Valentina's Lost Days

by A. P. Hernández

  Lazarus doubted that someone would be able to throw a stone of that size from the street because for that he would have to draw a perfect parable from the garden fence, cross the lush leaves of the malus and stamp against the glass. Calculate that it is a path of almost fifty meters.

  - "It is impossible..."

  Lazarus understands that, whoever was the one who did it, he had to jump over the fence, climb the trunk of the malus and, from the invisibility offered by its thick glass, blow out the glass with stone-throwing.

  - "But of course, why would someone take so much trouble? Why would anyone risk invading private property with a video surveillance system to blow up a window glass? Are there no more stealthy ways to enter a home?”

  Lazarus looks at the dead girl's bedroom. To his astonishment, everything seems in order: books on the bookshelf are perfectly aligned. The bed with a quilt with loving motifs (hearts and arrows) does not have not even one-fold. The bedside lamp placed in the center of the surface, the television hanging on the wall is perfectly centered, the desk drawers closed and the backpack that rests on the chair is with a closed zipper.

  - "Have they stolen?" -Lazarus asks.

  On one side, wait (WISH) for the lady to say yes. Some criminals broke the glass, went to a room and took some jewelry. That would explain the incident.

  - "No," -Marta answers. - "They have not come inside."

  - "Are you sure?" -Lazarus swallows.

  - "Completely."

  The hypothesis of the lady begins to gain weight. That seems personal. An attack directed at Valentina herself.

  - "And why are you so sure that it was "her murderer?"

  Marta contains the tremor of her jaw. For a moment, her gesture is sullen, stern.

  - "Yesterday ... Yesterday was the first year since my daughter committed suicide."

  -9-

  Ismael leaves the faculty and heads toward the student residence. He has just turned 19, he is dark skin, of medium height and is studying his second-degree course in Electronic Engineering at the

  Pío Baroja Public University. There is still the semester left to finish. The final exams are coming, and the students frequent the libraries. But Ismael does not worry about exams. In fact, he is willing to fail some subjects for the next course. He has everything studied. He has failed of the first session of the career Fundamentals Physics of Computing and Management of Organizations and Professional Skills. Of the second course, he plans to suspend the Expansion of Computer Structure and Concurrent and Distributed Programming and, of course, the next course would defer two more. The idea is that, upon reaching the end of the degree, you have enough subjects suspended to make your family believe that you must stay at the university for another year.

  He is not going to go home so soon. He thinks to do everything possible to prolong his stay and remains as far as possible from his father.

  Ismael looks at his watch. It is twelve o'clock. Now his colleagues are in a subject that, in principle, does want to approve. It is the subject of obligatory nature, Compilers. But Ismael is not worried about skipping class. Today it is a theoretical class, and the teacher does not pass the attendance list. Ismael does not need to be sitting two hours listening to that idiot either. He prefers to read the syllabus at home. It is faster and provides a more efficient and meaningful learning.

  Ismael crosses the campus. He likes to walk alone. The month of June is the best for it. He walks with his head down, his backpack hanging over one shoulder, as most students wear it. Ismael feels the weight of his laptop and notebooks. He knows that, logically, it would be to distribute it between his two shoulders, so that his back would be freed from the extra weight, but he does not. He wants to go unnoticed. It needs to go unnoticed. Especially, after the bullshit of yesterday. He feels like a complete moron but, at the same time, he knows it's something he had to do.

  - "It was my merit" -he thinks-. "One has to reclaim what belongs to one."

  -10-

  - "Have you informed the police?"

  Lazarus approaches the giant stone, bend down and observing it with thoroughness. It is grayish with some other orange tone. He reaches out his hand but stops in time. He does not want to touch it. He knows that this could contaminate the possible tracks.

  - "I was about to call 112," -Marta informs him. The woman smokes a cigarette from the frame of the bedroom door and seems more relaxed. - "I dialed the number and everything, you know? But I did not press the call button."

