Manuel shrugged. “And what doesn’t fit about that story?”
“What I find strange . . .” The officer heaved a huge sigh. “What I find strange is the scuff marks on the shoe tips. Suppose he did smash his face against a gravestone; maybe he could have crawled to where we found him. But his trouser legs were clean. Wet, yes. After all, it rained that night. But they weren’t soiled. If someone drags himself across the ground or goes on all fours through the wet grass in that cemetery, his trousers aren’t going to be clean. How come the only marks were on his shoes? The blow to his forehead was produced by a round, blunt object that crushed the bone without breaking the skin. An oval object, smooth and even. It didn’t break the skin. I checked all the crosses and gravestones in the cemetery, one by one, and nothing out there corresponded to that kind of injury.”
Manuel listened closely. His estimate of this strange man was rising steadily.
“And there’s the issue of the key. Get this: the family tradition is for male heirs to receive a key to the church the day they’re born. It’s a silver key, cruciform, set with precious stones, a symbol of their long and faithful support of the Church. I hear the family has produced generations of prominent churchmen. The original owner of the estate was a famous abbot from around here.
“When they found the boy that morning, the church was locked. I thought that was strange too. Given his supposed physical state, how did the door get locked? We didn’t find the key on the body. We searched every inch of the path from the church door to the site where the body was found. We even searched the whole lawn with a metal detector. It wasn’t anywhere.”
“Someone locked the church and took the key,” Manuel said.
“His brothers didn’t need his key; each of them had his own, engraved with his initials. They showed them to us right away, no problem.”
“And there were only three keys.”
“Four. The old marquis was buried with his, another of their crappy traditions. I suppose Catarina’s kid will get one once he’s born, but at that time there were only the three brothers. We talked to Fran’s friend the priest, supposedly the last person to see him alive. He told us he heard Fran’s confession and afterward they had a bit of a chat. He declined to describe the conversation under the pretext of the sanctity of confession, but he did say that Fran didn’t act like someone thinking about killing himself. And the upshot of it all is that officially the youngster died of an overdose because he was distraught at his father’s death. Which once again demonstrates the deference the Mu?iz de Dávilas get whenever there’s even a hint of scandal. Those in charge accepted the version offered to them.”
“But why? What reason could someone have for moving Fran’s dead body? Were they trying to hide the way he died? So they could pretend he wasn’t a drug addict?”
Nogueira wasn’t having it. “No, that’s absurd. Everyone in the whole region knew Fran was hooked. And believe me, for a lot of us it somehow made the family seem more human.”
Manuel didn’t understand.
“Listen, in the 1980s and ’90s thousands of young folks in Galicia got into drugs. The drug dealers owned the place. Damn few families didn’t have a son or daughter mixed up in it, or even several. It was tragic, and it’s not over yet. We were stumbling over dead young junkies all the time. It was an epidemic; that shit was everywhere. A rich kid, good-looking the way Fran was, was a gold mine for some dealer. The fact that one of the marquis’s boys got into drugs generated a lot of sympathy. People could tell themselves money can’t save you from calamity; see there, the rich are just as vulnerable. Like there’s some divine justice that affects everybody the same way.”
That much Manuel could understand. “And then?”
“No matter how much they were paying for the clinic and rehab, it’s obvious the kid was up to his neck in that shit. Life beat him down, and he had a relapse. But I think his girl’s right; he wasn’t trying to kill himself. He was just trying to dull the pain. He hadn’t shot up for a while, so he misjudged the dose. He probably died inside the church. Injected himself and passed out. The curved sides of the kneelers in the pews correspond pretty closely to the shape of the injury to the head. And then, who knows, maybe some family member cleaned up the mess. Though come to think of it, whoever it was didn’t even have to get his hands dirty. It could have been an employee, maybe the caretaker, some trusted soul. Somebody finds the body and sees what has to be done.”
“But why? For what reason?”
Nogueira’s long-contained rage finally burst through. “I already told you! This goddamn family doesn’t have junkies or whoremongers or rapists; but if they do, they make sure everything looks as pretty as possible. What’s really deplorable is that they don’t even have to ask. It’s been that way for centuries, and it’s not about to change. They’re the Mu?iz de Dávilas; you owe them that respect; you have to spare them pain, embarrassment, and shame. And don’t even mention the sacrilege of finding their junkie son dead of an overdose in the middle of the church. Such things don’t happen. But a son destroyed by grief, dead on the grave of his father, that’s a fine romantic tale, so that’s how it goes. They have this weird talent; they step out squeaky clean from shit that would swallow up any of the rest of us.”
Manuel looked off into the unseen distance through a windshield blurred by heavy rain. He told himself he’d stumbled into a different world. A strange unknown world. A world where behavior, response, and relationships were judged by different standards. Here he was, an outsider surrounded by chaos and unable to react. It was a nightmare. He knew that his unexpected numbness gave him the impartiality to ponder and analyze everything Nogueira was saying. He was an unwilling participant in the developing chaos, but his cold indifference allowed him to watch from afar without going mad, without allowing himself to be swept away by destructive passion. He blessed that sense of detachment.
“Is that what happened with álvaro?”
The officer didn’t have to stop to think twice. “Yes, it was partly that, the way we said. But this time there’s a difference. Their deference to family sensibilities is covering up something more serious than a suicide disguised as an accident. This time it’s murder.”
Manuel started to say something, but Nogueira cut him off. “Let’s go.” He pointed toward the neon lights blinking above the bar entrance. “This is the place.”
The pink and blue neon lights across the front of the building had been barely visible through the steamed-up car windows, but up close they flashed and dazzled. Manuel turned to Nogueira with a questioning look.
“Right,” the man answered. “It’s a pickup joint, a real dive. I suppose you’ve never been in one, at least not one this low class.”
Stationed at the door was a tall nameless guy with greasy hair and skin as white as an albino. His cowboy boots and blue polka-dot shirt wouldn’t have looked out of place at Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. He gave them a sloppily casual two-fingered salute. His smile bared teeth that gleamed eerily white in the blue neon light. He towered over them.