3.

WHY THE TIMELINE WAS MURKY FOR JOHN WAS THAT THERE WAS stagnation once she was brought into custody. Things did stop and people did communicate with each other over what should be done. Mexico City was consulted, and so too was the Supreme Court.

Why? Because as much as they thought she was a big fish—bigger than a flounder—the idea of the autopsy saying arsenic was immediately thought to be ridiculous. They identified other causes, and did not know if she could be held.

“That’s the most asinine thing I have ever heard,” Tallagonga said. “He has to come up with something else or we will not hold her.” She was so furious she threw the autopsy report across the dark-oak desk, and ground her teeth and then, held one tooth with her thumb and forefinger that the grinding had made sore.

Yet saying “We have to come up with something else” did mean she would be held.

And that was when Erappo Pole came into the room, and said in a heartbreaking voice that he was certain the littler boy, and this is what he said: “El niño mas pequeño se ha ido.”

The littlest boy is gone—or the littler boy is gone.

And his chest heaved sorrowfully.

So the idea of arsenic no longer obsessed them. The idea of the children’s deaths did—and it did not matter how they had died or went missing—she, Mary Cyr, was involved with both.

For Tallagonga, who had like Judge Gabel often talked herself into and out of judicial procedures against certain people, this was the result of four years of flawed legal actions against DeRolfo and others. They just simply did not see it as being such.

Others, however, in other places, did.

So the idea that they as law officials did not know this method involving arsenic was suspect was foolish. But they had to keep going with it, as long as they had it.

What it did do, however, is allow people in certain places in Mexico City to begin to speculate about the guilt of Mary Cyr or the innocence of someone like Carlos DeRolfo.

“He has turned into the crookedist bastard in the world,” one of his former friends said. “A real cocksucker. And he is scared shitless of everyone, especially Hulk Hernández.”

So to say that none of this was known was untrue. In fact all the untruth associated with the case was in a way known. Yet things were allowed to continue. Erappo Pole. who was paid some four hundred dollars a month extra for saying what Carlos DeRolfo asked him to say, did not think that he himself had done anything wrong in this case. The case was up to other people. He might know Mary Cyr was innocent, but it was not up to him to decide. Still, even Erappo Pole knew that to charge Mary Cyr was taking a big chance. And it might over time be a disaster for him. That is, once you are doing things that morally make you slide, you do slide, and the slide reaches speeds that make it hard to find traction. So you give up trying to find traction. You may have started out as a youngster thinking traction was possible. But after a while it is no longer feasible. Traction only limits the possibilities. Once this is realized the free fall is guaranteed. And this is what happened to Erappo Pole in the past twenty years. And it had all started with a wink from a man, at a fiesta, which said:

I know you, you are a good guyyou’ll look the other way.

And Erappo Pole had. And from that moment on, he was relied upon not only to look the other way but to make sure no one else looked either. So then, that is why things were at a stalemate initially. What Xavier had hoped and prayed for two weeks ago was that a penalty would be paid out from Canada through his office in Cancún to Amigo, and once the penalty was paid to Amigo casualties, the court would allow Ms. Cyr to receive a suspended sentence.

This is what Xavier had worked on tirelessly, but it carried within its marrow a fatal flaw.