  -"Ma'am," -Lazarus says, without repressing the harshness of his voice, - "you have to inform the authorities. This ... this is important."

  - "I have already informed the authorities." -Marta says it with the hand that holds the cigarette. - "I have called you, Inspector."

  Lazarus sighs, exasperated. He has already explained to her that he is not an authority and made it very clear before taking the large envelope with the € 20,000. Why, then, does she insist on considering him a policeman? Why does she insist on calling him an inspector?

  - "Ma' am, I already told you ..."

  - "I do not plan to call the police," -she interrupts, dryly. - "Not after the way they treated me the last time. They took me for crazy, you know?"

  - "Even so..."

  - "And besides," -she says again, - "that would be useless."

  Lazarus thinks about it and, for a moment, believes that the lady can be partly right. He knows that if she called the police, they would most likely send a couple of local police officers. These would take note of what happened and end up concluding the impossibility of establishing any link between the facts. On the one hand, there is a teenager who committed suicide more than a year ago, a girl who cut her wrists with her craft knife on her own. And, on the other hand, there is a window broken by a stone. What kind of relationship can one establish between such unconnected events?

  Lazarus does not see it as unlikely that the agents would consider that as a minor incident. A simple isolated event. An assault on a person's private property, yes, but nothing serious. In fact, they did not even enter the house. You could not also talk about theft.

  - "Do you have a Kleenex, ma'am?"

  Marta, surprised, rummages inside her bag. She takes out a packet of extra fine handkerchiefs, one of those flavored ones, and extends one. Lazarus, not remembering when it was the last time he had a handkerchief with the smell of mint in his hands, used it to pick up the stone. Look closely at its surface. It is irregular, riddled with pores and edges. That, in part, reassures him. He knows that extracting a fingerprint from that surface would have been an almost impossible mission.

  Lazarus returns to deposit the pebble on the carpet of the room.

  - "It's okay, ma'am," -he says, regaining verticality. - "I will investigate outside the police, but as I told you, if I find any indication, something revealing, you will have to report. Do you understand?"

  Marta deposits the cigarette in the corner of her lips and arches them in just a shadow of a smile.

  - "I want you to know that it is a crime to hide this kind of evidence from the police ... And the last thing I want is more problems. Do you understand?"

  The woman's lips contract with a kind smile. The cigarette accompanies the movement.

  - "It's okay ..." -Lazarus palpates his pants pocket and takes a few taps to make sure the money is still there. - "I need to watch the videos from your security cameras. Is there any way to access the recordings of the last couple of days?"

  Marta arches her lips even more. His smile is now resplendent.

  - "Come with me."

  -11-

  Ishmael climbs the stairs to the second floor of the student residence. His room is 2-18. It is a shack of just ten square meters, but there you have everything you need: a private bathroom and a place that, at the same time, plays the role of a living room, bedroom, and office. The bed located in the corner adjacent to the entrance door, so it does not take up too much space. The desk is stuck in front of the only
window in the room, so that, while Ishmael wastes his time doing some stupid practice of the career, he can rest his eyes looking at the distance. The views of the student residence are, just, deplorable: a wasteland converted into an improvised car park. But Ishmael does not complain. College students who come and go daily from their homes, park in front of their noses and know that, when the time comes, can provide valuable information.

  Finally, the room has a sizeable single-seating armchair and a small TV set anchored to the wall using a mobile support.

  Ishmael walks through the narrow corridor of the residence until he reaches the door with plate 2-18. Remove the keys from the backpack and enter. When he closes the door of the room with a key and, above all, when he is completely sure that no one can see him, he removes the laptop from his book back, places it on the desk and turns it on. The blind of the window is lowered. For his luck, the intense midday sun hits directly at the back of the residence, where he, along with many others, has his single room. So, he would not call anyone's attention for having the shutter down. Ishmael has gone to the open-parking lot and has observed the back side of the building. He knows that at that time, practically all the blinds are closed. All students (and that includes him) try to sneak out of the sun. No one can think that Ismael is a weirdo who likes having the window down. Nobody can imagine that that student of Electronic Engineering is plotting anything strange.

  That thought comforts him.

  After taking one last look at the door of the room and, after confirming that, effectively, with the latch put and no one can enter, he sits down with his laptop and starts working.

  Ishmael does not advance pending practices of the career nor studies for not a single exam. It focuses on his real work.

  -12-

  Lazarus verifies that the video surveillance system of the luxurious cottage leaves a lot to be desired. He understands that his role is fundamentally dissuasive.

  That is something that has always caught his attention. Luxurious homes of hundreds of thousands of euros (if not millions) protected by weak security systems.

  Lazarus sits at Marta's computer. Just by looking at the layer of dust that covers the CPU, the monitor, and the keyboard, he senses that the lady is not very focused on IT issues.

  - "The security cameras have a warning system to the police?" -he asks.

  Lazarus thinks he knows the answer, but still prefers to hear it from her mouth.

  - "Not that I know of."

  - "Ma'am, any surveillance camera system generates passive surveillance," -he informs her, while the PC starts. - "That passive surveillance needs to be complemented by active surveillance. Do you understand?"

  Marta slightly opens her eyes, perhaps showing a certain astonishment or, perhaps, some incomprehension. Maybe it will show both at the same time, who knows. The lady is very discreet.

  - "What I want to tell you is that your video surveillance system, right now, does not make any sense." -Lazarus does not want to be harsh with Marta, but he considers it his duty to alert her to that. -"It is useless to record images if you do not have security guards to review and act on them."

  - "I understand, Inspector," -she says. - "I'll take care of that matter ... Look, it's already started!"

  Lazarus grabs the mouse and slides the pointer along the desk. It is full of shortcuts, mainly Microsoft Word documents.

  - "Where can I access the recording menu of the equipment?"

  Marta looks at him again with that expression so difficult to figure out.

  - "If I'm honest, Inspector, I do not know much about computers ... My ex-husband managed those things."

  The woman lowers her tone of voice and looks away when she says, "my ex-husband". Lazarus does not ask her about it, but he makes a mental note.

  The former Chief Inspector writes the word VIDEO SURVEILLANCE in the search box, and several results appear immediately. One of them is a shortcut.

  - "I've found it! -He says. - "Let's look."

  Marta is at a prudent distance from Lazarus as if she is afraid to get too close to the computer screen and observe.

  Lazarus navigates through an intuitive interface and selects the DAYS tab. Here are the recordings corresponding to the last thirty days. Lazarus imagines that the new records are overwritten at the end of the cycle.

  - "What date is today?"

  Lazarus left his watch and cellphone at home. When he left his duplex that morning, he did not think he would need them.

  - "Today is three of June."

  Lazarus, convinced that Valentina's bedroom window was broken during the early morning, click on DAY 3.

  A pop-up window appears indicating to select the cameras desired. Seen this, Lazarus does not bother to ask Marta if she knows the number assigned to each camera. In order not to fail, select them all and click on ACCEPT.

  Next, a new floating window appears, and in it, you can see all the sections of recordings divided by blocks of one hour. Viewing the previous image, Lazarus believes that camera three is the one that can offer the most information. It has a wide viewing angle that covers the malus tree, a fragment of the pool and, most importantly, Valentina's window.

  - "Marta, can you tell me when you noticed that your daughter's bedroom window was broken?"

  - "I saw it this morning."

  - "And you're sure they broke it during the early morning, right?"

  Marta nods.

  - "Did you hear something?"

  She walks a little step towards the former Chief Inspector.

  - "I heard something while I was sleeping ... but I did not give importance to it. I thought it was the garbage truck."

  - "What time did you go to sleep?"

  - "At about one in the morning ... I usually fall asleep watching TV on the couch until that time."

