Smaller and Smaller Circles (22 page)

Enteng, the budding juvenile delinquent, not quite as fleet of foot or swift of reflex. Running straight in the direction of a few traffic cops who had parked their patrol vehicles on the side of the highway.

And afterward the first of several visits from the police.

Lolit's boy disappeared several months ago. Some of her neighbors were relieved, both for her and for themselves. She knows this, but keeps it to herself. She tries to stay cheerful, hoping that he will come home soon. Or someday.

Today two men she has never seen before come toward her, wallets ready. She asks them what they want, and they both point to the
maruya
.

“Five pesos,” she says, and one of them, the taller one, hands her a ten-peso bill. “You're not from here, are you?”

“No, just passing through,” he says between bites of banana fritter. “Looking for someone.”

“Eh, who?” she asks, curious.

“Maybe you know her,” the other one says. “We need to talk to her about her son.”

He fishes a crumpled piece of paper from the back pocket of his trousers, unfolds it and reads.

“Mrs. Lolita Bansuy. Son's name is Vicente.”

35

Seven victims, six
names. Laid out on a whiteboard like this, with the photographs, the dates, the details written in Ben Arcinas's slanty handwriting inside neat squares, it's almost like any other chart or table, dry and cold and dull. Except they all know what each of these squares represents; they've all seen it—or what's left of it—with their own eyes.

They're sitting in a conference room at the NBI: Saenz
and Jerome, Arcinas, Jake Valdes and Director Lastimosa, and
Cesar Mariano. They're transfixed by the grid on the whiteboard, the room silent save for the drone of an old air conditioner.

Director Lastimosa is the first to speak. “Well, we've identified most of them. What do we know about them?”

Valdes takes his glasses off and begins cleaning them with a handkerchief. “They all lived in the vicinity of Payatas: two from Payatas proper, two from Manggahan, one from Litex, one from Riverside. All poor. Two trash pickers. The rest is on that grid.”

“I presume you've sent people to interview the families?”

“Yes, sir,” Arcinas says. “So far we haven't come up with anything useful yet.”

Lastimosa shifts in his seat. “Make sure you give Father Saenz and Father Lucero a copy of everything you've got, Ben. Their view of what's useful might be different from yours.”

“Of course, sir.”

Lastimosa turns to look at Mariano. “Councillor, you were saying something about community surveillance?”

Mariano nods. “The other day I convened the
barangay
officials in my district—most of them come from the four communities Director Valdes mentioned. I strongly reprimanded them about the handling of the killings and told them they would face severe sanctions.” He pauses. “But then I realized they might be able to help you in your investigation. They may be lazy, they may be complacent, but they know these neighborhoods. We could rope them in to keep a close watch on comings and goings, to conduct night patrols—basically to tighten security in the communities.”

Valdes puts his glasses back on and turns to Mariano. “Right. And they would be familiar to residents, so their presence in the neighborhoods wouldn't be unusual. How many warm bodies are we looking at, Councillor?”

“Officials and
barangay
security officers combined—something like thirty, forty men.”

Saenz glances at Jerome. “If we had more eyes and ears on the ground, we might be able to detect something out of the ordinary. But someone has to coordinate. And they need to be communicating with NBI and the police constantly, so if anything happens, response will be as quick as possible.”

“Jake and Ben will take care of that,” the director says. “Councillor, they'll sit down with you after this meeting to map out plans and logistics. I imagine the highest deployment would be in the evenings and the closer we get to the end of the month, yes?”

“Yes, sir,” Mariano says.

The director looks at all the worried faces around the conference table. “All right, gentlemen. Let's keep our wits about us. We don't have a lot of time left before we add another name to that grid.”

On the way
back to the campus, Saenz is extraordinarily quiet.

“Something's bothering you,” Jerome says.

“Uh-hmmm.”

“Don't you have a dental appointment soon?”

“Not today. Tomorrow.”

“So. Not the dental appointment. Share?”

“I wish I could, but I don't know exactly what it is.”

Jerome gets to a traffic light just as it turns red, and he stops, so it's safe to take his eyes off the road for a moment. “What do you mean?”

“It's been nagging at me since Tuesday, when we received the envelope. I keep trying to grasp whatever it is, to hold it still and examine it, but it keeps dancing away from me, just out of reach.”

“What could it be? Something about the envelope, then?”

“Maybe. Or the envelope and the weekend we spent at the district health center.” Saenz shakes his head briskly, as if to waggle the tenuous thought loose. The light turns green, and they're moving forward again. “It's maddening, like an itch you can't scratch.”

“Maybe it'll come to you after a good night's rest.”

Saenz looks out at the passing scenery: at the people in the buses and jeepneys, at the dirty buildings, at the garlands of black power cables that line the streets of the metropolis. “Maybe,” he whispers unhappily, and Jerome doesn't even hear him.

36

The pounding at
Jerome's door will not stop. He sits up, fumbles for the clock on the bedside table and groans when he sees the time, dragging himself out of bed and into the receiving area of his small quarters. The hair on the back of his head sticks straight up, and he pats it down carelessly, without much success.

He peers through the peephole in the door.

“This had better be important,” he says, unlocking the door and stepping out of the way just as Saenz swings it open, waving a small Kraft envelope at him.

“I've made a terrible mistake, Jerome.”

Jerome scratches his scalp and yawns. “And a good morning to you too.”

“I failed to see the forest for the trees.”

Jerome shuffles toward one corner of his Spartan private quarters, where a small kitchen table holds an electric kettle and several mugs. Saenz follows close behind him. “Only God can see the forest at three in the morning,” the younger priest mumbles. “We ordinary mortals can barely keep our eyes open.” He turns on the stove, looks through the drawers for sachets of instant coffee

Saenz ignores Jerome's crabbiness. “Listen. I was so excited about identifying the bodies that I missed the obvious.”

“Are you talking funny?”

“What?”

The younger priest scowls. “Your speech. It sounds funny. Like you have a bit of a lisp.”

“Oh.” Saenz scowls back. “I'm getting to that. Where was I? Oh yes. I missed the obvious.”

“Which is?”

“That our killer could be working in the mobile clinic himself.”

Jerome stops, the open flame of the gas stove forgotten for a moment before he sets the kettle over it and turns to Saenz.

“Possible. But—”

“Our mystery envelope came a day after we were seen at the district health center. My guess is, the staff at the center is the same, or almost the same staff that works the mobile clinic.”

“But Emil said the mobile clinic has been around for years. If we follow the same logic we pursued when we were considering the meal deliveries, why didn't the killings begin much earlier?”

“I'm not sure yet, but what if there were personnel changes? Workers move and get replaced all the time.” Saenz pauses to think. “What if someone came to the clinic from somewhere else. Maybe he's done this before; maybe he hasn't. Maybe he's under some kind of strain, or something about the community and its residents triggers that strain? What if the killings are, indeed, some kind of—”

“Weird inaugural ritual to start the month right,” Jerome breaks in
. “So he takes advantage of his job in the mobile clinic—”

“To select his victims,” Saenz finishes for him. “Emil said the clinic comes to Payatas every Saturday. So he has time to choose, time to observe without drawing attention to himself. As you've said: there's nothing random about his targets.”

Jerome is putting instant coffee into two mugs. “Of course. The precise bladework would indicate some medical training; the obvious intelligence behind the selection and the
. . .
But who?”

The older priest opens the envelope and takes out a set of negatives. “I'll need your medicine cabinet.”

He has been in Jerome's bathroom before and knows that the medicine cabinet has a small fluorescent rod perched above the mirror.

The two now squeeze into the tiny bathroom, and Saenz tapes a rectangular piece of acetate, backed with a sheet of onionskin, to the fluorescent rod, creating a makeshift viewing panel. Next, he tapes the ends of four strips of photographic negatives to the acetate.

“What do you see?”

Jerome puts a hand to his chin and rubs it for a moment. “Instrument marks on the chinbones.” He studies them closely, then taps the fourth strip. “Except for this one.” His eyes widen, and he turns to Saenz. “That's the flap. The flap of the envelope you found in your pigeonhole.”

Saenz nods.

“But the marks themselves look so similar.”

Saenz smiles broadly.

“Complete dental restorative system.”

“Sorry, what?”

“There's a packer for packing fillings into cavities, a dental explorer for probing into the nooks and crannies of a tooth
. . .
and this.” The older priest reaches into his envelope and takes out a metallic object with a rubber handle, about seven and a half inches long, with the metallic end curving into a slight, blunt hook. “An elevator. Used to pry up the roots of the tooth until they can be extracted with forceps.”

“Where did you get that? No, wait.” Jerome laughs, grabbing the dental instrument from Saenz. “I remember now. That's why your speech sounds funny. I'm impressed.”

“She wasn't. I was a wreck of a man when she was done with me.”

The younger priest raises an eyebrow. “Please, spare me the details.” He looks back at the instrument in his hand. “But wait—how can you be sure this is it?”

“I can't. There are probably a few other things that can make these kinds of marks. But we have to start somewhere. I told you I'd measured the instrument marks. These things are made in several sizes, but this one seems to best match the marks, in the width—these have five-millimeter blades—and in the character of the grooves. And these rubber handles give you a good grip even if there's a lot of blood. And then there's this.” Saenz opens the envelope again. “That footage of the last crime scene from Joanna. I took the clip and fed it into the computer. That thing in the mud? Have a closer look.”

He hands Jerome a high-resolution printout of the strange black-and-metal object half-buried in the mud, caught by Leo's camera lens.

Jerome lays the elevator against the printout. He compares the two for a few seconds. “But why on the chinbone?”

Saenz strips the acetate off the fluorescent light and leads Jerome out of the bathroom, back toward the kitchen table. The kettle has been boiling for minutes. Jerome switches it off, takes a quilted potholder from a hook on the wall and removes the kettle from its base. He pours hot water into the two mugs and begins to stir the coffee.

“We know from the clean incision at the neck that he would slit the skin under the chin first, from ear to ear. I think he needed help to peel the skin back from the chin, so he would hook this under the skin and flesh, using it much like you would use a chisel, and start to pull the skin upward. But it couldn't have been easy. For an instrument so thin, these things are pretty tough, made from surgical steel or chromium; the skin and flesh would tear in places. So he'd hook in again and again, and in the process of pulling the skin over the chinbone, he would leave these marks.”

They both stare at the instrument, glinting cold against the dark wood of the tabletop. For Jerome, the nightmare journey seems clearer than before. In his mind, the scent of blood is stronger, the slippery viscosity of it, the tender resistance of flesh peeling back from bone.

“Gus. You realize what this could mean?”

Saenz nods. “We need to have a talk with Jeannie.”