cooking fires, and the distant sound of a baby's crying.
'League encampment,' the sergeant said. 'Smells real bad if you get too close. Stop over there next to the ambulance. We gotta climb the fucking hill.'
The hillside was steep and strewn with gray rocks, some of them as big as a baby's head. The sergeant picked his way carefully over the ground, going slow and huffing like a steam engine. At the pace he set, Silva and Hector didn't even work up a sweat.
About halfway up, Silva's cell phone rang.
'Director?' he said.
'That Mario Silva?'
'It's Silva. Who's this?'
'Corporal Borges from the State Police. I've got a message for you from Colonel Ferraz.'
'How did you get this number?'
'The colonel gave it to me.'
Silva sighed. 'What's the message?'
'Orlando Muniz Junior is dead. We found the body. The colonel said to meet him at the Muniz fazenda, the Boa Vista. You know where that is?'
'Yes.'
'He says somebody will be waiting for you at the gate.'
Silva thanked him and hung up without bothering to explain that he was already there.
The flat area on the crown of the hill had once been cleared, probably for grazing, but that must have been quite some time ago. A few stunted trees and some clumps of brush were sprinkled here and there. Silva stood still for a moment and let his eyes sweep around the horizon. Down below there were endless fields, most planted with sugarcane, some lying fallow. At the margin of one vast, empty area he could see the plastic shelters and flapping banner of the Landless Workers' League.
Close at hand, red earth was piled next to a rectangular hole cut into dried grass. Half a dozen cops in uniform, and some who weren't, were hanging around the site. Most were looking at the contents of an oblong wooden box about the size of a coffin.
The spectators didn't include Ferraz, who was standing to one side, engaged in conversation with the same officer Silva had seen entering and leaving his office, the one with the scar and the knife hanging from a scabbard on his belt. The colonel was dressed in a red polo shirt, jodhpurs, and boots, as if he'd been out riding when he got the news.
A man wearing latex gloves squatted over the box. There was a black medical bag standing open-mouthed on the ground near the man's right foot.
'Colonel.'
Ferraz turned at the sound of Silva's voice. 'How the fuck did you get here so fast?'
Silva ignored the question. 'Why don't you introduce me?' he said, nodding at the officer.
Reflexively, the officer nodded back. Ferraz looked from one to the other and finally said, 'Osmani Palmas, Mario Silva.' He didn't elaborate, and he didn't include Hector in the introduction.
'How did you find him?' Silva asked, pointing at the makeshift coffin.
'His old man hired a helicopter, had it fly back and forth over the property. The pilot spotted what looked like a grave. Turned out, it was.'
'Does Muniz know his son's dead?'
'He sure as hell does, and he's on his way. Those league guys screwed up big this time. He's going to fuck them up good.' Ferraz seemed pleased, almost gleeful.
'There's no proof they did it.,,
'No proof?' Ferraz laughed out loud. A couple of the other cops turned toward him. 'No proof?' he repeated. 'What do you think that is?' He pointed toward the corpse. 'How much more proof you think the old man needs?'
Silva brushed past the colonel and went to talk to the man wearing the latex gloves, a Nisei with rimless glasses and a purple birthmark on his forehead.
'Ishikawa,' the man said, rising to his feet. 'Medical examiner. You?'
'Costa,' Silva pointed at Hector, 'and Silva,' he stuck a thumb into his own chest. 'Federal Police. Any conclusions?'
'He was alive when they buried him,' the doctor said. He stuck the thermometer he was holding into a breast pocket, pulled out a pencil, and made a note. 'He tried to free his ankles and wrists. Cut himself up pretty badly. The marks on his forehead came from battering his head repeatedly against the lid. Maybe he was trying to knock himself out.'
Silva looked down at the body. The younger Muniz's pants were pulled down over his thighs. The thermometer the medical examiner had been using was obviously rectal.
'Cause of death?'
'Asphyxiation,' Ishikawa said, 'unless something else turns up in the autopsy.'
The doctor was friendly and more forthcoming than Silva would have expected. Silva was used to dealing with the bigcity medical examiners, men and women who were unwilling to hazard a guess about a cause of death, much less commit themselves, until they'd completed an autopsy.
Ferraz came up to stand at Silva's shoulder. 'His eyes were open when we dug him up,' he said. 'The doc here closed them for him. He musta been shit scared.'
Doctor Ishikawa winced at Ferraz's tone and lowered his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at him.
'You want to take him now?' he said.
'Hell, no,' Ferraz said. 'His old man's on the way. He'll want to have a look.'
He glanced at the road leading toward the main gate of the fazenda and squinted. Silva followed his gaze. There were three vehicles down there, coming fast, trailing red dust.
'That's probably him now.'
Silva took Hector by the arm. 'Let's go,' he said.
'You mean you're not going to stick around for the old man?' Ferraz asked, incredulously.
'We're going down to see what the league people have to say.'
Silva turned to go and then, remembering, he turned back to face Ferraz.
'I've been asked to look into the murder of Senhorita Poli as well.'
'So?'
'So I'd like to know why she gave you an authorization to go through her safe-deposit box and what you were looking for.'
'Confidential matter between her and me.'
'Confidential?'
'Confidential. And she must have made some kind of a mistake, because it was empty.'
Silva stared at him. Ferraz wasn't intimidated. As if to prove it he said, 'By the way, my boys have been all over the crime scene. The guy who cut their throats was lefthanded, just like Major Palmas here. And the blonde was raped, but there was no DNA, nothing under their fingernails, no strange pubic hairs, no semen. No prints, either. Too bad, huh?'
Silva didn't trust himself to speak. He turned on his heel and started back to where they'd left their car. Behind him, Ferraz and Palmas shared a laugh.
Hector followed his uncle down the slope. A moment later they passed the dead man's father, hurrying upward. The two bodyguards from the hotel were hot on Muniz's heels.
One of the bodyguards stopped to talk, but the other two men brushed by without a word. The old man's anxious eyes were fixed on the crown of the hill.
'Is it him?' the bodyguard asked Silva.
'Yeah. It's him.'
'Then God help them.'
'Help who?' Silva said, but the man was already scrambling to catch up to his boss.
'Let's get down to the encampment,' he said, 'before they do.'
Another two minutes brought them onto the flat. All three of Muniz's vehicles were pulled up next to Hector's
