Shadows Across America Page 30

  They let another minute pass with no response. Eventually they tried the door and found, to their surprise, that it wasn’t locked. They went inside, and the passenger looked at his cell phone in annoyance. After going through some emails, he murmured, “Idiot,” and got out to join his employees.

  “Don’t waste your time. He’s not here.”

  “His truck’s parked out back.”

  “Fine, then his truck’s here, but he isn’t. Let’s take that as a bad sign. We’re not going to stomp around in there messing with the evidence.”

  “Evidence of what, sir?”

  “I don’t know; that’s why we can’t mess it up. I’d rather have someone who knows what they’re doing go through it. Call the Bloodhound.”

  “He can’t have escaped. He wouldn’t be that stupid.”

  “That’s what I want to find out. Let’s get out of here and keep watch until the Bloodhound arrives.”

  “But sir, he’s in Brazil. He’d have to—”

  “Tell him to come! Now!”

  Cowed, they ran back to the car, making sure to open the door for him first.

  “Of course, Don Armando, right away.”

  8

  Colônia Liberdade

  The Volkswagen Touareg drove up to the fence, shielded from the house by rows of trees. When the dust had settled, a strikingly styled man got out. In his bespoke three-piece Harris Tweed suit with its perfectly folded pocket square, the mauve tie, and oxford shoes, he looked like some distant relation of Dorian Gray, just as handsome but slightly taller. He had mahogany hair, a milky complexion, and youthful athleticism that belied his delicate appearance. He quickly surveyed the terrain before remarking caustically to the front window, “They were here yesterday?”

  The driver, who was a little flustered, poked his head out and nodded. Careful not to sweat all over his outfit, the fresh-faced dandy got back into the car, next to his employer, to whom he didn’t say a word. He didn’t feel that he owed any explanations to the people who had hired him. It was more important to examine the terrain. He haughtily instructed them to move on.

  “What are we waiting for? We’re not going to find anything here. Armando, I congratulate you on the diligence with which you besmirched the scene with your footprints. Whoever was here before you will be very grateful. One would hardly describe it as German efficiency. But then, you’re Argentinian, I believe?”

  “My parents were German. I am Argentinian. I come from proud Aryan blood.”

  After driving on, they repeated the ritual, trying as best they could not to aggravate the tension that already existed between the two men. One of them was the head of security, the other a freelance adventurer. Before entering the cabin, the Bloodhound shared a cigarette with the others, who regarded him with a certain amount of awe. Then he went inside to perform his examination alone so no one else could contaminate the scene: he walked around the patio, circled the parked trailer twice, and bent down under the radiator. Throughout, he took great care not to muddy his pants or shoes. Armando was staring at his telephone in the car when a voice through the window made him jump. The young man enjoyed catching people out like that.

  “My dear Sicherheitschef, will you please accompany me?”

  Armando reluctantly got out and walked to the Beast’s truck.

  “His truck?” the Bloodhound asked.

  “Yes. This is the one he used to deliver the latest package: last week.”

  “And you believe he ran away?”

  “We think that it’s a possibility. I was hoping that you would tell me.”

  “He might have left without his truck.”

  “In fact, that would be the smartest way to do it.”

  “But you wouldn’t bet on it, hmmmm?”

  “He’s not the smartest man I’ve ever met.”

  “I suggest that we start talking about him in the past tense, just to get used to the idea.” He grimaced. “The door is shut, the keys are in the bowl, and everything is neatly stowed away. Nothing seems out of place. Did he use the water tank to transport the package? You can clearly see two different layers of dust, one of which is much thinner than the other. It was opened very recently, and the person who opened it had to feel for the handle. We’ll get an excellent haul of fingerprints off it.”

  “Whose fingerprints?”

  “Whoever was with him. He wasn’t alone.”

  They walked up the steps to the kitchen, the lithe tracker pointing out different clues as they went. When they got to the living room, he dramatically pulled back a thick, old, red woolen rug to reveal a portion of the floor. There was no change in color, as one would expect if it had been covered for a significant period of time. To Armando’s annoyance, the Bloodhound lit another cigarette, but his employer didn’t object.

