CARLOS DEROLFO INTENDED TO FIND VICTOR THE NEXT MORNING and do the post-mortem. He would trace the murder back to Ángel Gloton, and that would be it. They would have people at the gym say how much Ángel had changed, how mean he was. That would be the scenario.
But Victor wasn’t there! Where was he?
Carlos went along the grand walkway, with its beautiful high-end shops for tourists, and when he arrived at Information, there was already a crowd near one of the townhouse villas. And there was already a doctor on the scene—what bad luck that a Dutch doctor was at the resort.
“No,” DeRolfo said when he heard. “How long has she been inside? She has no business in our business—I will look at the child.”
He walked into the dark room, and felt a cold, clammy air on his skin. The child was lying across the bed in a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. DeRolfo had no idea Victor had still been alive the night before. Now he was in this room.
“¿Dios mío qué ha ocurrido?” he asked.
What in God’s name has happened?
People stepped aside when they saw him. The old porter greeted him with a gentle, approving nod of his head, and extended his hand to the boy as if showing a display
“Hay demasiada gente aquí,” he said softly. And people were ushered out.
He could not say it was natural causes because of little Florin, who might be found with knife wounds. He still had to say it was murder for anybody to treat it seriously. But he panicked and could not think of saying it was Ángel’s crime, because Ángel was standing beside him, looking as horrified as anyone there.
So again as night follows day, things happened.
He patted Ángel gently on the shoulder and asked the porter who was renting this place.
They told him that a woman named Mary Cyr lived there, and she had gone to the airport an hour before.
“So it has to be her,” Ángel said.
“Sí,” he said quickly. And this set all in motion. Little did Ángel know that if he had not been in the room, he very well might have been blamed.
“Find that woman,” DeRolfo said, tears in his eyes.
“Ella hizo algo a él. No estoy seguro de lo que.”
She did something to him. I am not sure what.
He knew he could not say she had picked him up off the ground, like he had; he felt he would have to give some other reason. But still he had missed his chance with Ángel. Yes, he still might blame him—but within seconds everyone wanted to suspect the woman. The boy, Victor, was not as strong as Ángel, but he was still a strong young boy—no, it would be hard to say she had strangled him.
As soon as he did the post-mortem—he insisted he do it—he realized it was arsenic. She poisoned him. This was ridiculous. Showing the DeRolfos for the bumbling cowards they were. In fact certain of their associates laughed uproariously. But, it seemed plausible for a certain kind of woman to do. And when he saw her, he realized it could be got away with. And so Mary Cyr became that certain kind of woman.
Now, with two little boys dead or missing and the entire town of Oathoa, the entire state, the entire country yelling for her blood, DeRolfo must play the part he had unintentionally created for himself when he decided to allow powerful people to pay him off and launder money at that coal mine.
One of the persons most outraged over Mary Cyr’s arrogance was the DeRolfos’ own daughter, Sharon. Sharon who was a photographer and had been brought up so privileged she had her pick of eight horses in their stables. She was so liberal he and his wife couldn’t do anything with her, so certain of her anti-religious self-righteousness they couldn’t talk to her more than three minutes without getting into an argument.
His wife was sure with all her daughter’s liberal views that “El mundo se va al infierno.”
The world is going to hell.
So what would she say if he and Gidgit went around confessing to things? Besides, Carlos thought of what Sharon believed about what she called unwanted pregnancy, so he said:
¿Qué dos niños importa, si muchos son asesinados a través del aborto?
What do two children matter when so many are killed through abortion?
That made him feel a bit better in this day and age. But not much.
When he told his wife, Gidgit, that he missed his chance at blaming Ángel so had called it arsenic, his face beamed at his own supercilious brilliance. However, she looked at him in delayed shock and, holding a peach in her hand, said:
“You are a complete idiot—”
His face darkened, and he started to complain that she never gave him credit for a thing.
Still they continued on.
In a week or so one of the policemen he knew, Erappo Pole, would find little Florin, and he had to set that up as well. But as yet, he did not have the tape. Maybe the boy had lost it—and if he did, all was fine. Mary Cyr would be put in jail. What was more incredible is that the police had discovered that she was the Mary Cyr. Had he heard of her?
No, not at all?
“So do you want to know who she is?”
“Sure, you tell me!”
Well then—la te da, da, da…
And so the life of Mary Cyr began to be revealed.
“What is that bitch doing down here!” Gidgit asked quietly when he told her. “That’s what I’d like to know.”
“Sí, sí,” said Carlos, shaking his head at the scandal. “Sí, sí.”