The Butterfly Effect

by Luis A. Santamaría

  “This? Nothing serious, I'll tell you later,” he said. “And by the way, back to her, the suspect has traces of blood on one hand.”

  After putting him off once more, Horner drank his whiskey in one gulp, left a twenty-pound note on the table, and stood up.

  "Let's go to work!"

  Until she was sure there were no police officers hanging around Cowley Road, Grifero did not come out of hiding. She had spent the entire night shivering behind a container in the alley that separated the liquor store. It was 5:35 and it had stopped raining. She ran like a street cat, and only stopped when, just around the corner, she accidentally kicked an abandoned cell phone. She picked it up for simple intuition and slipped it into her pocket. She didn’t stop until she returned to her hostel. It took longer than usual, because she tried to avoid the main avenues; the dark alleys were safer. She was breathless and frozen when she slammed the door and turned the key from inside.

  She sucked in a breath, her back against the door.

  She felt unhappy, and tears flooded her eyelids. “Alyssa Grifero never cries," she said. Then she wiped her tears.

  She had gotten too cold during the night, so she undressed and slipped under the duvet in her bed. She was unable to fall asleep. At seven in the morning, with the first rays of sunlight invading the bedroom, she rose and, naked, went to the bathroom. She sat inside the bathtub, leaning her head against the tiles and activated the shower. She stayed for a long moment staring at nothing under the very hot water.

  She remained in that position until seven-thirty, when she was so hot that it was difficult for her to breathe and her skin stung. Then she burst into tears without consolation. She hadn’t done it since she was fourteen years old.

  Alyssa had just spent one of the worst nights of her life.

  Chapter 7

  "Well, Salas, I came to the conclusion that you’re an upbeat optimist."

  "Don’t get confused, my friend. The harsh reality is that the bad news doesn’t come in pairs, but it come in streams, it pours. In fact, there must be a kind of mechanism prepared to dump kilos and kilos of shit in one place.”

  "You’re pulling my leg, Doctor?"

  "No, I'm serious. But experience has taught me that for every bad thing, there is a good thing that you’re not paying attention to. For example, you are here now, philosophizing about life with a friend you would never think you would have and me too. Second lesson.”

  Friday, November 10, 2006

  Chaos reigned in the police station of Torrelavega. The telephones were ringing incessantly, the chattering was happening from office to office, and along the corridors agents came and went rushing with piles of papers in their arms. Documents that, for the most part, contained information about Charley. The printers in the building could not work fast enough. Soon the portrait of Carlos Rubial, delirious and savage, as well as that of his brother, more appeased, appeared on the desks of each policeman. They had also been hung on the corkboards. In room B52, drops of coffee dripped down the wall, and, scattered on the floor, the broken pieces of what had previously been a Rolling Stones themed mug.

  The madness had begun an hour earlier, when, in the early hours of the morning, the British newspapers came out with the news of the murder of one Mike Lennard. No one would have stopped even a second for this news, however, if Marcos Tena had not done his usual review of the websites of major international newspapers. The rookie was about to spit out his first morning coffee when he clicked on The Sun's page. The English newspaper dawned with a striking cover. SHOCKING MURDER, said the engraved title, and below, in large, a close-up of...

  "Charley?" The young policeman whispered, absolutely puzzled, still observing the image. "It’s impossible."

  He rose from his chair like a spring and ran down the aisles of the station before the surprised look of the other members of the force, who didn’t understand why he was in such a hurry early in the morning. Julián Barreneche was waiting at his desk, and when he saw him come in so fast, he shouted from afar:

  "I just found out, Tena. Come on, it’s an urgent meeting,” and he raced out of there.

  They both entered into the B52 meeting room, each with a wad of papers.