  “I think it’s quite clear: he was killed. He was ambushed by one or two people; maybe there was a fight or he was tortured. The wood soaked up a lot of blood, which they then had to clean and cover with the rug. They must have found it in the second bedroom. They were good. It looks as though it was always here.”

  He knelt down onto the floor, which he caressed lovingly.

  “Mightn’t this be his work?” Armando asked. “What if he brought back one of his ‘indulgences’?”

  “This is nothing like the rape of a young woman. I’m afraid that you’re down one driver. Blood, blows with a heavy object, cuts. Bleeding. He might have been attacked with a knife and hammer, but if so, it would be odd for it all to be concentrated in one corner. If he’d died quickly, with the cleanup coming soon after, the blood wouldn’t have soaked in so much. That takes time. They might also have left the body to search the area. Once they’d finished, they might have come back to get rid of the body and clean up the crime scene. If you give me a few hours and bring me a few tools, I can tell you what happened more precisely.”

  “I don’t care how it happened. How sure are you that he was killed?”

  “Very. Either it was him or the other guy, but I’m betting on him. About . . . here, someone was hit hard by a hammer, and they bled—a lot.” The Bloodhound pointed to the dents in the wood. “And . . .” He started to sniff around; he’d detected a scent. His sudden reaction did justice to his nickname. He smiled at his own perspicacity. “A nail, or a piece of it at least.”

  He immediately started to search for dents in the floorboards, which were scattered around at regular intervals, some of them triangular, some flat and square. His bottom eyelids drew up involuntarily. “You don’t fight sitting down.”

  He got up and walked around the table, which was large and flanked by six chairs. He counted them and then inspected each one closely, paying special attention to the feet. Then he homed in on one of them, stroking the sides. “He may have been tied to this chair, although I couldn’t say for sure. After that he didn’t fight and was sitting down. Do you trust him to be discreet?”

  Armando answered this with a derisive snort.

  “Then take care. He was sitting down, and something was done to him. I don’t know what, but they were rough. The blood flowed in longitudinal lines. Outside, you can see where a heavy object has been rested. I imagine he was wrapped up in plastic or something waterproof that then leaked, like an ink stain on paper. This wasn’t random or improvised. I’d say that they lay in wait for him and were very careful. One or two men, no more than that. Not much space, not much movement, few clues. If it was two people, one kept watch while the other went to work on him. That’s how I would have done it. You should be looking for a pair.”

  Now that this conclusion had been reached, Armando shared some information he’d been holding back. “We found some emails he exchanged with the group that abducted a Central American girl. They just came out and asked for his information so they could track him down, and he sent it to them like the idiot he was. When we tried to contact them to find out what they were up to, we found out that they’d been dead for weeks. Someone got rid of them and as
sumed their identity.”

  “And now you have a parked truck, an empty hovel, and a disappeared man. I bet we’ll find him buried out back or in the stream. There are plenty of excellent places to hide a body. Whoever did this seems to have been quite competent. They didn’t leave any obvious prints or make any big mistakes. But they must have been in a hurry. There are plenty of clues in the gaps and corners, plus the visible marks on the floor where they put the rug down.”

  “Do you think we’ll be able to track them down?”

  “I think that while we’re wasting our time here looking for that bastard’s remains, your enemies are in Sao Paulo looking for the colony. If they haven’t found it already, that is. You need to warn them. What will you do? Move the girls?”

  “That, of course, is none of your concern.”

