mean what did I find? Come on, the guilty party of course, I always find the culprit and don’t you forget it; listen, my boys located the shell case and the slugand you aren’t going to believe me, Canizales was killed with a 9-mm Smith & Wesson and the bullet was made of silver. What do you make of that? The jerk was probably a vampire. Where did they find it? Among the sheets, it’s a little squashed, there’s a small dent in the wall where it hit before falling onto the bed. So they killed him standing up. That’s most likely, then they laid him down so you could take his picture. And what’s up with the shoes? One is expensive, the other is Chinese masquerading as Italian, you can get them in the Izábal Market, both of them were down at the heel. And the prints? We’re working on it, you know we didn’t get to do a complete check, however, everything seems to point to a case of Jack the Ripper. Just what I feared, have you had a chance to look at his cell phone, I need the calls from the last week at least. Lefty, are you an idiot or what? You think we’re machines? Got the message, I’ll look for you later, he hung up, he knew that any case that did not move quickly would get dropped, and he was liking this one.
Forgive me, the technical guy can’t live without me; from Paola’s bag he pulled out a cell phone on a little chain, we’ll check her calls and give it back to you, okay? Keep it, I don’t think any of us would want to use it. Which is Paola’s car? The gray Ford, do you want to see it? I do. He put the white plastic bag in the Jetta. The car was open, the kid with the bike looked on from the doorway of his house. Beatriz smiled at him. Tank almost empty, dirty paper napkins and Kleenex, flyers, a book of stories by Eduardo Antonio Parra, three pairs of shoes, an umbrella, a Post-it with the URLs for Cristina Rivera Garza’s and Rafa Saavedra’s blogs. The floor on the passenger side had a bit of fresh mud. That could be the footprint of the last person who saw her alive, it was still drizzling, when did it start? He remembered seeing a cloudy sky when he left Dr. Parra’s office. In the glove compartment nothing of interest. Is all this necessary? Beatrizasked. No, it’s routine, he noted something on the Palm, she had a connection with Canizales, now the two of them are dead, and we have to take that into account; did Paola see the play you are in? I’m not sure, she never mentioned it, but I think I saw her there on opening night.
They went back to the house. Dante had not even heard the gunshot, and the mother could not stop weeping because for a whole month she had refused to speak a word to her now-dead daughter. I could never make my darling girl understand how much I loved her. You’re a heavy sleeper, the detective said to Dante, who was still working the Rubik’s cube. I got home late. What time? About 4:30. Was it raining? Drizzling. Did you see a light on in her room? I didn’t notice, but her car was in the street and usually she puts it in the garage; the windshield was wet, which indicates that the probability she had turned on the wipers is low. That’s reasonable. More than reasonable, it’s probable, and it’s also probable that she had gone out and was going to go out again. Mendieta nodded approvingly, the young man kept on at the cube. What do you study? Mathematics.
When he was getting into the Jetta, the kid with the bike came over: Take me prisoner, copper, because I’m going to kill the culprit. It was suicide. But it was because of a jerk who screwed her around, I swear that asshole won’t see daylight tomorrow. What asshole? That dickhead of a lawyer. Ah, kid, they beat you to it, he met the dawn with a bullet hole in his head. No kidding. Don’t ask, and who the hell are you? No big deal, I’m head of the club in love with the queen and I’m the son of my mother. Well, things moved on, dude, they left you fanning the breeze.
He called Zelda Toledo: