The Rule of Nines (extract)
Paula Ilabaca Núñez Translated from the Spanish by Thomas Rothe.39.
You’re not allowed to sleep on call. You have to answer the phone, coordinate operations,how many police go out, how many stay at the station. Do they need experts atthe crime scene? What are the characteristics of the scene? You have to keep track of how many vehicles are in the parking lot, that nothing is missing, that everything functions as it should. You’re not allowed to raise your voice or turn up the volume on the battery-powered radio. Sometimes, depending on thesupervisor’s mood, youget certain freedoms, but there’s almost always a supervisorwho’s never in the mood. You’re not allowed to talk on the phone: they’re not ours, they belong to the government. Anything you say can be misinterpreted. That night, however,ourshift supervisor was laid back. We listened to music, commented old cases, recalled friends who had died in the line of duty, others debated an old chess game.
We were in a warehouse next to the old house now used asthe Homicide Unit headquarters. In the warehouse we slept and worked in groups to resolve the cases. We operated like a clan. If something happens to one of us, the rest are willing to die for him. That’s how we were trained: we must have a strict spirit of assembly. That’s what we call it. That’s how we are. We speak in code that only we understand, codes of nobility and honor.
It was six in the morning and the night had been calm: our superior had given us permission to sleep and we followed orders. Each of us slept sporadically. In general, we preferred to stay up all night because you can feel even more tired with just two hours of sleep, but we tried to rest. The night was calm and we’d finished all our work. When it was my turn to go to sleep, I set my alarm anddrifted off right away. A few minutes after I woke up the phone rang.
It was normal to receive these kinds of calls before signing off, I thought. The typical call that keeps you working after 8am. Detective Orellana picked up. A fire. A burned body. A mother in shock. The group of officers on call instinctively switched positions or places, one
went to make coffee, anotherturned on a computer. We dreaded piling into the patrol cars. We didn’t want to get home late to sleep. We had to leave at 8am. If they involved us in the case, we could be awake for the next six hours or more. We dreaded piling into the patrol cars
From a distance we heard Detective Orellana tell the chief what had happened and in turn the chief requested that Deputy Commissioner Cuevas be called. Cuevas should decide who to take. Cuevas was the oldest of the warehouse group: he had been an officer for eighteen years. Cuevas received the indication to take a woman. I froze when I heard this. I was the only woman on call that night. The only woman, the youngest and also the last to join the Homicide Unit. I had only been a police officer for four years and had worked in the unit for three months. We would say four years on the street, three months in the HU
Not just any detective can join the Homicide Unit. I knew that I had been accepted so young because I had studied a criminalistic specialty on top of my three years of police training. I’m a graphoscopic expert. That makes a difference. Police officers are only devoted to being police officers; those of us who study or specialize in some expertise are a minority. Detective Leiva, you’re coming with me. My colleagues weren’t surprised when Cuevas chose me. It’s good to go with a woman when there’s a mother involved, he said to everyone as he picked up the folder with his notebook where he would jot down information related to the case. I grabbed my purse and logbook and followed him to the patrol car. Everyone else went on counting the minutes for the night shift to end.
40.
We do as we’re told because we inherited this duty. We obey orders. We answer: yes, sir,or sometimes no, sir, I did’t mean that, sir. I’m not trying to pull a fast one, sir, it was just an idea, sir. No, sir, my head is not attached to my ass, sir. We pile into our policecars with blank expressions, and we obey, we always obey, because someone else will beresponsible and someone else will make decisions.
That morning, Deputy Commissioner Cuevas played this role. He sat in the passenger side and I sat in the back seat. Cuevas told the driver: we’re going to the municipality of La Florida. Then he said: drive carefully. I was sitting diagonally to him. I watchedhis profile: his hair was perfectly gelled in place The Unit secretaries always commented how young and attractive
Cuevas was. When he spoke to them, they would get nervous and blush. The car moved along and I observedhis features. His face was relaxed, this was routine work. I noticed he had dimples. It was like a child’s face and he seemed likeable, pleasant. Since I joined the HU, we had never worked together. I kept watching him as we drove and I saw when he pulled out a small rosary from his suit pocket and began rubbingeach of the beads, all the while talking on his cell phone with a policeman in charge of the crime scene where we were headed.
I was surprised by hischeerful and pleasant tone. I thought maybe they knew each other, but I remembered hearing that Cuevas was respectedamonguniformed police officers, judges, and experts alike. When he hung up, he looked back at me and smiled. He said: we’re going to a residential house, we have a burned body. A man, young. The mother’s in shock from her son’s death, but she’s cooperated diligently with Carabineros and firefighters. The boy was twenty or twenty-one years old, we still don’t know the exact age. When we get there, you’ll stay with her and I’ll organize the work we have to do at the crime scene. Alright? Of course, sir. I’ll take care of it, sir, I replied.
We arrived at the house. It was cordoned off from the street and only the police were allowed past the yellow tape. A fire truck was stationedbetween the street and an alleyway. The street was namedafter a musician: Verdi. The alley was named Puccini, and the rest of the alleys were: Haendel, Donizetti, Monteverdi a town of musicians, I thought. I looked at the place and it was a typical house, two stories, a duplex, a neighborhood house. Construction companies handed them over ready to use and they could hold up for years with just the basics, but the inhabitants always modified them to taste, demolishing and building walls, adding rooms, removing kitchens and installing new bathrooms. It always depended on each family’s economic situation. For the middle class, situations flow according to the flow of money.
Before entering the house, Cuevas motioned toward a small parkacross the street. You could barely see what was going on there, withall the commotion of the firetruck and the water hoses.When I took a better look at the place, I noticed a group of women standing around a barrel fire. We pulled out our police IDs. The women watched us cross the street, both of us wearing long dark coats, walking side by side. My coat was navy blue, I remember exactly, because I never used it again. I was wearing a thin white vest and cloth pants. The deputy commissioner was wearing a light brown suit with a somewhat garish tie and a black coat. I heard the women mutter to eachother commenting how old we might be. The policeman isn’t
over forty, they said. The girl is much younger, they added, maybe not even twenty-five. A couple of neighbors said, handsome investigator and pretty girl.Maybe they’re a couple, said one woman, taken by her first impression.Another answered, what are you talking about, she’s way taller than he is, only because she’s wearing heels, said another, until they had to stop talking because we were almost next to them. I looked out of the corner of my eye and Cuevas was smiling, while I gave them a serious glance. I don’t know why, but I thought the deputy commissioner’s charmwould give us the in. How’s it going, ladies? I’m Deputy Commissioner Cuevas and this is my colleague Detective Leiva. We’re doing a routine inspection. The women probably didn’t understand the last thing Cuevas said, but there he was with his dimples and his baby face and they shifted around to make room for us in the circle.
The women offered us tea. I looked at Deputy Commissioner Cuevas, waiting for his cue. We weren’t supposed to accept that kind of hospitality, but we had to take witness declarations, so we joined in. He agreed. I received a half-full cup with a used tea bag that one of the women quickly grabbed back. Sheswapped it for a cup of hot water filled to the brim and offered me a new bag. We started talking to them, assimilating into the group. The citizens trusted their policeforce.
41.
We had learned that a burned body is likely to be associated with an oversight: a lit candlenear a curtain, a cigarette that wasn’t entirely put out. Sometimes they even told us that it could be related to a suicide. They taught us that any death far from doctors or hospitals could involve a crime. In fact, we were convinced that all unforeseen deaths had a high chance of being a crime. My eighteen years on the street had taught me all that and more. It didn’t surprise me or seemout of the ordinary that there was a group of women commenting what had happened that night. I was actually hoping to find a group like that. Due to the nature of the event, the women were calm; some sad or with a lost gaze. Several were crying. There were no men in the group. They were only middle-aged women. They were talking when Leiva and I approached the group. They gave us tea I drank the tea. The best way to get in was by acting honestly. It was cold and that tea could save us from the morning frost.
As I sipped, I listened to the stories that emerged around the fire. The burned boy was
named Gabriel. The mother had been abandoned by the father when Gabriel was little and he lived in a nearby slum with his new wife and family. The boy was a university student. The women didn’t know what he was majoring in. Detective Leiva and I periodically exchanged glances amidst all thechit-chat. Leiva had a clever expression that I liked. It’s easy for such a young detective to get overwhelmed at a crime scene. They think I don’t notice, but you can see it in their eyes, in their anxiety, moving their hands or constantly jotting down whatever they see or hear. Leiva was confident, paid attention, and even though she didn’t write anything in her notebook, it was like she recorded everything in her mind. I motioned from a distance for her to pay attention.
Gabriel was brilliant, the neighbors repeated, agonized, and he would have usedthat intelligence to take his mother out of the slum, far away from that sad life. I noticed how Detective Leiva looked at the house and, yeah, it was different from the rest of the houses. We knew that the duplex houses in these slums acquire a life of their own. They eitherstay the same as when the construction companies deliver them or they’re modified. From the front, the boy and his mother’s house seemed to keep its original shape. Later, we would find out that it had a small difference. Before leaving, the father had built a new kitchen in a moderately spacious corridor facing the patio and Gabriel’s bedroom had been built on top of that.
The neighbors were young women, none of them over fifty. They were clearly troubled by what had happened, but willing to speak. Since I began working the streets, I had a certain knack for getting the inside scoop from these kinds of groups. My colleagues said it was because of my size. Compared to them, I’m notextremelytall or extremely short in fact, my height doesn’t exceed average. My bosses used to call me the Cuevas boy, especially with my baby face. So, I stood next to one of the women, who quickly opened up a space for me and grabbed my arm. This gesture took me by surprise, but I accepted it, smiling at her. Police in those dayswere known as men of few words, so this would gain their confidence. The neighbors were still talking, but not the woman who approached me. To encourage her I took her hand, sheheld mine and I looked at her from the side of my eye. You could tell she had been crying. She was probably more affected than the rest of the women. She’ll be my informant, I thought. So, without speaking to her, I kept holding her hand and exchanged questions with the rest of the neighbors. I watched Detective Leiva take a step outside the circle to smoke a cigarette. It was freezing cold. The sun was rising.
Suddenly, another neighbor came and they started telling the whole story all over again. I carefully listened to them, they might change their versions or provide more details Nothing Same as before. I scanned the area. I was trying to imagine the neighborhood without the cars and all the fire equipment. I tried to visualize the street without the firetruck or police cars. The neighbors kept telling the same story. I looked back at the house and tried to see it as it was. An ordinary house. The nextdoor house had an unnecessary expansion, a garden with grass and flowers, all neat and tidy extending to the sidewalk. Gabriel and his mother’s house had a smaller gardenfilled with dirt and stones. I gently removed the woman’s arm from my own and wrote down some notes. I noticed that she looked at what I was writing: duplex houses, irregular,victim’s house, unprotected fence, rickety expansion on second floor, toward the back. I closed my notebook and took the neighbor’s arm again. She squeezed it lightly. I put my hand back on hers.
42.
We had read about fires in books, we had heard about them in class, and by absorbing that information we also absorbed a void. As students, we talked at recess and the question that never came up was what to do when yousaw a burned body. We knew it was too much to ask never to see a charred, scorched body, but we also knew that a detective’s life always involved the risk of seeing everything. The cigarette I just smoked gave me a jolt and I felt better about the cold. I looked at the group and the deputy commissioner kept listening to the women, peering at the house and jottingdown notes. One neighbor said, continuing a conversation: but we don’t know why Gabrielito never talked to Gloria. They never got along, another woman said. I listened closer: Gloria was his mother’s name. Gloria always said that Gabrielito did the bare minimum around the house and helped her with money, but in the end he did whatever he wanted. Like any young man, added another woman.What do you mean, anyone? That boy had a dark side, said a lady who kept talking and making keenobservations, he was clearly depressed, always so pale and skinny. All young kids are like that now, ask the deputy commissioner, he can tell you. This sort of gossip continued, while I waited for something of sustenance Then I felt as though I couldn’t hear anything. The idea of a suicide came to mind. It seemed unlikely that anyone would want to burn themselves. Besides, suicidein those conditions and with that technique was
horrific, sinceeveryone knowsthat fire, like water, has a life of its own. Starting a fire in a house meant endangering the rest of the inhabitants. I had just overheard that Gabriel lived there alone with his mother. I shuddered at the idea of the boyburning himself.
I felt annoyed and anxious, but kept my cool. Any minute now I’d have to talk with the mother and the thought of suicide made me uncomfortable. I’d have to take her statement with a possible hypothesis already in my mind. I looked at the fire the women had litin a barrel. It seemed ironic that they had made a fire in front of a house that had just burned down. They were burning dead leaves and pieces of garbage from around the smallpark My mind kept racing over different ideas. I went back to the suicide. By burning himself, the boy could have even killed his mother or caused a larger fire thatcould have spread to the neighboring houses I felt nauseous I’d have to speakto the mother any moment now. That required having to listen to her, which I had no problem doing, but I didn’t like the idea of having to ask her questions over and over again and trying to reconstruct what had just happened. We knew how to interview people, but at the same time, each interview was like entering a human being, snooping around their hidden places.
I started to cool down again and noticed patches of frost in the park grass. Cuevas was absorbed in the conversation and his interest was starting to try my patience. I was eager to look around the house. I knew that Cuevas was looking for something by speaking and listening to the neighbors, and I couldn’t help noticing how he held that woman’s hand. It wasn’t a paternal or overbearing gesture, and not at all seductive it was a fraternal gesture. I recalled the image of him rubbing the rosary beads in the car ride over, and I assumed he was a religious man. However, I had never heard him mention anything about God and it didn’t come up in his conversation with the neighbors. We knew we couldn’t leave everything in the hands of God. We had to believe in science and evidence. I was thinking about that when a teenage girlsmiled at mefrom a distance. I smiled back. She looked like she had been up all night, at some party, dressed in black and with smeared eyeliner.
I knew right away that she would be my informant. I took a sip of tea and looked at Cuevas and, as if he could readmy mind, he nodded. The girl came over and offered me a cheese sandwich. I accepted it gratefully. The girl stood diagonal to me. I made a space so she could warm herself by the fire. While doing so, I looked at her and noticed her eyes were red and swollen. I was almost sure she had been crying. A police officer crossed the street heading
toward us in the park. The neighbors began to hush little by little. The firefighters wereputting out the last of the flames.
I thought about the evidence that we had to quickly remove from the scene, but I wanted to wait for Cuevas to give the order. He was in charge. I realized that he had taken out the little rosary again and was holding it in his free hand. The other was still latched onto the woman next to him.
43.
Witnesses are not required to make declarations. They only do if they want to. They can even opt out of swearing to tell the truth. They have the right to remain silent. That’s partly why I kept talking with the women in the park for so long. My experience told me that the best witness is the one who wants to speak, not the one we choose asideal. My intuition told me that the woman next to me wanted to tell me something. Something maybe not very nice. She hadn’t said a word in front of the rest of the women. It had been years since I had this kind of feeling, such a clear sign. I went through my detective training in the 1980s. I was always the best student in my class. I was always the best detective and the best investigator. I couldn’t outright say that a lot of that success was pure luck, listening to others, looking for signs.
