Charon's Net

by Gemma Herrero Virto

  “The killer’s blood type? Traces of semen?” he continued to ask.

  “None of that. Going by the state of the body’s decomposition, we can deduce that she’s been dead some three weeks, exposed to the elements and wild animals. The truth is that, if the killer did leave any clue, it’s all faded away... We’ve only found blood from type A positive, which is from Bianca. As for traces of semen, he didn’t rape her. I don’t even think he tried.”

  “He didn’t rape her?” asked Carlos, incredulous. “Shit, I was convinced the motive was sexual. Any other facts?”

  “Not for now... No footprints or fragments of skin, hair, or fibres, nothing... But I will continue studying it. If I find anything else, I will notify you immediately.”

  “Good, as soon as you can, send me a copy of the preliminary report to my office. Thank you.”

  Carlos turned around and headed for the door. Natalia watched incredulously as he walked away. Was that all he wanted to hear? Any medical student could have told him what she had just told him, without being too bright. She had much more to provide, and Carlos’s high handedness was not going to stop her from doing that.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me what I think about the murderer?”

  “Man, well I imagine you won’t consider him to be very nice, like anybody else,” replied Carlos, turning around.

  “Don’t be a fool. I’m referring to whether you’re interested in the conclusions I have been able to draw about our man whilst I was doing the post mortem.”

  “ ‘Our man’?” Carlos approached her until he was only a few centimetres away from her. “I don’t think they’ve properly explained to you each other’s functions in this. I investigate; I draw conclusions; I look for ‘my man’. I understand that you, as the new person, are still not very clear about your job. I will explain it to you. You are just assigned to the case to certify the victim’s death, make a few observations of the crime scene, and then come here to carry out the post mortem and prepare a report so that we investigators can work. I’m going to say it to you even more clearly: you gut and take notes. Understand?”

  “No, I don’t understand... I have a Master’s degree in forensic psychology, and I can do more than gut and take notes. I can tell you how this guy thinks, what his motives are, how he’ll attack again...” she insisted, feeling her rage increasing by the second.

  “And what gives you the impression that he’s going to attack again?” he asked, feigning interest.

  “Serial killers can’t stop themselves, so...”

  “Well a single murder is not a very long series, by any means” he cut her off, giving her another one of his loathsome little ironic smiles.

  “If you would listen to me, you would see that I’m right in what I’m saying,” she insisted.

  “No. I’ve spent ten minutes listening to you, and what I see is a novice who wants to be working on a Jack the Ripper case that she can solve all on her own and rise up very quickly through the ranks, but the only thing you’re going to achieve is to make my life complicated. Besides, if I needed conclusions on this guy’s personality, I would head for the forensic psychology department. It’s on the same floor, but I have bad news for you: they haven’t assigned you to it, so do me the favour of concentrating on your work, and let us real professionals do ours.”

  Carlos smiled at her again, nodded goodbye to her, and went towards the door. Natalia could feel that the embarrassment and rage were turning her cheeks red. Who would have thought that he was about to judge her in that way? She was a great professional; a master in her work, and she could help solve this case. And she was going to prove it, whether he liked it or not.

  “Maybe you’re afraid of a woman surpassing you?”

  Carlos turned around again and positioned himself back a few centimetres away from her. Natalia stood up even straighter, trying to show him that she was not going to be frightened by him.

  “I don’t know how I need to tell you so it’s clear to you. I am not afraid of anybody surpassing me, be they a man or a woman. I just want to do my job without having to watch out for someone causing me problems, and least of all you, who I don’t even like. Do you understand now?”

  “Yes, I understand. Let’s make a deal. You let me help with the case...”

  “No, damn it! Are we not speaking the same language or something? Besides, I already have a partner. Why don’t you go and bother him?”

  “I thought about it, but I like Roberto even less than you,” she replied. “And I suspect that you don’t like him either.”

  He was mute for a few seconds, looking at her in surprise. Natalia was pleased at having hit the mark with her reflections. She had been watching how they worked the previous night, and it had seemed fairly clear to her that the fact the two investigators assigned to the case did not say a word to each other should not be the usual procedure. She decided to take advantage of this silence to continue pressing her case.

  “Listen to me; you don’t like me, right? Well I’m giving you the opportunity to be free of me. I’ll help you with the case and, according to you, I’ll put my foot in it and cause you problems, right?”

  “Of that I have no doubt. Go on, that thing about freeing myself of you interests me,” Carlos smiled again. This time his smile seemed sincere to her, so she returned it.

  “Okay, the first instance that I interfere in your investigations, or cause you a problem, however small it may seem, I will request my transferral to another station.”

  “And if I don’t accept?”

  “I’ll have to stay here forever; they’ll offer me whatever position they offer me. I can be your worst nightmare.”

  Carlos puffed, looked up at the ceiling with a desperate expression and muttered ‘women’. Then he looked at her, and smiled at her again.

  “All right. I’ll give you an opportunity, but only one. What do you think about the killer?”

