Buried Strangers by Leighton Gage

mil-lions. And France. And the UK. Even little Belgium for Christ’s sake. You see all of that shit that went on with those kids in Belgium?”
    Silva nodded. He kept up on international developments, particularly anything that involved crime. Cavalcante took the nod to be an agreement with his thesis. “There. You see? Madmen can sprout up anywhere. Eventually the guy is cap-tured, or dies, and that’s it. End of story. If he hasn’t been captured, and the crimes have stopped, isn’t it logical to assume that the guy who’s responsible for that cemetery in the Serra da Cantareira is dead?”
    “There have been cases when a killer goes dormant—” Silva didn’t get any further than that. The minister cut him off.
    “Now a cult, that’s something else,” he said. “A cult is lots of people. A cult doesn’t stop doing what it’s doing just because one member died. If it was a cult they’d still be at it, right?”
    “It’s possible, but—”
    “But nothing. You just got finished saying there are no recent bodies in those graves. Nothing from last week, or last month, or last year. The killer is out of business. No doubt about it. People who do things like that never stop, do they? Not as long as they’re alive. So he’s dead. That’s the only log-ical conclusion. I’ve read the books, seen the movies. The last thing the tourist industry in this country needs is for a fucking academic theorist like this . . . this . . .”
    “Boceta?”
    “ . . . to come up with some crazy theory that there’s a gang of madmen out there waiting to snatch people off the streets. The Americans would panic. They’d never come near us.”
    They aren’t coming near us now, Silva thought. But he didn’t say it. What he said was, “We can’t be sure there isn’t another cemetery out there someplace, one with more recent graves.”
    “Any more than we can be sure it’s a cult,” the minister said.
    “WHO THE hell does he think he is?” Arnaldo said an hour later. “Since when does the minister of tourism get involved in murder investigations?”
    “Since the director invited him in,” Silva said.
    “And what’s his problem with a line of inquiry that links them to a satanic cult?”
    “That’s what I can’t figure out.”
    “So what do we do now?”
    “After Cavalcante left, Sampaio called in Boceta and had a go at him, told him he didn’t think much of his theory.”
    “Uh-huh. And how did Boceta react to that?”
    “You know of any other organization in this country that hires criminal profilers?”
    “No, just us.”
    “So how do you think Boceta reacted?”
    “The little weasel stressed it was just a theory? Said he’d give it some more thought?”
    “Uh-huh. And he asked the director to thank the minis-ter for bringing the lack of continuity, the absence of more recent murders, to his attention.”
    “I don’t know why I bothered to ask. What now?”
    “Now, Sampaio wants us to get back to what he calls the important stuff and leave the investigation of the graves to the people in São Paulo. Only he wants me to call them first and suggest that the line of investigation involving a possi-ble cult is a dead end.”
    “And by the important stuff you mean?”
    “Trying to dig up some dirt on Romeu Pluma.”
    “Okay. That’s what the director wants. But what you’re really going to do is follow the cult thread and maybe look into why Cavalcante doesn’t want to investigate it.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “So how are we gonna do it without Sampaio—”
    “Or Cavalcante.”
    “Or Cavalcante getting wise to what we’re up to?”
    “We’re going to tell Hector to go ahead, but to keep it out of his written reports, and I’m going to have a chat with Tarcisio Mello.”

Chapter Thirteen
    TARCISIO MELLO WAS A private investigator who’d retired from the federal police after a thirty-year career. He’d been a vigorous fifty-five at the time, and had been casting around, trying to find