the month. The Malan family may have concluded that our daughter led Marta astray, but it wasn’t like that at all. Marta made the first approach, not Andrea. I told Marta’s father that, but he didn’t believe me. Then his father called me, and he-”
“ His father, the deputado?”
“Yes. The deputado. He accused me of… pandering for my daughter.”
“If I lived in Recife,” Arnaldo said, “the deputado wouldn’t get my vote.”
“He never got ours,” Otavio said. “Not even before that telephone call.”
“Have they known each other long?” Arnaldo asked. “Andrea and Marta?”
“More than a year.”
“So Marta must have been fourteen when they met?”
“Exactly. That’s the reason we disapproved. Otherwise, they’re well suited to each other, similar interests in every way. Marta is very mature for her age.”
“What did you do when your daughter told you she was… seeing a younger girl?”
“I talked with both of them, told them they weren’t going to share a bed in this house, told them that if they really loved each other they were going to have to wait.”
“And they wouldn’t agree?”
“Teenagers are teenagers, Agente. Do you have any children?”
“Two. Both boys, both teenagers.”
Raquel lifted her hands, palms upward. “Then you know what I’m talking about,” she said.
Arnaldo was a first-class interrogator, good at reading his subjects. He liked what he saw and heard from Raquel and Otavio de Castro. They were being honest with him, holding nothing back.
But he was. And the burden weighed on him.
Raquel noticed.
“Are you all right, Agente?”
“Just… tired,” he said. Then, before she could ask him anything else, he inquired, “When was the last time you heard from your daughter?”
“That would have been the message she left on the answering machine,” Raquel said promptly.
“Message?”
She frowned at him, surprised.
“I told the officers about it. I’m sure they wrote it down. Didn’t they put it in their report?”
“In a case like this,” Arnaldo said, “we don’t start by reading other people’s reports. We get to them eventually, but we find it works better when we begin by collecting information first-hand.”
“Maybe I’d better tell you the whole thing then,” she said. “I think that would be best.”
She took time to gather her thoughts. Below the transparent surface of the table, Arnaldo could see Otavio squeezing his wife’s hand.
“Marta’s father came home and found the two of them in bed,” Raquel said. “They were… in a compromising position. He pulled Andrea off the mattress by her ankles. Marta screamed. Andrea started gathering her clothes, but he didn’t give her time to find her shoes. He grabbed her by the wrist, dragged her to the front door and threw her out. Then he took a belt to his daughter. When he finished beating her, he locked her in her room, but Marta had a toolbox under her bed. She waited until her parents were asleep and took the door off its hinges. She came straight here and rang our doorbell. By that time it was a little before four in the morning. She and Andrea started talking about running away together. We-”
Raquel looked at her husband and bit her lip. He took up the tale.
“-discouraged it,” he said. “I’m a lawyer. I explained to Marta that she’s still under the custody of her parents. She had no right to run away, and if she did, they’d have every right to bring her back, forcibly if necessary. I told her she’d have to go home and face the music.
“They asked for time to discuss it. They went into Andrea’s room and came out about fifteen minutes later. They said they understood. Andrea was dressed by that time, and the sun was already up. She said she was going to walk Marta home. That was the last time we saw her.”
“Weren’t you suspicious?”
Otavio shook his head.
“We’re not accustomed to having our daughter lie to us. Discretion is one thing, an out-and-out lie is another. I didn’t think Andrea would ever do that.”
“You mentioned a message on your answering machine.”
“Yes,” Raquel said. “That was later. She left it at a time when she knew Otavio would be at work, and I’d be out shopping.”
“How could she know you’d be out shopping?”
“On Wednesdays, there’s a feira, on the Rua Santa Rita. It’s where I go to buy fresh vegetables and fruits. Andrea could have called me on my cell phone, but she didn’t. She called here, when she knew I’d be at the feira.”
“Did you save the message?”
“I meant to. I erased it by mistake.”
“We both heard it, though,” Otavio said hastily. “We listened to it several times. Even if we’d kept it, it wouldn’t have added anything to what we know.”
Otavio was wrong. Sometimes the electronics guys could pull amazing things out of the background noise of a recording, but Arnaldo decided not to mention that. The couple was already suffering, and there would be a great deal more suffering still to come.
“She said she was with Marta,” Raquel said. “She said Marta didn’t want to go home. They’d taken a nap on the beach. A woman had come along and started talking to them. She told them she was a talent scout. Our Andrea is a pretty girl. So is Marta Malan. The woman offered them jobs as models. They thought it was a godsend. Literally, as if it was a sign from God that He was blessing their relationship.”
Arnaldo looked at each of Andrea’s parents in turn. They didn’t give any more credence to that story than he did. He wondered if the girls had always been that naive, or if they’d simply grasped at a straw.
“I suppose Marta must have lied about her age,” Otavio said.
“If the woman ever asked,” Arnaldo said, “which I’ll bet she didn’t.”
“Andrea said I wasn’t to worry,” Raquel said. “Imagine that. What was she thinking? How could I not worry?”
“I don’t suppose she said where they were going?” Arnaldo said.
“Oh, but she did,” Raquel de Castro said. “She said they were going to Manaus.”
Merda, Arnaldo thought.
But he didn’t say it.
Chapter Twelve
RECIFE/BRASILIA/MANAUS
Arnaldo Unes arrived at Recife’s delegacia central at 11:55 the following morning. The corporal on the reception desk was a slim fellow with a wispy beard who looked more like a clerk than a cop. Before Arnaldo had a chance to say anything, the corporal asked, “You that federal guy, Nunes?”
“Do I look that much like a cop?”
“Frankly, yeah,” the corporal said. He picked up the phone. “You’re expected. Have a seat over there.”
Two minutes later, a tough-looking brunette with a shoulder bag came into the reception area and stuck out a hand.
“Vilma Santos,” she said. “I’m your lunch date.”
Vilma had dark brown eyes and used little makeup. She had broad shoulders and stood erect. Her grip was as strong as a man’s.
“Come on,” she said. “My car is out front.”
When they were seated in her beat-up Fiat, she said, “I’m a delegada. You call me Vilma. I’ll call you Arnaldo.
