The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

Julio had an unkind thought: Well, so much for preserving the crime scene.

Two portly senior police officers walked warily toward the helicopter. Both saluted Chief Inspector Ordóñez as he stepped down from the chopper. He returned their salutes with a casual wave of his hand. Julio remembered seeing him in uniform only once, when Fidel Castro, a year or so before, had come to Montevideo and Ordóñez had been head of the protection detail.

“This is Señor Artigas,” Chief Inspector Ordóñez said. “You will answer any questions he puts to you.”

Both of the policemen saluted. Julio responded with a nod and offered them his hand.

“I ordered that nothing be touched?” Ordóñez questioned.

“We have covered the bodies, Chief Inspector, but everything else is exactly as it was when we first came here.”

Ordóñez met Artigas’s eyes. It was clear to both they were thinking exactly the same thing: The curious had satisfied their curiosity. The crime scene had been trampled beyond use.

Ordóñez gestured with his hand that he be shown.

There were two bodies on a covered veranda. They were covered with heavy black plastic sheeting. Artigas wondered if that was the local version of a body bag or whether the sheeting had just been available and put to use.

A large pool of blood, now dried black, had escaped the plastic over the first body. When, at Ordóñez’s impatient gesture, the plastic sheeting was pulled aside, the reason was clear. This man had died of a gunshot wound to the head. There is a great deal of blood in the head.

And not a pistol round, either, I don’t think. His head had exploded.

The body was dressed in dark blue, almost black, cotton coveralls, the sort worn by mechanics.

What looked like the barrel of a submachine gun was visible in the pool of dried blood. The dead man had fallen on his weapon.

Artigas felt a gentle touch on his arm and looked down to see that Ordóñez was handing him disposable rubber gloves.

“This has been photographed?” Ordóñez asked.

“Yes, Chief Inspector, from many angles.”

Ordóñez squatted and pulled the weapon out from under the body. It was a submachine gun, its stock folded. He held it out for Artigas to see.

“Madsen, right?” he asked.

“Yes,” Artigas said. “That’s the 9mm, I think.”

Ordóñez raised the barrel so that he could see the muzzle, then nodded.

Artigas looked around and saw a glint in the grass just beyond the veranda. He walked to it. It was a cartridge case.

“Have you got a position on this? And photographs?”

“My sergeant must have missed that, señor,” the heftier of the two local police supervisors said and angrily called for the sergeant.

When Artigas went back on the veranda he saw that Ordóñez had replaced the black plastic over the body and had moved ten meters down the veranda, where another police officer was pulling the plastic off another body. This one, too, was dressed in nearly black coveralls.

Another large pool of dried black blood from another exploded head.

As he squatted by the body, Ordóñez looked at Artigas and asked, “What did you see?”

“A cartridge casing. Looks like a 9mm.”

“I wonder where this one’s weapon went to?” Ordóñez asked, studying the body.

He pointed to a disturbance in the blood that could have been the marks left when someone had dragged a weapon from it.

“Looks like somebody took it,” Artigas agreed.