“I suggest that is precisely what you do. Lock the place up securely and await the attentions of the policia, who will not be long in coming, I promise you.”
Sandoval nodded soberly. If only old Nacho had stayed on the regular paths like anyone else. Or if he had to stray sometime, couldn’t he have waited a few measly weeks longer? Sandoval would no longer have been the jefe by then; he would have been safely, agreeably, delightfully engaged in the administration of the village council’s affairs, with no responsibility for corpses or murders or “You have a problem on your hands, Chief Sandoval,” Bustamente observed.
“You’re telling me.”
“No, I mean an additional problem. I found no bullet. I searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly. It’s not there.”
Sandoval frowned. “But why should you expect to find the bullet? It might be anywhere. Do you expect to find the bullet when you shoot a rabbit or a deer? Bullets continue on their way-”
Bustamente shook his head. The problem was, he said, that there was no exit wound. The mummified skin on the back and sides of the body was intact. Ergo, the bullet had never exited. But he had searched the thoracic cavity thoroughly and it was nowhere to be found.
“I don’t understand. How can that be?”
Bustamente twisted his skinny neck, working out the kinks. “Shall we go outside now? I want some fresh air.”
They went to a stone memorial bench in the cemetery, where they sat awkwardly side by side. Sandoval himself felt a little better there; the air was fresh and he was among family. It seemed sometimes that half the population of Teotitlan was either a Sandoval or related by marriage to a Sandoval. Bustamente offered him a cigarillo, was turned down, and lit one for himself.
“So then where is it, this bullet?” Sandoval asked. “If not inside the body, then where?”
“There is only one possible answer.” Bustamente got his cigarillo going, shook out his match, and emitted twin streams of blue smoke from his nostrils. “It could only have fallen back out through the perforation by which it entered.”
That didn’t sound right to Sandoval. “But can a bullet do that? Come out through its own wound?”
“I don’t see why not. It’s not usual, that’s so, but-”
“And you said it was a problem for me. Why is it a problem for me if you found no bullet?”
Bustamente dropped the barely smoked cigarillo onto the concrete pad that supported the bench and ground it out under his sole.
He arched his scant eyebrows. “Do you want to turn in a report to the Procuraduria de Justicia in which you tell them you were not capable of finding a bullet that probably lies within a meter of where the corpse was discovered? Would you prefer the policia ministerial to find it for you?”
“I would not,” Sandoval said softly, but with feeling.
Bustamente uttered a short laugh. “I should think not. You had better return to where he was found and locate it. And if you do not find it there, you must search every millimeter of earth on the way back. That is my considered advice. It may well have come out while the body was on the burro.”
Sandoval blew out his cheeks and exhaled. What a job this was going to be. “I’d better get started now.” They both stood up. “Is there anything else you need to tell me?”
“Nothing that would interest you,” Bustamente said curtly. “I will have my own report for the police next week. And now if you’ll excuse me-”
Flaviano Sandoval was by nature a mild, even a timid, man, given to diffidence and conciliation, as opposed to temper outbursts, but at this he bristled. “I am the police,” he said forcefully. “If you have additional information, I wish to know it.”
But Dr. Bustamente was not a man to be intimidated, least of all by Flaviano Sandoval. “I meant the real police,” he said drily, but it was beyond him to resist demonstrating his expertise. “If you must know, however, I can tell you that it is my judgment that to become desiccated to this extent, he had to have been lying out in the open for at least eight months, more likely ten.”
“And I would say no more than six months,” Sandoval said, still bristling.
Bustamente stared at him. “Chief Sandoval, I have twenty-two years of experience in these matters. I have certificates in forensic medicine, in clinical pathology, in maxillofacial pathology…”
Sandoval let him rattle on. It was Bustamente’s fault he was in this mess-well, in a way it was-and he owed the officious, self-important old man a comeuppance.
“Six months,” Sandoval repeated when Bustamente paused for breath. “No more.”
Bustamente smiled a lipless smile. “Oh yes? And perhaps you would care to tell me on what premise you base this learned conclusion?”
“On the fact that I know who this man is, and he was most certainly alive six months ago.”
That very satisfactorily took the wind out of Bustamente’s sails. “You know… you saw… well, who is it-was it?”
“He claimed his name was Manuel Garcia. A vagrant. I had him in the jail for a night in May. Then I sent him on his way. I myself put him on the bus to Oaxaca. I watched the bus leave.”
Bustamente leaned back, narrow-eyed, reassessing him. “And why did you not bother to tell me this earlier?”
“Because you didn’t bother to ask me,” Sandoval said spitefully, but a moment later he felt a stab of guilt- well, a prick of guilt-partly because he knew he was being petty, but mostly because he knew it wasn’t the truth.
Why then had he kept it to himself? Because he’d been hoping that Bustamente would conclude that there was nothing sinister about the man’s death, that it had been the result of exposure, or a simple fall, or a heart attack, or best of all that the cause had been impossible to determine. Then Sandoval would have had Garcia quietly buried in a nameless grave at the far corner of the cemetery, an anonymous, unmourned death with no follow-up required. To have supplied his name would only have complicated things, and to no useful end. That far he’d been willing to go to preserve his and the village’s tranquility. But homicide? Murder? No, duty required otherwise, and for Sandoval duty was paramount.
Besides, Pompeo was sure to find out.
“And what else do you know about him that you neglected to tell me?” Bustamente asked coldly.
“Nothing at all.”
Nothing beyond what he knew within ten seconds of setting eyes on him: Manuel Garcia was going to be trouble. ALL the rest of that day, Sandoval, Pepe, and Pompeo searched diligently, twice walking the two kilometers that the burro had carried the body, and then back; four times altogether. The chief’s back locked up with an audible click after two hours of bending and stooping, so that he was reduced to prodding at objects on the road with a stick. Young Pepe began complaining of neck and knee pains not long after that, and even the granite face of the indestructible Pompeo wore a look of suffering by the time they were done. In all, they retrieved sixty-five pesos in small coins, five shotgun pellets (collected, just in case), and a Belgian five-cent Euro coin. But of anything even vaguely resembling a . 32-caliber bullet? Not a sign, not a hint. TWO or three times a week-the number was left to his discretion-Sandoval had his dinner up at the Hacienda, a familial perk that went along with his being the brother of their award-winning cook Dorotea; a delightful arrangement as far as he was concerned. He had eaten there the previous evening, and being conscientious about presuming upon the Gallaghers’ courtesy, he would ordinarily have avoided dining there twice in a row. But after the day he’d had, he was in sore need of the restorative powers of Dorotea’s cooking. An exception was in order.
He parked his car in the lodge’s lot and made his way, somewhat more stiffly than usual, to the buffet table in the dining room. Sometimes he would eat with the guests to keep up his English skills-necessary because on summer weekends the village overflowed with American tourists-and because it pleased Mr. Gallagher to show off his relationship with the jefe de policia. But Tonio Gallagher wasn’t in residence this week and Sandoval was in no mood to sharpen his English. Instead, he carried his food to a separate nook at the back of the dining room that was kept for the various Gallaghers. He sat himself slowly and carefully down, with something between a groan and a sigh. As always, the smell of Dorotea’s thick, smooth mole sauce went a long way toward reviving his spirits.
After a while he was joined by old Josefa Gallegos, who supervised the housekeeping staff, and Annie
