Jutsiñamuy’s office looked like an artist’s studio. But then, he wasn’t like other prosecutors, or even like your everyday citizen. Widowed and childless at fifty-nine, he spent more time at the office than in his gloomy Niza home full of memories and nightmares. If he was going to be alone, he preferred his office. It was a mezzanine, full of files, battered books, and art-history magazines that he bought at the used bookstores downtown. As well as outdated encyclopedias, like the Ariel Juvenil and several from the Salvat publishing house: the Encyclopedia of Colombian Art and the History of Colombia. And of course an array of seemingly useless objects: a small basket of rusty keys, three plastic Kodak cameras, a damaged music box with a circus horse, ashtrays from European hotels, padlocks, buttons—where did he get it all? He liked flea markets. His office was unusually large, even if it wasn’t the most comfortable or easiest to access in the building. He had a bathroom with a shower, a triangular nook with a wicker sofa and two more armchairs, plus a work table with a computer and printer, telephone, and ancient fax machine, barely used. The table stood in front of a huge picture window with a view of Avenue of the Americas, Guadalupe Hill, and, in the distance, the clustered lights of Usme and Ciudad Bolívar, the impoverished areas to the south, a Lumpenproletariat landscape and the unfortunate source of most of the city’s cases of violence, robberies, murders, stabbings, and shootings. Petty theft and drug dealing.
Sometimes the prosecutor would stare out at those lights and, overwhelmed by reality, would imagine heartrending scenes: children begging their mothers not to do drugs and feed them instead, fathers beating those same children, men punching pregnant women, drunk men raping their wives in front of young children. It wasn’t all like that, of course. Most of those households were just struggling to get by, honest people trying to make it in back-breaking, ill-paid jobs, but his experience insisted on showing him the other side: the savage face of the ferocious, indifferent city, the scarred and wounded skin of this wretched metropolis that swallowed up its most vulnerable children alive.
When he left his office and walked to the end of the hall to get some hot water for tea from the communal urn next to the elevator, he could see the lights of northern Bogotá. The opulent, wealthy end of the city. That sight evoked other crimes, more compatible with the view, since in Bogotá crime, too, is stratified by social class. Those hills housed the corruption of congressmen and civil servants, illegal commissions obtained for prominent families, the pilfering of public funds validated through contracts, influence peddling, tax evasion, the misappropriation of resources, breach of public duties, fraud, and every possible and conceivable form of theft, but at high—astronomically high—rates. The difference was that the northern thieves stole millions of dollars, so they were arrogant, lazy, and depressed: the domestic factory for social contempt and violence. Of course in the north there were also rapes and beatings, drug addicts and psychopaths, murder and femicide, abuse of minors and exploitation and assault, Jutsiñamuy would remind himself. They’re not as desperate, but they’re the same species.
Musing on the crimes inflicted on Colombia’s citizens by day-to-day life, he decided to take a look at the news bulletin from the Office of the Prosecutor General itself. He switched on his computer and opened the page. What’s on the menu today? What have we got?
He read:
April 27, 201– / 8:47 P.M. /
Seven families received psychological, psychosocial, and legal support from the Office of the Prosecutor General, in collaboration with the Unit for Holistic Aid and Redress to Victims (UARIV), to assist them in preparing to receive the remains of their family members, who were victims of the Colombian conflict.
The interagency support team of forensic pathologists and odontologists, psychologists, social workers, and other professionals worked for three days with the thirty-five relatives of the victims, whose bodies were exhumed between 2011 and 2016 in Florencia (Caquetá) and in the departments of Tolima and Meta. The homicides were committed by participants in the country’s armed conflict.
Seventeen years after she was disappeared, Yolima Orozco Arango’s family received her remains. She vanished from a rural area outside Palo Cabildo (Tolima) while working as a physician’s assistant. On March 10, 2017, the incident was attributed to the arm of the Self-Defense Forces of the Magdalena Medio led by Omar Isaza.
Javier Castellanos was last seen in the year 2007. He was killed in combat in 2008 in Puerto Rico (Meta). His exhumation was carried out in accordance with Agreement #62, signed in Havana, Cuba.
Also exhumed under this agreement was the body of Luis Emiro Mejía Carvajal, whose family never heard from him again after Holy Week in the year 2000.
On April 8, 2000, José Abel Tafur was taken along with several family members by an unlawful armed group in Morelia (Caquetá). After three days his family was freed. His body was recovered in the rural settlement of Palmarito outside Florencia, the capital of Caquetá.
The victims also include Edison Varón Alarcón, who left his farm along with his brother and another man. Following a tip received by Justice and Peace in 2009, the criminology team exhumed the body in 2014.
At the Office of the Prosecutor General’s request, the body of Daniel Sanabria was also exhumed in 2011, but the crime against him was committed on August 16, 2000.
Additionally, Sergio Guarnizo Rodríguez, twenty-three years old, disappeared in 2003, when he was loaded into an SUV. His whereabouts thereafter were unknown. Along with his body, three other bodies were also recovered.
The judicial proceedings took place in the Hotel Lusitania in the city of Ibagué (Tolima) through the Search Unit for Disappeared Persons run by the National Office of Transitional Justice of the Prosecutor General.
The menu presented some appealing options, but when he reread the entries, he saw that they were all incidents from the past. The vast wave of war, now subsided, was still tossing bodies up onto the sand. The country was still uprooting its beautiful blanket of vegetation to exhume the thousands of lonely bones so that each one could reclaim its name and tell its story. “Colombia: a box of bones,” he said aloud.
The ring of his cell phone startled him from his musings. He patted the pockets of his pants and shirt—where the hell had he put it? With the echoing acoustics in the office, the sound seemed to come from everywhere. The pocket of his jacket, hanging from the coat rack. He jumped toward it. If there was one thing he hated, it was failing to pick up the phone. He considered it a minor defeat. He calculated one more ring just as he spotted his phone, on a bookcase across the office. He lunged for it, but missed, and his hand knocked it skidding over several large binders and onto the floor. When he finally snatched it up and hit the button to answer, it had gone silent.
“Damn it!”
He saw Laiseca’s number on the screen.
“I didn’t reach it in time,” he said. “What’s up? Did you find something?”
“Nothing, boss,” Laiseca said. “Not in Cali or Popayán, and not at any of the smaller police offices either. The problem is there aren’t killings like this anymore. These days it’s all small-ball stuff: crimes against social activists, scandals, sicarios with two-for-one deals, revenge beatings by local thugs and wannabe mobsters. Stabbings. There’s a lot of that stuff.”
