Who Killed Palomino Molero? Read Online Free PDF Page A

colonel’s small gray eyes blinked once, and a menacing little smile appeared on his face. “Let’s hear it then.”
    “Lituma here has done some investigating in Piura, Colonel.”
    Lituma sensed that the base commander was blushing. He felt a growing discomfort and decided he would never be able to give a convincing report to someone this hostile. Almost choking, he began to speak. In Piura he’d learned that Palomino Molero was exempt from military service but had enlisted because, as he’d told his mother, it was a matter of life and death that he get out of town. Lituma paused. Was the colonel listening? The colonel was staring at a photograph of his daughter in a setting of dunes and carob trees, his face a mixture of disgust and love.
    Finally, the colonel turned toward him: “What does this ‘life and death’ business mean?”
    “We thought he might have explained himself here, when he joined up,” interjected the lieutenant. “That he might have said why he had to get out of Piura so quickly.”
    Was the lieutenant playing dumb? Or was he as nervous as Lituma because of the colonel’s nice manners?
    The base commander looked the lieutenant up and down, as if he doubted he was an officer. A stare like that should have made the lieutenant blush, but he expressed no emotion. He waited, impassively, for the colonel to say something.
    “Don’t you think that if we knew anything like that we would have included it in the memorandum?” The colonel spoke as if the lieutenant and Lituma were children or imbeciles. “Didn’t you think that if we here on the base had known that Palomino Molero felt threatened or persecuted by someone we would instantly have informed the police or the court?”
    He had to stop speaking because a nearby plane began to rev its engines. The noise finally grew so loud that Lituma thought his eardrums were going to burst. But he didn’t dare clap his hands over his ears.
    “Lituma found out something else, Colonel,” said the lieutenant as the noise died down. He was not perturbed—as if he hadn’t even heard the colonel’s questions.
    Mindreau turned to Lituma. “You did? What was it?”
    Lituma cleared his throat to answer, but the colonel’s sardonic expression silenced him. Then he blurted out: “Palomino Molero was deeply in love and it seems . . .”
    “Why are you stuttering?” asked the colonel. “Not feeling well?”
    “It seems it was not a proper love. That may be the reason he ran away from Piura. That is . . .”
    The colonel’s face had become so sour that Lituma felt stupid and he choked up. Until he walked into the commander’s office, the conclusions he’d drawn the previous evening had seemed convincing to him, and the lieutenant had said, in effect, that they were valid. But now, faced with such sarcasm and skepticism, he felt unsure, even ashamed of them.
    “In other words, Colonel, it may be that a jealous husband caught Palomino Molero fooling around with his wife and threatened to kill him.” Lieutenant Silva came to the rescue. “And that may be why he enlisted.”
    The colonel looked at them silently, deep in thought. How would he insult them this time?
    “Who is this jealous husband?”
    “That’s what we’d like to know,” replied Lieutenant Silva. “If we knew that, we’d know a lot of other things.”
    “And do you imagine I keep up with all the affairs of the hundreds of airmen and noncommissioned officers on this base?” Colonel Mindreau returned to his sardonic schoolteacher’s style.
    “Certainly not, Colonel,” the lieutenant excused himself. “But it occurred to us that someone on the base may know something. A messmate, one of Molero’s instructors, someone.”
    “No one knows anything about Palomino Molero’s private life,” the colonel interrupted again. “I myself looked into that. He was an introvert who didn’t tell anyone his problems. Isn’t that what it says in the memo?”
    It seemed to Lituma that