Smaller and Smaller Circles

by F. H. Batacan

  “Could have been the tip.”

  Saenz frowns and shakes his head. “Still too thick. No, I don’t think it was even a blade at all.” He switches off the light as Jerome moves back toward the body. “Ask me about the teeth.”

  “Father Gus, what about the teeth?”

  “Pitting.”

  “A mouth breather. Just like some of the others.”

  The front teeth of three of the five other victims they’d seen had minute pits, invisible to the naked eye. This showed that they had breathed often through their mouths—a sign of chronic respiratory disease. Their families could rarely afford meat or fish, and so the children were raised on diets short on protein, long on carbohydrates and other soft, mushy, insubstantial food. The lack of protein in their diets also partly explained how small they were as they hit their teens.

  “Sexual assault?”

  “Nope.”

  Jerome nods. “But the excision of the genitals . . . I still can’t fully account for that.” He thinks back to previous case reports and clinical assessments that he had come across during his studies in abnormal psychology. “Some sexual conflict in there somewhere.” He thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “Time of death?”

  “When he was found, he was a mass of maggots. The weather’s been both humid and wet. I wouldn’t put it at more than two, three days. Four at most, but highly unlikely.”

  Saenz walks over to his desk and puts on his reading glasses, then picks up a clipboard and squints down at a document typed in smudgy carbon on a sheet of onion skin. “Like the others, there was very little blood found around the body.”

  “Suggesting . . .”

  “That he killed them elsewhere. Wherever he does it, there’s going to be a lot of blood. So it must be fairly well hidden. Or at least somewhere easy to clean, easy to flush out—a bathroom, a garage. He would have had to change clothes too before he dumped the bodies, to avoid suspicion.”

  Jerome runs a hand over his face and holds it over his mouth for a few seconds before walking to the whiteboard. Saenz joins him there.

  Six is the heading of a new column on the extreme right of the board. Down the leftmost column, marking out the rows, is a series of categories: age, sex, date found, approximate date of death, mutilations.

  “The body was found on the seventh of this month,” Jerome says. He picks up a marker, stares at the blank space at the end of a row titled approximate date of death and starts tapping the board, as though counting. Then he glances over his shoulder at Saenz. “So we’re looking at, what?”

  “Medicolegal officer says the fifth, most likely.”

  Jerome turns to the whiteboard again and writes July 5 in the space. He caps the marker, puts it on the whiteboard ledge and steps back. That’s when he notices Saenz staring hard at the board, his brow furrowed in concentration.

  “What’s wrong?”

  A light seems to go off in Saenz’s head. “We’ve been looking at the dates all this time.”

  “Right.”

  Saenz is now a flurry of long limbs and motion as he darts away from the board and back toward his desk. He shuffles through the piles of papers, folders and paraphernalia until he finds what he is looking for. “Maybe we should have been looking more closely at the days.” He holds a desk calendar aloft.

  Jerome immediately sees where he is going with this. “Got it.” He turns back quickly to the whiteboard. “Okay. First boy found February second. Medicolegal says approximate date of death was the night or day before.”

  “February second was a Sunday. Approximate date of death was Saturday.”

  Jerome pens the days in below the dates. “Second boy—found March third. Date of death, the first.”

  “The third was a Monday. Date of death—Saturday.”

  Jerome writes, then goes to the next row down the line. “Third boy—found April sixth. Date of death, the night or day before.”

  “Sunday—and Saturday.”

  “Fourth—May fifth. Date of death, the third.”

  “Monday—and Saturday.” They pause a moment to absorb this. Then Saenz says: “Go on.”

  “Fifth boy—found June tenth. Approximate date of death, the seventh.”

  “Tuesday—and Saturday.”

  “And this one—the seventh and the fifth.”

  “Monday—and Saturday.” Saenz looks up from the calendar to study the new information on the board. “That’s the first Saturday of every month since February.”

  Emil sits by himself in Father Saenz’s faculty office.

  In the chill of the room, he can feel acutely the wetness of the socks inside his shoes, the dampness of the legs of his trousers from the knees down. He crosses his arms over his chest, keeping his fingers tucked into his armpits.

  A storm is raging outside, and the government has hoisted typhoon signal number 2 over several parts of Luzon, including Metropolitan Manila. The branches of the trees on the campus whip back and forth with every shift in the direction of the wind. The rain lashes against the windowpanes. Occasionally a plain or flowered or patterned umbrella bobs up and down just outside the glass—someone caught in the fury of the elements.

  The door opens. It’s Gus Saenz, struggling with a soaking wet umbrella that has been turned inside out by the wind. Jerome Lucero follows close behind, his umbrella in somewhat better shape.

  “Oh, Emil, I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long,” Saenz says, moving forward with both hands extended to grasp the parish priest’s in a warm, if wet, handshake.

  “It’s okay, Father Saenz. Father Lucero.”

  Saenz takes the umbrellas and leaves them to drip dry inside a plastic bucket in one corner of the room. “Coffee?” he asks Emil.

  “Yes, please.”

  A cup is poured and gratefully accepted. Emil takes a sip, then blows on the surface of the coffee to cool it down.

  “Nice day for a super typhoon,” Jerome says, pulling up a chair. “Have classes been suspended in your district, Father Emil?”

  Emil nods. “Early this morning. Half of the students had already turned up.”

  Jerome grunts in disapproval. “Huh. You’d think they would have learned to suspend classes early enough after all these years. It’s not like they didn’t know the typhoon was coming until this morning.”

  Saenz sits behind his desk and turns to Emil. “So,” he prompts.

  Emil sets down his coffee cup and begins wringing his hands, trying to calm himself before asking questions. “Is it one of our boys?”

  Saenz pauses a moment. “We can’t be absolutely certain yet. But it’s definitely the same set of mutilations.”

  “My God.” Emil crosses himself. “Why is he doing this?”

  Jerome stands, pulls up the blinds to allow more grey daylight into the room. And if I knew the answer to that question, Emil, he says to himself, we might actually be able to stop him from doing it again. He keeps his eyes focused on some vague spot outside the windows, looking but not really seeing, and does not respond. For a moment the room is still and silent save for the sound of the wind and rain outside.

  Saenz clasps his hands together on top of his desk. “We don’t know yet. Honestly, we may never know. But you can help. You can tell your parishioners to keep an eye out for suspicious characters. And warn the kids about staying out in the dump late.”

  Jerome nods. “Do it discreetly—try not to create a panic. Whoever it is, we want to be careful not to alert him to the fact that the authorities are already looking for him.”

  “So—we wait for him to make a mistake?” Emil frowns.

  “I know it sounds contrary to common sense, Emil,” Jerome says. “But if he feels threatened, he may go into hiding, and there’s a chance we’d never find him again. And there’s nothing to suggest that he’d stop doing this if he
were forced to flee to another place.”

  Emil chews on this a moment. “All right, Father Gus. I’ll do what you advise. I just hope you manage to find him soon. The people aren’t stupid; they’re already asking questions; the fear is growing. It’s a poor community, and they’re used to being ignored by the powers that be. If that fear turns to anger—well, you know very well what can happen.”

  “I know, Emil. And I can promise you, this situation is not being ignored.” He glances at Jerome. “Certainly not by us.”

  W

  This is how it happens in Jerome’s dreams.

  Always it begins with him standing in the dark, in the rain. He is alone, dressed as if for sleep in loose-fitting shorts and a T-shirt, rubber slippers on his feet. Always it is very cold.

  And then he hears it, a child’s voice screaming for help.

  He starts running, first this way, then that, slipping in the mud and the slime, losing first one slipper, then the other, leaving deep, gouged tracks where his feet slide. Dirt lodges deep under his toenails and fingernails when he claws the mud to regain his balance. He runs until his heart can pump no more and his lungs give out and his legs ache, shouting for the child.

  Tell me where you are; talk to me. I’ll find you.

  And then he realizes his voice is no longer his own. It is small: a child’s voice.

  And again he stumbles in the mud and the garbage, legs failing him, arms failing him, and then the hand on his shoulder, rough and hard, shoving him down. He can smell the muck—warm, moist, sweet with rot—as his face is pushed into it.

  Then he turns—he tries to turn—and he can almost see the man’s face, and then the hot breath on his cheek and words, words he can’t understand, spoken in a whisper that seems like a thick, slow churning of blood in his ears, the man’s spittle falling on his face like tiny shards.

  Always the rock first and then the blade, sharp and slim and cold.

  When he awakes in the safety of his own bed, he’s bathed in sweat. He shakes his head to clear his mind and waits in the stillness for his labored breathing to return to normal.

  He untangles his legs from the blanket, swings them over the edge of the bed and feels in the dark with his feet for his rubber slippers. He goes into the bathroom, switches on the light.

  Jerome reaches for the tap. Cool water rushing. He bends forward and splashes it on his face.

  When he is done, he looks into the small mirror on the medicine cabinet. His eyes seem to have lost their whites. They are round and deep and dark, black holes full of unanswered questions. His face, still dripping water, is pale and thin, paler and thinner than it has ever been since this whole ugly business began. In the quiet spaces between his clinical practice and counseling, his teaching and his religious duties, these killings have consumed him, occupied his thoughts, filled him with dread.

  Yet they call to him, as they call to Saenz. And neither of them can turn away.

  “And he said to them, ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, “These people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.” You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.’”

  Mark 7:6–9

  2

  When Jerome opens the door to Saenz’s office, he sees Saenz standing by an open window, lost in thought.

  “Hey,” he says, but Saenz doesn’t turn. Jerome glances at the desk and sees a letter lying open on it. It’s creased in several places, and he can imagine Saenz crushing it in one of his large hands, anger coursing through the long fingers, before smoothing it out again.

  Jerome stands there for a while, waiting for Saenz to say something. When he doesn’t, the younger priest quietly volunteers, “I’m sorry.”

  Saenz keeps his eyes fixed on a cluster of coconut trees on a stretch of campus lawn visible from the window.

  “Bud rot,” he says, finally.

  Jerome looks up at him, confused. “Excuse me?”