I paid attention to each of the women in the parkwhile checking my phone for updates onwhat was happening at the crime scene. I knew that the fire was still burning inside the home. Is the rest of the house burning down? I asked the fire chief, stepping away from the women’s circle, so as not to disturb them. From the other side of the line,he answered no, that the fire continued its course among the solid material of the exterior and interior walls, something common in this type of fire, but very slow to put out.
I hung up and went back to the conversation. The women were remembering events from when Gabriel was a boy, the friends he had, and they went from that topic to others unrelated to what had happened that morning. Then I motioned to Leiva to go off with the teenager who had approached her The detective took her to a bench in the park. I did the same with the woman who was holding my arm, but she asked if we could talk somewhere else. I took her to the patrol car, while Leiva went into a house with the girl. I sat with the woman in the back seat. The driver had left, so I was direct with her. When I asked her the first question, she was reluctant to tell me
what she knew. She fixed her hair, looked at her hands, and kept silent for a few seconds. I stared at her, but withoutinsisting. She smiled at me, embarrassed. Look, I don’t want to get mixed up in problems or have Gloria find out I talked to you. But I think about her relationship with that poor dead boy and I feel like I have to say something. You believe in God, right? Don't tell me you don’t, I saw you with that rosary in your hand don’t bother. I didn't want to say anything in front of the other women because I didn’t want to look like a talker. I’ve been friends with Gloria for a long time, long before her husband left her and went off with that girl from the slumsback there. My husband and I always supported Gloria and tried to help her as much as we could. I live there in the alleyway, almost next to her house. When Gabrielito was a child, I gave him penicillin injections when he came down with pneumonia. I learned how to do thatin a free nursing classat the hospital.
Anyway, I don’t want to take a lot of your time, and what I’m going to tell you is short. That boy was into some weird shit. He didn’t study Literature or Engineering, he studied some nonsense major that got into his head, it had to do with traveling, nature, outdoor life. He studied something likeGeography, no, wait, that’s not what it’s called, now I remember, it was Geology. He was a very diligent boy, but strange. Always locked in his roomand he didn’t get along too well with Gloria. My poor friend, having to put up with her husband leaving her and on top of that with an introverted kid. Neither of us could understand how he ended up in that empty place with his own mother. They didn’t talk to each other, they didn’t pry into each other’s lives.
He was always studying in his room or spending time with that girlwho came around sporadically, the famous Edith. He went crazy over that girl, Gloria told me he’d tolerate all her fits, because she was dating someone else, deputy commissioner But I’m no fool and even though I never told Gloria, I saw him go in and out of Ingrid’s house, the girl my son calls a Goth, that girl from the house right there on the corner.
They can’t fool me. They were half dating. They were always seeing each other, and when I would water my front garden, in the afternoon or in the morning, I would see him cross the street. Gabrielito would go out with his backpack as if hewas going to the university, but then he’d lock himself up with that girlwhose parents work all the time. I saw them a lot. Besides, my dog Chocolate never liked Gabriel and barked at him whenever he went by the house; he never bit him, it was just to scare him. So,every time Chocolate barked I knew it could be Gabrielito walking by.
Stupid ass kid. He was mixed up in all kinds of weird shit. Gloria told me that he locked himself in his room with that girl, Edith. And that she heard banging and moaning. She never told me anything else because my friend was shy, a good woman, believe me, she never had a man since her husband left and that’s why a man never set foot in her house. With all the moaning and banging, she even told me once thatshe got scared because the girl didn’t stop sobbing in the room, a strange sob, it wasn’t like regular crying, it was as if something had really hurt her; but she told me that after that encounter, and every encounter, really, Gabrielito and the girl wouldcome downstairs, calmly, and he would drop her off at the bus stop and when he came back he would stay up late studying.
