Felipe Altamirano Alvarez Espadachín
It was the early hours of the 4th day since the day the storm began.
It was still raining heavily outside.
I could hear the sound of the rain clearly as I was in the interrogation room, interrogating one of the boys that we arrested when we went to Casa 52 in Calle Wulfric, two days ago, to rescue Basilio Armada.
"Tell me!" I yelled as I banged the table in such a way that I scared the boy who I was interrogating.
He was silent and timid as he looked at me, nervously.
"Do you know that if you hide information your punishment is going to be more. You weren't just stealing someone's money. You tried to commit murder!" I said as I walked around the chair on which the handcuffed boy was sitting.
He was shivering.
I couldn't believe how nervous that boy was. He was the one who was about to stab the old man in his neck. But in the interrogation room, he was timid like a whimpering whelp, struggling to speak.
I was silent for a few minutes.
Then, I softened my tone and came closer to him.
"Listen, son, we are interrogating you so that you would tell us why you did what you did," I said.
He just looked at me.
"It is well known that you and your friends brought a knife to kill the old man. If you tell me why you did what you did, you won't be judged on circumstantial evidence", I said.
He didn't say anything.
He began fidgeting and circularly moving his toes.
He opened his mouth, intending to say something, but he struggled to voice it out.
"Go ahead!" I yelled.
"I want water," he begged in a breathless voice.
"Give him!" I told an officer beside me, asking him to give the sweating boy some water.
As the officer was breaking open the seal of the plastic water bottle, I told the jittery boy, "Listen, young man, I don't have all the time in the world. You're not going to get sweet-talked into telling us what you know. Hurry!"
He drank the water, wolfing it down.
As soon as he was done, the police officer removed the bottle from the mouth of the hand-cuffed boy. Some water spilled out of his mouth, as the officer removed the bottle.
The boy was sweating profusely. Beads of sweat rolled off his skin and fell off his chin. He was feeling the uncomfortable warmth of the room.
He stared at me with wide eyes.
I leaned on the table as I drummed it while observing the boy who was just silent and nervous.
He was licking his lips.
His eyes alternated between the floor, my shoe, my name printed on my uniform and the yellow light that illuminated the tiny room.
Suddenly, I kicked the table very hard.
The boy was startled when he saw me do that.
The table fell after crashing into the wall of the tiny interrogation room.
I snapped my fingers and demanded (after moving close to his face): "Tell me, quick."
He was silent and shaking.
"I'm not done with you," I said pointing my finger at him, as I walked out of the room for five minutes, after kicking down the chair in a way that it fell next to his feet.
My officer restored the table and the chair to their original positions when I was gone.
After drinking water, I entered the room after five minutes.
The boy hadn't moved an inch on the chair.
"I'm going to tell you your own story," I said as I clasped my hands while looking at him.
He just looked at me with those widely-opened eyes that were filled with fear.
I smelt something bad. I realized that I had frightened him to the point that he had urinated in the interrogation room.
The police officer with me was about to call the janitor before I stopped him by gesturing to him.
"You, young boy, were hired by the gang, Salvaje", I said.
He was about to say something but I silenced him by gesturing with my hand.
"You and your three friends wanted to prove your allegiance to them by committing the act of murder."
I increased my pace while walking around the chair he was sitting on.
I moved closer to his face and said, "And you and your friends were willing to shed innocent blood."
"You. You're lying," the boy stammered.
Using my hand, I gestured that he should be quiet, silencing him before he could say any other word.
"You know very well what happened to a majority of the Salvajes after the death penalty was re-introduced in Bolivia last year?" I said, raising my voice once again.
"THEY WERE EXECUTED!" I yelled, loudly, near his face.
He tried to move his face away from my face.
I moved a few steps back and continued pacing around the chair.
There was dead silence for a while.
The sound of my boots striking the floor reverberated through that tiny, claustrophobic room.
The boy gulped.
His eyes were mildly twitching.
He was clenching his fingers.
He just looked at my boots as I stomped around the floor
"I have no connection to the Salvajes!" he protested in a dry, nervous voice.
I quickly banged the desk - startling him once again - and bellowed, "THEN TELL ME WHY YOU DID WHAT YOU DID!".
He almost fell back along with the chair, as he leaned hard against the back of it.
"I'll tell you. I'll tell you," he began in a frightened, broken voice.
"Faster, boy. Hurry!" I yelled, banging the table once again.
"Alfredo told Valiente…"
"Told what? Told what?" I shouted.
"..that there was a wealthy man who used to buy cigarettes from a shop near his house."
"And? Hurry!" I bellowed.
"He told me that he was observing that the man was alone and that he's an easy target."
There was some silence once again.
The air was tense.
Lowering my tone, I softly asked, "Why? Why did you plan this?"
He was silent.
"Tell me!" I demanded, raising my voice once again.
He just kept looking at me, without saying a thing.
"Hurry!" I said as I snapped my fingers, impatiently.
He then began mumbling something.
"I can't hear you properly!" I yelled.
