Red April (27 page)

“Are there … witnesses … statements from neighbors?”

“Witnesses? You know how it is, Chacaltana. Nobody talks,
nobody makes a statement, nobody wants any problems. Even the call that reported it was anonymous. This is a fucking mess. I'm sorry about what happened yesterday. You … you were right.”

He noticed that it was enormously difficult for the captain to apologize. It caused him pain. Chacaltana could not believe what he was saying when he said:

“Don't worry, Captain. I understand. We all have too much to worry about, don't we?”

The captain thanked him for his understanding with a gesture.

“The fact that people don't talk isn't so serious. By some miracle we've managed to keep the matter out of the press. Even though we're crowded with tourists and reporters. Sometimes I ask myself if all these people aren't blind.”

Prosecutor Chacaltana was asking himself exactly the same question. But the captain gave a military pitch to his voice and said:

“I want you to tell me everything you know about this case.”

Prosecutor Chacaltana told him slowly and in detail, as if he were reciting all his reports. He did not mention the detail that all the people who knew about his investigation had been killed. He thought the captain would discover that for himself. The police official was thinking about taking charge of the investigation. He seemed very interested. Perhaps they had called him from Lima, they always knew everything, if they had retired the commander it would be precisely because they were up to date on everything. In reality, the prosecutor was not concerned about any of that. When he finished his account, the captain said:

“Go see the pathologist and prepare a report to open the case.”

For a moment, Chacaltana wanted to say that he could not become involved in this matter quickly. That what they faced had been going on for centuries and would last for many more centuries. That they were fighting against ghosts, against the dead, against the spirit of the Andes. That he had just sexually violated
the person who was probably the best woman he had ever known in his life. That according to the law he ought to marry her now. That he no longer wanted to deal with this case, that he preferred to get away with Carrión to some pretty beach on the northern coast. He opened his mouth and finally said, with all the conviction of which he was capable:

“Yes, Señor.”

On the twenty-first day of April, 2000, the priest of the Church of the Heart of Christ, Sebastián Quiroz Mendoza, was discovered dead in the environs of his basement, when neighbors requested the intervention of the police force to guarantee order and safety while the perpetrator fired his weapon in the streets adjacent to the parish house.

According to the reconstruction effected by the forensic pathologist, the aforementioned priest was first tied by the hands and feet and gagged, which is suggested by hematomas at his joints and the corners of his mouth, then subsequently subjected to the amputation of his lower left extremity while alive. Likewise serious wounds were inflicted with acid, and the trachea and larynx were perforated with a sharp cutting instrument through to the nape of his neck, until he was left in the interior of the crematory chamber located in his basement.

According to verification effected by police authorities, the perpetrator subsequently proceeded to open fire at the walls and doors of the property, after which he fled, carrying the amputated lower extremity and his instruments of mutilation in a clear demonstration of a lack of the mental faculties required for sanity. The shells discovered at the scene correspond to a regulation weapon, which suggests that the perpetrator could have been a terrorist with access to military arsenals, or had stolen a pistol, with premeditated treachery and a clear advantage over his victim, from a member of the nation's security forces.

It is important to note as well that the wounds inflicted on the
aforementioned priest Sebastián Quiroz Mendoza could not have been perpetrated by a person older than forty, due to the fact that they required considerable physical strength, or by a functionary or person who works or carries out his assigned duties in an office, for example, the need having been demonstrated for training in either police or subversive operations, which the perpetrator displayed in his actions.

Further, the signatory, who at the time of the outrage was asleep in his own residence, suggests, based on his criminological experience, that the crime would have to have been committed by vandalistic elements or groups especially dedicated to the perpetration of homicides with the intent to commit larceny or robbery.

