Requiem for a Killer by Paulo Levy Page A

different from the one that was actually executed, as well
as documentation irregularities beginning with the approval of the
original plans. It’s really ugly, sir.”
    “And this all happened under the supervision
of our friend, engineer Raimundo Tavares!”
    “Not directly. Another engineer from his
company had been named to do the job. That’s the excuse he gave at
the hearing and as a result he ended up hanging his own employee.
The company obviously suffered since all payments were suspended
while the official investigation was going on. But after the issue
cooled off and stopped making headlines construction was authorized
to restart and payments began again. On the grapevine they say that
all he got was a slap on the wrist and then the whole thing went
away.”
    “And City Hall never noticed anything during
their inspections?”
    “It looked the other way until the hearing
began. The property wasn’t even legally deeded. For sure somebody
was being paid off by Raimundo Tavares. Apparently it was all done
very quickly so that the cash could be misappropriated without any
fuss.”
    “We now have a connection between Raimundo
Tavares and Nildo Borges. If Maria das Graças gave us his name to
cover up for someone else we’ll figure it out. One thing’s for
sure: she helped us a lot, whether she knows it or not. And that
puzzles me. Anything else?”
    “That’s it so far.”
    “Good work.”
    “Thanks, sir.”
    Solano left and Dornelas picked up the phone
and dialed three numbers.
    “Anderson, Joaquim Dornelas, how are
you?”
    “Everything’s going fine, Inspector, thank
God.”
    “Great. I have more photos for you to
download from my cell phone and burn on to a CD. Can you do that
now?”
    “I’ll be there in two minutes.”
    “Thanks.”
    And he hung up. The stack of papers on his
desk seemed to be calling to him with a voice of its own, and
Dornelas was being seduced by it like Ulysses by the mermaids in
the epic Greek poem. But he pushed the stack aside and stood up. He
began wandering haphazardly around the office to help him think
more clearly.
    He took deep breaths and the images stored
in his subconscious began coming forcefully back to him. One by one
they flashed through his mind in a sequence that made no sense; the
freshly painted and unfinished wall under the window in Maria das
Graças’ room, the drag marks and the tire ruts on the little beach,
the place where the body was found, the syringe, the round band-aid
on the dead man’s arm. The connection between these facts and the
information regarding Nildo Borges and Raimundo Tavares was still
somewhere out there, off in the distance, flimsy perhaps, but it
was clear to him that it existed.
    “Can I come in, Inspector?” asked Anderson,
standing in the doorway.
    “Please do.”
    “Is this the cell phone?”
    Dornelas nodded. Anderson picked it up from
the desk.
    “I’ll bring it back in ten minutes.”
    “Thanks.”
    He left.
    And then, hit by a sudden bolt deep down,
one of those that comes with no warning, Dornelas went back to long
ago, to the communion between his mind and his soul, but on
another, higher level. Unconsciously he remembered the Benedictine
school, the study of the liturgies, the interminable high masses.
The horror of the confessional came back to him, the priests
dressed in black, true vultures who asked him in sweet tones to lay
bare his soul. The day he married Flavia came back to him, the vows
of faithfulness, eternal love, and then inexplicably he began to
distance himself from it all, from the oppression and the
dogmas.
    In his soul it was very clear to him that it
was the power of society’s conventions, and not his personal
beliefs, that had led him down this path until now. He saw that he
was now being very practical about an issue that was so very
abstract. He surprised himself. It made him feel light, at peace.
And it liberated him in a profound and intimate way. When he was
satisfied and had