Valentina's Lost Days

by A. P. Hernández

  But she listens to the sound of her mobile.

  She is alone, so who can call her?

  Marta takes out her head and hurries up to the ladder. She has left the cell phone next to her Pamela hat, in the lawn lounge where she used to sunbathe with her daughter.

  She dries her right hand with the towel and picks up the cell phone. The screen reads:

  Incoming call

  Lazarus del Río

  Marta feels her heart skip a beat.

  - "Tell me!" -she greets him- - "What have you found?"

  The voice of the former Inspector rings on the other side of the line.

  - "Good morning, ma'am," -he says quietly. - "The investigation is going well, but still, there is nothing firm."

  Marta sighs. Although deep down she already knew it. Not a day has passed.

  - "I'm calling to ask you a quick question." -Lazarus hesitates for a moment. - "Your daughter ... did she have a credit card?"

  - "What do you say?" -that, she did not expect it. - "N-no, for God's sake, if she was only 15 years-old."

  - "And could your daughter use your credit card to buy online?"

  - "Impossible," -she replies, without hesitation. - "My Valentina was not like that. If she wanted to buy something, she would have just told me. Between us, there were no secrets."

  - "Marta, can you check the movements of purchases made with your credit card in, say, the last twelve months?"

  Marta wraps herself in the towel. Suddenly, she feels shivers.

  - "Yes, Yes, of course. I can check it ..."

  - "Do it and write me a WhatsApp. Tell me if there is a purchase that you cannot justify. Thank you."

  -12-

  Lazarus hurries to hang up. He does not want the woman to start asking him and does not want to tell her anything yet. For the moment, all he has are suspicions.

  If Valentina used the InfieleX website to talk to her Prince Charming (at her own will or the insistence of the forenamed), she might have secretly used her mother's credit card to buy her username.

  While waiting for the lady's WhatsApp, Lazarus continues to search through the rest of the notebooks. Apparently, in the rest of the classes, Valentina paid more attention, since the number of annotations and scribbles in the margins is ostensibly less.

  He has already stacked all the notebooks in the corner of his desk. He only has left to examine the books of Danielle Steel. Although Lazarus does not have the slightest intention of reading any, he takes "A perfect Stranger" and begins to turn the pages. The book does not have annotations. Its pages, slightly wrinkled, indicate that it has been read, but nothing was written. Deposit the novel on the tower of notebooks and take "Decisive Encounter." You do not need to go through many pages to find a folio meticulously folded, hidden between the middle chapters.

  - "A letter!" -Lazarus claps his hands, more than satisfied. Carefully unfold the paper and start reading:

  For my spring love:

  Since you entered my life, nothing has been as before. I spend days and nights thinking about you. If I'm not by your side, I'm not myself. You complete me, my spring love, you make me be who I want to be.

  I know it's no coincidence that we have coincided in this life. It is destiny, that has united us. And nothing can separate us.

  My spring love, I want to know you better.

  Let me be your partner, your friend, your lover.

  Fondly,

  S.

  Lazarus releases the letter.

  - "What a cake! -He exclaims.

  The letter has been printed on a computer. It has used a Calibri font and a double line spacing.

  It looks like the typical romantic letter written by a teenager. It is full of clichés: "you complete me," "fate has united us" and "I ca not live without you."

  Lazarus shuffles two possibilities. The first is that Valentina was the author of the letter; the second is that it was written by someone she met online.

  Lazarus doubted that Valentina had written that. A reader of Danielle Steel could write love letters, it's true, but why would she refer her true love as "my spring love"? And why would she sign with a brief S? If it was Valentina's intention to save ink by writing her name, why did not she sign with a V?

  - "S", -he says to himself. - "S"...

  - "Who could be the author? Someone named Sebastian? Any Samuel, Santiago, Sergio, Salvador ...?

  His mobile emits a sound.

  - "Marta's WhatsApp!"

  Lazarus opens it and reads the first WhatsApp he has received in his life:

  All movements are my purchases.

  All in order.

  - "So "S" paid her username in InfieleX" -he said. - "What a gentleman!"

