Free Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage Page A

father’s murder, Mario Silva received an invitation to go to Quantico. He was the first Brazilian to be so honored. His law degree, fluent English, and the spectacular results he’d achieved in Brazil’s combat against the drug trade had all contributed to his receiving the coveted opportunity. There could have been no clearer indication that his superiors destined him for greater things. For ten classroom weeks, in the company of 250 other police officers, he took courses in behavioral science, leadership development, communication, health/fitness, law, and forensics. Forensics interested him most of all.
    Upon his return, he was transferred to Brasilia, the federal capital. The expectation of his superiors was that he’d be able to put some of the things he’d learned into practice. Those were the days when experienced law enforcement officers, not political appointees, ran the Federal Police. The man who held the job, Helio Fagundes, was a consummate professional who recognized talent when he saw it. And he saw it in Mario Silva.
    “HOW BIG is this thing?” Fagundes asked. They were in his office. Silva had been back from the United States for about a week.
    “About like that,” Silva said, as if demonstrating the size of a fish he’d caught, “and like that, and that,” tracing the other dimensions in the air.
    “That small? Jesus!” Fagundes leaned forward, leafed through the proposal on his desk, and looked at the bottom line. “Cheap, too,” he said, “Compared to those monsters we’ve got downstairs. Okay, you’ve got a green light. I’ll send you the paperwork. Go buy the thing.”
    The “thing” was an IBM Personal Computer. The device, less than two years on the market, was just beginning to come into use in law enforcement agencies in the United States. Silva had seen his first one when he was in Quantico.
    The computer was duly installed in a small room down the hall from Silva’s new office. Silva started learning how to use it, and with the blessing of the director, he hired a young man to help him. The young man was Cicero Morales. Cicero had a sparse goatee, a developing potbelly, thick horned-rim glasses, an acne problem and unkempt hair. Years later, and thirty kilograms fatter, he would become the head of the Federal Police’s forensic laboratory. Even then, at twenty-three, Cicero was an unusually perceptive man.
    “This whole project of ours,” he said to Silva one night when they were working late, “it’s not just for the greater glory and efficiency of the Federal Police, is it?”
    “What do you mean?”
    Silva stared at Cicero out of hooded, black eyes. “Oh, come on, Mario, this is me you’re talking to,” Cicero said, ripping open a bag of potato chips. “There’s something personal about this business. Why don’t you just admit it?”
    “What makes you think it’s personal?”
    Before he replied, Cicero stuffed a handful of the chips into his mouth, chewed, and swallowed. “Are you telling me it’s not?”
    “That’s what I’m telling you.”
    “Chips?” Cicero offered the bag.
    Mario shook his head. Cicero took out another chip, nibbled it up in two bites. “Why did you choose São Paulo for the pilot project?”
    “Why not? I wanted to give this thing an acid test.”
    “I’m not buying it, Mario. Brasilia would have been much better, and you know it.”
    “I don’t know any such thing.”
    Cicero took in an exasperated breath and let it out in a snort. Some fragments of potato chip came with it. He grabbed one of the napkins he kept next to his workstation and wiped his mouth.
    “You want me to spell it out for you? Okay, I will.”
    Cicero crumpled the empty bag and tossed it. Then he gripped his right thumb with the other hand and started to count off his reasons. “First, because São Paulo is just too damned big. It doesn’t make the job twice as hard, it makes the job twenty times as hard. Second reason: We’re here, so instead of