Smaller and Smaller Circles

by F. H. Batacan

  “Alex says he still has a whole pile of unfiled records at the mobile clinic. He’s dropping by with them in about an hour.”

  “What did you tell him?” Saenz asks.

  “Just that I was going through the files and looking for the records of some of my patients, so I asked him to bring whatever he still had there.”

  Saenz says to Alice, “Maybe it’s better if you and Jeannie dealt with him by yourselves. I’m not sure anyone else should see us here.”

  She nods. “Come, Jeannie. Let’s just wait for Alex in the lobby.”

  It’s nearly noon when Dr. Alex Carlos finally arrives at the health center. Jeannie watches him park his car, get out and open the trunk. He takes out a large cardboard box and heads to the entrance, where Jeannie holds the door open for him.

  “Thanks for coming by on a Sunday to bring these in for me, Alex,” she says.

  “No problem. Records?” he asks, cocking his head in the direction of the records room.

  “It’s fine. You can just leave them here,” Alice says, tapping the surface of the reception desk.

  “They’re heavy,” Alex warns. “And there’s another box in the trunk.”

  Jeannie tries to hide her annoyance, but she’s not able to do a very good job. “These should have been filed centrally.”

  “And then what?” he snaps at her. “You’d have to come back and dig them out all over again if the patients return to the mobile clinic.”

  Alice and Jeannie have both grown familiar with Alex’s flashes of temper—surprising because he’s usually such a quiet, placid fellow—so Alice moves quickly to defuse the tension. “It’s okay, it’s okay. We’ll work out a system eventually. Just let Jeannie look for some of her patient records in here today. Alex, go and bring the other box in. There’s a good man.”

  Alex stares at Jeannie a moment, then turns his back on her and walks out the door to fetch the second box. Jeannie begins to say something, but Alice puts a hand on her shoulder to restrain her, nodding toward Alex, who’s visible through the glass window. Jeannie takes a deep breath, then busies herself with opening the first box.

  The door swings open, and Alex walks in with a smaller box. He doesn’t set it down on the desk beside the other one. Instead, apparently having regained his good humor, he helpfully offers again: “They’re heavy. Why don’t I just bring them into the records room for you? That way Jeannie doesn’t have to sort through them out here in the lobby.”

  “It’s fine,” Jeannie says without looking at him. “I’ll just have one of the interns move them tomorrow.”

  Alex looks to Alice for a cue, and she smiles at him.

  “Thank you, Alex; it’s fine. Just put them down on the desk. There you go. Did we interrupt your Sunday plans? No? Well, thanks so much for bringing these in.” She keeps up a constant stream of patter until he’s out the door, then waves at him as he gets back into his car and drives away.

  She locks the door just as Mariano steps out of the records room. “All there?” he asks.

  “All here.”

  By noon of Monday, all but one of the four remaining victims have been identified. Saenz telephones Arcinas at the NBI with the results; he requires a second verification by a forensic odontologist at the bureau. He suggests, once this is completed, that Emil accompany his men in the unpleasant task of informing the families.

  Jeannie and the two priests have caught only snatches of sleep in the last forty-eight hours; even if Jerome knows little about the procedure for identifying individuals through dental records, he has not left the health center, except to buy food and coffee.

  Worn out from lack of sleep, they neither complain nor stop to rest longer than an hour. They know only too well that there are families waiting for news, wondering if the police are doing anything other than shuffling their missing persons reports around in their filing cabinets. There are empty places at dinner tables, empty spaces in shared beds. There are others lying awake at night with their eyes wide open, despairing in the hard, unyielding dark.

  The work of the last two days and nights will end this waiting; not happily, but mercifully. Their minds are not clear enough at this point to process the full significance of three victims having been identified from the batch of records from the mobile clinic, other than the obvious: that they were all patients there. Any deeper analysis will have to wait until they’ve managed to get a few hours’ rest.