  Natalia tried to control her joy whilst she thought that perhaps he was not as unpleasant as he had seemed to her in the first instance. She crashed her hand into his to close the deal, and answered:

  “That I don’t consider him to be very nice, like anybody else.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  They were sitting in Capri, the bar where the people from the police station would go for a drink right after work, before returning home. Natalia observed the place in silence whilst Carlos collected from the bar the two coffees they had ordered. The walls were covered with a dark wood, the lighting was soft, and through the loudspeakers gentle music was playing. It would have been a peaceful and pleasant location were it not for the cries coming from a group playing darts in one corner, or the continuous noise of the slot machines by the entrance. Natalia had never been there before. She had not been at her job for long, and had never been one to make friends easily, so therefore, up until that day, nobody had invited her to go with them for a drink at home time. Once more, she felt like things were beginning to look up. Carlos appeared with the cups, sat down in front of her, and folded his arms on the table.

  “Okay, get started with your erudite conclusions. I’m waiting to be enlightened.”

  Natalia devoted herself to stirring the coffee whilst she looked at her notes. It had not gone unnoticed to her that he had abandoned his cold formal tone. Perhaps he was beginning to see her as a member of the team. She decided to do the same. She needed to try to get along with him if they were going to work together.

  “Stop being sarcastic and listen to me,” she said. He gave a timid smile of apology and encouraged her to continue with a head gesture. “This whole thing is nothing more than hypotheses taken from contrasting the facts from the post mortem with the theories on the criminal personality as established by forensic psychology. Which is to say, don’t take it all for objective facts; only as a starting point.”

  “Don’t worry; I wasn’t planning on taking anything you say as an objective fact.”

  “Sarcasm again? Hadn’t you pr
omised to be good?”

  Natalia raised her eyes from her papers and smiled sweetly at him. He nodded, apologising and hurriedly searched for a cigarette. Had she managed to embarrass him? What a pity about the lighting. She would have enjoyed knowing whether the hard inspector was capable of blushing.

  “All right, let’s begin with the analysis of the head injuries,” she continued. “Based on the trajectory, we can guess that the killer is a man of short stature. The blows do not follow a downward trajectory, therefore one must assume that the killer was the same height as the victim or only a little taller, that is to say, I would bet that he measures between 5’3” and 5’9.”

  “Wow, that’s not bad... There are not many men with that build. That reduces the possibilities somewhat. I’ll send for them to search the files of the killers who are that height who are free, and we’ll have somewhere to begin...”

  “Wait, I don’t think that’ll be of any use. You can do it if that is the procedure but, analysing the blows to the head, I think this is our killer’s first crime.” Carlos looked at her in surprise, and began to take notes in his notebook whilst she continued talking, trying to explain. “He needed to strike three times to render the victim unconscious so he would be able to move her. That suggests a lack of experience. I am certain that in the ensuing crimes he will improve. If we let him, of course. We also deduce that the killer was a weak person, judging by the scratch marks I observed on the victim’s legs. He had to drag her in order to move her from the car to the place where he hurled her into the forest. No carrying her in his arms, you understand?”

  Carlos nodded as he continued taking notes, interested, without looking up from his notebook. Natalia allowed herself to stop for a few seconds to take a sip of coffee, trying to put her thoughts in order. For the moment, it appeared to be going well, and that she was impressing him. She cracked a smile of triumph, and continued:

  “The facts I have given you up until now are objective conclusions drawn from the post mortem regarding our man’s physique. I will move on now to what I have been able to deduce about his personality. In spite of the fact that there was no attempt at rape, I still think that the motive for the crime was sexual, at least as long as we don’t have proof that the killer knew her and had reasons for hating the victim in this way and, frankly, I can’t think what a fourteen year old girl could have done to deserve this.”

  “What about a resentful classmate?”

  “No, nothing like that. In spite of the fact the height and physical strength could tally, I don’t think it would have been a boy. A boy can kill in a moment of rage, and even be very cruel, but the premeditation and the viciousness with the body, which furthermore seems to satisfy some sort of obsessive ritual, tells us of a highly disturbed personality that tends not to be present in children. Besides, the killer has to be of legal age and have a car in order to be able to have transported the victim to the forest, don’t forget,” Carlos nodded, encouraging her to continue. “For the moment, we will stay with the hypothesis of the sexual motive. We can deduce from the previous facts that, if the killer is small and weak, he has not had much success with women; he could even have a physical deformity, like many other serial killers.”

  “I’m going to ask you again not to treat him as a serial killer. For now, there has only been one murder, and my intention is for it to stay that way. You appear very keen to be taking part in the sequel to The Silence of the Lambs, but for me it puts my hair on end just thinking about more little girls being killed.”

  “I agree that there shouldn’t be any more victims but, if we rule out personal revenge, all we have left as a motive is disturbed behaviour, and this tends to repeat itself, so let’s carry on with this hypothesis and pray that I’m wrong,” Natalia breathed deeply and continued. “Okay, let’s imagine that his deformity is sexual; that he wanted to maintain a relationship with Bianca but knew that it was going to be impossible, due to castration or some chronic sexual deficiency. Hence the viciousness with the girl, taking out his frustration on her, you understand?” Carlos nodded whilst he continued writing notes. “And hence also the emptying of the eye sockets; it’s a characteristic thing amongst those killers with any obvious physical defect, as if they wanted to erase the very defect that the victim has seen in them.”

