“I’m so sorry, Inspector. No Rose, no Benevides, and the only Chaves we have is a man.”
“She could have registered under another name. Look at the women; you can eliminate anyone who’s not alone. She’s young, pretty, between twenty-five and thirty, brown hair.”
To my surprise, the hotel had a reasonable number of single women guests. But the description eliminated a lot of them. The manager was considering several possibilities when Welber showed up with the picture.
“Oh, it’s the professor!” he exclaimed happily, only to say, with a worried expression: “But she left last night and hasn’t come back yet; the key is still in the box.”
We almost flew over the desk but managed to maintain our composure. After the usual excuses, the manager showed us to Rose’s room. Before we opened the door, we rang the bell twice and knocked loudly to no response.
The room was obsessively neat. It appeared as if its occupant, with nothing else to do, spent her days arranging the clothes and objects. The arrangement reproduced the geometry I’d seen at her mother’s house. We went over the room millimetrically.
Everything in the room was new, functional, and strictly necessary, bought after she had fled. On top of the table, some books. Novels. Lined up next to them were two volumes with blank black spines: the two daybooks missing from the shelf in her room in Tijuca.
The discovery of Rose’s hideout, even though it came rather late, was of the utmost importance. From that moment on, we were presented with two scenarios, depending on what the kidnapper wanted. If it was information, Rose was probably already dead. He would have tortured her and she would have told him something. Once he’d gotten the information, he would have killed her. But if he was looking for an object or money or something she couldn’t carry with her in her memory, she could protest that it was in her hotel room, and in that case they’d both come to get it. All we could do was pray that the second hypothesis was the right one. And wait.
We decided with the manager that we’d wait inside the room. He was to proceed as usual. Whenever she arrived, whether alone or accompanied, he should simply hand over the key without a word. As soon as they got in the elevator he would call the room and let the phone ring once. I asked him for an extra key so we could come and go whenever we needed to. No one from the hotel, not even him, should enter the room under any circumstances. We ordered some sandwiches and sodas and a thermos with coffee. We’d be prepared to wait a day. More than that would indicate that the first hypothesis was correct.
We ate the sandwiches in the bathroom so as not to leave any strong smells in the closed room. Luckily I had quit smoking. Welber had never smoked: he was the picture of health. I thought of the guys at Alba’s gym, I thought of Alba, I thought of Alba’s body, I thought of our date that night. I turned to Rose’s daybooks. We couldn’t turn on the overhead lights; we had to read with the light from the bathroom. We took our positions and began our vigil, trusting in the manager’s warning and the second hypothesis.
7
The daybooks, in addition to their normal function, served as a kind of diary in which Rose jotted down, intimately but concisely and sometimes in code, notes about her life at Planalto Minerações. The reason the two volumes were special was that they registered her meetings and travels with Ricardo Carvalho. These weren’t descriptions of amorous encounters or narratives of trips, but notes sometimes accompanied by short commentary. The affair had started two years ago (the time covered in the two books). It didn’t take long to read the two books—it wasn’t a complete text, just quick annotations, most of which had nothing to do with the case.
The codes Rose had used to disguise her commentary were such that anyone could figure them out easily; every written secret is meant to be discovered. After a certain point in the last six months references to New York started appearing regularly. The first one was just “Lucena discovered New York!” I noted the exclamation point. The note could have been an innocent reference to the beauties of Manhattan, if it hadn’t been for another, more recent note: “Lucena/New York situation intolerable—something needs to be done urgently.”
The sound of the elevator made me switch off the bathroom light instantly. The hall carpet muffled completely any footsteps. Someone knocking on a nearby door and then absolute silence. I turned the light back on. Welber was frozen, seated diagonally across from the door. In the shadows, he could have been mistaken for furniture. In the corner opposite him, near the bathroom door, I was rereading parts of the diaries.
I could make out two different trends in Rose’s notes, one corresponding to the intensity and frequency of her affair with Ricardo and another, also mounting in intensity but with an obviously depressive character. The most recent notes referred almost exclusively to the trio Lucena/Ricardo/New York, even though it wasn’t clear at first whether the Lucena/Ricardo link was positive or negative, if they were friends or enemies.
The contents of the daybooks were too personal and intimate for the phrase “Lucena discovered New York!” to mean that Cláudio Lucena had discovered the wonders of that city. Most likely Lucena had discovered something that had happened or was happening in New York. It could be something relatively innocent, like Rose and Ricardo’s romance, or maybe something more sinister, like something illegal Ricardo was doing in that city, with Rose’s knowledge.
Welber was so still in his corner that I was afraid he’d start to snore. I thought it would be better to turn off the bathroom light; reading could only distract me. Between the bathroom door and the bed was an armchair. It looked uncomfortable enough for a long wait. I had already been sitting there for fifteen minutes when Welber got up to stretch his legs. The sudden break in his immobility startled me.
At four in the afternoon, I asked him to find a phone outside the room to call the station and let them know how to contact us in case some information about Rose broke. I also asked him to tell the manager that if he wanted to let us know something more he should call and let the phone ring three times—and that he shouldn’t budge from the reception desk under any circumstances. Welber was gone long enough to worry me, until I heard the prearranged knocks and he opened the door.
“The Anti-Kidnapping Division says that the kidnapping wasn’t arranged by any known group.”
How the Anti-Kidnapping Division could make such a statement with such certainty in such a short time was beyond me. The already dark room darkened further while I thought about it. Another hour passed before one of us spoke. It was Welber.
“Inspector?” When he called me inspector it was something serious. “What are you thinking?”
What he meant was, is it worth waiting here while the murderer could be torturing and killing the girl, just like he did her mother? I’d already asked myself that question a few hundred times. And every time I’d convinced myself that there was no other alternative.
“Welber, I think that if anything happens, it’ll be after dark. I don’t think he’d risk going out with Rose in broad daylight. It’s five-twenty; in another half-hour we’ll be in the critical period, until ten.”
We decided that from then on everything we did would be in absolute silence and darkness. The manager’s warning would give us almost a minute’s advantage, but I was convinced that we were dealing with someone much more daring and competent that your run-of-the-mill thief. Whoever had grabbed the girl out of my hands in the middle of the street could easily get to that door without giving the manager a chance to warn us.
Welber had a glass of water and took a swallow every once in a while. I drank coffee instead of water. The thermos was almost empty and the bedside table was practically covered with little plastic cups. The water sent Welber to the bathroom a few times; the coffee gave me a stomachache, especially because I hadn’t eaten much that day. Impossible to go to the bathroom. Nothing more grotesque or demoralizing for a cop than being surprised by a criminal while sitting on the toilet. After a while my entire being was focused on my in
testines. The world had been transformed into a tube. I tried to distract myself with memories of the last few days, but the only memories that came up were of similar situations. When I was a kid, I’d taken a bus trip from Rio to Cabo Frio, and the bus had gone all around Guanabara Bay. After less than half an hour the stomach pains had started. At first it wasn’t so bad, but it kept getting worse. It wasn’t the first time I’d taken that trip, and I knew that the first stop came after an hour, at a gas station almost at the other end of the bay, the only stop before Cabo Frio. I thought I could survive an hour. Right when I saw the lights of the gas station I started undoing my belt. The bus just drove right on by. It was the closest to death I’d ever come until age eighteen. I didn’t want to relive that anguish just then in that hotel room. I whispered to Welber that I was going to the bathroom, and I made my way in the dark. Fear of getting caught inspired me to relieve myself in record time. I went back to the watch.
Around eight o’clock, my jaw was hurting from squeezing it and my whole body started itching. At first I thought it was mosquitoes, but then I realized I hadn’t heard any buzzing. I thought about fleas, but it would have to be a lot of them because I was itching all over. I finally realized it was just nerves. Just then, Welber shifted slightly and made an almost inaudible sign with his mouth. Two minutes passed and nothing.
I wasn’t sure if Welber had been trying to warn me or was just breathing when I saw shadows in the light under the door. Then the noise of something being stuck into the keyhole. Not a key—probably a lockpicker’s tool; but the lock took a while to give way. When the door opened, the form cut out by the light was indistinct. It could have been a big man slightly stooped or two people holding on to each other, one behind the other. The shape took a step into the room to turn on the light before suddenly backing up into the hallway and firing. We couldn’t shoot because we didn’t know who we were going to hit; he kept firing at the door. The shots tore plaster from the wall and splintered the doorpost. Welber was the first to cross into the hall. He fell back, shot. When I crossed the threshold to protect him there wasn’t anyone in the hall. I ran to the stairs. When I got downstairs everything seemed perfectly normal—no sign of the gunman. I shouted for the manager and ran back to help my companion.
8
Welber was operated on in the emergency room. The procedure lasted more than three hours. He had to have his spleen removed, but the initial prognosis was hopeful. Even though he’d lost a lot of blood, youth was in his favor. He left surgery for the ICU of the hospital. Visits were prohibited. I went back to the hotel to talk with the manager; I got there at ten to one. We were both tense and exhausted. The bar was open twenty-four hours. I ordered the biggest sandwich on the menu and a beer.
The manager looked confused and scared. The key to the professor’s room was still in its box; no one had ever taken it out. The only explanation he could offer was that they had come in through the service entrance, without passing through the lobby, and had gone up the stairs instead of using the elevator. Because the halls were carpeted and separated from the stairs by a thick fireproof door, no one downstairs had heard the shots. Only the guests on that floor had heard the noise; they had been the first to come to the wounded detective’s help.
“Is he going to live?”
It was the manager’s biggest worry. A shootout in the hallway was bad enough, but a murder could really ruin the hotel’s image. It was more than that too: the manager seemed genuinely concerned about what had happened to my colleague. I thanked him for his get-well wishes and asked him to tell me in as much detail as possible what the “professor” had done from the moment she’d registered at the hotel.