“Keep looking,” Jutsiñamuy said. “Ask for the reports from the provincial police stations. Maybe bodies have been dumped in remote areas. Remember: we’re looking for gunshots from a 7.62 rifle or a .52 machine gun.”
“At your orders, boss. Over and out.”
After hanging up, Jutsiñamuy called the forensic pathologist. “All right, Piedrahíta,” he said, “what did you find inside those stiffs?”
The pathologist was speaking from the autopsy theater at the coroner’s office, where he was still working.
They’d known each other more than twenty-five years.
“Well, they are in fact from two different incidents. One’s been dead about two weeks, and the other two are from within the last five days. I may be off, but not by much. The caliber of bullet is different too. The one who’s been dead longer is the young guy, thirty-five. Four through-and-throughs. A nine-millimeter, something homemade. The other two, on the other hand, suffered much more serious injuries: one, destruction of the right lung with a lot of bleeding, the heart perforated at the mitral and tricuspid valves. The other, shattering of the skull, wounds at the clavicle and neck.”
“What caliber?”
“Point five-two. Machine gun. Pretty heavy weaponry for peace time.”
There was a silence. The pathologist spoke again. “Tell me if I need to pack a suitcase and leave the country.”
“What are you talking about, man? You didn’t leave even when things were totally fucked. It’s weird, though. I hope the old conflict isn’t surfacing again.”
“I was thinking that,” Piedrahíta said. “I’ve been getting nothing but stab wounds and small bullet holes for a while now. These ones scared me.”
“How far away were the shooters?”
“I’d guess about fifty meters.”
“From above?” Jutsiñamuy asked.
“Yes, exactly,” Piedrahíta said. “Wow, you’re learning!”
“The young woman who was at the crime scene said it.”
“Oh, I remember,” Piedrahíta said. “I met her last year during that case with the guy where they amputated everything and cut off his balls. She’s sort of Indian-looking?”
“Jesus, Piedrahíta, remember I’m the Indian here.”
“All right, sorry. Don’t be so touchy. You told me about her. The guerrilla girl.”
“Yeah, her. Ex-guerrilla.”
“Well, she knows her stuff, because seeing all that without opening the bodies up isn’t easy.”
“Anything else worth noting?” Jutsiñamuy asked.
“The young man’s stomach was empty, which is weird. And he was in cold storage for a few days. I sent off for blood and tissue analysis. If anything pops up, I’ll call you.”
“Were you able to identify him?”
“His fingerprints are worn off, but they’re working on it. The other two we got.”
“Who are they?” Jutsiñamuy asked.
“Their names are—or, rather, were—Óscar Luis Pedraza and Nadio Becerro, both from Bugalagrande, thirty-eight and thirty-two years old, respectively. We’ve even got their social security numbers. They worked for a security firm, SecuNorte, based in Cali. What’s strange is that in addition to the injuries I’ve already described, they were both finished off execution-style in the base of the skull.”
“Really?” the prosecutor said, surprised. “People say it doesn’t hurt that way.”
“Come on down and ask them if you like,” Piedrahíta said. “They look pretty relaxed here on the trays.”
“According to the word on the street.”
“Well, unfortunately I’ve never been shot in the back of the head. So I can’t confirm.”
“Do they look like drug dealers?”
“Haha, don’t make me laugh. In this country anyone who gets shot and dumped on the side of the road looks like a drug dealer. Especially if nobody reports him missing. But those who die are victims. Don’t forget that. They have their own dignity and tragedy about them.”
“You’re awfully philosophical today, Piedrahíta. Why is that?”
“You need some erudition to understand this shitshow, don’t you think?”
“All right, Prof,” Jutsiñamuy said, “I’ll let you get back to work. Send me the reports when they’re ready.”
He hung up and sat thinking a while: So yes, the caliber suggests that two of the bodies could be from the shoot-out at San Andrés de Pisimbalá. But why put bodies from different incidents together? Were they trying to disguise the other one? And who’s stupid enough to think we wouldn’t realize? Or the opposite: did they leave him there precisely so we would realize? The exciting thing about this work, he thought, was that it always took him to the far reaches of human existence: of its idiocy or its cynicism.
Feeling agitated, he tried to settle his thoughts before pursuing his theories any further. He removed his shoes, lay down on the wicker sofa, and stretched his legs up against the wall. This would send the blood to his brain, but he didn’t have to do it for long. Just seven minutes. After that he put on a CD of jungle sounds: wind in the trees, a gentle waterfall, water flowing over rocks, a bird taking flight . . .
At about ten that night, with something he couldn’t pinpoint niggling at him, he decided to call Piedrahíta again. The forensic pathologist had just arrived home.
“What’s going on? Having a hard time sleeping tonight?”
“I’m still at the office, turning this over in my head,” Jutsiñamuy said.
“As soon as we get the results of the blood and tissue analyses,” Piedrahíta said, “I’ll finish up my report and send it over to your office. Ten tomorrow, max. So relax. Have a beer or a drink and put on a movie. There are some great series on Netflix.”
Jutsiñamuy tapped his finger on his desk twice and said, “Tell me something. Was there anything else about the bodies that caught your attention?”
“Anything else? Like what?”
“Tattoos, for example.”
“They do have tattoos, a lot of them. But everybody has that stuff these days. You can see them in the photos.”
“All three men?”
“I think so.”
Jutsiñamuy took a deep breath before he spoke. “You’re going to have to forgive me, Piedrahíta, but I’m coming by to pick you up in thirty minutes. I have to see those bodies tonight.”
The pathologist cleared his throat and was silent a moment. “Well, law and justice before health. I will ask that when you come you get out of the car so my wife can see you from the window and won’t get suspicious.”
“Absolutely. I’m on my way. Still in Torres del Parque?”
“They’re never getting me out of here alive.”
Despite the late hour, the traffic was still heavy in Bogotá. The falling drizzle was only a respite between downpours. The entire country was enduring severe rains and melting like a cube of sugar. The earth had become too saturated to absorb any more water.
Arriving at Torres del Parque, he got out of the car while his driver went over to talk to the guard. Before leaving he’d stuck a bottle of wine in his briefcase to give to Piedrahíta. It was the forensic pathologist’s job to handle cases at any hour of day or night, but he believed in personal gestures. Plus he didn’t drink. He couldn’t remember who had given him that bottle or why. It had been in his office for more than six months.
The forensic pathologist didn’t smile when he saw him; he only shook Jutsiñamuy’s hand, a worried look on his face. He was wearing his pajamas under his suit. Jutsiñamuy looked up at the sixth floor and saw that the curtain was being drawn back. He raised his hand and waved.
