Buried Strangers

by Leighton Gage

  Cariocas, most of Brazil agreed, were indolent. This time, Clarice didn’t tell her husband to shut up. Apparently, she agreed with his evaluation.

  “Describe this carioca,” Tanaka said.

  “He has black hair. I think he puts oil in it.”

  “Taller than me?” Tanaka asked.

  “Yes.”

  That was no surprise. Almost everybody was taller than Yoshiro Tanaka.

  “Show me,” he said. “Show me how big he was.”

  She stood up and hesitantly held up a hand, palm down-ward, about thirty centimeters above her head.

  “Beard? Mustache?”

  She sat down again.

  “Mustache.”

  “Eyes. What color?”

  “Brown . . . I think.”

  “He wears a chain,” Ernesto said, “with a big fucking medallion from Flamengo hanging on the end of it. Can you beat it? Flamengo. Here in São Paulo. Cheeky bastard.”

  Tanaka grimaced. The medallion was an affront. The team was anathema to fans who hailed from São Paulo, and those fans included Yoshiro Tanaka. The medallion was also new information, something Lucas hadn’t put in his report. Tanaka made a note of it.

  “The address?” he asked. “He wrote it himself?”

  She nodded.

  “Do you still have the paper?”

  “No. I threw it away after I copied it into my address book. Did I do wrong?”

  “Can’t be helped,” Tanaka said. “You’re sure you got it right?”

  “Augusta’s oldest daughter, Mari, has a friend,” Clarice said, “a girl named Teresa. She came to see me. Her letter was returned, too. What Teresa had, and what I had, was the same.”

  “And the Lisboa girl hasn’t written to this . . .”

  “Teresa. No. And she promised she would. There has to be something wrong.”

  “Just because your letter was returned? Just because nei-ther of them have written?”

  Clarice opened her mouth in surprise.

  “You mean Sergeant Lucas didn’t write up the part about the shop?”

  Tanaka was puzzled. “Shop? What shop?”

  Clarice lifted her eyes in exasperation.

  “But that was the whole point,” she said. “That’s why we came here in the first place.”

  Chapter Seven

  THEY’D BEEN SHOPPING FOR a cupboard. Actually, Clarice was doing the shopping, and Ernesto was tagging along to make sure she didn’t go overboard on the price. It was late Saturday afternoon, just before six o’clock, three weeks to the day after the Lisboa family’s departure.

  Ernesto was weary and footsore. He wanted to go home, take off his shoes, loosen his belt, and pour himself a tall glass of beer, all of which was exactly as Clarice had planned it. Armarios, priced like the one he’d found “far too expen-sive” that morning at ten, he’d deemed “reasonable” by two and a “pretty good deal” by five thirty. All she had to do was to keep him on his feet for another half hour or so, and he’d be ripe for the picking.

  “How about this one?” he said, giving the price tag on a squat, triangular cupboard only a cursory glance.

  She shook her head.

  “No,” she said. “I want a taller one, like—”

  “Like the one Augusta has,” he sighed. “Yeah, you told me.”

  Ernesto sat down on a cane chair with a torn seat, took off his shoes, and started to massage his feet. Clarice, as if hers weren’t hurting at all, moved forward into the gloom.

  The secondhand furniture shop had, at one time, been three adjoining houses. An enterprising merchant had pur-chased them, knocked holes in the intervening walls, and created one huge space piled high with tables, chairs, bed frames, cupboards, and cabinets. There were only a few sales people. The entire area was dimly lit.

  Clarice stopped in front of a dining table.

  It couldn’t be.

  She bent over to examine the surface. In the near dark-ness, she could just make out the cigarette burn; the one Augusta tried to remove with steel wool and shoe polish. She looked for the ring-shaped stain that Mari had made with a can of Guaraná. And found it. The chairs were there, too, even the one with the broken back. She was about to call Ernesto when she spotted the cupboard. She walked around a sofa with stained upholstery, moved a small table out of the way, and examined it more closely.