  Room B52 was a not a very large room used by the police as a meeting place. The entire space was occupied by a sturdy rectangular wooden table and matching chairs with wheels. There were no pictures on the walls, just a corkboard now empty and a whiteboard with markers. A small television and its corresponding video player was catching dust in one of the corners, waiting for a detective to use it to search for clues in some mysterious recording. Because of the Internet, nothing had been used for some time. In the center of the table, a photograph of Mike Lennard absorbed the looks of the two agents. It had been printed in color and A4 size. The snapshot was his Facebook profile photo; it was the most that they could get out of his social network, since Lennard barely updated his profile. What is known in the police jargon as a corpse account. In it, Lennard posed smiling with the London Tower Bridge in the background. It had been taken on a sunny day, although the wind blew his hair in all directions. It was the photograph of a normal guy enjoying a day of sightseeing in the capital. The picture couldn’t show the whole body, but it would not be unusual to see the man with a travel guide in one hand and an ice cream with vanilla cookies in the other. Next to Lennard's close-up photograph, Charley's photograph, which, taken on the day of his capture hours before his suicide, was contrasting.

  Both policemen looked at the snapshots and their companion alternately, in absolute silence.

  "What do you think, Tena?" Asked the superior as he rubbed his chin with his fingers.

  "Fuck, they're identical," he said, not raising much his voice, in fear of putting his foot in it. “That is, Lennard and Rubial were like two drops of water.”

  Barreneche nodded.

  "Come on, you say it first. I’ll give you the honors,” he said, as if he were doing someone a favor.

  "They were... brothers?"

  The chief of police looked into his eyes, making him see that the situation was so obvious that it wasn’t worth answering.

  Marcos Tena rubbed his temples and dropped his back against the back of the chair. Fuck, that shit, he told himself, overcame by circumstances.

  Barreneche pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and made some calls. In a few minutes the building went into a flurry. Mike Lennard's life landed on the computers of the police station and the rumor soon became a reality: Carlos Rubial had a secret brother who had just been brutally murdered in an Oxford home. Barreneche was in charge of executing a search warrant against Alyssa Grifero, and make sure that her name and her image was plastered in all the news in the country. He also contacted the Interpol office in Madrid, which in turn sought help from Interpol England through the International Cooperation Division. It was urgent that they did not let that young monster out of the country. The case had become a matter involving two nations.

  The police chief was gesticulating and shouting louder as he paced the room, always on his cell phone. Marcos Tena watched him with some fear.

  "Aren’t we rushing things, chief? We have no evidence against her,” he said when his superior hung up the phone. The young policeman thought it necessary to offer his opinion on the matter.

  Barreneche took a sip of coffee from his personal cup, decorated with the well-known red tongue of the Stones, before answering with superiority:

  “Carlos Rubial lances down a ravine and his only friend, or whatever that little fox is lands in Oxford a few days later. That same day that she arrives, the twin brother of Rubial is found in the same city with a bullet in his head. The coincidences do not exist in this profession, boy. Rule number one.”

  Tena nodded, though his reasoning told him otherwise.

  "You'll have to inform the judge," he said.

  The boss replied immediately:

  “No way. The next time I talk to Callejo, I'll give him that girl
on a silver platter. Didn’t he want to close the case? Well, that's what we're going to do.”

  "What about Sara Mora?"

  Barreneche arched a single eyebrow, forming an acid cartoon expression.

  "What about Mora?" He repeated almost mockingly, as he seemed to rethink the current situation of the neurosurgeon.

  "The victim is the twin brother of her aggressor," said the youngest cop with a boldness unheard of for the police station. “I think we should at least follow her.”

  At that moment Barreneche's phone rang again, which allowed him to ignore the demonstration of his new detective. He picked it up and kept listening, opening his mouth just to pronounce monosyllables. The call lasted less than a minute. Barreneche repositioned his glasses on the bridge of his nose. His hands were shaking. He took another sip of the cup, and then, in a fast movement, threw it into the air with inappropriate violence. The container passed a few inches from Marcos Tena's left ear, spitting coffee before it smashed itself against the wall and exploded into several pieces.

