“And what about the priest? Why didn’t she go after him?”
“I believe she would have. If she’d been able to locate him.”
“Crazy. How did she get to Brasilia? And Rio?”
“Drove, probably. She owns a car, could have gone back and forth in a night. It would have been tiring, but it’s doable. Ribeirao Preto and Campinas are, of course, much closer.”
“And now she’s clammed up completely, has she?”
“Yes.”
“So it isn’t likely we’re going to get any answers for the rest of our questions.”
“No.”
“You know what bugs me?”
“What’s that, Director?”
“That pervert.”
“Pervert?”
“That pervert, Big Castor Salles. He’ll come out of this with nothing more than an add-on for rape and another add-on for killing the kid. The odds are, he’ll be out before she will.”
“The add-on for rape,” Silva said, “is guaranteed. We have the forensic evidence to make our case. But he won’t serve even a day for the murder of Julio Arriaga Junior.”
“What? Why not? What about all the witnesses?”
“Everyone who was in that cell is frightened to death of him. He’s a member of the PCC. He has friends. Zanon Parma, the public prosecutor, tried, but he couldn’t find a single person willing to stand up in open court and testify.”
“Are you telling me Salles is going to walk?”
“On the murder charge, yes, he’ll walk.”
“But… but if he hadn’t killed the boy none of this would have happened. No one would have died. After all the trouble he’s caused, a conviction for rape is nowhere near what Salles deserves.”
“No,” Silva said. “It isn’t.”
Epilogue
The following article appeared in The Estado de Sao Paulo, Brazil’s leading newspaper, on the eleventh of March, 2008, three weeks and one day after the murder of Juan Rivas.
KILLER SHOT IN ESCAPE ATTEMPT
At approximately 5:30 P.M. yesterday evening, Castor Salles, 28, was shot and killed while attempting to escape from police custody.
Salles, “Big Castor” to his cronies, was being transported to Federal Police headquarters when the incident occurred.
Already accused and incarcerated for assault, he was to be questioned about his involvement in the PCC, the country’s largest and most dangerous criminal enterprise.
But upon arrival in the underground garage, he managed to slip his handcuffs. Using them as a weapon, he succeeded in stunning Haraldo Goncalves, one of the agents accompanying him. He then made a grab for Goncalves’s pistol.
Salles was about to turn the weapon on his captors when he was shot to death by Agent Arnaldo Nunes, another federal policeman.
Hector Costa, the delegado in charge of the case, called the incident “a lamentable but clear-cut case of self-defense.”
Mario Silva, the Federal Police’s Chief Inspector for Criminal Matters, praised Nunes for his courage and quick thinking during the confrontation.