Gabrielito also liked to set things on fire, a bad habit that Gloria couldn’t discourage. In his room he would light candles, maybe the fire started there. Whenever I came back from the bakery, the one back there on Santa Raquel, I’d look up at Gabrielito’s room and it was always lit with candles. And listen to this, once I saw them, detective, I saw the silhouettes of that girl Edith and Gabrielito and, well, I don’t know how to put it, but they were, you know. Living in these slums,everyone so close to each other, it’s the worst, detective, there’s no privacy. Especially poor Gloria’s house, because her backyard connects to the one-story houses, so it’s worse, you can see everything from the street. Whether or not they peer out the window, whether or not they have the light on.
There were nights when Gabrielito’s light was turned off, because he liked to go out and he’d disappear for whole weekends. There were other nights when the light was on and you could see him in his window reading and studying. That time I saw them it was, I don’t even know how to explain it, it looked like they were a single body, but you could see two bodies and their arms were outstretched, from where I was they looked like a cross. At one point it looked like he jolted her head, he probably grabbed her by the hair. Her hair was in a short pony tail, so you couldn’t see its shadow. But I could tell he was pulling on it, because her head moved back and forth. I opened my eyes, surprised by that twist in the story. When we grilled witnesses, there were always some that gave distorted information. I imagined her walking back home and observing the boy in his room. Observing silhouettes. I took my notebook and wrote down a couple of things. Mrs. Isabel watched me in silence.
I knew that when witnesses spoke, they could go on for more than an hour. If they went on too long, they might begin to invent things, so I decided to give her somedirection. Do you know
anyone who might have threatened Gabriel? Have you ever seen his friends or people who would go over to his house? I asked her. No one came over to Gloria’s house with Gabrielito, deputy commissioner. He would go out with friends who weren’t from the neighborhood. It seemed like Gabrielito only got together with these two girls, but Gloria told me that he had some friends who called the houseevery now and then, but they weren’t friends from the university, they were poet friends. I took out my notebook again and wrote down what she was saying. Really, poet friends? Do you have any idea how old these friends were, approximately? Young, like him. Literature students, he met them at a poetry academy or something like that. Gloria complained that since he started hanging out with them he had become more distant, went out more, and was always on edge over that Edithgirl.
Mrs. Isabel, when was the last day you saw Edith here in the house? I couldn’t tell you exactly, I don’t think she’s been over in a little morethan a month. Besides Ingrid, did Gabriel have any more friends here in the neighborhood? Nobody. I already told you he was a very strange kid. If you don’t have anything else to add, you and I are set, I said, waiting for her to add something else. Do you already know what caused the fire? Mrs. Isabel asked. I heard the firefighters say that only Gabrielito’s room burned down. I answered, intrigued, since I still hadn’t set foot in the house. I sensed I was about to corroborate or lay out a theory. I looked her in the eyes and smiled affectionately. Mrs. Isabel looked me in the eyes and smiled. Instinctively,she fixed his hair and said in a lower voice, I would say maybe he wanted to hurt himself: you think he wanted to commit suicide?
We could not share a hypothesis with anyone, let alone a conclusion, before we had scientifically or empirically explored all of the case’s details. The law doesn’t allow it, and neither does our training. From a criminalistic point of view it’s unacceptable. I’m not sure I’m following, Mrs. Isabel, I said, I still haven’t even gone into the house. I looked into her eyes. I remembered my colleagues joking about my gray eyes and charm, which they saidhelped me with women. I waited for her to speak. I waited for Mrs. Isabel to give me her own version of the facts. And she did.
God forgive me, but I’m sure Gabrielito must have killed himself, I pray God forgive me. The bad life he was living with that girl, with the two girls, that is, thedistance fromhis mother, that must havedrowned him. I pulled the rosary out of my pocket and slowly touched each bead I looked at my witness in total silence, perceiving how deeply affected she was. I pattedher on
the shoulder to cheer her up. Let us pray that he soon be reunited with the Lord. Amen, Mrs. Isabel said, stepping out of the patrol car, not before giving me a sincere hug. At that moment I decided to make a change of plans and recorded it in my notebook. I looked at the park and saw Detective Leiva leaving the house which I had seen her enter a while back.