  Julian Barreneche had just been informed that Alyssa Grifero had landed at the Madrid airport early in the morning. Her current whereabouts were completely unknown.

  In Oxford, Tallent woke up with the sound of her own groan. She suddenly opened her eyes, and immediately she felt herself soaked in warm sweat. Her nipples were rigid and she felt a pleasant tingle in her most intimate area. She covered her breasts with the sheet and breathed hard. The embarrassment experienced by the realization that she had just had an erotic dream turned to bitterness to remember the details of her fantasy: once again, she should have already surpassed some kind of record, she had taken off her clothes for Brunet and they had made love wildly on the dining-room table.

  She gave herself only a couple of minutes to relive the details of her dream between the sheets. When she considered that she had already been punished enough, she washed up, dressed in sports clothes, and went to the gym to run the five miles a day she had imposed to keep her ankle strong.

  "It must be a nightmare." Sara Mora kept repeating these five words. She was in shock. From the flowery quilt of her Victoria Road bed, the warmth that came through the window. The morning was splendid. What day was it? She was not entirely sure. She was no longer certain of anything.

  She had not slept all night, but she hadn’t tried to sleep either. Since she had returned to the Connors' house after the uncomfortable interrogation that she had survived. She simply slipped into her humble room, sat her bottom on the bed, with her hands in her lap and without even changing her clothes. Her hair was full of knots and her cheekbones were stained with running mascara. She was a disgusting mess.

  She spent time visualizing in her mind the inert body of Mike Lennard, the hole in the middle of his face. The bathroom wall splattered red, the smell of death. She wanted to vomit several times, and she had done so as soon as she got out of Agent Horner's car and she had no more bile left to throw up. "Agent Horner," she said aloud, and her fear deepened. To be an accomplice in a medical secret as she had been to Verónica Salas was one thing, especially for a good reason, but as a leading witness to a cold-blooded murder? That was too much. If that agent were to learn that the victim was Charley's twin brother (i.e., her rapist), her life would immediately become a Hitchcock movie: they would use the desire for revenge as the main motive for the crime, and therefore, she would become suspect number one. She was definitely glad she had not told the truth about it.

  What kind of action movie had her life become? She, whose biggest adventure was to watch romantic movies on Friday nights.

  Everything swirled around the figure of Mike Lennard, so she struggled to form a mental scheme that made sense. The newly deceased was at the center of the composition, and around her Sara imagined everyone who had a connection with the murder: Carl, his wife Amy, police officers Carroll and Horner, Charley... Charley? It didn’t make sense. He’s dead! A new chord struck her as she remembered the disgusting amputee. Sara came to the conclusion that some secret had to be kept by Lennard so that someone would want to end his life in that way. If he were a millionaire and the murderer would only aspire to his money? She questioned herself, and immediately dismissed the idea by remembering the humble aspect of his house.

  The doctor shook her head and was ashamed to play detective again. Even she, who had collapsed like a child in front of the police when they took her as a witness. Police. She who had lied for being a coward, in fact, seen from a calmer point of view, it could very well buy her a problem. Was she losing her mind? She wanted to cry, but there were no tears left. She didn’t know what to do, or where to go, or who to talk to. For a moment she was tempted to catch a plane and return to Ámber, to her hospital, from where she should have never left. She wanted to talk to someone, and then a name came to mind that she had completely forgotten about since the case of Alfonso Morales.

  "Jaime!” She whispered in the air, whimpering. “My dear Jaime, forgive me...”

  She threw herself headfirst towards her purse, which she had left lying on the floor of the bedroom as soon as she entered, and threw it inside. She wanted to call Jaime Vergara, her friend from the faculty, and just unload everything on him and tell him everything that had happened. Surely, such a good guy, Jaime would make her smile as he always did. Unfortunately, her cell phone was not in the bag. She then inspected the pockets of her coat and all she found were a pair of coins.

  She put her hand to her mouth and paled. At some point in the night she had lost the phone and had no way to retrieve it. Sara felt alone in the world, as much as she never thought she could be.

