Every Bitter Thing cims-4

by Leighton Gage

  “I am happily affianced.”

  “A fact of which I am aware. But I am also aware that you are not immune to the attractions of the fair sex. Could it be you fear Gilda’s sharp scalpels?”

  Gilda Caropreso, Hector’s fiancee, was an assistant medical examiner.

  “I do not fear Gilda,” Hector said. “I love her. It’s constancy that motivates me, not fear.”

  “Constancy? What’s that?” the Federal Police’s Lothario said.

  An hour later, he was at Bruna’s hotel. As he entered the air-conditioned comfort of the lobby, a team of paramedics was pushing a gurney toward the elevators. At the reception desk, a man with a badge was taking a statement. The cop tried to wave him off, but Goncalves flashed his Federal Police ID.

  “What’s up?” he said.

  “Simple homicide,” the cop said, “nothing that would interest the Federal Police.”

  “Maybe not. Man or woman?”

  “Woman.”

  “Flight attendant?”

  The cop raised his eyebrows. “Yeah.”

  “Bruna Nascimento?”

  “How the hell did you know that?”

  “Just a bad feeling I had. And now it does interest the Federal Police.”

  According to the time stamp on her registration, Bruna Nascimento had checked in at six twenty-seven in the morning of the previous day. The reception clerk remembered her well; remembered, too, that she’d sent her luggage upstairs. Then she and her companion, another flight attendant, had headed off in the direction of the coffee shop.

  The homicide cop let the clerk finish his story and then filled Goncalves in on the other things he knew. The two women had taken a table near the door and ordered hot chocolate and croissants. They’d been joined by a man in uniform. The waiter, no expert on airline uniforms, was unable to say whether he was a flight attendant or a pilot. The airline guy left before the women did.

  There’d been a DO NOT DISTURB sign on her door all day long. That wasn’t unusual. Sometimes the people on flight crews liked to laze their time away in their rooms.

  The next day, when the sign was still there, a chambermaid had knocked. There’d been no answer, so she’d let herself in. And left screaming.

  That had been just over an hour ago. The captain and the copilot had already been located. The captain hadn’t slept in the hotel at all. He had family in town. The copilot said he’d been in the coffee shop on the previous morning, but, since then, he’d had no further contact with the women.

  The homicide cop went off in search of other people to interview. Goncalves went upstairs.

  The assistant medical examiner was already there.

  “How’s it going, Babyface?” the AME said. It was Plinio Setubal, a friend of Gilda Caropreso’s. Goncalves had met him once, at a party.

  “Haraldo,” Goncalves said. “Haraldo, not Babyface.”

  Setubal looked puzzled. “I thought everybody called you Babyface.”

  “Only a few ballbusters,” Goncalves said, “and I don’t like it.”

  Setubal shrugged and changed the subject. “You ever see anything like that?” He pointed at Bruna’s body. The once-beautiful girl was a frightful mess.

  “Was she, by any chance, also shot?” Goncalves asked.

  Setubal did a double take. “Once. In the lower abdomen. How did you know?”

  “She’s not the first,” Goncalves said. “You already take the body temp?”

  Setubal shook his head.

  “Can’t. Not until Janus Prado gets here. He gets antsy if we start messing with the bodies before he’s had a look. I can tell you a couple of things, though.”

  “What?”

  “Rigor is diminishing, so she’s probably been dead for at least twenty-four hours. And some of those wounds are postmortem. The guy who did it just went on beating her and beating her.”

  “After she was dead?”

  “You have another definition of postmortem?” Setubal said.

  Twenty minutes later, just when Goncalves was concluding that there was nothing to be learned by hanging around any longer, Bruna’s friend showed up. Her name was Lina Godoy.

  They put her in a vacant room, and Goncalves went to talk to her. He knew Janus Prado wouldn’t like his questioning her alone, but Prado, Sao Paulo’s head of homicide, was one of those people who’d been spreading the “Babyface” nickname around. Goncalves delighted in irritating him.

  Lina was sitting on one of the beds, staring at the wall and clutching a handkerchief. She looked up when he opened the door, started talking even before he’d introduced himself.

  “I can’t believe it,” she said. “I can’t believe she’s dead.”

  Lina was pretty, a brunette, his type. But then, most women were Goncalves’s type.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and told her he was a cop.

  “Who did it?” she said. Her eyes were a grayish green.

  “We don’t know. Not yet.”

  “Was she… raped?”

  “We don’t know that either. I’ll have to ask you some questions.”

  “Anything. Anything I can do to help.”

  He took a chair from in front of the desk, placed it against the wall, and sat down. There wasn’t much room on that side of the bed. Their knees were only centimeters apart, which suited Goncalves just fine. He took in a deep breath of her perfume. Something floral.

  In a few short minutes, she took him through the events of her last morning with Bruna: the coffee shop, the copilot’s clumsy advances, and her departure for the country. Then she asked a question of her own. “Have you told her parents?”

  “I don’t handle that end of it, but I’m sure someone is trying to get in touch.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I don’t want to be the one to tell them, so I’m scared to call. But if they already know, and they know that I know, and I don’t call…”

  “Best to give it a while,” Hector said. “When we’re done here, I’ll give you the name of someone to talk to, someone from the civil police. They’re in charge of notifying relatives.”

  “I thought you said you were from the police.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I’m federal. We do… other things.

  Did Bruna have a romantic interest? A boyfriend?”

  “Yes. A new one. He lives on St. Barts.”

  “The island?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s there now?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Name?”

  “Henri, with an i.”

  “Henri what?”

  Lina shrugged. “She always just called him Henri. His number must be in her address book. The book is red. It’s about this big.” Lina held up a thumb and forefinger. “It’ll be in her purse if…”

  “If what?”

  “If her killer didn’t take it. My God, I don’t believe all of this. It’s like some bad dream.”

  “I wish it was, Senhorita. What can you tell me about your copilot?”

  “Horacio?”

  “Him.”

  “He’s a creep.”

  “But harmless?”

  “How can you ever be sure about anyone?”

  “True. Look, the guys from the homicide squad are going to be here any minute, and they’re going to ask you all the same questions. Just be patient with them and run through it again, okay?”

  She wiped her eyes and nodded. “Okay,” she said.

  “Something else,” he said. “I was trying to get in touch with Bruna to ask her a few questions about another case we’re looking into. Maybe you can help.”

  “If I can. Sure.”

  “Bruna was on the 8101 on the twenty-second of November.”

  “That’s our usual run.”

  “Were you aboard as well?”

  She reached for her purse and took out a diary with a black plastic cover. “The twenty-second of November, you said?”

  He nodded.

 
She turned pages, found the date, looked up. “Yes,” she said.

  “On that flight,” he said, “she was, initially, one of two flight attendants assigned to business class. There were only eleven passengers in there, but the economy class cabin was full. The chief steward changed the assignment-”

  “I remember,” she said. “That was me. I got pulled out of business and put into economy.”

  “Can you recall if Bruna told you anything about that night? Told you anything unusual that might have happened to her?”

  Lina frowned, remembering. “She mentioned a couple of things,” she said. “First of all, there were some unwelcome advances.”

  “Unwelcome advances?”

  “That’s the training manual talking. It means someone coming on to you. She had two of those. One was from this creep who came up behind her when she was making coffee. He put his hands around her waist. She had to brush them off.”

  “You don’t, by any chance, remember the man’s name?”

  She shook her head. “He told Bruna he sold lubricants, and that he traveled back and forth from Sao Paulo to Miami all the time. Maybe so, but…”

  “She didn’t recall having seen him before?”

  “Neither of us did.”

  “So you saw him?”

  “Bruna pointed him out, told me to watch out for him, but… well, it was a while ago.”

  “Would you recognize him? In a photo?”

  She frowned. “I’m not sure. I could try.”

  “A couple, you said, a couple of unwelcome advances. Tell me about the other one.”

  “Bruna was dozing. Someone touched her hair and she woke up with this character breathing bad breath into her face. He was only a few centimeters away. Can you imagine?”

  “Must have given her a start,” Goncalves said.

  “It did. He claimed he wanted to know where the ice was, but you don’t have to get right into somebody’s face to ask a question like that.”

  “No, you certainly don’t. Did she point him out as well?”

  “She did. And that one I’m sure I’d remember. He had a brown mark right here.”

  She touched her cheek.

  “Brown mark? Like a liver spot?”

  “Yes, like a liver spot. This whole business is right out of a crime novel. What did you say your name was?”

  “I didn’t. It’s Haraldo. Haraldo Goncalves.”

  “Call me Lina.” She extended a hand and Goncalves took it. Her palm was moist, no surprise after the shock she’d been through.

  “Lina,” he said, “you suggested that something else happened as well, aside from the… what did you call them?”

  “Unwelcome advances.”

  “Unwelcome advances. What was it? What else happened?”

  “In the middle of the night, Bruna heard somebody moving around in the cabin. She was on her guard by then. She stuck her head around the corner of the galley, and there he was, the one with the mark on his cheek, messing around in one of the overhead compartments. When he spotted her looking at him, his eyes got all round, and his mouth dropped open. It was like she’d caught him with his hand in the cookie jar, she said.”

  “Did she speak to him?”

  “She did. Asked him, sarcastic like, if he needed any help.”

  “And he?”

  “And he told her no. But she could see he wasn’t happy.

  Looked furtive, was the way she put it.”

  “Furtive?”

  “That’s the word she used. Furtive. Bruna was always using words like that. She had two years of university, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t. Did she report the incident?”

  “Right away. She went to first class and talked to Leandro, the chief steward.”

  “And?”

  “And he asked her if the guy took anything, and she said not as far as she knew.”

  “So the chief steward didn’t take any action?”

  “Leandro has fluent Japanese. He mostly works that Tokyo run.”

  “So?”

  “I guess what I’m trying to say is that Bruna wasn’t an alarmist. She was a good judge of character. But Leandro never had a chance to learn that about her. They only worked together a few times. Oh Jesus!”

  “Oh Jesus what?”