He began to rephrase what he was trying to say.
"We owed money to a guy who bought us drugs. He was bothering us, sir. We were desperate. He said he would kill our families if we didn't pay the money," he stammered.
There was a brief silence of two minutes before I continued to interrogate him.
"How long have you been planning to attack the old man, and steal his money?" I demanded.
"Two months. But…"
"But what?", I said, raising my voice.
"But we planned to do it later. When the floods came, we thought it was a good time to commit the crime. So we preponed our crime. Because it was flooded everywhere, we also thought that after we kill the old man, after stealing his possessions and money, we could drown his body in the water before fleeing the scene."
There was some silence once again.
I brought a chair and placed it close to his.
I then sat down and looked at him in the eye.
"Why did you think that crime was the answer to your problem with the drug-dealer?," I asked
"I didn't know what to do, sir", he said as he broke into tears.
"My parents don't know about my addiction. Not only mine, but my friends' parents also don't know that we were drug addicts. We come from really good families, sir. If our parents know about our addiction, they'll kick us out of the house after beating us up badly", he added with sobs interspersed by his words.
There was some silence.
The room grew very hot and uncomfortably humid.
The atmosphere was very tense and tight.
The sound of rain pouring outside could be heard.
I was sweating.
After some minutes, he broke the silence in that tense environment with a plea.
"Sir, can you promise me that my parents won't know what I did?" he pleaded.
"No," I firmly refused.
There was some more silence.
I knew that he was thinking about something in the silence, so I didn't say anything.
He then made another plea.
"Sir, can I be spared from jail? If I go to jail, I won't be able to go to Harvard. It was my childhood dream to go there. I prepared so hard for my SATs. If I get convicted, my life is over! Please can I not go to jail?" he pleaded.
"No. You will be punished for your deeds, and you will face the consequences of your actions."
There was some silence once again.
After about 10 minutes of me being silent and he being pensive, I broke the silence.
"But, because of your confession, your sentence will be less than that of your friends unless they confess their crimes," I said.
"I also want you to tell me who used to sell drugs to you. He will pay for his actions. We're going to arrest him," I added.
After the interrogation was over, we gave the boy a new change of clothes, and the janitor cleaned up the interrogation room.
After the boy took a shower and changed his clothes, I made him sit with our resident sketch artist.
The sketch artist began his work, and he promised to have the sketch of the drug-dealer sketched out by 10:00 p.m that night.
For the rest of the day, I was busy with some usual rescue work. We had to arrest some burglars who tried to take advantage of the floods. We had to arrest drug peddlers who were trying to escape the flooded regions with their drugs. We had to help people who needed medical attention get to where they were supposed to.
Everything was normal until it was 6:30 p.m when I was at Calle Bustamente.
The radio operator called me and told me to go to Calle Wulfric.
Suspicious, I asked her if it had something to do with Casa 52.
"Yes," she said, "The medics have already gone there. The maid of the man owning the house called us three hours ago after seeing something strange. We need the Police to investigate what happened."
"I'm going there," I said as I and my team of officers turned our boats towards the direction of Calle Wulfric.
What might have happened? We just rescued the old man two days ago and suddenly another situation?
I asked my team to turn on the sirens of our boats, as we sped through the flooded streets.
Until we reached the place, my mind was disturbed.
By the time we had reached Calle Wulfric, a team of medics was there. Neighbors had crowded the lawn. Some of the medics were trying to keep the crowd away from whatever occurred at the house.
Alejandro and I loaded our pistols and walked with them in our hand, as we got down from the boat and walked towards the house.
"Teniente," a medic said as he saluted me.
I nodded in acknowledgment of the salute as I walked with Alejandro towards the house. While Alejandro and I walked towards the house, the rest of the police officers were helping the medics keep the interested crowd at bay.
It was very dark inside when we walked through the already opened door. The police helped the old man replace his door yesterday because his previous door was damaged when we set the charge to enter the house to rescue the old man.
The medic guided us up to the stairs and into that same hall where we had rescued Basilio earlier.
We followed him.
As soon as I entered that room, I received a surprise.
I was taken aback by the stench of body fluids and the stench of a corpse. I covered my nose in disgust.
The pale corpse of Basilio lay sprawled across the floor, with eyes open.
As I covered my nose and looked at the corpse, I thought, "How could he have died? I remembered talking to him, on the phone, yesterday evening. How did he die?"
I started to doubt that the boys were sent by a gang to kill the old man. The corpse looked like Basilio was either suffocated using a pillow or poisoned.
How could he die just after a failed murder attempt on his life? Something was fishy.
I then decided to examine his body.
As I squatted to examine the smelly carcass, which the medics were preparing to bag, I noticed that he was holding on to the telephone's receiver with his right hand.
I then followed his left arm, until I discovered where his left hand was.
It was on his chest.
That was when something in the fingers of his left hand caught my attention.
His left hand looked like it was grasping onto something.
I gently loosened the fingers of his left hand, to discover that his left palm was enclosing a container full of sleeping pills.