Ink and a Slanted Hand

Chapter 10

The closing of the first act came, as real disasters usually do, disguised as a quiet day.

Irene woke up without the sense of urgency that had accompanied her for the past week, almost with the momentary illusion that life could return to a normal rhythm. Castel had already left—a short note on the kitchen table, "Meeting with the gallery. I'll be back at noon. D.”And the apartment, silent and bathed in morning light, seemed to him for the first time a space of his own, not just a borrowed refuge.

He arrived at the consulting firm early, with a coffee in hand and a renewed determination to treat the day like any other. Ivo greeted her from his desk with a restrained gesture, still charged with the tension of the last few days, but with something like hope appearing in his expression: Renata Ibarra's letter had arrived that morning by email, on official letterhead and a signature that confirmed, unambiguously, fourteen months of legitimate employment.

"I sent it to Detective Castel," Ivo said, as Irene stopped by his desk. I hope that this closes, at least, that part of the suspicion.

"I hope so, too. "And I meant it. The guilt he had felt after Renata's call had not diminished; if anything, it had grown up during the night, fueled by the image of Ivo checking his lock five times before sleeping, terrified by a suspicion that, increasingly, seemed unjustified.

The morning passed with an almost suspicious normality: two sessions with patients who had nothing to do with the case, administrative paperwork, a brief call from Castel confirming that he had received the documentation from Yerevan and that he was verifying it more calmly. For the first time in days, Irene felt like she was breathing without the constant weight of vigilance on her shoulders.

The disaster came at three o'clock in the afternoon, in the form of a call from Castel himself, his voice strained in a way that Irene had not heard before, not even in the most dangerous moments of the previous week.

"I need you to come to the police station." Now.

"What happened?"

"They found a body this morning. A woman, thirty years old, the same characteristics as the previous ones. A pause, the sound of something hitting a table, perhaps a fist. Irene, they killed her last night. While you and I were in the apartment checking maps. While Ivo Sandoval was, according to the access records of his building, locked in his apartment all night.

The relief Irene had felt during the morning crumbled suddenly, replaced by a cold nausea that rose from her stomach.

"Then it wasn't him.

"Or you have an accomplice." Or we are completely suspicious. Castel's voice sounded fractured, as if the weight of the case had finally found a crack in his usual control. Come to the police station. There's something in the scene that you need to see.

He drove with his hands clenched on the steering wheel, the city blurring around him as his mind went over, repeatedly, every assumption he had built over the past week. If it wasn't Ivo, who? Someone from the art gallery, any names on the guest lists that they hadn't yet thoroughly researched? Or someone much closer, someone whose name he hadn't even considered because the very closeness made him invisible to suspicion?

He found Castel in a room of the police station he had not seen before, smaller than his Internal Affairs office, with photographs of the crime scene spread out on a metal table. His face, when he looked up, had a pallor that Irene did not know.

"The victim's name was Renata Ibarra.

The name fell on Irene like a physical blow. "Renata... the woman from Yerevan? The one who called yesterday?

"The same. Castel slid a photograph over to her, and despite years of professional training watching crime scenes, Irene felt her stomach churn as she recognized the familiar pattern: the decorative ligatures, the careful arrangement of the body, an open book on her chest. He flew in from Yerevan last night. His flight landed at nine o'clock. She was found this morning in a hotel near the airport, with fragments of a novel on her chest.

"Why was he here?" She had no connection to the case, beyond yesterday's call.

"That's the question that has kept me awake all morning. Castel ran his hands over his face, a gesture of genuine exhaustion. I checked his phone, with the family's permission. He received an anonymous message two days ago, asking him to travel to "clarify in person" Ivo Sandoval's situation with his former employer. Someone quoted you here, Irene. Someone who knew she was going to call you, who knew her testimony would change the course of the investigation.

The weight of involvement fell on her with devastating clarity. "That means that whoever writes the letters knew, before we did, that Renata was going to confirm Ivo's alibi. He knew that his testimony would cause us to doubt him as a prime suspect.

"And he decided to eliminate her before he could do it alive. Or, if we think of it another way—" Castel paused for a moment, arranging his thoughts. He decided to use it to reinforce the exact opposite. Because now, with Renata dead in an identical pattern to the rest of the victims, while Ivo was, according to all records, locked in his apartment with no verifiable alibi for that specific stretch of the night...

"It's going to look like he shut her up. That he summoned her here and killed her to prevent her testimony from exonerating him.

"Exactly.

Irene slumped into the chair in front of the table, her mind working at full speed, rearranging each piece of the puzzle in this devastating new light. If the killer had orchestrated Renata's death specifically to incriminate Ivo more strongly, then the entire pattern of suspicion they had built over the last week was not the result of an organic investigation, but of a carefully calculated manipulation by someone who knew every move they made, every doubt they sowed, every piece of evidence they gathered.