Associate District Prosecutor Félix Chacaltana Saldívar looked again at the page he had just written, thinking about another way to cover his presence at the site. No. It was sufficient. He erased the word “police” to avoid arguments with Pacheco and considered the report concluded. He would not have to face the couple from the previous night, who were probably more terrified than he was, in a confrontation with witnesses, but he knew that sooner or later the authorities would get around to him. On the previous night he had not even been careful to avoid leaving prints in the basement. On that basis they would have sufficient cause to accuse him. The prints would have to go to the laboratory in Lima, they would take a while, perhaps enough time to find the real killer. A matter of days. God willing.

In spite of having to find a quick solution, he could not get the incident with Edith out of his head. He did not understand why he had done what he had done. He tried to remember and at the same time forget the episode that morning. He had not been looking for sex but for a kind of power, a kind of domination, the feeling that something was weaker than he was, that in the midst of this world that seemed to want to swallow him whole, he too could have strength, potency, victims.

Or perhaps he had simply wanted sex. In either case, he felt like a perfect imbecile. It would be very difficult to convince himself otherwise. Above all, it would be very difficult to convince Edith.

He decided to concentrate on his investigation in order not to
think about her, although moments he had been beside her returned like flashes to flog his memory. Her closed eyes, squeezed tight like her clenched teeth, her legs trying to resist his attack. He would return to the archives of the Office of the Prosecutor. He wanted to know if Father Quiroz had been threatened or undergone earlier attempts on his life during the years of terrorism. Perhaps that would give him a clue. This time there had been no note from Sendero, but that must have been due to lack of time. Chacaltana had interrupted the killers in the middle of their work, who knows how they had proposed to end it.

For lunch he ate a chicken sandwich at a street stand and then went to the Office of the Prosecutor. The faithful were forming lines at the Church of Santo Domingo, holding pieces of cotton in their hands to clean the wounds on the image of the Lord of the Holy Sepulcher. The prosecutor imagined all those hands, one after another, touching the wounds of Christ. Without knowing why, that made him think of his mother and of Edith.

Again he walked down the deserted corridors of the Office of the Prosecutor on a holiday, until he reached the file room. He began the search. Quiroz did not appear among the papers. Or perhaps he was there in a place beyond the images of Edith glued to the prosecutor's eyes: her body wrapped in the towel silhouetted against the first light of day. Her small feet, two soft packets. The taste of her pubis. The shining path that joined her neck to her navel, a road the prosecutor would never travel again. Perhaps she would accept an apology, he thought, as he opened boxes of abandoned cases. After all, he was not a bad sort. He had behaved well with her … at least until that morning. Perhaps she would be able to forget about it quickly. He would bring her flowers that night. Ask her to dinner. Take her dancing. She would like that. Soon, the morning's disgraceful incident would be only a bad memory, easy to erase.

Without realizing it, in a reflexive way, he was looking for Edith's name in the files. He tried to recover from his not very
professional deviation from his subject. Then, out of curiosity, he looked for it deliberately. Her parents, at least, had to be there somewhere. He wanted to know more about her. He felt like looking for her everywhere, learning how he could make a good impression on her, finding her at every moment of her life. He was afraid he would not see her again in person, that she would not want to see him. But at least there, among the accusations, the victims, the perpetrators on both sides, Edith Ayala, at least a little of her, would be present.

He spent the afternoon looking through the old papers and enduring the allergic reaction produced by the dust. Edith's parents, Ronaldo Ayala and Clara Mungía, did not appear among the abandoned accusations. He continued looking until he found them in the reports of battle casualties. The attack they had led on the police post had been a desperate maneuver. Six poorly armed terrorists against a station with ten police. They had attacked at dawn on a day in July in the mid-eighties. Apparently, they miscalculated the number of men waiting for them. The police had been warned of the attack. The assault was a massacre. One policeman died, two were wounded, and all the terrorists were annihilated. The legal reports indicated shots in the back of Ronaldo Ayala's neck. They had finished him off after the assault. His wife showed wounds in the stomach and a final shot in the chest. When she was already wounded, she had continued to advance. In the photograph she looked a little like Edith: the hair, the neck the prosecutor remembered so well, were a maternal inheritance. But Clara Mungía did not have her daughter's sweetness. The identification-size photograph, taken in a previous arrest, showed the inexpressive, resolute gaze the prosecutor had seen so often beneath the eyebrows of Senderistas.

