“So I’ve been told. Any indication as to what prompted Juraci to hire Prado?”

“No.”

“Anything else of interest in her papers?”

“A receipt for house keys. Four sets. Made last week by a locksmith named Samuel Arns. He’s got a shop in the strip mall you had to pass in order to get here. We went through this house with a fine-tooth comb and found only three sets. One set was in a drawer in her office. One was in her purse, which the kidnappers left behind. And one was in the purse of one of the maids.”

“And that’s significant because?”

“A theory I have, which I’ll get to in a minute. Let me see. What else did we find? Oh, yeah, the footprint.”

“Footprint?”

“Juraci must have heard them coming. She locked herself in her bedroom. But the door was flimsy. He smashed it with his foot. In doing so, he was kind enough to leave us an impression of his sole and heel.”

“He?”

“No woman has feet that big, not even my wife. Once he was inside, Juraci panicked and lost control of her bladder. We found urine on the rug and on the sheets. We figure he tossed her onto the bed, threw himself on top of her to hold her down, and injected her with whatever was in the syringe.”

“ Tossed her? Is the victim a lightweight?”

“Juraci? Hardly. There are pictures of her all over the house. She weighs ninety kilos if she weighs a gram.”

“Big guy, then.”

“Big feet at least. And strong. We recovered a few fibers from the sheets. Looks like he was wearing a wool sweater.”

“Any sign of blood?”

“Not in the bedroom. The kitchen is full of it. That’s where they killed the maids.”

“The bodies are still here?”

“Still here. I’ve got an ambulance on call to bring them to the IML, but I figured you’d want to see them first.”

“You figured right.”

The IML, Instituto Medico Legal, was where Sao Paulo’s criminal autopsies took place.