  “Oh Jesus, what am I going to say when I talk to Bruna’s mother?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Aline Arriaga?” Hector asked.

  The woman who’d opened the door nodded. She had eyes as blue as aquamarines, was moderately tall, had medium-length black hair, and her figure wouldn’t attract a second glance. But her eyes were beautiful. They were also bloodshot and underlined with dark circles. The woman had been doing a good deal of crying and getting very little sleep.

  “What is it now,” she said glumly.

  “Now? I’m sorry, Senhora. I don’t-”

  “The guard downstairs said you were from the police.”

  “I am,” Hector said. “The Federal Police. I’d like to talk to you and Julio.”

  “Julio?”

  “Your son.”

  “Junior,” she said. “Not Julio. Julio is my husband. My son is Julio Junior. And if you want to talk to him, it means you’re not here for the reason I thought you were. It means you don’t know.”

  “Know what, Senhora?”

  “You’d best come in,” she said and stepped aside. After he’d entered, she closed the door behind him and leaned against it as if she needed the support.

  “Junior’s dead,” she said.

  “Dead?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “They said he fell, but I don’t believe it. Not for one minute.”

  “My sympathy for your loss, Senhora. When? When was this?”

  “Almost three months ago,” she said. “He was on his way back from the United States. My husband, Julio, lives there. Junior was visiting him. They arrested Junior at the airport.”

  “Arrested him? For what?”

  “Drug smuggling, they said. And I don’t believe that either. They dragged him off to a delegacia and put him into a shower with a bunch of perverts. Junior was only fifteen years old. What could they have been thinking? Tell me that! What could they have been thinking?”

  “Senhora, I’m sorry to hear all this. Truly sorry.”

  “Spare me your pity. I don’t want pity.”

  She pointed toward the small couch. Her outstretched finger was trembling. Hector, wishing to avoid an outburst of hysteria, sat. She took a seat facing him and then a deep breath.

  “Now,” she said, “tell me.”

  “The flight Julio-”

  She cut him off. “Junior. It’s Junior. You say Julio, you’re talking about his father.”

  “Junior, then. The flight he was on, 8101, the one that arrived on the morning of the twenty-third of November-”

  “Yes?”

  “There were some… incidents, things that happened to some of the other passengers.”

  “What kind of incidents?”

  “Senhora, I-”

  “Tell me. What kind of incidents?”

  “Murders. One of the victims was the son of the foreign minister of Venezuela. We’ve been asked to investigate.”

  “The death of the son of the foreign minister of Venezuela rates an all-out investigation by the Federal Police, but the death of my son doesn’t matter to anyone but me. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “No, Senhora,” Hector said. “That’s not what I’m telling you.”

  “Well, it sure sounds like it. It sounds exactly like what you’re telling me.”

  “Senhora, believe me-”

  She held up a hand to silence him, stood up, walked to a table near the door. “I want you to hear something,” she said.

  She started pushing buttons on an answering machine. Her movements were very rapid. Whatever she was doing, she’d done it many times before. There was a final click, and she turned up the volume on a young and frightened
voice.

  “Mom? Where are you? Mom? For God’s sake, Mom, pick up the phone.” Some indistinguishable words were growled in the background. “Mom, they say I have to be quick. It’s like this: they opened my backpack when I was coming through Customs. There were pills in there, drugs, they said. And now they say I need a lawyer, but I didn’t do anything. I swear. Those pills weren’t mine. They weren’t-”

  The boy’s plea came to an abrupt end followed by a beep.

  Aline pushed another button and scoffed, “Drugs! My Junior with drugs!”

  “You don’t believe it?”

  “I never believed it! Not for a moment. I still don’t.”

  “What kind of drugs?” he asked quietly.

  “Ecstasy.”

  A drug teenagers favored. Hector had seen kids as young as twelve using the stuff. Junior might well have been carrying it; in fact, Hector couldn’t think of any other reason why the boy might have been arrested. But he wasn’t about to say that to his overwrought mother.

  Aline Arriaga walked to the windowsill, picked up a picture frame, and handed it to him.

  “Junior,” she said.

  Julio Arriaga-Junior-a good-looking kid with his mother’s black hair and a lopsided smile, wore a gray shirt with blue piping. A baseball bat, gripped in one hand, was resting on his shoulder.

  “His last photo,” she said, “taken in Florida. Julio sent it.”

  “His father lives there?”

  “I already told you that.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. You did.”

  “And I live here, but not for long. I want to get out of this country, wanted to get out even before what happened to Junior… happened. Julio’s saving money. He’s going to send for me.”

  “I’d like to speak to him,” Hector said.

  “Julio? Why? Why do you want to talk to Julio?”

  “He took your son to the airport, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then he might have spoken to one of the other passengers, seen something that would be significant for our investigation.”

  “Julio moved recently. I don’t have his new phone number.”

  “An address perhaps?”

  “I don’t have an address either. I’ll have to get back to you.”

  She wasn’t meeting his eyes. And there was something else, too. Something he couldn’t put his finger on. He suddenly had the feeling she wanted to get rid of him. He looked back at the photo in his hands, made a point of admiring it. “A handsome young man,” he said.