“That’ll be enough to reassure her,” Piedrahíta said. “At this time of night, the only reason to go out is usually that somebody’s died.”
“Just think,” Jutsiñamuy said, “we’ve got three.”
“That’s what I told her.”
They drove through the Egipto neighborhood, which was populated with beggars, crack smokers, and hurrying pedestrians. They headed down 7th Street to Third Millennium Park—it was a strange name, futuristic and hopeful in a city that seemed on the brink of self-destruction. Watching the “dregs” of society preparing their doses so they would sleep easy, Piedrahíta mused, “I imagine the corpses of all of these people while they’re still alive; they still move and talk and have their memories, but they’re already dead. Humans are nothing, really, aren’t we?”
“Nothing at all,” Jutsiñamuy interrupted, bringing him back down to earth. “But don’t start getting philosophical. We’re going to see our guys.”
The three bodies were on metal trays stored in a refrigerated cabinet.
“More light, more light,” Jutsiñamuy said, bending over to study their tattoos.
He peered eagerly at the images imprinted on the bodies, studying them through a magnifying glass. What was he looking for? The two more recent bodies had a lot of symbols: suns with rays of light, gothic letters, images of Jesus on the cross, naked women with the name “Yeni.” The prosecutor scrutinized them again and again. He took photos with his cell phone.
“Can we turn them over?”
“Yes, yes, of course.”
A nurse, possibly an intern, turned the bodies over. They saw more tattoos: falcons, names, ribbons, daggers, harps, horses, tigers. The prosecutor eagerly studied them until finally pausing on one.
“There it is!” Jutsiñamuy said exultantly. “Look at this one!” He pointed to the ribs of the man named Óscar Luis Pedraza: the tattoo of an open hand, in shades of black and gray, with the words “We are healed.” Nadio Becerra had the same image on his right shoulder, and the John Doe under his left nipple.
“‘We are healed,’” Piedrahíta read. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Maybe it means the three of them are from the same team,” Jutsiñamuy concluded. “Just because they didn’t die on the same day doesn’t mean they weren’t part of the same clan, or cartel.”
“Or one of those weird churches,” Piedrahíta said. “The phrase sounds more like evangelicals than it does drug dealers.”
“I was just about to say that. You took the words out of my mouth.”
“How did you know they had those tattoos?”
“I didn’t,” the prosecutor said. “But a few days back I saw a TV show about Salvadoran gang members. Their tattoos identified which group they were with. I remembered that and thought we might get somewhere if these three had any that match.”
They took photos and looked to see whether the bodies shared any other features, but they didn’t find anything. They left the lab sometime after two. Jutsiñamuy thought of Julieta and sent her a message: “Call me when you wake up. I’ve got something good.” Then, stretching his arms, he asked his companion, “Should I take you home, or shall we get some food?”
Piedrahíta looked at his watch and said, “Food. At this hour of night, it’s definitely chow time.”
Back in Popayán, Julieta thought again about the missing boy and called Father Francisco. “Please tell me he’s showed up,” she entreated after saying hello.
“Unfortunately not. I’ve been making calls everywhere, but no dice. I even talked with the people from the internet café in Inzá where Franklin hangs out, but they said he hadn’t been in. Weird, right?”
“Really weird,” she said. “Please keep looking, and if he shows up, let me know. I hope you understand that the situation is rather serious.”
“Of course, Julieta,” Francisco said. “Just think, a kid that young gone missing. It’s unacceptable.”
Reviewing her notes, Julieta decided she should go to Cali to check out Pastor Fritz Almayer’s New Jerusalem Church. But she was worried about the kid. There were matters in Tierradentro that remained unresolved, like the man on the motorcycle and their nighttime visitor.
Now she was certain of it: the incident by the Ullucos River had been a battle that nobody wanted to leave evidence of. Between two groups powerful and well connected enough that the police had pulled their report.
She decided to stay in Popayán one more night. It was five in the afternoon and her head and bones still ached, but she felt calm. A healthy meal, some solid sleep, and she’d be set. The next day, bright and early, they’d go back to Inzá to search for the kid and make a visit to the pastor of the Christian and Missionary Alliance Church.
“Johana, find out who’s the pastor there. I’ll need his name and where he’s from, his educational background, if he’s married and to whom—anything you can find. And get us an appointment for tomorrow.”
“Sure, boss.”
Julieta pulled out her cell phone and called her elder son. As usual, he didn’t pick up, so she called his younger brother instead. Three rings and it went to voicemail. Anger began to rise in her. She didn’t have the number for her ex’s landline, so if she wanted to know how the boys were, she’d have to call him directly. She tried her sons two more times, with no success. She had no choice.
“Hi, Juli, how’s the trip going?” Joaquín answered.
The hangover, which she’d had under control, returned in a wave of nausea.
“Good, are you with the boys?”
“Yeah, babe, we’re at the Corral Gourmet on 85th, we just ordered some burgers. Which one do you want?”
“Please don’t call me babe in front of them, or anybody else. Pass me to Jerónimo.”
She heard some noises and Joaquín’s voice. She imagined him telling the boy, “Watch out, she’s in a mood.” She could kill him.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Why don’t you answer your damn cell phone, huh? I called you a hundred times.”
“It died. I left the charger at school. It wasn’t my fault, I swear. It died, literally. The battery was at zero.”
“Don’t eat French fries—that’s not food, it’s garbage, and you’ll get pimples. And go to bed early. I’ll call you again tomorrow. Bye.”
She sat in the restaurant and, in an attempt to calm down, pulled out her notebook. She wrote, “Three bodies tossed in the ditch by the side of the road between Santander de Quilichao and Popayán, kilometer 46. One with four gunshot wounds. The other two shot from above. Could they be ours? We’ll have to see what the techs at the forensic lab find.”
Suddenly she remembered Daniel Zamarripa, her editor at El Sol, the Mexican newspaper that was funding her investigation. She sent him a message: “Daniel, the story’s going really well. Three corpses have shown up by the side of a highway. There are evangelical churches involved, and pastors. I’m on top of it, and I’ve acquired information nobody else has.”
Instantly, as usual, Zamarripa responded: “Keep going, it sounds dark and interesting. Try to focus on the evangelical churches, that’s a bombshell. But be careful. Ciao.”
Johana came over and sat down next to her with a notebook.
“All right, boss,” she said. “The guy’s name is Ferdinando Cuadras; people call him Pastor Cuadras. We’ve got an appointment at ten in the morning. He’s forty-two years old, from Pereira. He did seven semesters of systems engineering at the Technological University of Bolívar. He dropped out and enrolled in the National Training Service to do a computer course. He was a novice with the Jesuits, and while he was in the National Training Service he joined the Franciscans. He was there less than two years and left to start an ice-cream shop in Pereira, called Pipo’s. It went under, according to the web page.”
“How did you get the appointment?”
“I said we wanted to talk about the Alliance gatherings and their pastoral significance. He doesn’t seem too bright. He’s only been with the church for five years. From what I saw, most of the congregants are indigenous.”
“Well, he must have good friends if he got that set up so quickly,” Julieta observed. “Do you have a photo of him?”
Johana showed her one on her phone. “Here.”
She zoomed in on the photo until the face went blurry. Then she wrote the name in her notebook. He looked familiar, but she knew that happened if you stared at somebody enough. Everybody reminds you of somebody. All right, Mr. Ferdinando Cuadras, tomorrow we’ll meet face to face. Another damn F name, for a change.
“Thanks, Johana,” she said.
Johana gathered up her things and got up. “If you don’t need anything else, I’m going to watch TV in the room.”
“OK, I’m going to stay and work a while longer.”
Julieta watched her skirt the courtyard and go upstairs, gripping the handrail. She was a good assistant.
Now that she was alone, she really wanted to order a gin and tonic, but she resisted. Away from me, Satan. Better have a really strong green tea, with two teabags, instead. She called the waiter over.
“What’ll you have, ma’am?”
“Do me a favor and bring me a strong green tea, with two teabags.”
“Unfortunately, we don’t have green tea, ma’am.”
She looked at the menu again. “Then an Earl Grey, two teabags.”
“Oh no, I’m so sorry, ma’am, we’ve just run out,” the waiter said, bowing slightly. “We’ll be getting it in tomorrow, God willing.”
Julieta stared at him. “What do you mean, ‘God willing’? Why wouldn’t he be willing?”
“Of course, ma’am. It’s just an expression. Sorry.”
“Bring me a chamomile tea. Really strong. Two teabags.”
The man bowed again and disappeared behind a door. After a short while he returned.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but unfortunately we’re out of chamomile too.”
Julieta banged her fist on the table. “Then bring me a goddamn gin and tonic!” She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry. As you can see, I’m a little anxious.”
“No worries, ma’am. Should I make it a double?”
“Yes.”
The young man swung his arms, as if reciting a poem for his teacher.
“We can offer you Bombay Sapphire, Tanqueray, Gordon’s, Beefeater, Hendrick’s, Larios, Gilbey’s, Bols . . .”
“Jesus,” Julieta said. “You have all those brands of gin and you don’t have chamomile tea? Even a nightclub wouldn’t have that selection.”
“No, ma’am, this isn’t a nightclub, but there’s one we recommend nearby, right on the plaza. It’s called El Cauca-No.”
“Thanks. Gordon’s is good.”
“Right away, ma’am.”
She hated herself, but she kept working.
First a description of the battle on the bridge based on the kid’s account and then the incident that night in the archeological park hotel. As she wrote them out, one after the other, something occurred to her. A possibility she hadn’t considered and that, at first glance, seemed unlikely: what if it had been the kid who came into their room? Maybe he wanted to tell them something. They’d spoken to him the day after the nighttime visit, when they went to the church, but Julieta recalled having noticed something odd in the way he said hello. As if the kid knew they’d be coming and was waiting for them. But if that was the case, why had he stayed silent in the darkness? There were a thousand possible answers. “Franklin: likely nighttime visitor at the hotel.” She remembered that the rental car had been broken into that same night. Was it a coincidence?
The gin and tonic produced a notable improvement in her general well-being. Draining the last of the drink, she started to feel really good. I think I cured my hangover a little too well, she thought.
She signaled to the waiter again. “Bring me another.”
“Coming right up, ma’am.”
Writing, like reading, is a socially aggressive behavior. A person writing is alone and oblivious to the things happening around her. As a result, Julieta didn’t see the group of executives from ACOPI come into the restaurant. When she noticed them, they waved and invited her to join them. But she finished her second gin and tonic and went up to the room, bored by the prospect of bantering with the group. Johana had turned on the TV to watch the news and was lying in the bed by the window, on top of the comforter. She’d taken off her pants. She had nice legs and skimpy underwear.
Julieta couldn’t resist teasing her. “Jesus, the guerrillas let you wear thongs? They can’t be very comfortable during a gun battle.”
Johana sat up with a start, embarrassed. “Oh, boss. You don’t spend the whole day fighting. Obviously.”
Julieta went into the bathroom with her pajamas and toiletry bag. She’d decided to take a long, restorative shower. Standing in the tub with the steam billowing around her, she was finally able to empty her mind.
When she came out, Johana was asleep.
Though he’d slept little and badly, at seven in the morning the prosecutor was already in his office. The events of the previous night in the autopsy room at the coroner’s office kept replaying in his mind. They unsettled him. Are the churches really tied up with this business? he wondered. If so, Julieta’s guess about the “man in black” was correct. He’d refused to believe it until now, but this was looking like evidence. He pulled out his notepad and read again: “We are healed.” And his quickly sketched rendering of the hand tattoos. He studied the photos on his cell phone, zooming in on them as close as he could. He turned on the computer and searched for references to the phrase and the image. He kept mulling on it and finally called one of his colleagues.
“Wendy, can you come to my office for a minute?”
A little while later he heard two knocks on the door. Wendy was thirty years old, athletic and somewhat sinister-looking, with black lipstick and eyeshadow. Large tattoos peeked out from under her shirtsleeves. She seemed like the perfect person to ask.
“Wendy, honey, do me a favor and look into what the hell this means.”
He showed her the photos of the tattoos and the phrase.
“It seems like it might be something religious. I’ll take a look and let you know.”
When she left, Jutsiñamuy stared after her. He didn’t know anything about Wendy’s life except what could be gleaned from her appearance: She was a goth, which could suggest a tormented person with social problems, but Wendy was one of the most well-liked workers in his unit. She never forgot a birthday, she was the first to give out gifts on Secretaries’ Day, and she was always looking out for the cafeteria workers and the woman who came around with the coffee cart. Everybody thought she was an angel. “A Colombian-born angel,” as he called her. Did she have a boyfriend, husband, steady partner? It was a mystery. Was she a lesbian? Not a clue.
He was lost in these thoughts when his cell phone rang. The screen showed Julieta.
“Good morning, my dear friend.”