  That morning, at the newly opened Terminal 4 of the Madrid airport, Alyssa knew for sure that she had gotten in a big mess.

  She had just gotten off the plane that had brought her from London and she was already in the commercial area when she stopped in a cafeteria with the intention of putting something in her stomach. The distress caused by the Cowley Road tragedy was still fresh in her mind, and she hadn’t eaten anything from the kebab piece the other night, at which point it had been more than twelve hours. She was hungry and exhausted, though she had taken the flight to rest her eyes.

  While devouring a muffin, she saw that the television of the establishment relayed a morning program on affairs of the heart news. The bun held Alyssa's full attention until the broadcast was interrupted by an informative breakthrough that opened with the shocking image of a murder at Oxford. A Spanish nationally known reporter with huge glasses, who put a voice and face to events abroad, explained in explicit detail how a man named Miguel Lennard, an ambassador to the British country, had been found dead in his home during the night. At the back of the picture, Cowley Road's number 219 was sealed and guarded by numerous English journalists.

  The bun became a heavy paste inside Alyssa's mouth.

  The news linked the initial findings of the National Police Corps' criminal departments and the Oxford police, who were working together on the case. According to the reporter, "a young female Spaniard who had a relationship with Lennard's brother traveled to Oxford from Santander on the day of the crime."

  Alyssa shrunk in her chair. She began to tremble.

  "As commented by the police chief of the police station in Torrelavega, she was living a life based on drugs and sex along with Lennard's twin brother, Carlos Rubial. After Rubial's suicide, everything indicates that Grifero, a demented soul, was looking for some kind of family revenge.” The exclusive concluded with the full-screen image of Alyssa's close-up. It was the photograph on her identity card. Above it, the monitor occupied a sensationalist red capital word:

  WANTED

  "Grifero is at an unknown whereabouts, although the latest rumors put her back in Spain.” The spectacled reporter was about to close the advance. “More information, in the three o’clock news.”

  Alyssa didn’t wait to see the end of the news. She rushed out of the establishment, leaving the remains of the muffin with butter and
half coffee unfinished. It took her a few seconds to detect the nearest restroom and she slipped into the restroom. There she acted on instinct. She took from her bag her sunglasses and an intense red lipstick, which she used to become another person. She also collected her hair in a ponytail, since in the photograph that was circulating through the news media in Europe she came out with her hair loose. The next thing she did was pull out a Nokia N80 from her pocket and turn it on.

  The cell phone had come to her hands by chance as she fled the alley between the liquor store and Lennard's house. She had accidentally kicked it, catapulted it several meters forward, and then tucked it into her pocket for no apparent reason. She didn’t think of it again until she came out of the shower that morning, once she had cleared her inner demons. At that moment she had nothing to do and she didn’t know what her next step was going to be. And the walls of the hostel overwhelmed her. She simply had no plan.

  The device turned out to be a silver Nokia N80. She connected it to the charger of her own cell phone, because it was dead, and after a few seconds she turned it on. She was surprised that it didn’t have an access PIN code (apparently there were still innocent people in the world who did not use passwords) and above all that the menu was in Spanish. It's hers, she confirmed internally. Once on, Alyssa couldn’t avoid the temptation to pry. She entered the MESSAGES menu, but found nothing that caught her eye. Then she tried her luck with the mail server, which fortunately had cookies stored, so which, again, she could access without knowing the user and password. Among dozens of advertising emails and subscriptions to magazines, supermarkets and medical forums, there was one factor that stood out in the inbox: Jaime Vergara had written eight emails to her in the last week and all were lacking response! It took her less than ten minutes to read them all, each looking more interesting than the last one. That man spoke, among many other things, of Alfonso Morales and his illness. He also quoted little Oli, which caused a tremulous smile in her expression. Apparently, this Jaime was a doctor, just like the owner of the mobile. And she was in trouble like her.