The Games (Private #11)(31)

The Bear looked uncertain, said, “I dunno. We were watching this place.”

“Did you go in there before us?” Tavia asked. “Look around?”

“No way, Reynaldo,” Urso said hotly. “I heard the chimes, figured the train distance, left to call my boys into position. End of story until you showed up.”

“How long were you gone when you went to get your friends?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Ten minutes? I walked around the corner to make the call where I wouldn’t be heard.”

“Whatever it was, something spooked them,” Tavia said.

Urso said, “I still get paid, though. I found them.”

Tavia hesitated, but I said, “He did his job. Pay him.”

I’d no sooner said that when my cell phone rang. It was General da Silva.

“General?” I said, stifling a yawn. “You’re up early.”

“I’m always up early,” the Olympic security chief said.

“That’s why you’ve always got things so well in hand.”

“Not this morning,” he said. “We’ve had a murder in the ranks, Jack. I want you and Octavia at the crime scene as soon as possible.”





Chapter 34



TRAFFIC WAS BUILDING. It took us almost an hour to drive from the cigar factory to Barra da Tijuca, a newer district of Rio south of Leblon. Shopping malls. Strip malls. Tract houses with red-tile roofs. It looked like large swaths of Orange County, California, had been slapped down in coastal Brazil.

We followed General da Silva’s directions to a residential street on a hillside that had a view of the beach and the ocean. Da Silva was waiting for us by a police barrier along with Lieutenant Bruno Acosta. There was a fire truck up the street, and firemen reeling in hoses. The air was tainted with a sickly smoke.

“Media hasn’t gotten word of it,” Tavia said.

“Yet,” da Silva said, not happy.

“We meet again,” Lieutenant Acosta said to me. “You find those missing girls?”

“No.”

“Ransom note?”

“Not yet,” Tavia said a little too quickly. “At least, we haven’t heard about one.”

“Let’s focus on what’s going on right here, okay?” the general said.

Acosta studied Tavia and me a beat and then motioned us through the barrier and down the road. The smell became more ungodly the closer we got to the driveway of a single-family home set behind lush hedges.

We came around the corner of the hedge and saw a tropical garden in front of a beautiful Mediterranean-style two-story home. The only thing that marred the idyllic setting was an incinerated car with the silhouette of a charred corpse in the driver’s seat; puddles of water surrounded the vehicle.

“The water’s unfortunate,” Tavia said. “Probably compromised evidence of whoever—”

“Get out of my way!” someone yelled behind us. I looked over my shoulder, saw a fit man in his late thirties wearing a business suit and no tie running up the street toward us. “What the hell is going on?”

“Senhor Santos. Antonio,” da Silva said, trying to stop him. “You don’t want to see this.”

“See what?” Antonio Santos cried, and he dodged around him, went to the end of the driveway, and halted.

His jaw sagged open and his eyes got hazy with disbelief. Then the corner of his lower lip began to quiver, and he sank slowly to his knees.

“Luna!” he howled. “Oh God. Oh…”

He retched and then fell over and curled up into a fetal position. We waited until the spasms that racked his body eased and then helped him to his feet.

“Can we talk to you inside?” da Silva asked.

Antonio Santos nodded numbly. Then he stole another glance at the horror, said, “Did they…was she…burned alive?”

The medical examiner, a big-bellied man named Cardoso who’d been studying the body, joined us, and the general looked to him. Cardoso shook his head. “Gunshot wound to the back of the skull. She probably died instantly and long before the fire.”

Santos stifled a sob, turned away from the car and the ME, and walked unsteadily to the front door. He fumbled for his keys, dropped them. He let Tavia pick them up and open the door.

It was as beautiful inside as it was outside, and spotless, nothing out of place. Santos did not seem to know where to go. Da Silva motioned him to a seat in the living area, where he began to corroborate much of what we already knew.

The victim’s husband worked for the Rio Olympic organizing committee and was a liaison to the governments of Rio and Brazil. Santos was charged with cutting through red tape and seeing that projects were completed on time. He’d done much the same job in the years leading up to the World Cup in 2014.

Santos said he’d been working insane hours the past month or two and had hardly seen his wife. He’d had a late dinner with Luna two nights before but had not been home in a week and had been sleeping on a couch in his office.

“Your wife have enemies?” Tavia asked.

“Luna? No. She loved everyone and everyone loved her.”

“You have enemies?” I asked.

“You mean people who hate me enough to kill Luna? No. No, I don’t think so.”