“I just read your message. What’s up?” she said.
He explained what Piedrahíta had discovered. The evangelical church theory was picking up steam.
“I have an appointment with the pastor of the Alliance Church in Inzá in a little bit,” she said, “the one who organized the Pentecostal Woodstock over the weekend. I’ll look into the hand and that phrase. Send me the image.”
After they hung up, Jutsiñamuy sent her one of the photos of the tattoo, and as he pressed Send he felt a twinge of vertigo. Was he overstepping in collaborating with the journalist? There was no going back now, but he deleted the message exchange anyway, pointless though it would be in the event of a serious accusation.
With that done, he continued his research. He needed to address another issue, one that, to be honest, he’d somewhat neglected: who had blocked the information on the attack from within the police network, and why? He’d have to look into that himself. He couldn’t entrust it to anyone else until he knew more.
He decided to do an analysis, as objectively as possible, of the facts:
1. Alert issued by a police sergeant in San Andrés de Pisimbalá, who calls the police headquarters in Inzá.
2. In Inzá, a corporal on duty receives the call and sends a cable informing of and reiterating the alert. He mentions the attack, the use of war weaponry, and the involvement of two well-armed groups.
3. An agent from the prosecutor general’s office sees the cable and sends it on to his office.
4. He requests a more detailed report from the headquarters in Inzá, which in turn requests the same from the post in San Andrés.
5. The station in San Andrés replies: “That’s all we know. Over. Huge shoot-out. Danger. Attacks in the area. Determine who they were.”
6. But a few hours later everything was different.
7. The corporal in Inzá didn’t say anything more, and headquarters changed its story: an argument between drivers that devolved into them shooting into the air. The station in San Andrés, after an additional inquiry, said it had been a minor incident.
Which means, he thought, someone intervened in the middle of the chain of events, after the info was posted to the network. First obvious conclusion: someone in law enforcement saw it and sounded the alarm (organization, group, church?). Meaning they stepped in and communicated with the Inzá headquarters. Who was the police chief there? He searched online: Genaro Cotes Arosemena. Shit, he said to himself. From the coast? Let’s see. He pulled up the guy’s file. Lieutenant, born in Planeta Rica, Córdoba. Fifty-seven years old. Served in law enforcement in Catatumbo, Antioquia, and La Guajira. Head of Inzá police since 2013. Theory: someone called him and asked him to change the report. He’d have to find out who’d contacted the lieutenant that day.
He called the technical investigation unit and requested a report on calls to and from the lieutenant’s cell phone. Confidential information. Top secret. Then he went back to the three bodies in the morgue. He flipped to a new page in his notepad and wrote the three names again: John Doe, Óscar Luis Pedraza, and Nadio Becerra, from Bugalagrande, thirty-eight and thirty-two years old. He also put the name SecuNorte, the Cali-based security firm.
He called Agent Laiseca. What time was it? Nine already.
“Good morning, Laiseca. How’s the search coming along?”
“Well, boss, it’s slow going. We haven’t been able to find any more cases.”
Jutsiñamuy was silent a moment. “In the meantime, go ahead and look into the other two, the ones we’ve identified. Óscar Luis Pedraza and Nadio Becerra. Look into them at SecuNorte. They worked there. That’s in Cali.”
“All right, boss. I’ll call as soon as we learn anything.”
He hung up. He needed a boost.
He went out into the hall and walked to the urn. He’d been holding on to the information about Pastor Fritz Almayer. Once he knew more and the inquiry was headed down a solid path, he wanted to investigate it more thoroughly. Julieta’s report on the other pastor, the one from Inzá, would be interesting.
At the coffee station he ran into a colleague with his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.
“How’s it going, prosecutor? Want to take a stab at who wins tomorrow’s Tour de France stage? We’re taking bets.”
The secretary of the archive was writing down the bets on a notepad. Up to ten thousand pesos.
“Put me down for Nairo in third but keeping his leader jersey.”
“But that’s not possible. If he comes in third, he’ll lose several seconds for each rider and lose the lead. It’s really tight.”
“Write it down. I’ve got solid intel.”
“Wow, OK. If you say so . . .”
“And fix that shirt and tie, man,” he said. “We’re supposed to represent order.”
On his way back to his office, he saw his secretary coming toward him down the hall. “Sir, you have an internal call.”
He raced to his office, closed the door, and picked up.
“Boss, I’ve got something good for you.” It was Laiseca. “I’m calling on this line for security, plus I’m out of minutes. I talked to SecuNorte and we learned something unbelievable. Pedraza and Becerra haven’t reported in for a year, but the last job they did was providing security to some people who came in from Brazil and a Brazilian man named Fabinho Henriquez. I just sent you the name so you’ll have it.”
“Henríquez with an accent?” Jutsiñamuy asked.
“No, sir. It’s Portuguese. The accents are different.”
“Oh, OK,” the prosecutor said. “Go on.”
“I looked into him and found out he lives in French Guiana. He has a legal gold-mining company based in Cayenne, but I found some other articles. They’re in French and Portuguese, but as far as I can understand, he has links to mining companies in other parts of the Amazon, and of course in Colombia.”
The prosecutor listened impatiently, guessing the best was yet to come, and Laiseca said, “But here’s the juiciest bit, boss. Hope you’re sitting down. He’s the founder of several evangelical churches that are part of the Assembly of God, in Belém do Pará! Huh? What do you think of that? According to what I read, he founded them himself in rural areas and in jungle villages.”
“Hot damn. That is interesting. What kind of church is it?”
“International evangelical, sir, with a footprint in northeastern Brazil. They’re Pentecostals, boss.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It’s a long story, but it’s based on some verses from Mark that describe the power of God and the way it is transmitted to humans. They believe that God acts through the pastor’s hand, so pastors have supernatural powers.”
“Supernatural?”
“Yes. Bringing the dead back to life, curing the sick, speaking foreign languages without ever learning them, healing wounds, immunity to poisons. What do you think?”
“Amazing stuff. I should become Pentecostal.”
“I saw it on YouTube,” Laiseca continued. “There was this one pastor who used to do a show from the pulpit. He’d arrange to be bitten in front of the congregation by this super deadly kind of snake they’ve got down there, the lancehead. Its venom causes gangrene and heart attacks. I don’t know what the trick was, but the video shows the fang marks in his forearm. And nothing happens to him!”
“A fake snake?” Jutsiñamuy said, joking.
“There’s no such thing, boss. I was thinking maybe it didn’t have any venom. That happens with snakes that are—”
“All right, tell me about the guy,” Jutsiñamuy broke in.