  Lazarus selects the video block between 02:00 and 03:00. He suspects that the crook knew Marta's habits and waited outside until he was sure that the owner was asleep.

  The recorder activates.

  -13-

  For Ismael, the hunt has just begun.

  He has great dexterity with the computer keyboard: more than 400 beats per minute with a high index of precision. His fingers glide with amazing speed through the keys. More than touching them, it seems to caress them.

  He is chatting with GOTI-K. The conversation is as follows:

  - SUPERMAN: I want to see you in person.

  - GOTI-K: I want to be with you too. I cannot wait.

  - SUPERMAN: How much I want to caress you and kiss you. I cannot stand!!!

  - GOTI-K: Tomorrow I'll take the train!!!!

  At that point, Ishmael is insensitive with spelling errors. As with the subjects suspended in the career, those mistakes are conscious and deliberate. He commits them with the sole intention of empathizing with Cynthia (the real name of the 17-year-old who hides behind the ridiculous username GOTI-K). That ignorant bitch does not know how to write, and Ishmael does not want to drive her away with his lexical care.

  - "If she wants shit, I'll give her shit" -he thinks.

  - SUPERMAN: So good! At what time am I going to pick you up????

  After seeing the way, she has just written his last chat, Ishmael starts to laugh out loud but quickly stops. He does not want to attract the attention of students residing in rooms 2-17 and 2-19.

  - GOTI-K: I'll arrive at ten in the morning. But I have not told my parents.

  - SUPERMAN: Nooooooooooooo!!!!!!! Do not tell them anything.

  Quickly, Ishmael laments what he wrote. "Tell" is not the word a fucking garrulous would use. A semi-literate, a functionally illiterate like GOTI-K would have said: "Do not tell them nothing" or, simply, he would have used the onomatopoeia "Sssssssssssshh," although surely, he would not even have the decency to put the final H after the eses.

  - "Take it easy, Ishmael," -he says to himself, forcing himself to raise his hands from the keyboard. - "Do not make more stupid things."

  - GOTI-K: I will not
tell them anything. I know that is our secret!!!!!

  - SUPERMAN: Yeees!!!!!

  - GOTI-K: I have I want so much to kiss you, honey.

  - SUPERMAN: Me tooooo!!!!!!!

  Ishmael opens the last drawer of his desk, the only one that has a security key. Under the pile of folders and scrap papers is the object. He caresses it.

  - SUPERMAN: Do you know that I bought a surprise for you????

  - GOTI-K: what do you say ??? seriously??

  - SUPERMAN: Yessss !!! And it's just for you, precious!

  - GOTI-K: I have a surprise for you too!!

  An image appears on the laptop screen. It's female underwear: a black bra remodeled with foam, and a black thong with floral laces.

  - SUPERMAN: I'm getting hot!

  Obviously, Ishmael is lying to her. But that goth idiot could not distinguish a lie even if she wanted to. Ishmael is not excited to see a piece of cloth. He has other tastes ...

  -14-

  The quality of the image leaves much to be desired. The cameras of surveillance video are old, without IP connection, without heaters to reduce the condensation and much less, technology HDCVI of 1080p of resolution.

  In other words: when playing the recording, Lazarus finds a video of inferior quality. You cannot zoom because the image is pixelated.

  - "How long do these cameras have?" -He asks Marta.

  The woman, who has just lit her second cigarette, inhales a puff.

  - "I do not know ... But more than five years, sure."

  Lazarus is content with what he has. He strains his eyes to try to distinguish something suspicious on the computer screen, but everything is in order. The leaves of the malus tree swing solemnly, and the portion of the pool captured by camera number three shows a still water, serene as a mirror. The only visible fragment of the garden fence is at the top of the image. It looks little, but it is enough to check that everything is clear. If it were not for the feeble movement of the leaves of the tree, that would seem like a fixed image rather than a video.