  Ernesto got up and came over to join her. “There you go,” he said, tapping the front door, “An armario just like Augusta’s.”

  The relief on his face would normally have pleased her, but not this time. A worried frown crinkled her forehead.

  Ernesto fingered the price tag tied to one of the knobs. “Not a bad price, either. Let me see if I can talk the guy down a little.”

  Footsore or not, Ernesto Portella was a tough man to sep-arate from his money. He was about to go in search of the shop owner when she put a hand on his arm.

  “Ernesto,” she said, “Augusta’s cupboard had a hole on the inside.”

  “Clarice, why are you always—?”

  She tightened her grip on his arm. “Pay attention. She used to keep her rice in plastic sacks.”

  “Plastic sacks?” He scoffed. “How dumb can you get? Everybody knows rats—”

  “—can chew through plastic. And chew through wood. And one did, right through the back of her cabinet.”

  “And you think . . . ?”

  She took her hand off his arm, opened the door, and pointed.

  “Right there,” she said.

  The hole was almost seven centimeters in diameter.

  It must have been a huge rat.

  “WE LOOKED through the rest of the shop,” Clarice told Tanaka, suddenly more garrulous than she’d been at any time during the interview. “Her bedside tables were there, too.”

  “Sure of that, are you?”

  Clarice bobbed her head. “I remember the day she bought them. I helped her carry them home. Believe me, Delegado; something terrible must have happened. Augusta wouldn’t have sold those things. I’m her friend, and I know. I asked her about the cupboard. I wanted to buy it myself, but she said she’d never sell it. It was her mother’s.”

  Tanaka let her run out of steam, and then he stood up. “I’m going to that shop,” he said, “and I want both of you to come with me.”

  “Merda,” Ernesto said.

  Chapter Eight

  ON THAT SAME MONDAY morning, while Tanaka was interviewing the Portellas, Arnaldo and Silva were meeting with the federal police’s criminal profiler, Dr. Godofredo Boceta.

  Boceta was a man in his midforties with a receding hair-line and horn-rimmed bifocals that looked as if they’d come out of a 1950’s catalog. He never used one word if he could use two, never employed a shorter word if he could think of a longer one, and always took detours before he got to the point. He was one of those people who could break up a friendly office conversation around the watercooler just by putting in an appearance. To say he was boring was an under-statement. Dr. Boceta’s verbosity drove Arnaldo nuts.

  The profiler sat upright in a chair across from the two fed-eral cops. He was looking at one of the photos, the one that showed the overall view of the burial ground in the Serra da Cantareira. His mouth was puckered, as if he were sucking on a lemon.

  “Do you know anything about Alzheimer’s?” he asked.

  “I had an uncle who died of it,” Silva said.

  “In an institution or at home?” Boceta asked.

  “An institution.”

  “Did they use art as an activity for the patients?”

  Arnaldo released a long breath, almost a sigh.

  “I don’t recall,” Silva said. “Why?”

  “Sometimes institutions hold exhibitions of patients’ art-work,” Boceta said, ignoring the question.

  Arnaldo shifted in his chair. He was a bulky man, and his movement caused a considerable rustle. Silva kicked him under the table.

  “Ouch,” Arnaldo said.

  “And?
” Silva said.

  Boceta looked back and forth, finally decided to ignore the interjection, and continued to address Silva.

  “And if you look at the art of Alzheimer’s patients, you’ll notice something curious. Not all the time, but often.”

  Arnaldo couldn’t contain himself. “What the hell has this got to do with what we should be talking about?”

  Dr. Boceta pulled his glasses down to the end of his nose and stared unblinkingly at Arnaldo. His stare reminded Silva of that of a fish.

  “If you’ll contain your impatience,” Boceta said, “I might tell you.” He removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, stretching out the moment.

  Sometimes Silva thought Boceta knew exactly what he was doing to people. He was determined not to let the man get to him.

  “Alzheimer’s patients often draw trees and domiciles,” Boceta said. “And as the disease progresses, the windows and doors of the domiciles tend to diminish in magnitude. One day they disappear.”