“Well, that’s all we’ve got for now.”
Jutsiñamuy drew two lines under the information in his notepad, and in a fit of meticulousness looked at the time and jotted it down.
“Very good, Laiseca. Is Cancino with you?”
“Right next to me, sir. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No thanks, I believe you. All right, go out and get more info on the two guards, and I need you to find out who the third guy might be, the John Doe, OK?”
“At your orders, boss. Over and out.”
When he hung up, Jutsiñamuy scanned the list of foreign pastors from the Inzá gathering that Julieta had sent, to see if one of the Brazilians was Henriquez. But the name didn’t appear. This is getting good, he thought.
Julieta scoped out the building again from the side of the road. It was about three hundred meters away. A three-story structure with a steeple and a neon cross. Underneath, a lighted sign: “Christian and Missionary Alliance Church of Inzá.” They turned right and drove through what had to be the furthest-out houses on the south side of town, went along the road, and parked in front. Her cell phone said it was a quarter to ten. She liked being punctual, but this often happened: she would arrive way early, when people were still getting ready.
They were greeted by a young woman in a skirt and a white shirt with the church’s logo embroidered on the left pocket. “Pastor Cuadras will see you in just a moment. Would you like coffee?”
They thanked her and declined.
From the foyer a lateral arch led into the nave of the church. Julieta glanced inside. A massive stage or pulpit with an iron table on marble legs. Curtains to either side. Speakers concealed amid the fabric.
In the back, partially recessed into a wall made of something made to look like alabaster (or was it genuine?), a modern statue of Christ. Julieta imagined that during worship the figure, made of a strange red glass with purple streaks, must light up. Don Ferdinando’s finances clearly weren’t suffering, since unlike the plastic chairs she’d seen in other places, he had pews of cedrela or comino wood. Everything seemed very pleasant, but instead of an air of tranquility, the place set her teeth on edge. What was it? Maybe a foul whiff of air freshener that didn’t go with the wood or the fake alabaster. A lavender scent, like a locker room or a motel bathroom. The fragrance was coming from the dark expanse of the floor. It had been mopped recently. Gross, she thought.
She turned to mention it to Johana and came face to face with Pastor Ferdinando Cuadras—he was practically on top of her. She recognized the man from the photo, though Photoshop had helped him out there. Whereas on the screen he looked young and energetic, in reality he was a pudgy guy with visibly unwashed hair dyed a mahogany color with gray roots showing. All of Julieta’s revulsion for the lavender was transferred to this humble servant of Christ, who, to top it all off, almost bowled her over with the reek of his breath as he gave a beatific smile and said, “Welcome to our church.” Just what I needed, Julieta thought. It was the thing that disgusted her most in a person.
“Come into my office,” Pastor Cuadras continued. “I’m delighted to have you visit.”
Julieta tried to avoid being directly in front of him and moved off to the side, but it was no use. Sensing that she was the boss, he pursued her, speaking even louder. In accordance with (unwritten) provincial protocols, he needed to put on a show for her, the well-educated urban woman.
“Besides my religious readings,” he said, “I love reading investigative journalism. We have some great journalists here! What’s that book about the life of Saint Laura? Oh, yeah. A-ma-zing. A fantastic study. And I still listen to the radio too: the W, Blu Radio, Caracol . . . I always say that here in Colombia we’ve got the best journalists, don’t you think?”
Julieta sat down on the far side of the table and, still suffocating from the smell of his rotting teeth, managed to say, “Thank you for seeing us, Pastor.”
“Always in the Lord’s grace,” he said. “This house belongs to everyone and to the Father of the world.”
She longed for a cigarette, to shield herself with a curtain of smoke.
“All right then, how can I help you?”
Julieta glanced at Johana. “Well, my colleague and I wanted to talk to you and learn about the Alliance event you held last weekend.”
“Oh, of course. Hang on a second, honey, did we offer you anything to drink? Esther, come here!”
The same employee, this time sour-faced, appeared in the doorway.
“I did offer but they said they didn’t want anything, sir.”
“Oh, OK, well, bring me a Coca-Cola Light, would you?”
He turned back to his visitors. “That was a huge event, you know. We prepared for more than a year, and I’ll tell you something, it could be—I don’t know, it could be the largest gathering of Christian churches ever in Colombia . . . Do you know how many came? Thirty-seven! What do you say to that? And not some dinky congregation that meets in a garage, no sir, none of that. Thirty-seven of the biggest Christ-centered churches. The theme was, of course, solidarity with the rural world in post-conflict Colombia. I wanted to focus the discussion on declaring those long-suffering territories a sacred zone, one of resurrection after war, because that’s the basis of Christian thought and evangelical action: forgiveness and reconciliation. Over the weekend we gave twenty-three seminars and indigenous people came from all over to tell us their experiences.”
“But . . . are the indigenous people Christian?” Johana asked.
“Some are, some are, honey. We’re working hard on that. The important thing is to look for topics where we’re in agreement.”
“And what topics are those?” Julieta asked.
“There are plenty, really deep stuff. For example, the thing that worries every decent Colombian: the ideology of gender and the creation of a homosexual state. We can’t allow it. It’s an affront to God, and we’ve got to band together to fight it. Fortunately we’ve been able to block it. The guerrillas keep demanding it, of course, and since the government used to give them everything they asked for, well . . . But luckily that’s over now.”
“Tell me something, Pastor Cuadras,” Julieta said. “You pastors are allowed to marry, right?”
“Of course. We understand that human love is not an impediment to loving God.”
“And are you married?”
The pastor was silent. He cupped his hand over his mouth and coughed gently. “No, miss, not yet, by the grace of Jesus Christ and the apostles.”
“May I ask why?” she asked. “You’re older, experienced. You could start a family.”
“Up to this point, it’s been God’s will to have me working exclusively for his glory rather than devoting myself to one person. We pastors are devoted only to the Lord and the Bible.”
Julieta pretended to take notes, but she was only scribbling random words and doodling. She hadn’t gotten to what she was really interested in: his relationship with Pastor Fritz Almayer.
“And which Christian church do you have the closest ties with? The Christian and Missionary Alliance is huge, right?”
The pastor shifted in his chair. “Absolutely. We’re associated with congregations from lots of countries. People of faith seek us out and love us and above all support us practically all over the world.”
Julieta didn’t like for interviewees to notice her eagerness to learn something specific, but this guy was driving her crazy.
“Is that so? In what ways do you influence and improve the life of the community?”
