Buried Strangers

“With good reason. The city administration doesn’t run the favelas, the drug gangs run the favelas. And drug gangs kill cops.”

“And drug gangs kill cops,” she agreed. “I know. Who do you think gets their bodies for autopsy? But that’s exactly my point, you see. Life in the favelas is cheap. Drug gangs kill cops, cops kill dealers, and lots of perfectly innocent people get caught in the crossfire. People die and disappear all the time. Favelas would be perfect hunting grounds for organ thieves.”

“Okay, suppose you’re right, suppose that’s what those graves were about. That brings up another question.”

“Which is?”

“You’ve established that none of the corpses were recently deceased. So why are the people who were killing them then not killing them now? Why should they kill thirty-seven men, women, and children and then simply stop?”

“Maybe they didn’t.”

“Stop you mean?”

“Uh-huh.”

“You think we should be combing the Serra da Cantareira for more burial grounds?”

“Maybe. But even if there aren’t any, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the killer or killers suspended activities. They could simply be destroying the evidence.”

“Burning the corpses?”

“Dissolving them in acid might work, but it would be a long and messy process.”

“I can’t believe we’re having this conversation.”

“I know. Bizarre, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Burning the corpses. You know what? I’m warming to the idea.”

“Oh, please. Was that meant to be a joke?”

“Not funny, huh?”

She shook her head.

“If they’re medical people,” he said, “and they’re burning the corpses, would they use a crematory oven?”

“I doubt it. Have you ever seen one of those things?”

“No.”

“They’re called retorts and they burn at a little over eleven hundred degrees Celsius, which means they have to be heavily insulated and need a substantial chimney. They’re huge, costly to buy and install.”

“How do you happen to know all of that?”

“I had a namorado who used to install those things.”

“I don’t think I want to hear about it.”

“About what? The retorts or the boyfriend?”

“The boyfriend.”

“Good. I don’t like talking about him. He was a creep. They also have to be licensed, retorts that is, not boyfriends, although come to think of it, that might have been a good idea in his case.”

“A namorado’s license?”

“Uh-huh. To get the license you’d have to pass a test. There’d be sections on sensitivity, reliability, honesty, and all that kind of stuff. You’d have to show a girl your license before you asked her out. My ex would have failed on all counts, particularly the fidelity part, the canalha.”

“These retort things,” he said, as if the conversation hadn’t taken a detour, “if they didn’t have one, how would they go about cremating a body?”

“There are other devices, ovens designed for the disposal of medical waste. They don’t burn as hot as retorts, so the process would take a lot longer, but they’d do the job. The advantages would be that they’re much smaller, cheaper, and more common. They wouldn’t attract attention if they were installed in a clinic, and although they require licenses, the licensing procedure is much simpler. The downside is that adult bodies wouldn’t fit inside. They’d have to be dismem-bered before cremation, and once the burning is complete, the bones would still have to be reduced to powder. That’s not a problem. There’s a machine that crematories use for grinding bone. It’s commercially available and quite small.”

Hector sat back in his chair and looked at her.

“What a mind,” he said. “We could make a good team. Professionally, I mean.”

“Sure,” she said, “professionally.”

“And, professionally, would you suggest I start checking out all the clinics that have ovens for the disposal of medical waste?”

“No, I wouldn’t. You might get lucky, but I doubt it. Unless you catch them in the act, all you’re going to do is to put them on their guard.”

“Hmm. You have another suggestion about where we go from here?”

“Let’s just get together and see how it plays out.”

“It’s a deal. Tomorrow night?”

“Eight o’clock. My place. Do you cook?”

“Not well.”

“Okay. It will be spaghetti with a meat sauce and salad. You buy the wine.”

“Chilean? A Carmeniere?”

“Too heavy.”

“A Cabernet Sauvignon?”

“Fine.”

“Getting back to the case. .”

“How about this: transplants, legal or illegal, are the last stop, the end of the line. They’re what you do when the diagnosis is certain, when there’s no other way to save a patient’s life.”

“So?”

“So you go back to the beginning. The path leading to a transplant begins with someone getting sick, going to a doc-tor, and having tests or treatment done. When it’s a heart problem, there’s going to be a cardiocath, or a radioactive stress test, probably both.The gear to do that kind of stuff is expensive. Only major hospitals have it.”

“So we find people whose tests-”

“And/or treatments.”

“-and/or treatments indicate they wouldn’t survive with-out a heart transplant.”

“Yes. And you cross-reference to the waiting lists for heart recipients. Anybody who didn’t put themselves on the list must have had access to an alternative source. Anybody who did, and is no longer there, has gotten a legal organ, or died or-”

“Has gotten one illegally?”

“You catch on fast,” she said.

Chapter Thirty-two

On the following morning, Hector called his uncle in Brasilia and told him whom he’d had dinner with and what she’d had to say.

“Your namorada may be onto something,” Silva said when he’d finished.

“She’s not my namorada, just a friend.”

“And even if she isn’t onto something,” Silva continued as if he hadn’t heard Hector’s interjection, “it’s a line of investigation we should have been exploring from the very beginning. Godo suggested it.”

“Transplants? Godo suggested transplants?”

“No. He just said the motive might be rooted in what he called a ‘utilitarian purpose.’ We went from there to cults without considering the more obvious alternative.”