  Silva threw Boceta a conversational bone: “And the trees?”

  “Ah, yes, the trees. The trees lose their leaves, extend longer and longer roots. Mostly, the patients choose to draw those roots in black.”

  Arnaldo let out another long, slow breath. Silva kicked him again, more gently this time. Arnaldo didn’t react. Boceta put his glasses back on and resumed his study of the photograph.

  “I’m telling you this to illustrate the correlation between artistic expression and diseases of the mind. Now, take your serial killer. A disturbed individual often shares common characteristics with other disturbed individuals with the same malady. That, gentlemen, is a good deal of what crimi-nal profiling is all about.”

  “I see,” Silva said, hoping that Boceta was finally getting to the point.

  “I’m sure you’re aware that serial murderers, people who have a compulsion to kill, tend to demonstrate a lack of affect, often take trophies, and tend to specialize in certain kinds of victims. By certain kinds of victims I mean little boys, little girls, women, young men if the killer is a male and has homosexual tendencies.”

  “Yes.”

  “There are always exceptions, of course. Most serial killers are men, but there have been women, notably a prostitute in the United States named Aileen Wuornos, a lesbian who demonstrated a distinctly masculine approach to homicide.”

  Arnaldo stood, looked as if he were going to say some-thing, but didn’t. He walked to the credenza and poured himself a glass of water. Boceta waited until Arnaldo had resumed his seat before continuing.

  “The expression, I might almost say artistic expression, of serial killers often extends to the way they bury their victims. Sometimes they pose them, as if for a photograph. Most commonly, they don’t bury all of them in one central loca-tion. If they do, it’s generally in their home, under the porch, for example, or under the floor.”

  “But there are cases where they set up their own little cemeteries?” Silva asked, his interest awakening.

  “Indeed there are. And in most of those cases, the first victim is buried at the apex of a triangle with the other vic-tims radiating out from there.”

  “Most cases?” Arnaldo might as well have said what help is that, because that’s the way it came out.

  Boceta bristled. “This isn’t an exact science,” he snapped. “We’re dealing with statistical probabilities. Every serial killer is insane in his own insane way. There are always exceptions. Always. But they’re always insane. That’s why the Americans’ criminal trials of serial killers are so ludi-crous. Serial killers don’t belong on their death rows. They belong in institutions. Their legal definition of insanity, and the aberrations that stem from it, are an abomination. Any fool can plainly see—”

  “Conclusions, Godo?” Silva interrupted, trying to get the profiler back on track.

  “Yeah, and sometime within the next twenty minutes, if you please,” Arnaldo said.

  Boceta sniffed, as if Arnaldo emitted an odor that offend-ed him. “Alright, here’s what we know,” he said, addressing himself exclusively to Silva. “The killer shows no apparent preference for sex or age; he buries his victims side by side, indicating he doesn’t give particular importance to any one victim; sometimes he buries them in a mass grave, adults and kids all heaped in together, not taking any care to arrange them, just disposing of the corpses. My conclusion is that he doesn’t attach any aesthetic value to what he’s doing, that he isn’t milking it for a vicarious thrill, that he is, in short, not acting out of any inner compulsion. He’s not your stan-dard serial killer. I say he, but only to avoid repetition. I don’t want to waste your time.”

  “Perish the thought,” Arnaldo said.

  Boceta narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to reply, but Silva deftly cut him off. “So we could be dealing with a her, or a them, instead of a him?”

  Boceta kept looking at Arnaldo. He looked so long that Silva was arriving at the conclusion that he’d have to repeat his question. But then the profiler said, “Exactly.”

  It was probably the most succinct answer that Godofredo Boceta had ever given to anyone.

  Silva pressed his advantage. “Okay, but I’m not sure I get it. What you’re saying is—”

  “I’m saying that I sense some utilitarian purpose here.”

  “Utilitarian purpose? What do you mean by a utilitarian purpose?”

  “Well . . . genocide, for example.”

  “Genocide? You call genocide a utilitarian purpose?”