  Alice arrives for work while Saenz is on the phone. A stout, efficient woman, she helps Jerome clear away the stacks of files and records the three have waded through since Saturday night.

  They hear voices in the outer room. “It’s the health center staff,” Alice says. She’s about to go outside to talk to her people when Jerome stops her.

  “I wouldn’t tell them what we’ve been doing here these past two nights,” he reminds her. She pauses, nods in understanding, then goes outside, Jeannie tagging along behind her.

  Jerome tucks dental casts, X-rays, and photographs, along with the dental records of the three identified victims, into the black leather bag, just as Saenz wraps up his conversation with Arcinas.

  “To NBI?” Saenz asks.

  “To a proper meal and a hot bath first.” Jerome picks up the bag.

  When they leave the records room, the lobby is empty, save for a young, slim man, possibly in his late twenties, dressed in khakis and a white, short-sleeved, collared shirt. He’s sitting in one of the chairs in front of the reception desk, reading a newspaper. He doesn’t look up when Saenz and Jerome make their way to the door and leave.

  They know. The tall man knows. They’re watching me now.

  No. He doesn’t know. How could he? Don’t be silly. You’ll be all right. You feel good. You felt good last night, felt good this morning. Don’t let a little thing like that shake you.

  But what if they do know? Why did they come here? Jesus, mercy, Mary, help. So near, so near. They must know something.

  He looked right at you. He’s probably watching you now.

  Stop sniveling. That’s what they want you to do. Stop it stop it stop it.

  Be a man.

  33

  Saenz comes in to work early the next morning to prepare for a 9 a.m. faculty meeting. On the way to his department office, umbrella tucked under one arm, he stops by his pigeonhole to check for mail. He finds two scholarly journals, several faculty and university notices and one letter envelope made out of heavy, cream-colored linen paper.

  He slides the journals and notices back into the cubbyhole but takes the envelope and studies it on the way to his office. There’s no postmark, no return address, just his name and office address written in a small, precise hand.

  “Morning, Father Gus,” says one of the department secretaries as she passes him along the corridor.

  “Morning, Maila,” he says. The envelope is curiously light and thin. He stops by a window and holds it to the pale light.

  It’s empty.

  Saenz turns the envelope over to open it and finds that it has been sealed with tape instead of with the adhesive strip on the flap. He stares at this for a moment, then turns around.

  “Maila,” he calls out, and begins walking back the way he came.

  She’s some distance down the corridor, but she stops when she hears his voice.

  “Yes, Father?”

  “I don’t think I can come to the meeting today. Could you tell Dr. Achacoso that I’ll explain later?”

  “Oh, okay,” she says. “You won’t be in your office, then?”

  “Probably not. But I’ll call her later.”

  “All right, Father.” She waves goodbye and disappears into the department office.

  Saenz steps out into a light drizzle. He opens the umbrella and heads for the laboratory, a ten-minute walk away.

  W

 
Jerome swings by a fast-food joint on Katipunan Avenue for a cup of coffee and a breakfast sandwich. He begins eating the sandwich in the car as he drives into the campus. The lawns are a vivid green after the rain, the streets slick.

  He parks in the usual place, opens the door. He picks up a small stack of books and papers with one hand, his coffee in the other, and holds the half-eaten sandwich between his teeth and lips as he gets out of the car. He puts the coffee on the hood, shuts and locks the door with his free hand, retrieves his coffee and makes his way carefully toward the laboratory building.

  He is almost at the steps when the glass doors swing open and Saenz rushes out. He takes quick strides toward Jerome, removes the sandwich from his mouth, bites into it and says, mouth full, “We have fan mail.”

  “Eh?”

  Saenz holds the glass doors open for him. “When I got to the department this morning, I found an envelope in my pigeonhole. No postmark, no return address.”

  “Addressed to?”

  “Father Augusto Saenz, S.J. Then my office number at the department.”

  Saenz takes the coffee from Jerome as they enter the outer office. He takes a few sips and motions for the younger priest to follow him into the laboratory.

  “Hey. That’s my breakfast, you know.”

  “I know,” Saenz says, still chewing. “Always tastes better when someone else pays for it. You of all people should understand.”

  Before Jerome can retort, a young, slim man in tight, black jeans bounces toward them, whistling a tune, backpack slung over one shoulder. He breaks out into a sunny grin with big, blindingly white teeth when he sees Jerome.

  “Tato. What are you doing here so early?”

  “Just got paid, Father J,” the young man answers.

  Tato’s English speech is a linguistic anomaly—a little bit surfer dude, a little bit Bronx; it’s completely put-on, picked up from endless hours of watching MTV. However, since he has been using it for as long as Jerome has known him, it is impossible to imagine him speaking any other way.

  “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Tato stops bouncing. “Awww, man, I got a line on a vintage Strat: Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, one-piece maple neck, clay dots. Pretty banged up after being passed from hand to hand since the sixties, but I think with some TLC . . .” His spindly fingers fly in the air as his face contorts itself into a rock-and-roll sneer. Both priests are stupefied.

  “Yeah, but can you play it?” Jerome asks.

  Tato starts bouncing again. “Hey, Father J, for about twenty grand, I’d better learn how, huh?”

  Saenz shakes his head and waves him away. “Go away, Tato. I’m an old man. I can’t take you this early in the morning.”

  The young man laughs and saunters off while the priests head toward the laboratory.

  “I presume he was talking about an electric guitar,” Saenz says as he walks through the door.

  “Or a chainsaw. Hey, since when do you pay your assistant twenty thousand for one autopsy?” Jerome demands. “And could you use another one?”

  The older priest snickers. “Tato makes money from far odder jobs than being my assistant. Besides, you can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  “Sure I can. It’s the touching things I can’t stand.”

  “Uh-hmmm.” Saenz proceeds to the drafting table and flips on the switch to illuminate the plastic plate.

  The cream linen envelope is on the table. Jerome moves closer to examine it as Saenz goes to his desk to look for his glasses. “Nice.”

  Saenz looks up. “Isn’t it? What’s he telling us?”

  “He’s a man of taste?”

  “Close enough.” Saenz finishes off Jerome’s sandwich. “Observations?”

  Without touching the envelope, Jerome studies the address, written with a fine-tipped sign pen in small block letters, evenly spaced, the address lines straight. “Neat handwriting.”

  “Very neat,” Saenz says. “What else? Notice anything unusual about the envelope?”

  Jerome reaches for a box of disposable plastic gloves lying on the table, and yanks out a pair, and pulls them on before handling the envelope. “Well, for one thing—there’s nothing in it.” He shoots Saenz a questioning look. “Otherwise we’d be looking at the contents first, right?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  Jerome turns the envelope over. “Sealed with tape and nothing inside it. Why seal it with tape when it can be sealed with the adhesive strip?”

  “Good. Any ideas?”

  Jerome frowns. “To protect the adhesive?”

  “Right. Because?”

  “Because . . . if you used the adhesive strip to seal the envelope, opening up the envelope would . . . tear up the adhesive strip. Right?”

  “Good. And why wouldn’t you want to tear the adhesive strip?”

  Jerome feels a tingle of excitement. “If there was something on it that you wanted to preserve.”

  Saenz claps him on the shoulder. “Well done. Take a look.” Saenz spreads the flap open and holds a magnifying glass over the adhesive strip.

  Jerome bends to look through the lens. At first he can’t see anything, but then he realizes that there are random lines on the strip, as though a pointed instrument like a pin had been used to scratch the adhesive. The scratches are the same cream color as the envelope itself, faintly visible against the pale yellow adhesive. “Hmmm.”

  Saenz slides a strip of photographic negative onto the plate. “You can see the lines better on this.” It’s the flap of the envelope in greyscale: the lines a darker charcoal against the paler grey field of the adhesive strip.