  Carlos lifted his head and looked at her. Natalia tried to decode that look: approval? Recognition? Admiration...? She would have given anything to know what he was thinking in that moment, to be certain that he was not going to listen to her for five minutes just to end up telling her that he would not be needing her.

  “Have you found any reason for why he would amputate her hands?” he asked, interested.

  “The truth is I haven’t; I’m lost on that one. It’s not something very common, but I’m following up on it. After all, not all multiple murderers are the same. This would be his characteristic feature, his personal signature to identify him if copycats should appear, which is something we hope doesn’t happen here and which, in any case, is more common in the United States. I guess that the amputation of the hands has something to do with some episode in the killer’s life, with the event that disturbed them, so it’s something we should investigate... Well, I think that for now we don’t have much else. What do you think?”

  “Not bad.”

  She frowned, and turned her head down towards her papers, in an attempt to avoid him realising the disappointment that her expression must have conveyed. She had not been expecting a parade with fireworks, but certainly some element of recognition. She had not even had four hours’ sleep; she had worked a lot on that report, and she knew that the hypotheses it had provided her with were appropriate. Would it be so hard for him to say something encouraging to her?

  “So we have a murderer around 5’3”, of weak build, with some sexual dysfunction or obvious physical deformity, and who is highly disturbed from a psychological point of view, although this would be their first murder,” he resumed, rereading his notebook. “I would have to look through the files of all sorts of murderers and sexual criminals who are currently free, and ask for information from all the psychiatrists in the area about people who could meet these characteristics, even if they have no criminal record. That job alone will keep us busy for weeks.”

  “Let’s suppose one thing for a moment,” Natalia interrupted him. Carlos raised his gaze from his notebook. “Let’s suppose that his behaviour up until now has been totally normal; that he has put up with his problem for many, many years, until finally it exploded.”

  “Are you suggesting that he may never have been on file or in psychiatric treatment?”

  “Exactly. Nevertheless, the sexual dysfunction is something we may assume he has had treatment for at some point,” she said.

  “If you’re trying to propose that we ask for reports, which for certain are confidential, from all of the urologists, psychologists, sexologists, and psychiatrists in the Basque Country, the only thing I can tell you is that you are crazy and that this work would take years. Besides, we can’t even know whether this guy has just got here, or even whether he was only passing through. We will begin as I have said, to see whether we have any luck.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “We’ll pray that another way of catching him comes to me. Have you finished your coffee?”

  “Yes, where are we going?”

  “We have to go back to headquarters to tell Roberto to begin checking files. He’s going to hate me,” Carlos smiled like a naughty little boy, and she returned the smile. “And I have to go to Bianca’s house to talk with her parents and investigate her room, in case there is anything there that could lead us to the killer. All right, the fact is that I was thinking that, if you’re not too busy...”

  Natalia felt overwhelmed by happiness. That was the best sentence of recognition. He was inviting her to go with him, to take part in the investigation whilst he left his partner going over files! She stood up with a triumphant smile
on her face.

  “You seem like a schoolboy asking me out on a date. All right, I’ll go with you.”

  “Don’t be so happy. I am only giving you more opportunities to put your foot in it so I can free myself of you soon.”

  “As you wish, but I warn you that, if what you’re looking for is for me to make a mistake, I’m going to have to disappoint you.”

  ***

  Carlos drove thoughtfully whilst Natalia watched the sky out through the window. A pallid sun fought a battle, now lost, with some ever increasingly grey clouds that were trying to cover it. The wind blew hard, creating swirls of leaves and rubbish on every corner. Carlos’s voice from the adjacent seat made her turn her gaze back to the car’s interior.

  “This morning I was at Bianca’s school to ask for her academic record,” he told her. “I wanted to know whether she was a girl with school or behavioural problems before going to speak with her parents.”

  “That seems right,” said Natalia. “Maybe by knowing more about the victim, we will be able to deduce something about her killer.”

  “That’s what I thought. The fact is that I went for the report and got held up talking with her teacher: exemplary girl, good student, excellent academic file, no disciplinary problems...”

  “Wow, then we’re not going to get anything there,” replied Natalia.

  “So it seems. The only thing that her teacher was able to say against her was that she was a very shy girl; that she didn’t mix with the other pupils... And an interesting thing: over the last two months she retreated even more, seeming distracted, and even her grades went down a little.”

  “That could be very important. Something could have happened to her two months ago; something like having met her killer,” suggested Natalia, interested.

  “It’s a possibility, but I still believe the hypothesis of an unknown assailant.”

  “Okay, but from what they say about Bianca, she doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who would be hitchhiking at the crack of dawn, or going for a stroll with the first guy who showed up,” she noted. “If she already knew him, maybe we might be able to find something in her house: a diary, letters, a photo... Perhaps it might be our lucky day.”