The file included an attachment that spoke of Edith. In the mid-nineties, a repentant Senderista had accused her of being a member of the logistical apparatus of the party. She was not yet sixteen, but according to the witness she passed weaponry and
messages among the cells that survived in Ceja de Selva. She had been interrogated, but nothing of interest had been learned. She showed no lesions when she left the interrogations. After that, she had been left in peace. A report from Intelligence added that for two years she had dedicated herself to bringing medicine and food to those imprisoned for terrorism at the maximum security prison in Ayacucho, while she worked as an assistant in a butcher shop in the central market.

Butcher shop. Prison. Inevitably, he thought of Hernán Durango, Comrade Alonso, and his tale of the Indian servant's dream, and his stories. He remembered the first time he had seen him. The party has a thousand eyes and a thousand ears, he had said. The eyes of the people. Or perhaps only two eyes like two nuts in their shells, above two clenched jaws sweating with rage, two eyes vacant in their sockets. Almost in spite of himself, the prosecutor made some deductions and came to a conclusion. Perhaps he had the killer. At that moment, his blood turned to ice in his veins.

He thought it was an unfounded suspicion and returned to his office. He wanted to reject it. He wanted to remove that possibility. He telephoned Colonel Olazábal:

“Good afternoon, Colonel. How are you?”

“Well, I'm fucked, Chacaltana. Just like you, I suppose, working on a holiday.”

“I spoke about your promotion to Commander Carrión,” the prosecutor lied. “He seemed very well disposed, but he has been retired.”

“Yes. Well, news flies.”

“We will have to begin that task again with his successor. Do not be concerned, I will help you.”

“Thank you very much, Señor Prosecutor. You know that if there's anything I can do for you …”

“Well, to tell you the truth, yes, now that you mention it. I need a list of visitors to Hernán Durango González.”

“Right now?”

“If that might be possible, yes, Colonel.”

The colonel promised to call him back in five minutes. The prosecutor sat waiting by the phone. It had to be a coincidence, a miscalculation, a dead end. This whole story was filled with them. He spent an hour and a half next to the phone, caressing his pistol, until the colonel called.

“Let me see … Here it is: to begin with, the inmate's parents: Román Durango and Brígida González …”

“Ah ha …”

“A sister named Agripina …”

“Yes …”

“And just one other person. Not a relative. Maybe a girlfriend, though in that case, she was very patient, don't you think? Though you know, there are girlfriends who wait twenty years, let me tell you …”

He gave a short speech on girlfriends and inmates until he said a woman's name, and then the prosecutor moved his lips and felt a huge pain in his chest. Without saying good-bye he hung up the phone and hurried out of the building.

Outside, night had just fallen. The Lord of the Holy Sepulcher, lying in a transparent case on a bed of white roses, had taken over the streets. Blood dripped from his forehead, his side, his hands and feet. Only the candles of the town's notable and wealthy citizens who surrounded him illuminated his figure in the darkness. The faithful were dressed in black. Streetlights had been turned off. At that moment, the silence was absolute.

Chacaltana pushed his way through the solemn crowd, advancing directly to the restaurant on the square. Some people pushed him back, but no one dared to break the silence of the Sepulcher. Even among the tourists inside El Huamanguino restaurant, the atmosphere was one of reserve and silence. Edith was at her counter when he came in. She looked at him with an expression of surprise that quickly turned into fear and then hatred.
She stepped back reflexively but did not move from the counter. It was he who approached her and took her by the arm.

“What are you doing?” she protested.

“I have to talk to you.”

“Don't touch me!”

Her eyes. The hatred of those eyes he had seen in the files that afternoon.

“Ssshhhhh!”

The clients demanded silence. The owner of the restaurant approached and said, in a quiet but firm voice: