Smaller and Smaller Circles (12 page)

18

In the huge,
open-concept newsroom of a major television network, Joanna Bonifacio glances up every now and then to watch the late night news on one of a dozen television monitors set on stainless-steel brackets on the wall she faces. She is simultaneously making short work of a newspaper crossword puzzle and chewing a large wad of bubble gum.

The room, divided only by chest-high partitions of heavy industrial plastic and grey mohair, is almost deserted. An old dot matrix network printer can be heard tapping out news scripts and reports from the international wire services.

The arctic atmosphere, necessary for the maintenance of broadcast equipment, is air-conditioner sterile aside from occasional stray smells of brewed coffee and toner for photocopiers.

Joanna straightens up in her seat when she sees the NBI's Benjamin Arcinas, smug and smiling, on-screen.

“Look, Wally,” she calls out to her boss, the executive producer for
First Person
, the weekly current affairs program for which she writes. Wally Soler is half dozing at the desk behind hers, feet propped up on the edge. She turns around, notes that his socks are mismatched again tonight, then grabs an ankle and gives it a good shake. “Arcinas changed his hair color. Again.”

Wally wakes, stands, stretches himself out with a yawn: a tall, chunky man with salt-and-pepper hair, a square face lined in all directions, small, shrewd eyes. He tilts his head back and puts his face up close to the television set, peering shortsightedly at the screen.

“Hey, it's redder now.”

“Yeah, kind of strawberry.” She blows a large bubble from the wad of gum in her mouth. “Geez. He sort of looks like Nancy Drew.”

Notwithstanding Arcinas's paranoia about the press, Joanna Bonifacio really does have it in for him. She has dedicated a large measure of her efforts as a crime reporter to pointing out the most awful errors—and there are many of them—in his handling of criminal cases. And she has done so in precise detail on one of the highest-rated programs on the country's largest broadcast network.

She is not on his Christmas gift list.

“What's he talking about?”

Joanna frowns, waves her hands. “Quick, Wally Wonka, turn it up.” She is given to calling her boss strange names.

Wally turns up the volume just as the newscaster is saying,
“The suspect is believed to be behind the killing of a young boy in the Payatas area. NBI Task Force officials say the boy, whose body was badly mutilated, was found last month. Authorities also say they purposely did not release details of the murder to avoid a panic in the community.”

Joanna snorts. “Who covered the NBI today?”

“Claire,” Wally says as the broadcast cuts to the junior reporter interviewing Arcinas. Claire Manalo is one of several young and pretty news trainees whom the network predictably favors—with better pay, better opportunities, better support—over older, less telegenic but often more capable journalists and producers.

“I take one sick day—one sick day in
three
years
, mind you—and NBI coverage goes to hell,” Joanna grumbles. “Look at that. She didn't press Arcinas. She swallowed everything he tossed out without questioning a single thing. What is it with these kids? Easy on the eyes but short on the brain cells.” She pokes Wally's belly with a forefinger. “When am I going to get that liposuction budget? Huh?
Huh?
”

Wally chuckles; as a veteran of many newsrooms, he knows all too well the resentment of seeing plum assignments going to better-looking, or better-connected, or more self-promoting upstarts.

“You're not fat, Joe. You're Simone Signoret. You're ample. Curvy.
Zaftig.
”

She raises her eyes heavenward. “Do you even know what that word means?”

He clips her across the top of her head in response.

“Ow,” she protests.

She blows a noteworthy pink bubble, which bursts and flattens over her chin. Absently, expertly, she lifts it off with her tongue as she turns her attention to the corkboard on the partition in front of her desk. Something makes her lean closer, and seconds later she is practically tearing off the papers and photographs pinned to the cork as she searches for something underneath.

Wally watches all this, puzzled. “What is it? What's wrong?”

“The dead boy's injuries,” she says. “The mutilations they mentioned.”

“What about them?”

“So familiar,” she says, thinking aloud now, scanning the few documents left on the corkboard. “Something I've already
. . .
” and sh
e reaches for a small sheet of lined paper, torn from a spiral steno notebook and covered in her own thin, spidery handwriting. She reads it, and a moment later slams the palm of her hand on the top of her desk, then thrusts the sheet of paper under Wally's nose.

“See? I was right. They're familiar. The injuries. The way they were described. Look at this. In February, they found a boy at the landfill site. Dead, naked, similar injuries. A few media outlets picked it up, but nobody was interested for very long.”

“Except you,” Wally says, studying her notes.

“Long enough to find out that they managed to identify the boy. Ryan Molina. But nothing came of the investigation, and there were no other leads. Or, more likely, nobody bothered to look for any more leads.” She takes the paper back from Wally. “I held on to this because
. . .
” She shrugs. “I thought the kid deserved better. I thought I might want to go back to it when I had the time.”

“But you didn't have time,” Wally says, and he's right; often the daily grind of the newsroom makes it impossible to revisit past stories whose trails have grown cold.

Joanna looks up at him sharply. “I do now. Don't I?”

Wally clears his throat. “Why do I feel a headache coming on?”

Joanna lifts an eyebrow the merest fraction of an inch, and by that fraction Wally is subtly but effectively reminded of many things. That she has a graduate degree in anthropology from a French university. That she speaks four languages aside from English and Tagalog. That she worked three years in Osaka for the United Nations Asia and Far East Institute for the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders. That she has paid her dues working the police beat for two major dailies.

“Come on, Wally. You know me. I'd never give you a headache without a corresponding reward.”

Conceited old cow
, Wally thinks, then permits himself a private laugh.
She's just like her father, God rest his soul.

“Don't tell me about it. Just get to work. You want Manny to come along?”

Manny is a cameraman, Wally's photographer-sidekick from the old days when they were both still working for one of the big-name broadsheets in the Port Area. When Wally moved into broadcasting, Manny thought he would learn how to operate a video camera. This was well over a decade ago, and Joanna is not sure that he has quite learned how.

“Not time for the camera just yet. And Manny—you know, the last time you assigned him to me, most of my footage was out of focus. And he smokes like a chimney.” Joanna is allergic to cigarette smoke.

“He's big and he can look out for you.”

Wally sees Joanna as the daughter he never had. What he did have, though, was four or five failed relationships in the last two decades, all collapsing under the strain of late hours, low pay, dangerous assignments, hard drinking. Serial infidelities on both sides. Didn't seem to be much point in having children.

Joanna's father was Wally's best friend from those early days when reporters still used carbon paper and typewriters, and Wally was godfather to Joanna and her sisters. He'd always been especially fond of Joanna: she was old for her age, observant, quiet but persistent in her
whats
and
hows
and
whys
. She grew up big and gentle like her father, with her mother's drive and neuroses and a sharp, probing intelligence all her own.

“Big, nothing. He's slow and—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. He smells bad.”

Joanna has already begun gathering up her things.

On her way out, she presses her palm against the man's forehead affectionately, then removes her hand and scurries away, as fast as a woman of her height and size can scurry.

Wally puts a hand to his forehead. He peels something off it, then looks down at the bit of paper.

It is a tiny Bazooka Joe comic strip.

Gus Saenz is
a light sleeper. At any time in the night, he can tell if any of the other priests on the same floor is
awake
or has left his quarters. He remembers sounds in the night, voices, doors opening or closing, the flushing of a toilet down the hall. He remembers if the room grew warmer or
colder in the course of his slumber. He has, on occasion, been known to answer questions or join in the conversations of other people in the same room—often coherently—while asleep.

Tonight, sleep, or what passes for sleep, eludes Saenz. In
his quarters, he lies in bed in the semidarkness and stares at his
long, pale feet propped up on a pillow at the end of the bed.

Tonight, the moon is full. The lacy shadow of the curtain unfurling in the wind passes over the skin of his feet at almost regular intervals, and he holds his breath until the shadow comes again.

Skin.

He has a scar on his left foot, long and wide, its surface paler than the skin that surrounds it. He got it when he was a young boy, thanks to the particularly nasty slip of a new, clumsily held pocketknife, a Christmas gift from his father.

He flexes his foot so that the scar catches the full light from the moon before the curtain's shadow passes over it.

At a certain angle, the foot appears perfectly smooth and unblemished.

He and Jerome have agreed to meet at the NBI in the morning. Jake Valdes says he will try to convince Arcinas to allow them to speak to his suspect. Saenz is deeply grateful for this intervention, because he knows Arcinas would never agree to it if he himself made the request.

Saenz recognizes that this is a crucial moment, and with all humility, he hopes and prays that Arcinas has found the right man. And yet, he wonders if anyone can—if it is possible to detect the scars that lie under the surface, to get at the diseases that take root not in blood or muscle, not in bone or pulsing organ, but in the mind, which can cunningly hide its ills beyond the reach of X-rays and electronic probes and surgical needles.

He wonders if he knows enough to recognize the scars when he sees them, just beneath the skin of some, deceptively normal man.

He flexes his foot again, and the scar reappears. It is a while before he closes his eyes, and when he does, there is one question in his mind.

In what kind of light will I see your scars?

19

“All right, I'll
let you talk to him. But only for a few minutes.” Arcinas closes the folder on his desk ceremoniously, as though closing the book on their involvement in the case. “Though there's really no point. He's confessed to everything.”

Jerome's face is grim, his teeth tightly clenched. He is holding his anger back in a supreme effort of will.
Humble pie time, Jerome
, he reminds himself; the need to get at the truth is more important than his own professional pride.

“Still,” he says, and the words come out clipped, “I think the director would want us to question him.”

Arcinas's snakelike eyes narrow. “The director has given me full operational control over this case from here on, and now that we've brought it to such a successful conclusion, I'm sure he would agree with me that your—uh, assistance—is no longer necessary.”

Okay, that's it
, Jerome thinks. “Which direc—,” he begins, but this time Saenz is ready. His arm shoots out to restrain the younger priest, and he turns to Arcinas.

“Precisely because you have concluded this case so well, you must be anxious to ensure the correctness of this arrest.”

A trace of apprehension touches Arcinas's face, but it is quickly replaced by a look of undisguised antipathy. “All right. Ten minutes.”

On their way downstairs with the officer Arcinas has assigned to assist them, Saenz and Jerome see a tall woman with a serious face taking the steps two at a time. A small man, about five feet two inches tall, lugging video camera and kit, struggles to keep pace with her.

She stops short when she sees them.

“Father Saenz,” she says, holding out her hand to the older priest, and Jerome is startled at both the easy familiarity with which she greets Saenz and at her deep, throaty voice—a cross, he decides, between Lauren Bacall and Bela Lugosi.
“Voici!”

Saenz's face registers surprise, and then he smiles broadly in recognition. “Joanna—
salut
!”

The woman takes the older priest's hand and shakes it vigorously, then begins to speak to him in rapid French. “I'm not surprised to see you here. How's the weather up there?” she asks, tilting her head in the direction of Arcinas's office.

“Very sunny. Arcinas is quite pleased with himself.”

“Ah, Arcinas
.
The nutcase,”
she snorts in contempt. Then she scrutinizes Saenz's face. “But you suspect it's all a scam, right?”

Saenz shrugs. “I have no idea,
Joanna.” He pauses as Jerome clears his throat, then switches to English. “My manners. Joanna, may I introduce my friend Father Jerome Lucero?” He turns to the younger priest. “Jerome, this is Joanna Bonifacio. She was one of my students at the
Institut de Paléontologie Humaine
.”

“That explains the French,” Jerome says with a grin. He holds out his hand, and she takes it; her grip is like a construction worker's.

Her eyes search you
, he thinks.
For uncertainty. For dishonesty. For fear.

The woman gestures toward the cameraman, who has put down his equipment and is now wiping sweat off his brow with a checkered handkerchief that has seen better days. “Leo, my colleague,” she says, and the compact, dark brown–skinned man flashes them a brilliant but gap-toothed smile.

“Joanna is a producer for that crime show.
First Person
.”

Ah
,
Jerome thinks
. First Person.
Loud, sensational, top-rated, five years running. Often intelligent. Occasionally brilliant.

“Unusual career choice,” Jerome says. He meets her gaze and holds it without flinching.

“Why?” she asks, a quiet challenge in that single word. For a few seconds he imagines that she is considering decking him, but unexpectedly, she gives him a conspiratorial wink:
you're all right
. “It's my apostolate, eh, Father Lucero?” She shifts her focus to Saenz once more. “So, come on, Father. I've been hanging around here since last night, but nobody will tell me anything.”

“Operationally, that was probably very wise of them.” He chuckles.

She ignores the good-natured jibe. “There was another one. In February. It made the news but was quickly overshadowed by bigger stories. So I have lots of questions. How many others have there been? Why didn't he talk about them in his little press conference yesterday? And why haven't they come out into the open and warned the public until now?”

“I'm sorry, Joanna. I wish I had answers for you. You'd better go and talk to Ben. I'm sure he'll see you.”

“Yeah, right.” Another snort; she rubs the tip of her nose with the back of her hand, a mannerism Saenz knows well from her student days in France. “I gave him hell with that bank robbery a couple of months ago, remember? He'll be jumping for joy to see me.”

Saenz shakes his head; Joanna is a good friend and an excellent pupil, smart as a whip—and just as pleasant. Which is to say, not at all.

“
Je suis désolé
,
Joanna. You know I can't give you any information until this whole matter is settled.”

“D'accord.”
She shrugs, then pulls a thin silver case out of her back pocket. It is an oddly elegant thing, something Jerome would not immediately have associated with this gruff giant of a woman. He notices that it is engraved with the initials
acb
.

As she takes out a calling card, she catches him studying the monogram and snaps the case shut. “My dad's,” she says dismissively as she shoves it back into her jeans pocket and out of sight. “Old-fashioned frippery, if you ask me, but useful on occasion.”

Jerome detects a note of profound sadness underlying her self-possession.

Joanna turns to Saenz again.
“Voici ma carte,”
she says, handing the card to the older priest. “If you need to talk to anyone, Father, I don't have to tell you I'm your best bet.”

“Better yet, you don't have to tell me you'll be hounding me from now on,
n'est-ce pas
?”

She winks at Jerome again, then practically leaps past them and up the stairs toward Arcinas's office. Leo the cameraman gives them the same gap-toothed smile before taking up his equipment and following her.

“Interesting woman,” Jerome says.

“A first-rate mind, Joanna,” Saenz says, as they proceed down the corridor with the slack-faced officer who has been waiting at the foot of the stairs all this time. “And a genuine pest.”

Before they enter the room, Saenz takes Jerome by the arm and pulls him to one side. “What will we be looking for?”

Jerome glances at the officer to see if he is listening, but the man is fiddling with a set of about a dozen unlabeled keys hanging from a key ring made of bent wire.

“Not sure. If he is who Arcinas says he is, he wouldn't have confessed so easily. The care with which the murders are committed, the absence of witnesses, the uniformity of the mutilations—they all point to a highly organized mind.”

“Sir?” The officer has finally found the right key and is now holding the door open for them.

“You do the talking, Jerome. I'll sit in and observe.”