The man raised his index finger in the air, as if he were pointing. “Well, miss, as I said, we’re working for the people on a number of issues that are our church’s main areas of focus in the world. For starters, providing relief and spiritual counsel. In these postwar times, you can’t imagine the wounds people harbor in their souls! Here in the church we listen, organize prayer chains to help victims overcome their suffering . . .”
Julieta was getting ahead of herself, but she couldn’t resist. “Have you received any government funding for your programs?”
The man hesitated. “Well, we have projects that require financing. But that’s not the important part. What really matters is what helps people find the path to Christ—that’s the key.”
“And how’s your relationship with the other churches in the country?”
“We have an assembly and there are meetings at least every three months. We’re organized because the different institutions are all engaged in the same activity: our objective and our purpose is the word of Christ. We all agree on that, and because we’re united we can express our opinion with strength on certain domestic issues. We are the voice of many people who have never been heard.”
Julieta was about to give up on the interview, but Johana, noting her irritation, decided to jump in. “Pastor, I’m from Cali, and my mother goes to a church called New Jerusalem. Is that one of your churches?”
The pastor smiled broadly. His foul breath spread through the room and Julieta almost passed out.
“They’re not part of the Alliance, but they’re close collaborators. Pastor Fritz, who leads that church, was with us this past weekend. We work in the remote village areas and are good friends. He’s a disciplined man and his expression of the message is exemplary. Tell your mom she’s in good hands. I’ve been to some of his sermons and he’s a wonderful speaker.”
“How long have you known him?” Julieta asked.
“At least five years, shortly after he opened his church. He’s from the plains region, from Caquetá I think. So he’s sensitive to the country’s problems, like us. He offers people consolation. We agree on that: you can’t talk about the word of Christ without having your feet on the ground. I always wonder: if Jesus Christ were here, what would he do about this or that?”
Julieta’s bile rose again. “Do you think that if Christ were here, he would have voted against the peace process the way you did?”
The man smiled nastily and looked at Julieta with a strange gleam, as if something had lit up in his mind. He was silent a moment, making a gesture of suspense that might have come out of a manual such as How to Speak in Public, the spine of which was visible in the bookcase behind the desk.
“If Christ were among us, honey, none of this would have happened, believe me. We would be in his glory. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to prepare my noon sermon.”
Julieta knew she’d lost an opportunity, and she hadn’t managed to find out anything about the image of the hand or the phrase “We are healed.” At any rate, she hadn’t spotted them anywhere.
“One last thing, pastor. Do you know a boy named Franklin Vanegas?”
The man was already getting up. He was startled by the question.
“Of course. I know him well. Why?”
“He disappeared two days ago.”
“Disappeared? Are you sure?” he said, reengaging in the conversation. “That boy is always off somewhere. He’s young, but he gets around like an adult. He goes all over the place.”
“Sorry, pastor,” Julieta said, “one last thing. I’m curious how you met him.”
“Oh, everybody knows Franklin,” he said. “He’s well liked. He comes to do odd jobs for a little money. Whenever he shows up I hire him for something, even if I don’t need him. He loves poking around on the internet. Franklin’s a good kid, besides that. God knows what he’s up to on there.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Just at the Alliance gathering. He was helping out with the delegations from other churches. He was assisting Pastor Fritz, actually, now that you mention it. He was with that group, if I recall correctly.”
“Group?” Julieta asked.
“Well, the pastor didn’t come alone, of course. He brought people with him.”
“Women?”
“He performs his services with two women. He’s almost always with them.”
Seeming suddenly wary, Pastor Cuadras stood up and stared at them oddly, even icily. “Did you really want to talk about the Alliance gathering, or are you after something else?”
Julieta looked him in the eye. “We’re interested in the relationship between the Catholic Church and the evangelical churches in the region. We were just in Tierradentro and San Andrés.”
“Oh, I figured. So Father Tomás sent you here. All right, now I understand the point of these questions. You can tell him I said hi.”
The goodbyes were somewhat rushed. Julieta couldn’t wait to get out of there.
When they got into the car, she turned to Johana. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Johana eyed her cautiously. “It looks more and more certain that Pastor Fritz was the one who survived the attack. This pastor’s story matches up with the kid’s. The women who got out of the Hummer and climbed into the helicopter!”
“Exactly,” Julieta said. “But there’s something I don’t understand.”
“Franklin,” said Johana.
“Yes, the kid. Or young man? I don’t even know what to call him. If he was with Pastor Fritz during the festival, he must have recognized him, so why didn’t he tell us? And another thing: how is this Cuadras asshole bound up in all of this? Did he send the motorcycle spy? Did he give the order to delete the report about the attack?”
They were full of questions, which was what Julieta most enjoyed. The twists and inconsistencies of a story made her eyes shine. She felt like she was deep into it now. It warranted a cigarette.
“We didn’t find out anything about the tattoo,” Johana noted.
“Well, one thing at a time.”
They drove back to Popayán, where they retrieved their belongings from the hotel, returned the Hyundai, and hired a taxi driver to take them to Cali.
On the road, Julieta tried to organize her thoughts again. What was she looking for now? She had a hunch that she couldn’t put into words. She considered calling her sons again, but just the thought of talking to her ex made her feel exhausted. She scanned the day’s news on her cell phone and found an article about the bodies on the side of the road.
“The police found three bullet-riddled bodies in a ditch along the road between Popayán and Cali, near the village of El Bordo. The victims’ identities remain unknown, police say, as does the motive for the crime. The three men were shot to death. The preliminary theory of the prosecutor general is that the murders are linked to local drug-trafficking mafias.”
Julieta looked for additional news on the incident in other papers, but all she found was the same brief article from the Colprensa news agency. In Calí’s El País she found a photo of the road and the bodies in plastic bags.
She called Jutsiñamuy and recounted her conversation with Pastor Cuadras. She told him she was on her way to Cali. “Did you see the news in the press?”
“Of course. El Espacio has pretty detailed photos of the corpses. In two of them you can see the tattoo I told you about.”
As Julieta listened, an idea occurred to her. “Hey, tell me something. Are the tattoos recent? I mean, could they have been done after the men were dead?”
Jutsiñamuy froze. He hadn’t considered that possibility. “I’ll call Piedrahíta right this minute.”
They hung up. Julieta closed her eyes. The heat and the winding road were making her sick.
“I’m heading your way, my dear,” Jutsiñamuy said, calling Piedrahíta from the car. “Get the highway stiffs ready for me again.”
“What for? We were just about to start processing them for release.”
“I’ll explain when I get there.”