  -13-

  Cynthia eats like a donkey. She chews with her mouth open and talks non-stop, throwing to Ishmael pellets of food all over his face.

  But he controls himself. He knows that the drug will not take long to take effect. GOTI-K is so focused on him that she has not noticed that her thirty-three-centiliter beer can has, in the back, a small fragment of insulating tape. Ishmael had to use it to seal the imperceptible hole caused by injecting the sleeping pill. He used a dose enough to put a mare to sleep; then, - "why does Cynthia talk so much? Why does not she shut her mouth for a damn once and for all?"

  - "I looked at you as soon as I saw you in the chat," -she says, gobbling down another small pasty. - "SUPERMAN. What a funny name. It is super funny. And I loved that we continued chatting through that page ... how was it? Oh yes, infeliceX!"

  - "InfieleX" - he corrects, dryly.

  - "Oh yeah!" -Cynthia starts laughing. Her laughter resembles the braying of a donkey, the braying of a stupid, smelly donkey. - "I loved it! I thought it was super ... how do you say? Oh yeah! Super clandestine, as if it were a secret romance. How cool!"

  Ishmael watches Cynthia closely. It has lowered the guard because the first indications of the drug begin to appear. GOTI-K continues talking, yes, but she is already dragging the words as if it were hard for her to vocalize.

  Within a few minutes, she will feel a tingling sensation in her extremities, and her tongue will become heavy and insensitive.

  - "I became Gothic a year ago, you know?" -Cynthia puts her hands to her head. - "Uff! what a dizziness! And how long have you been Gothic?"

  The sensible thing to do would be to wait a couple of minutes more. But Cynthia is already under the effects of an overdose. She will not be able to escape. She will not be able to resist.

  - "Do you want me to be honest?" -Says Ishmael.

  - "Yes, yes, yes, of course!"

  - "Well, the truth is, I'm not Gothic."

  Cynthia looks at him in amazement.

  - "My name is not José Antonio, nor am I an electrician. And rest assured that I do not write like an illiterate whore."

  Cynthia leans her back against the pine trunk. She is white, and not because of Ishmael's revelations. She is sick. The vegetation, the birds and the tops of the pines are spinning around her in a circle.

  - "I have deceived you." -Ishmael sits beside her and caresses her shoulders. Cynthia barely feels his hand sliding down her skin, caressing her. She does not feel her body.

  - "Well, my name is Ishmael, I'm studying Electronic Engineering, and I'm a murderer. I love killing little girls like you."

  Cynthia wants to shake him, take his hand off her arm ... or is her chest what he is caressing? She does not know anymore; she does not feel anything. She starts drooling, and cannot move. She is paralyzed.

  Ishmael lifts the back of the hummus of the mountain and extracts his surprise.

  - "Look, look what I bought you." -He shows it in front of her eyes, moving it like a toy. Do you want to try it?"

  With the scalpel, he breaks the corset and the bra that she showed yesterday through chat. Ishmael bites his nipples. It has small breasts, but the nipples are bulky. Sink her teeth around her areola until he feels the taste of her blood.

  - "Do you
like it, GOTI-K?" -He sticks the scalpel into her belly, though it only sinks a few inches. She does not want to kill her. Not yet.

  Without losing time, he begins to bite her neck. Cynthia's tears slide until her collarbone. He savors it. He inserts the scalpel under the black tulle skirt with ruffles and realizes that she is not wearing underwear.

  - "Where are your panties?" -Ishmael prefers to bite the nipple. He sucks blood like a child would with breast milk. - "Do not you wear panties?"

  Ishmael is already excited, but he must finish. It must be satisfied.

  Ishmael removes the hand from her skirt to go over her body. With vertical movements, the scalpel caresses her legs and belly. The blood begins to flow profusely.

  Ishmael feels increasingly safe, so he begins to introduce more and more the cutting edge into the skin of GOTI-K.

  He feels his body shudder.

  The rest is blood.