  The office building was in the financial district, the capital’s newest neighborhood. Ironically, it wasn’t far from Calvo’s office. Visitors were welcomed by a rotating door, and the spacious lobby left ample room for patrons of the two buffet restaurants at the back, most of whom were employees of the offices above. Ethan leaned on the bar from a spot that gave him an excellent view of the ground floor. He sized up his options, which were many; he hadn’t seen any security apart from the two guards watching the entrance with shotguns. It would be easy to slip up the stairs or get into the elevators along with the crowd. Emboldened, he decided to try visiting the floor where the office was located. But when he looked at the board with the directory of businesses, Smit & Betancourt wasn’t there. Surprised, he went to the information desk to ask the receptionist. As soon as she heard his accent, the girl started getting flirtatious, but still, she had no idea what he was talking about. She was new and hadn’t heard the name since she’d started working there. Keen to make a good impression, she asked him to wait for a moment and went off to consult her supervisor, who she said had been there for years. Two minutes later a pompous man was quickly explaining that the business he was asking about had only used their facilities for three months, even though they’d paid a deposit for six. They’d never really moved in to the office and only used it for occasional meetings. When Ethan asked when they’d left, he found that it was on the very day he’d arrived in the country, ten days after the kidnapping. Ethan left the building with a sense of frustration and the receptionist’s telephone number.

  Brazil was a continent unto itself. It was an oft-repeated cliché, but you couldn’t really understand it until you’d been there. The general image of Brazil was the postcard one of endless beaches flanked by skyscrapers with idyllic, jungle-covered mountains looming in the background. For many, Brazil was still Rio de Janeiro, samba, and the Amazon. But Suarez, who’d been there before, marveled at how the landscape changed as he drove through the south in his rented car. He was dressed in his best tourist outfit, brandishing a guidebook as his alibi. He drove for hours through featureless grassy plains and undulating hills that reminded him of the Pacific coast. He was looking for a town with a population of fewer than thirty thousand inhabitants known, like most of the state, for its tranquility and, more distinctly, for the German heritage of many of the locals, most of whom had emigrated at the beginning of the Cold War. He couldn’t help but be surprised by the gradual disappearance of black and darker-skinned people the closer he got. The south of Brazil held many surprises for the uninitiated, the biggest of which awaited him on his arrival. He had lunch in the local capital surrounded by signs in German. After lunch he passed several run-down farms before his long journey came to an end, heralded by a flashing sign telling him to reduce his speed before he got into the town. To his left was a Protestant church. The smooth asphalt road gave way to rural ruts. When he got to the town center, however, the infrastructure suddenly improved to what he considered “first world” quality: unblemished traffic circles, cobbled streets, and notably better housing with tiled roofs instead of the more typical metal sheeting. But the transformation stretched to more than the materials used. The design and decor also took on characteristics that he, who’d never been across the Atlantic, associated with Bavaria. The neat, orderly town exhaled peace and quiet from every stone. The signs for restaurants, some of which were illustrated with rosy-cheeked Tyroleans, invited their customers to enjoy traditional Alpine fare. His amazement increased when he got to the hotel, which was built like a Swiss guesthouse: three whitewashed stories with balconies, artisanal red beams, and similarly styled wood fittings. The exceptionally polite receptionist, who loved his town, informed Suarez that 90 percent of the population was of German origin. It had been founded by Prussian colonists in the nineteenth century, and German was still the official language. The population in this part of Brazil was bilingual, speaking both German and Portuguese, while you were as likely to come across a black person as you were in Austria. At the end of his exceedingly friendly introduction, the receptionist suggested seeing the natural wonders of the surrounding area and even an amusement park. Suarez, who knew his history, was intrigued, excited, and concerned by these revelations. He had been warmly welcomed into one of the safest and most peaceful parts of Latin America, but the area also hid a terrible secret.