He got to the coroner’s office as quickly as he could. He didn’t have his driver, so he left the car double parked in the parking lot and raced up the stairs two at a time. Piedrahíta was at his desk. They said hello and went down to the morgue. The prosecutor was so worked up that he didn’t want to waste time explaining what he was thinking.
The three bodies were still on the metal trays.
“The religious tattoos, Piedrahíta, that’s what I want to see.”
The assistants turned the corpses over. Once more they saw the open hand, black and gray, and the words “We are healed.” Jutsiñamuy bent down as close as he could.
“Do you have a magnifying glass?” he asked.
Piedrahíta handed it to him and Jutsiñamuy took a careful look.
“All right,” the forensic pathologist said, “tell me what you’re thinking, would you?”
“I want to see how new these tattoos are.”
The pathologist studied them and said, “To the naked eye they don’t look very old, but we can analyze the ink.”
“That’s perfect. I need to know if the tattoos were done after death or if the men had them already.”
“We’ll need proper tests for that. Leave it to me. As soon as I find anything, I’ll call you. I understand your urgency—it’s an interesting idea.”
They parted ways and Jutsiñamuy returned to his car. As he drove back to the office, he got a call from the technical investigation unit.
“We have the information on the calls you asked for. But it’s highly confidential. Shall I bring it by your office?”
“Yes, leave it with my secretary.”
“This has to be delivered to you directly, sir. You know how it is. These are delicate matters.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I arrive. I’m on 26th now.”
In the office, he weighed the various theories. If the tattoos were recent, as Julieta suggested, maybe one side was trying to send a message, a warning, to the other. Or just to pin the blame on them and bring them to law enforcement’s attention, figuring the authorities would notice the tattoos and follow that lead in the investigation. A way of getting rid of the enemy—but which side?
Best to keep the tattoo lead under wraps for now. The case was starting to draw media attention, though they were completely in the dark as to the facts. The prosecutor was happy to avoid that pressure. He called Laiseca.
“What have you got for me today?”
“Nothing yet, boss, apart from it’s boiling here in La Sultana. We still haven’t finished digesting yesterday’s sancocho stew.”
“Don’t you know it’s against the rules to eat sancocho on duty?” Jutsiñamuy scolded him. “The dish violates the Geneva Conventions.”
They laughed.
“I knew about the bandeja paisa, but not sancocho!” Laiseca quipped. “Over.”
“Seriously, now,” the prosecutor said, “go talk to the families of the two men we identified. They were informed last night. We told them that once the analyses in Bogotá were completed, the remains would be brought to Cali. All right? And tread lightly. We need to find out who the men were and why they were killed. That’s it.”
“Oh, is that all? It’s easy to ask,” Laiseca said. “The hard part is getting people to answer.”
“If you pull it off, I’ll recommend you for a promotion,” Jutsiñamuy said, “so get moving. Is Cancino with you?”
“Yes, boss, right beside me. Do you want to talk to him?”
“No need, I believe you. Look, Laiseca, one more thing. As soon as you talk to the families, call me and tell me what they’re like, OK?”
He hung up just as another call came in from the technical investigation unit. Half an hour later, they delivered a printed list of calls for Chief Genaro Cotes Arosemena and the station in Inzá. Organized in several columns were times, dates, durations, and phone numbers. The surveillance guys had written in the name for each number.
He went down the list.
Cotes had made and received thirty-two calls. Damn, Jutsiñamuy thought, this guy’s a social butterfly. He checked the names: three from the wife, one from the mother, six to police officers, a mysterious Yuliana had called him four times and gotten six calls from him, nine to police numbers. He also found two long conversations with a private cell phone, no name. The first, incoming, lasted thirty-seven minutes; the second was an hour later and a bit shorter, eleven minutes. He called the electronic surveillance people and mentioned the two calls to a private number—could they find out anything more?
“That one’s got added security shielding it,” the technician said. “We were able to identify the number, but not the name associated with it.”
“What level of security?” the prosecutor asked.
“Similar to what we use here. Should we keep trying? We may need to get authorization.”
“Leave it for now.”
Jutsiñamuy drew a line in his notebook to apply what he called the “jealous husband technique,” in which he worked to come up with a sequence of events that best fit his suspicions. The first call (received by Cotes) could have been somebody asking the police chief to drop the Tierradentro investigation and offering a bribe. That call, with all the discussion and negotiations, could have lasted thirty-seven minutes. Then, an hour and fifteen minutes later, Cotes called that number back and said, Yes, I’m in, I’ll do it.
The theory fit, but there was nothing to show it had to be true. Maybe Cotes had talked to a colleague or relative who worked in security and then called them back to confirm something. There was only one way to find out: dial the number. A bit tricky. From his office? His telephone line was hidden from cell phones.
Before he could change his mind, he lifted the handset and dialed.
One ring, two, three.
Hardly anybody answers the phone these days, especially if they don’t know the number. He figured this time wouldn’t be any different.
“Hello?”
Jutsiñamuy almost fell over at the voice. He’d been so sure nobody would answer, he hadn’t planned what to say. “I’m calling from the Office of the Prosecutor General. With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?”
There was a silence . . . the clearing of a throat.
“The Prosecutor General? What is this about, if I may ask?”
Jutsiñamuy decided to show his cards. “I’m Prosecutor Edilson Jutsiñamuy from the criminal affairs unit. Please identify yourself and don’t hang up; we are recording this call and have pinpointed the number.”
“Lieutenant Argemiro Cotes, from the Bogotá police. What can I do for you, sir? What’s going on?”
Jutsiñamuy was even more startled to hear this. He thought quickly. “Lieutenant Cotes, it’s a pleasure to speak with you. I’m sorry to take up your time, but we need to confirm some details for an investigation.”
“Happy to help, sir. Tell me what this is about—I’m getting concerned.”
He had the same last name as the Inzá police chief. A relative? Even better.
“It’s nothing serious, Lieutenant. We’re looking into some bodies that turned up by the road from Cali to Popayán, and I was given your number to follow up on some information, but I see there’s been a misunderstanding. Are you by chance related to the police chief in Inzá?”
The man laughed. “Of course. Genaro’s my cousin.”
“That explains it,” Jutsiñamuy said. “You’ll have to forgive me.”
“No problem, sir, this has happened before. If I can be of any use for the investigation, you can count on me. Do you have my cousin’s number?”
“I’ll track it down, Lieutenant, don’t worry about it. Have a good day.”
He hung up and raised an eyebrow. A cousin?
He’d have to look into it. Argemiro Cotes. Police lieutenant. Cousin of the Inzá police chief. Excellent.