Juan Carlos Corvo woke with a the sound of his digital watch's alarm. Twenty minutes. That was all the time he had to rest before getting back to work on the cases piling up on his desk. He had never had as much work as he had over the past few months.
He stood up, straightened his tie and belt, and headed back to the station. It was eleven-thirty at night, but instead of the place being half-empty, as was usual at that hour, it was packed with officers interviewing the recurring relatives of the missing or following even the slightest possible lead on their computers.
Before going to his desk, he poured himself a coffee and greeted two colleagues who were watching the news on an old CRT television in the break room.
“Did you see this, Corvo?” one of them asked, chewing on a donut.
“The only things I've seen over the last forty hours are reports and the roof of my car,” he replied after taking a sip of his coffee, as bitter as his mood.
“A huge hurricane just formed in the middle of the world's largest desert. Scientists say it's the largest and most violent ever recorded. The good news is that they estimate it won't reach any city with the same intensity.”
“That's good. At least now we know we're not the only ones going through hell.”
Without saying anything else, he left the kitchen and went straight to his desk. On the way, he couldn't help glancing past the general reception counters to see if Mrs. Ferraro had returned. She and her son had been there since the previous night, demanding that her husband's case be treated as a disappearance, and had left just a few hours before the deadline was reached. He hadn't been able to say anything due to protocol, but ever since he had interviewed the children and heard the red-haired boy's absurd story, he had taken a particular interest in Mr. Lorenzo's case, having one or two potentially related reports pulled up even before the seventy-two-hour deadline had passed. Now that it was officially a disappearance, he could focus more on his findings… Too bad it wasn't the only case on his hands.
“Corvo,” another officer called from the hallway just as he sat down in his chair. “You have two new ones in the interrogation rooms.”
“So you decided to take Micheleangelo Ferraro and Tomás Grullón to the emergency room. Could you explain to me how they ended up in such condition?”
“It was an accident,” Hugo replied, nervously fidgeting with his hands on the interrogation table.
Corvo still hadn't received the medical details regarding the boys' condition. He only knew that it had to be serious. Of course, he couldn't reveal his lack of information, and he still needed the people being interrogated to give him more details.
“Does this accident have anything to do with how they ended up on the roof of that building?”
“…Maybe.”
“I don't know. We found them like that,” Sarah had said earlier. “But we found them in the alley, not on any rooftop.”
“The owner of the business on the ground floor saw them come down, but not go up. He claims there was no way they could have gone upstairs without him seeing them.”
“Like I said, I don't know anything about that building. I only know that we found them in the alley.”
“However, the owner claims he saw three young men and two girls. Two of the boys were injured. One was being carried by a red-haired boy and a smaller girl with short, almost boyish hair. The other was being carried by a teenage girl with chin-length hair. Do those descriptions sound familiar?”
“Yes,” Hugo said before Corvo could even finish the question. “I was helping María carry Tomás. Sarah was supporting Mica, Micheleangelo, since he could still walk.”
“Your companion claims that you found them in the alley. Why would she do that?”
“Ah!” he exclaimed, now even more nervous. “W-Well… She found me in the alley. I asked for help, and we went upstairs to find Mica and Tomás.”
“So you went up and back down without the owner seeing you more than once?”
“We used the fire escape.”
“That building doesn't have a fire escape.”
“…Well… I don't know. Are we talking about the same building?”
“The department assigned four officers to watch over you after your mother's demands,” Corvo continued to Sarah. “She was very frightened, thinking you were a target of whoever was responsible for the disappearances in the city. Even so, you managed to sneak out without any of them seeing you.”
“That sounds more like your problem than mine,” Sarah replied without changing her serious expression. Corvo let out a small, sarcastic laugh at the clearly venomous comment.
“If you were in danger, why did you decide to leave?”
“My mother is the one who thinks I'm in danger. I know perfectly well that nobody is after me.”
“And what makes you so certain?”
Sarah didn't answer.
“Do you know that one of your companions thinks you're responsible for the disappearances?”
Sarah held his gaze, and Corvo couldn't help thinking that this girl was hiding a secret the size of an elephant, and just as dark as the disappearances themselves. But for some reason, he found it impossible to imagine that a simple teenage girl could be responsible for so much chaos. Finally, she looked away and sighed.
“If it was Hugo,” she began, “I think you may have misunderstood him. He has a rather strange sense of humor and doesn't know which subjects to respect and which ones not to.”
“Why would he joke with a police officer about something like that?”
“That's what I mean.”
“I can see this isn't going anywhere,” Corvo declared as he faced Hugo, tired of him refusing to abandon his story about using a nonexistent fire escape. “Is any of this related to that fantasy world you told us about the other day? The one Sarah Gutierrez used to make people disappear?”
“Ah, that? No, officer… I wasn't in my right mind… I was… Uhh…”
“Do you know that joking or lying during an interrogation could be considered obstruction of justice?”
“No, sir. I mean, yes. It's just that… I… Maybe I imagined the whole thing.”