  “In the mind of the perpetrator, or perpetrators? Of course it is. Haven’t you heard the term ethnic cleansing? The people who practice it actually believe that they’re making a posi-tive contribution to their societies. Think of the Turks and the Albanians, the Hausa and the Ibo, the Bosnians and the Serbs, the Nazis and the—”

  “Enough. I take your point.”

  “In all the cases I’ve cited, and many more that I could cite, the killers attached no great significance to the dispos-al of the bodies. Burning, dissolving in acid, burying, tossing into rivers, it was all the same to them, a simple problem of disposal where ritual played no role. There are consistencies between what they did and the behavior we see here.”

  “So you’d rule out ritual killings?”

  Boceta waved a finger in Silva’s face. “I never said that. Don’t put words in my mouth. I merely suggested a hypoth-esis. There are, of course, other explanations.”

  “Ones in which ritual might be involved?”

  “Of course.”

  “Give me an example.”

  Boceta thought for a moment. Then he said, “A use for body parts, perhaps.”

  “Like what?”

  “Some believe that the eating of human flesh conveys benefits. That, by consuming another human being, you take on some of their life force.”

  “Now we got cannibals in São Paulo?” Arnaldo said. “Fat chance.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Agente. Whether cannibals are active in São Paulo or not is no concern of mine.”

  “No? So why are you suggesting it?”

  Boceta shot Arnaldo a beady-eyed stare before turning back to Silva.

  “You might want to inquire, Chief Inspector, if the skele-tal structures of the victims were intact.”

  “Why?”

  “In ritual killings, the murderers often go after specific bones or body parts containing those bones. If the skeletal structures are incomplete, that could tell you something. Mind you, it would only be significant if the same mutilation took place in every case.”

  Arnaldo turned to Silva. “Remember when Dr. Couto cut that assistant of his short? Maybe she was gonna say some-thing about missing parts.”

  “Maybe,” Silva said. “And I’m sure Hector would be de-lighted to call her up and ask her.”

  Chapter Nine

  SERGEANT LUCAS KNEW TANAKA was not a man to be moved by the disappearance of a family of nobodies from a favela. There had to be something else driving him, and in Luc
as’s experience, one of Tanaka’s principal motivators was money. Lucas, too, was not averse to earning a few reais on the side. If he hung around and kept a close eye on his boss, he hoped some of the crumbs might fall to him.

  When he heard Tanaka’s door open, he kept his head down, picked up a pile of paperwork, and dropped it on top of the newspaper he was reading.

  “Sergeant?”

  Lucas looked up. “Às ordens, Delegado.”

  “Get me a car.”

  Lucas repressed a smile. Tanaka drove himself to and from the office. On all other occasions, he took advantage of his seniority and had himself driven. The person who normally did the driving was Sergeant Lucas.

  Lucas stood up. “Right away, Delegado.”

  Tanaka looked at the surface of Lucas’s desk. The paper-work didn’t quite cover the sports pages of the Diário Popular.

  “And since your hands are so full this morning,” he said dryly, “I’ll dispense with your services and drive myself.”

  THE SHOP was on a crowded street in Bom Retiro, a place of broken and narrow sidewalks, rumbling trucks, and crum-bling facades. Once, years ago, it had been a residential neighborhood, lower-middle class even then, going downhill ever since. The shop’s proprietor had moved a number of his bulkier and cheaper pieces into the open air, completely blocking the space between the shop and the curb. Tanaka had no doubt that the man was slipping a few reais to the cops on the beat to get away with occupying so much of a public thoroughfare.

  He parked in front of the hardware store next door. The guy arranging a display in the window gave the police car an apprehensive glance. He looked relieved when the people who got out of it started walking toward his neighbor’s establishment.

  Next to one of the rolled-up metal doors was a sign, black letters on enameled metal, identifying Avri Cohen as the proprietor.

  “Dead these two years,” a balding man with a paunch told Tanaka as the delegado stood there, making a note of it. “I own the place now. Name’s Goldman.”

  Tanaka produced his policeman’s identity card.