  “Now look at these.” Saenz slides three photographic negatives closer to the envelope. Jerome has seen these before: they are photographs of the instrument marks on the chinbones of three of the victims. The grooves, Jerome notes, are markedly similar to the lines on the adhesive of the envelope.

  “I’ve measured the width of these marks against those on the victims,” Saenz says. “It could very well be the same instrument.”

  Jerome taps the plastic plate with the magnifying glass. “This is probably a stupid question, but can you lift a print off paper?”

  “Not stupid at all. Modern techniques allow the lifting of prints from almost any surface.” Saenz pauses to think, then shrugs. “I suppose I could do it here. Iodine fuming, or ninhydrin, the standard chemical workup. Maybe enhance it with zinc chloride if the image isn’t very good.” He lifts an eyebrow and turns to Jerome. “By the way, I’m no expert in fingerprinting techniques. Anthropology is my main area of expertise.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Jerome says with a chuckle, but his amusement is short-lived. “But you would have thought of it by now. Unless . . .”

  The older priest nods. “Number one, if he’s smart enough to know what we’re doing, he’s smart enough not to leave a print. Number two, a print will probably help the police build a case against our man after he’s caught. But it won’t help us with trying to identify him.” He shakes his head, clearly frustrated. “At the moment, nearly all existing fingerprint records in the country, criminal or otherwise, are in manual storage-and-retrieval systems. So, fingerprints are not the way to go.”

  Neither of them speaks for a while, and then Saenz slaps his thigh with the palm of his hand. “Ading. He was supposed to have gone back to the site where the seventh body was found.”

  “You haven’t heard from him yet?”

  “No,” Saenz says, annoyed with himself for having let this slip his mind. He rushes to the outer room to ring Rustia. He picks up the phone and dials Rustia’s number at the NBI.

  “Rustia.”

  “Ading, it’s Saenz.”

  “Father.” The relief in Rustia’s voice is plain to hear. “I’ve been trying to reach you since Friday night.”

&n
bsp; Saenz thumps his forehead with the heel of his palm. Silly, silly, silly. “I’m sorry, Ading, I was tied up all weekend. What can you tell me?”

  A deep sigh on the other end of the line. “Well, for one thing, I thought I could go to the crime scene the day after we last talked, but I didn’t get to go until late the day after that. We were down two technicians last week due to illness and we were already stretched like you wouldn’t believe before then. Didn’t even have time to stop and try to get a hold of you till Friday night.” Rustia clicks his tongue, exasperated with the situation. “Really sorry about that, Father.”

  “It couldn’t be helped, Ading. Seems like that’s always going to be a problem for you.”

  “Here’s another problem, Father. Seems like the local police didn’t do a very good job sealing off the area. When I got there, there were—shall we say—tourists. Couple of people, kids and adults, gawking at the place where the boy was found. Asked them to leave, but I think we were too late. Whatever that thing on the tape is, it’s gone. Could your reporter have taken it herself?”

  “I don’t think so.” Saenz considers the possibility for a moment and then shakes his head. “No, Joanna is aggressive, but she won’t go as far as obstruction of justice.”

  “Well, maybe the scavengers got it. I’m sorry, Father.”

  “It’s okay, Ading. Thanks for trying.”

  Saenz returns to the laboratory, and Jerome knows the news is not good.

  “Who was that?”

  “Ading Rustia.” The older priest sighs. “He got to the crime scene a day late. Found that the site wasn’t properly processed, or protected afterward.”

  Jerome bends forward to take another look at the grooves through the magnifying glass. “He’s smart, all right. He’s aware of the possibility that you may have found the instrument marks already. He wants to know if you can find his little postal clue: it’s been sent in contempt. He’s letting you know he knows who and what you are, and that he’s not impressed. He’s also told you that he’s watching you.”