“You imagined it?”
“Yeah, you know. The stress of exams and… Normal teenage stuff.”
“You're telling me it's normal for you to imagine… No, to be so certain that someone creates worlds with their mind to transport people and make them disappear? Certain enough to use it during a police interrogation?”
“… Ma-aybe?”
“Kid, I need to be clear with you. The previous interrogation was a formality. That girl's mother, Sarah's mother, suspected that you were doing something bad to her daughter. We ourselves treated it like a game, the paranoid nonsense of a stressed mother. I conducted your interview and, instead of getting annoyed with you for talking about nonsense, I simply wrote it down in my notebook and left it at that. But everything has changed now, kid. Two of your friends ended up seriously injured in the hospital, another one did last night and fled from there today. On top of that, there are eyewitnesses who saw you at your school yesterday afternoon, when you weren't supposed to be there, at the same time two teachers disappeared and one was found dead.”
Hugo went pale.
“Something tells me you know exactly what I'm talking about, don't you? And yet, none of the officers covering the investigation area says they saw you leave yesterday or arrive today. The officer in charge of the case suspected that you might know something, but now I think I can say for certain that you do.”
Corvo felt sorry for the boy. Just like with Sarah, he didn't believe the young man was capable of any of the things the others suspected. But just like with Sarah, his statements were beginning to undermine that belief.
“Let me give you some advice. Spit it out. Tell us everything you know. I don't think you're guilty, but I do know you know something. Or maybe you even know a lot. Tell me, Hugo, what's going on?”
“I…” Hugo began after several seconds of doing nothing but trembling. “I… I have nothing to say. You wouldn't believe me anyway.”
“When we questioned your mother,” Corvo said to Sarah, who had gone through the last half-dozen questions without wanting to answer anything at all, “we showed her several photographs of students from your school to find out who had been visiting you in the basement of your establishment, so we could identify anyone who might pose a risk to you.”
Sarah watched him without saying anything, but Corvo noticed a reaction in her eyes that, from experience, he could interpret as nervousness.
“She identified the ones you must already know. Micheleangelo, Hugo, Catherine, Jacob, Tomás. But she also said that James Howard was someone she had found you with several times. As you must know, James Howard has disappeared. Likewise, although we have no evidence directly linking him to you, his employee, Mr. Rafael Alicanto, has disappeared. In Hugo's rambling statements, we showed him a photograph of Mr. Rafael, and he identified him by the nickname Mr. No. But he also told us that you
transported
him to that world. Nothing has been heard of him since that day. Is that also one of Hugo's jokes?”
The girl didn't answer, but as Corvo expected, her body did. And much more clearly than he anticipated. Sarah's eyes welled up with tears, and she nearly let one escape.
“I don't think we can get anything else out of them,” Corvo explained to his superior. “They're definitely hiding something. Now, whether they're guilty? I doubt it. I recommend putting an ankle monitor on them to keep them under surveillance, but nothing more… At least for now.”
“So be it, Juan Carlos,” said the potbellied, square-headed officer sitting behind the commissioner's desk. “So we're still at square one?”
“I don't know if I'd say square one, but it's true that I wouldn't dare say we've made any progress. By the way, sir, I need us to locate the other two kids. Jacob Jeffer and Catherine Moran. Also, Hugo Rodríguez mentioned another girl, a María. We only have the description given by the shopkeeper who called us when he saw them come down from the building. Younger than the others and with short, boyish hair.”
“I'll put Jeffrey on it.”
“Very well. I'll go out as soon as I can to interrogate Micheleangelo Ferraro and Tomás Grullón at the hospital.”
“About that, Juan Carlos. We've just received the hospital report. Tomás Grullón has multiple broken bones and one leg that is almost unusable.”
“Were they beating him? I can't see those kids lynching one of their own, but…”
“If they beat him, they did it with a wrecking ball. Repeatedly. However, that's not the strangest part. Micheleangelo has an injury the doctors couldn't fully explain. Four severe burns, two in front and two in back, each pair following the same trajectory. But what's concerning are his stomach and liver. They had to perform an exploratory laparotomy to look for evidence of internal bleeding because of the fever and the severe pain. They suspect peritonitis. He must be in the operating room now.”
“Well, I can see I have nothing to do at the hospital at the moment… Can I see the reports?”
“Of course. I already had them left on your desk.”
“Very well, Chief. I'll get to that and…”
“I'd recommend you get some sleep, Juan Carlos. You look terrible. How long has it been since you left here? Two, three days?”
“I already slept for twenty minutes in the car. I'll do it again after I read the reports if necessary.”
“That's not sleeping, kid. Remember what happened to you ten years ago. Anxiety and stress can play very nasty tricks on men. And you're not the same age you were back then.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but I can't just go to sleep while someone might need me.”
“Even God took a break, Juan Carlos. I'm just saying.”
“Anything else?”
The commissioner rolled his eyes and dismissed him with a wave of his hand before returning his attention to the computer. Juan Carlos Corvo left without another word. He had a case to close.