  -14-

  Lazarus del Río eats his grilled breast. It's 6:00 p.m. When he locks himself up in his office, the time flies. That also used to happen to him when he belonged to the police force: he began to solve a case, and he forgot things as mundane and fundamental as the simple fact of eating.

  - "That's why Blanca left me," -he tells Bucephalus.

  Blanca was his wife more than fifteen years ago. They break up, shortly before that happened and were convicted of murder. But even so, Lazarus hoped that Blanca would visit him in jail. Only once, to know how he was.

  - "But she did not go, Bucephalus."

  The cat is sitting at the table, in front of Lazarus. He has taken to position himself in that strategic place every time his owner sits down to eat. Now do not look away from the griddle breast.

  - We have a courtship for more than four years. Fuck, Bucephalus! Do you know what four years are?

  The cat moves the tail from left to right once, like a black whip.

  He does not know what happened with Blanca. And he does not intend to call her either. He wants his memories to disappear ... Although during his fifteen years in prison he thought about her continuously.

  - "I'm not the same as before, and neither is she. She did not want me when I was Chief Inspector, so, imagine now."

  He has just lost his appetite, so he offers the remaining breast to Bucephalus. The cat licks it with shyness and then gives delicate bites.

  Lazarus leaves his feline friend eating on the table and returns to lock himself in his office. And it is that Lazarus is obsessive. He is unable to disconnect. His mind never gives him a break moment, not even when he sleeps. Maybe that's why it was one of the best, if not the best.

  While he was eating his grilled breast, he kept thinking about the same thing. Lazarus takes the letter he found between the pages of Danielle Steel's book, "Decisive Encounter", and looks at the final "S."

  Lazarus has an idea. Swiftly, he picks up Valentina's third-quarter math notebook and passes through the pages until he finds the scribbled heart. VALENTINA AND SUPERRMAN.

  Before, he did not give importance but now observe better.

  - "Superrman" -he reads- Why does it have two R's?"

  Lazarus doubted that Valentina could not write Superman. The name of the famous superhero is now very common: there are movies, comics, books and TV ads with products of this character.

  -Superman -he reread again-. With two Rs ...

  His heart skipped a beat, have an idea, an idea so logical, simple and consistent that cannot be wrong.

  He enters again in the URL https://www.infielex.com. Once again, he indicates that he is of legal age and meets the registration form. This time, he clicks on NEW CLIENT and fills in the information requested, indicating the number of his credit card. The monthly fee for using InfieleX is thirty-five Euros. Lazarus gladly pays it with the reserve that remains in the bank. In the user name, type SUPERRMAN. Then, type his password.

  Click on REGISTER, but a pop-up window appears:

  ERROR

  The username SUPERMAN already belongs to someone.

  Please, use a different one.

  -15-

  Marta has just taken a shower. She has put on a summer blue linen shirt and comfortable short jeans. Go down the stairs to the living room while continuing to think about the last conversation with Lazarus. What made him believe that her daughter could secretly take her credit card?

  She wanted to ask, but the former Chief Inspector did not give him a chance and hung up right away. Marta does not know if it was the best. She prefers to remember Valentina as the obedient, big-hearted girl she always was. Like the girl who ran to her room on stormy nights.

  Marta lies down on the couch and turns on the television. It's almost seven in the afternoon, and she continues without eating. She imagines that by now she must have the coffee and the muffin that had for breakfast on her feet.

  She rests her head on the armrest. She has very long hair, too much. It is uncomfortable. Her ex-husband liked to have her hair like that, but there's no reason to continue having it.

  While changing the TV channel, Marta thinks about everything she did for Patricio. For him, she wore that blonde hair, put silicone implants on her until she reached a size 95 B cup, and because of him, she stayed in shape, going to spinning for an hour a day, five days a week.

  But as much as she took care of herself, he knows that a 43-year-old woman cannot compete with a girl of 26. Patricio divorced and left with a 26-year-old student. He, who is over 50 years old.

  - What an asshole! -she thinks, by pressing the off button.

  She does not want to watch TV, does not want anything. She only feels disgusted with her implants, and wish she could tear them out and throw them away ... Even the house disgusts her.

  - "Too big, so empty ..."