  “Bud rot,” Saenz repeats. “I’ve told the head of facilities management about the bud rot on those trees. He won’t listen to me. It started with one tree. Now three others are infected.”

  Jerome moves toward the window, glances out at the trees, then back at Saenz, puzzled. “You’re thinking tree mortality at this moment?”

  “The first tree is too far gone. Some days, when the wind blows in the right direction, you can smell it: decomposing tree tissue.”

  “Okay.” The end of the word curls upward, like a question, and Jerome stares at him, frowning. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “It’s a fungus, you see. Phytophthora palmivora. It attacks the heart of the palm. I knew that’s what it was when I saw that the topmost leaf was dead. The fungus eats its way down and through the tree.”

  “Right.” Jerome takes a deep breath. Before long he, too, is staring at the trees. Cars and students go up and down the small road that borders the lawn. One student, seeing the two priests at the window, smiles and waves at them, but the men fail to notice, and she continues on her way. “Are there others?”

  “There will be.” Saenz moves away from the window, toward the desk, looking grimly down at the letter. “That’s the nature of any kind of rot. If you don’t stop it, it keeps going. It will keep going until it destroys the very organism that feeds it.”

  Jerome folds his arms across his chest and leans against the window frame, observing Saenz. “You know the cardinal won’t change his mind. The matter’s closed as far as he’s concerned.”

  Saenz’s face darkens with a tightly controlled fury. “It is not closed. It will never be closed. Not until Ramirez is made to answer for what he’s done.”

  Jerome is startled by the phone ringing, the sound loud and shrill in Saenz’s small office. When the older priest doesn’t move to answer it, he asks, “You want me to get this?”

  Saenz nods, and Jerome picks up. “Yes?” It’s Susan, an administrative officer in the Sociology and Anthropology Department where Saenz teaches and his de facto secretary. “Yes, he is. Hang on a moment while I ask him.” He claps a hand over the mouthpiece and whispers, “Susan’s asking if you want lunch.”

  Saenz shakes his head, waves the offer away, not once looking up from the letter.

  Jerome hesitates, then returns to the call. “Hey, Susan, thanks, but he’s not hungry just yet, and he has a pile of things to attend to. He’ll probably pop down to the cafeteria when he’s starving. You know how he is.” A pause, a chuckle. “He’ll scarf down something from the pastry case on the way to his afternoon class. Don’t worry about him; he’s a big boy now.” He wonders if Susan can detect the artificial cheer in his voice. “Okay. See you.”

  When he sets the receiver down, he realizes that Saenz has not moved. “Look. You’ve been chasing him through the system for more than a decade. The cardinal just moves him around. The children won’t talk because they know nothing will happen. He’s made powerful friends. What else can you do that you haven’t already done?”

  Saenz sighs. “I honestly don’t know, Jerome. But I have to do something. This can’t go on.”

  Father Isagani Ramirez is a diocesan priest serving under the Archdiocese of Manila. For many years he served as a parish priest at a parish in Quezon City, until rumors of inappropriate conduct with minors began to surface. Saenz became involved when one of his former pupils, a quiet, intelligent young man who had been struggling to get through university, attempted suicide. When Saenz tried to find out why, he learned, among other things, that he had been molested as a child by Ramirez.

  Saenz sought help to verify the young man’s claims and later found reason to believe them true. But a report to the archdiocese was met with silence. Months after that, Saenz received news that Ramirez had merely been transferred to another parish.
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  Saenz was incensed, but he was advised to think carefully about taking any further action. So, like any good Jesuit, he reflected, he prayed, he sought guidance and discernment. In the end, his conscience told him to continue to press for further investigation of Ramirez’s misconduct and information on the decision to move him to another location.

  In his new parish, Ramirez—a charismatic speaker who could keep a crowd enthralled and whose charming, easygoing, even gossipy manner endeared him to people—quickly found wealthy backers to help him set up what was supposed to be a charity shelter for orphans and street children in the area. Kanlungan ni Kristo—“Refuge of Christ”—had twenty beds initially, but soon expanded to thirty, to forty, and now seventy beds.

  Saenz watched all this from afar, unhappy that his pleas went unanswered for years, even more unhappy that Ramirez was now in a position of even greater access to and power over children and preteens. But just when it seemed completely hopeless, a nun, Sister Miriam Taguibao, came to him out of the blue with suspicions of her own. She had been helping out at the shelter for two years and been disturbed by certain things she had seen and by the atmosphere of secrecy and unease that had been evolving slowly there. Her disclosures—credible to Saenz as well as to other experts whom he consulted, including Jerome—seemed to confirm Saenz’s worst fears about Ramirez’s involvement in Kanlungan.

  It was with Sister Miriam’s help that Saenz brought forward a set of fresh complaints against Ramirez; and this time he argued strongly for a criminal investigation rather than a Church inquiry. But Ramirez had powerful friends within the Church hierarchy and in society, and Saenz was shut out of the ensuing Church investigation. One by one, the children and teenagers who had been willing to testify dropped out, fearful and intimidated. Saenz himself had by now earned a reputation for being a bit of a troublemaker, and Sister Miriam was mysteriously reassigned to distant Cotabato City.