  The house belonging to Marlon Figueroa, the link between the deputy chief and the ghost firm, was in a middle-class neighborhood with public streets supervised by guard posts on every corner and signs that declared that the neighborhood was organized against crime. But it wasn’t as luxurious as one might imagine for someone who moved in those circles. Or perhaps Figueroa was just a small fish who helped keep the shoal moving, feeding on the scraps left by sharks like the deputy chief. Ethan studied the cozy little house protected by a fence that was mostly for show and decided to stake it out to see who else lived there. By the second day, he realized that something was wrong: nobody had come in or out. The house appeared to be empty. Given the circumstances, he decided that he’d risk breaking in at night so as not to attract the attention of the guards sitting in their little wooden boxes. In the dark, it was easy enough for him to walk over and unlock the gate. Once in the garden he listened hard but couldn’t hear a sound. The house was completely dark. He checked the guard post on the corner, which showed just as few signs of life, and applied himself to the lock. It was easy enough to force. He opened the door carefully, lifting it a little so that it wouldn’t make a sound scraping against the floor. When Ethan went inside, he was met with a terrible, nauseating smell. Gagging, he closed the door and pulled his shirt over his nose to block out the stink. Before going on, he went into the kitchen to find a cloth, wet it, and wrapped that over his nose. The stench grew more powerful the farther on he went, until he got to the door at the end of the hall, which was half-open. He pushed it. Just as he’d suspected, he found a rotting body on the bed. Dead for an indeterminate number of days, it was stretched out as though it didn’t have a care in the world. Its teeth glowed in the weak light from the streetlamp. The morbid grin seemed as though it was mocking Ethan, smug in the knowledge that its secrets would never be revealed. Ethan explored the room, the grin following him around with its obnoxious grimace. He thought, I know; you don’t have to rub my nose in it. He went into the bathroom in search of deodorant but couldn’t find any. He covered a towel in scented soap and wrapped that around his face in the hopes of making the rest of the search bearable.

  After checking in and getting settled, Suarez set about trying to make friends with the locals. He toured the family-oriented oasis, keeping an eye out for anything that might lead him to what he was looking for, but he met only dead ends.

  It wasn’t until the end of the second day that one of his exploratory drives took him to a community set slightly apart from the town. He entered a small forest on a well-kept dirt road whose entrance was signaled by an anachronistic garden. On the other side of the woods was a concrete wall with fake columns that flanked the road for half a mile, ending in a large set of double doors and a neoclassical roof with a sign in German and Portuguese. Suar
ez slowed down to study it, but all he saw was an intercom and several security cameras monitoring the entrance. Not wanting to give himself away, he didn’t stop, though he memorized the name so he could write it down as soon as he got away from the estate, which went on for another half mile. This concerned him. A fortified compound in one of the safest states in the country. It had a cool, impersonal feel, not dissimilar to that of a prison. He wondered how many people lived there and why it didn’t appear on any maps or traffic signs. It seemed to have been forgotten entirely. There must have been a reason for all this secrecy. He stopped at the first grocery store he came to and decided to try sharing his discovery with the shopkeeper in the hopes of getting some answers.

  “What’s that strange castle down the road? Do you know it?”

  “Castle? Haha, you won’t find many castles around here, I don’t think.”

  “Yes, down a path, just over a mile. It has a very long wall. The signs say that it’s called Colônia Liberdade. Why would anyone want to spend their time locked up in a place like that when it’s so lovely here?”

  The storekeeper’s expression changed, and she stopped laughing. “Oh yes, the residence. Well, you know, people. They live there and don’t bother anyone. Everyone’s home is their castle; they can do what they want. Is that all?”

  “Oh, this, too, please. Thank you.”

  Suarez headed back to the hotel, deciding not to say anything to the concierge or any of the other people he’d met. Instead, after a brief rest he got back into the car and returned to the capital, where he’d had lunch on the day he arrived. Colônia Liberdade. He didn’t need to write it down; he knew that he’d remember it.

  Just before dawn, Ethan finished his search and left the tomb before the sunlight exposed him. The guard was asleep. He crossed a small park to where he’d parked the car and drove back to the apartment, looking forward to a shower and some rest before deciding his next steps. The people who had organized the kidnapping had been careful to cover their tracks, and all the leads he’d found had apparently been unceremoniously cut off. The only thing left to investigate was the origins of the ghost law firm, for which he’d need some help. But he wasn’t very optimistic; Figueroa had probably eliminated any records that might lead Ethan to his bosses before they’d tied up that last loose end and left him rotting away in bed.