  “What’s that, sir?” asked the taxi driver.

  “Nothing, nothing at all.”

  Chapter 10: A Not Too Religious Meeting at “The Church”

  As the taxi made its way slowly up Manuel L. Barragán Avenue, Lombardo turned on his cell phone and it dinged telling him he had a text message. It read “A las siete vamos a rezar a la iglesia, jajaja.” The message was from his geek friend telling him he was going to be at a bar called La Iglesia (the church). “At seven we’ll be praying in church,” it said. Lombardo told the taxi driver to forget about going to the Public Ministry building and to take him to that bar instead.

  This silly custom of giving bars cute names such as “The Office,” “The Union Hall,” “The Factory,” and so on was started in Monterrey during the seventies. Men thought it was clever to say to the wife, “I am going to ‘The Office,’” as if women were too dumb to catch on that they were really going to a bar.

  Lombardo had never liked Monterrey. To him, it wasn’t a classy city; it had no style, no character such as cities like Guadalajara or Querétaro, which he preferred.

  After being transferred here, he had tried to quit the Public Ministry and get a job in a private security firm.

  On a cold December morning he had stood across the street from the Cervecería del Norte, the brewery where he was going to be interviewed for a position as a security guard. The traffic on University Avenue had been incessant, and the steady drizzle mixed with the smog and dust to form a sticky, ugly paste on the pavement. A smokey, dilapidated bus, rushing over the numerous potholes had splashed mud on his trousers.

  The interview had not gone well so he took the afternoon bus to Nuevo Laredo to visit his parents. When he told his father that he wanted to quit his job but was having trouble finding another one, his father invited him to have a beer. In the bar they met one of his father’s friends. The man had a son who worked for the newly formed Investigations Department of the Public Ministry. They were looking for people; he had asked Lombardo if he would like for him to call his son and arrange an interview. Lombardo had objected and said he had quit the Public Ministry because he didn’t like the work, but his father’s friend insisted that this was different. According to his son this was a regular police investigation unit not a catch-all like the Public Ministry that was full of thugs and “lawyers” with shady credentials.

  He had agreed to go back to Monterrey for an interview with the Investigations Department and that’s how he had come to have this job that he liked in a city that he did not like.

  Although he disliked Monterrey’s materialistic, money-focused attitude intensely, he had come to like some of its people, especially the kind of people that lived in his neighborhood. So, he had come to accept things because, as he had said once, quoting someone or other, humans are forever accepting a compromise between the ideal and the possible. If we didn’t, life would be unbearable.

  Once out of the cab, and as he walked the length of the small plaza in front of the bar, he finally called the Director.

  “Where the hell have you been?” asked the charming man.

  “I have been questioning people.”

  “Listen, Lombardo, wrap this up quickly. Gonzalez said it was probably a mugging by drunks or drug addicts, so write a report to that effect and just wrap it up, ok?”

  “I don’t think it was a robbery.”

  “What?”

  “I said, I don’t think it was a robbery, or that he was killed by drunks or drug-crazed ‘teporochos’ or hippies or what have you.”

  “Look, I have been getting calls from the Dean of the University, from the Governor, and who knows who else, and they all want to spare the University any embarrassing publicity or scandal, so, just take it easy, make like you carried out an investigation, and wrap it up, understand?”

  “Yeah, I understand,” he said, “I understand all right. See you, boss.” He closed his cell phone which dinged again and showed him he had a message. It was from Casimiro who was still at the lab. He said that Lombardo’s laundry was very dirty and it would take a while to wash it. He sent one back: “nsto la ropa lmpp” (I need the clothes as soon as possible.). Then he added, “xtrma kuida2,” warning him to be careful. Lombardo hoped he would understand that he shouldn’t be sending frivolous messages.

  He stood in front of the entrance to La Iglesia and made another phone call. The Medical Examiner’s office receptionist was gone and the answering machine came on but he knew Dr. Figueroa’s extension.

  Dr. Ernesto Figueroa, head of the forensic lab answered. Dr. Figueroa said that the body had been formally identified by the victim’s father and brother. The widow, too distraught, had not shown up. The father had signed the form authorizing further pathology studies after the required autopsy. He would let Lombardo know the results as soon as they were done.

  “When will that be, Doctor?” Lombardo asked.

  “Come by tomorrow afternoon; I might have something for you then,” said Dr. Figueroa.

  Lombardo typed a reminder into his phone about the widow. He would go and see her in a day or two, after she had been through the worst and had a chance to calm down. He also wrote a note about talking to the father and the brother.

  Finally, he called the department and told the policewoman at the reception desk that if anyone sent him anything, not to put it on his desk but to wait to give it to him personall
y.

  “I don’t want anybody messing with anything sent to me, OK?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  He pushed the heavy wooden doors—leftovers from when the place was a convent—and walked in.

  Inside it was cool and dark. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the lugubrious atmosphere lit only by red and blue neon signs. A projector was displaying a football match on a huge screen. The sounds of the game filled the cavernous room. Way in the back he saw a hand waving at him.

  He weaved his way through the mostly empty tables to where his friend sat grinning at him; his dark features blended into the shadowy atmosphere so that only his Cheshire Cat smile shone like a waning moon.