  She is not happy there anymore. There is no point in continuing to live in it. Maybe she should put it on sale and ...

  The sound of the bell brings it back to reality.

  -16-

  - "Sorry that I came without warning" - the former Chief Inspector explains when entering the cottage-, but everything has come up very quickly."

  - "Does not matter." -Marta closes the front door and turns to Lazarus. - "You have left me worried before, you know? Why did you tell me about the credit card?"

  - "Ma'am, I do not want to tell you yet. -That is a situation that Lazarus foresaw before arriving. - "I'll tell you everything, but only when I'm sure."

  Marta crosses her arms. It shows that she is angry. So, get to the point, Lazarus does not have time for that.

  - "Did Valentina have a computer of her own?"

  The woman changes her posture and, as if she does not know what to do with her hands, and puts them in her pockets.

  - "No ... We only have one computer." - All this begins to puzzle to her.

  - "Does it matter if I search?" -Without waiting for an answer, Lazarus heads for the spiral stairs. He already knows where to find the PC.

  But Marta grabs him by the shirt and stops him.

  - "Tell me what happens!" -Her harsh tone soon becomes supplication. - "Please..."

  Lazarus lowers the only step that has climbed and put the hands on her shoulders, delicately. Try to reassure her. The woman is having a very bad time.

  - "They are just hypothesis, ma'am, but I think your daughter liked to make friends in chats."

  - "Impossible" -Marta gives a start. - "My Valentina would never do that. She ... She was my girl ..."

  - "A girl who did not have friends. And a girl who used the chats to try to make them." -Lazarus puts the cards on the table. - "Why did you not tell me? Why did not she tell me that, in high school, she did not get along with her classmates?

  Marta puts her hands to her face. Start crying like a girl. The lady goes to the luxurious white leather sofa in the living room and falls off on the couch. Lazarus takes a seat next to her.

  - "I went to talk to the principal of the institute, you know? - Marta wipes her tears with the back of her h
and. - "I also spoke with the counselor. We thought about changing it downtown, but my Valentina did not want to ... She was very reluctant to change, you know? And she only had one more year to finish ESO. So, we chose to hold one course more ..."

  Marta raises her feet to the sofa and shrinks. Form a ball with her body.

  - "I should have taken her out of that Institute ... I was an idiot ... I should ..."

  Lazarus approaches Marta and hugs her. Feel her body shudder like a girl's.

  - "Do not be sorry, ma'am." -Marta curls her head on his shoulder. Lazarus strokes her long golden hair with a fatherly gesture. - "You ... You could not know ..."

  One minute passes and, little by little, Marta recovers part of her composure. Finally, she lays on the sofa. Her face is wet with tears.

  - "I'm sorry, Inspector, what a show I'm giving you!"

  - "Do not worry." -Lazarus stands up. - "I'm going to check the computer, okay? If you need me, I'm upstairs."

  -17-

  Lazarus starts the computer. The PC starts much faster than his. Lazarus reads the equipment specifications: An Intel i7 at 4.2 Ghz, 16 gigabytes of RAM, two Terabytes capacity, a GTX Titan graphics card, and a liquid cooling system.

  - "Good rocket! -Lazarus thinks that someone (probably Valentina's father) dedicates to graphic design.

  Without losing more time, double click on the only installed browser: Mozilla Firefox. Cross his fingers and go to its browsing history. For his luck, it has not been erased.

  - "Great!"

  A list appears of all the websites visited. Lazarus descends with the mouse until arriving at the history of the past year. There is no sign of the InfieleX website, although it finds other pages of chats.

  Swiftly, extract the notepad from the pocket of his jeans and write down the address of the websites:

  https://www.chatyoung.es

  https://www.girlsandboys21.com

  https://www.hookuponline.es

  Lazarus accesses the web pages but finds that they are sporadic chats. One enters, writes a username and starts chatting. No password, no previous registration. That easy.

  Lazarus has a suspicion. Could it be that Valentina knew her Superrman through one of those chats? And could that Superman be reconquered, in pursuit of preserving his anonymity, an InfieleX?