The first thing he did was find the form she’d filled out upon her arrival. In the space designated “name” she’d put “Beatriz de Carvalho”; profession: “Professor at the Federal University of Espirito Santo”; address: “Rua Loren Reno, no. 23, Vitória.” Interesting, that she had chosen to create a name using the executive’s wife’s first name and his last name.
She had rarely left the room, the manager reported; occasionally she had gone to the supermarket in the neighborhood or had picked up a bunch of books. She hadn’t made a single phone call and hadn’t received a single visit. She’d paid for the first two weeks in cash. The few times he remembered seeing her leave were in the evening. On one of the few times they’d spoken, she’d told him she was waiting for her military husband to be transferred to Rio; she’d have to wait until next semester to request a transfer to the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In the meantime she was taking advantage of the peaceful hotel to read and write. She ate in her room and never came down to the public rooms in the hotel. The manager figured the military husband must be pretty jealous.
Whatever they had come to get in the room was still there. There wasn’t much the secretary had brought with her; the field of investigation was limited. It wouldn’t take long to go over the whole room. If it was money or something like jewels or diamonds or gold, it wouldn’t be hard to find—but if it were a document, letter, receipt, or something like that, it would require a little more effort. I was exhausted: the wound on my head still throbbed, my eyes hurt from my time in the dark staring at the bright line under the door, and the feeling of failure was overwhelming.
The murderer would be back to get whatever he hadn’t managed to get the first time. I thought about sealing the door, going home, taking a bath, sleeping, and coming back the next morning to inspect the room as thoroughly as anything had ever been inspected. But just sealing the door wasn’t enough. Someone who could take out two watchful policemen wouldn’t worry too much about unsealing a door. I could put a guard on duty. But I didn’t want any more casualties. I talked to the manager and decided to sleep in Rose’s bed, with the double lock on the door and with my gun at hand. It was a disjointed night; noises inside and out woke me up several times, and the next morning I didn’t feel like I’d slept at all.
It didn’t make much sense to bathe only to have to put on the same clothes I’d worn the day before. I ordered coffee and began the search. First I’d look for money or larger objects. I started with the bathroom and examined every inch of the entire hotel room. After this preliminary search, I was almost certain that there was no money or gold or jewels hidden in the room. The second phase was tougher. It could include things as diverse as letters, notes, receipts, or simply a number or a bank code noted anywhere, which forced me to examine every page of the books and notebooks Rose had accumulated. At noon I gave up. I hadn’t found anything that could be of interest to the kidnapper. Even so, I sealed the door and went home, but not before setting up a police guard in the hotel.
The confrontation in the hotel had entirely changed the course of events in at least two ways. First off, the aggressor didn’t know if he’d killed Welber but could be very sure that the entire police department would be coming after him, which would force him to redouble his precautions. Second, he no doubt assumed that I had turned the hotel room upside down looking for whatever he wanted, and that, having found it, I wouldn’t have just left it there waiting for him, not even as bait. He’d immediately conclude that I had it on me, which transformed me into his prime target. I wasn’t too happy about that—especially because of his proven firepower—but, conversely, I was now in charge of the game. From that moment on, he’d have to seek me out.
After emptying my mailbox, I went upstairs to the blinking answering machine. A useless message from the precinct, another from Alba wondering what had happened to me, a third from Aurélio, as usual asking if I wanted to have lunch, and another from the detective who’d stayed behind at the hospital, reporting that Welber was in stable condition. I went to bathe, but first I called the station to ask if they could ensure that my phone wasn’t being tapped. If I was going to be the target of a murderer, I wanted at least to have a clean phone line.
I took a long bath, trying to wash off the day and night spent in the hotel. I tosse
d something frozen into the microwave without checking to see what it was and started to return my calls. First was Aurélio. Since I hadn’t called him back, he’d gone to eat by himself. He was worried about me. He’d called the station and they’d told him all about the shootout the night before. He wanted to know about Welber. I couldn’t tell him anything he didn’t already know. Then I called Alba. She was in the middle of a class. I asked her to call me as soon as possible. Finally I called the hospital. Nobody knew anything about the policeman in intensive care, nor did they know who the detective on duty was. The microwave beeped three times and I ate a lasagna with some passion-fruit juice that must have been in the fridge for six months.
Alba called at ten to two in the afternoon. I told her I’d call back in the next ten or fifteen minutes, then left the building and called from a pay phone. At first she didn’t understand what was going on, but it finally dawned on her and she didn’t ask me to fill in the parts I’d deliberately left out. I told her about the shootout and explained that it wasn’t safe to go out with me until things calmed down, that she shouldn’t call me, and that it would be better if nobody knew we were friends.
“Just friends?” she asked.
“Honey, friends is already pretty dangerous. More than that’s even more dangerous. Soon we can be whatever we want—when it’s safe for you, I’ll give you a call.”
I went back home thinking I could have been a little sweeter, that I could have said good-bye with a kiss, but I still wasn’t emotionally up to par.
The Silence of the Rain Page 18