“In Herculaneum,” the professor said, “they excavated tons of compacted human waste from a septic tank, and so were able to establish what the citizens ate, like dormice and sea urchins. It’s funny how we learn about people from the shit they leave behind.”
That was the last time I saw the professor alive — at least literally speaking, since the following day I heard him, through the partly open door of his faculty center office, speaking to none other than Professor Umali. I couldn’t make out exactly what they were saying — and the fear suddenly seized me that it was about my perfidy in having worked for Umali a few years earlier. I began constructing my tortured defense — then realized that they were having a casual conversation, almost as if Calixto Umali was back to being the professor’s most brilliant and respectful pupil. One of these days I’ll ask Umali about that unexpected visit, like who called whom first and what was on the agenda. I might even wheedle some work from him again, and feel guilt-free now that the professor’s gone, but we’ll see.
Two mornings later I got a text from Jo-Anne, our departmental secretary, telling me that the professor had died. What, where, how, why? I texted back quickly. I’d just come out of the shower and hadn’t even pulled my pants on — but even before Jo-Anne responded, a flurry of ideas ran through my mind. Chiefly, that Lalaine somehow had something to do with his death. At the very least, she had driven him to it.
Jo-Anne’s text seemed to confirm my suspicions: Accidental fall into hole behind house. Hit head. That was no simple hole, that was the septic tank, and yes you could lose your footing on the edge, fall in, and hit your head on the hollow-block floor and get a nasty bump, but it wouldn’t kill you — it just didn’t look deep enough — unless you were hit again and again.
I could just see it happening: Lalaine luring the professor to the backyard, then Dencio coming from behind with a shovel and whacking the old man over the head with it, jumping into the pit to slug the professor some more and finish the job. I was sure that Lalaine had texted Dencio, then given him that Help, he’s going to kill me look, and that Dencio quickly figured out the side benefits of compassion and had mustered the temerity to do her bidding. But if they’d killed the old man there, why not just leave his body in the pit and cover it with earth and concrete? Too obvious; I’d often noticed Lalaine watching those true-crime and CSI-type shows on TV, where the scheming wife and her lover-accomplice always get caught. “The soil’s too fresh,” the detective would always mutter, pawing on bent knees at an obviously off-color spot.
“We drove him to the hospital,” Lalaine told me that same afternoon, in the very same gazebo where I had been sitting with the professor just two days earlier. I had to go to that house, I had to hear it from her own mouth, I wanted to see Lalaine twitch and hear her sputter, trying to explain away the terrible truth. “It happened late last night, around one a.m. I woke up to get a glass of water, I’m always thirsty being pregnant, and he was gone from his bed — actually the sofa in the living room, where he now sleeps, or was now sleeping... Anyway, the door was open and I looked out and — I don’t know how, but I could feel where he was, what he was doing or wanted to do. So I took a flashlight and went to the backyard, calling his name, but there was no answer. And when I looked into that hole in the ground he was already there, unconscious, bleeding. I jumped in to try and pull him out, but I couldn’t... so I called Dencio.”
“Dencio? Why not call me? I’m sure you have my number somewhere.”
“There was no time to look. Dencio lives close by, and I was very afraid. He came, rushed right over, and helped me pull my poor husband out of the pit, and we brought him to Labor Hospital but it was too late. He died in my arms, in the back of the car. You know — he was still alive when I found him.”
I didn’t know where to begin tearing away at her lies. Dead from a fall into a six-foot pit? Okay, sure. Dencio so conveniently nearby? So, all right, Krus na Ligas was just five minutes away on a bike, but why not scream to call the neighbors for help, like genuinely distraught wives are supposed to do? Driving to Labor Hospital? Why not the UP infirmary just a few streets away — not that they were good for much more than dispensing Tylenol? Again, why drive anywhere at all? Why not just let their victim writhe to his death at the bottom of that infernal pit? Perhaps she suffered a pang of guilt watching him lie there, looking back at her with How could you? in his glazed-over eyes. Did Dencio drive the Ford Escape at full speed, or did he take his time cruising out of the UP gates and onto C. P. Garcia, maybe stopping for a burger in a twenty-four-hour McDonald’s along the way?
And now that I gazed at Lalaine in her proper widow’s somber dress, a deep-blue linen outfit with a modest neckline that she might have worn to a dinner with other faculty wives at the Executive House had she felt up to it, I didn’t know whether to marvel at, or be appalled by, her incredible composure. Her simple words were inflected with emotion and what I had mistaken for sweet naïveté, that’s how dangerous she was. I realized that this was going to be a bit more difficult case to crack, that I had to be equally deft and skillful in probing the mind and motives of the widow Sanvictores.
It was the audacity of her next gambit that astounded me. Placing her hand so carefully that her fingertips just barely touched my knee, and with no suggestion of malice or enticement in her demeanor whatsoever, the widow Sanvictores glanced at the parked Escape and asked: “Would you like to buy my husband’s car? I need to go away for a while and could use the cash. I just realized I have very little money, and it will take time to go through his papers. You understand, of course — about the car, all the memories. I don’t drive, and... and I know you like it. I’ve seen how you look at it.”
My throat went dry. Of course she had seen me look, many times, at the car, at herself. Unlike my girlfriends, she knew what I wanted, and was prepared to give it, at least in stages. “I don’t have much money,” I began to whine. “I’m just a graduate student, and the Escape is such a nice car.” She or someone — maybe Dencio? — had taken the trouble to wash the SUV that morning, so that it sparkled more than usual, enough to give me a headache. But I managed to pull myself together and pop the question: “How much do you want for it? Maybe my father can help. He needs a new car, or a newer one, anyway.” I covered my mouth with my hand to disguise my desperation.
She beamed and picked up a pencil from the gazebo table — I could see lots of numbers on a pad of paper, so she must’ve been working on some calculations when I called to say I was coming by — and wrote a number: 365. The buzz in my head got stronger. Surely this was a mistake. Didn’t she know how much a 2005 Ford Escape XLS was worth? Had she even bothered to ask around or bought one of those car magazines at the pharmacy checkout for thirty pesos, scanned the ads, and realized she could make herself an extra hundred thousand or two? I know; I’ve looked. I buy those magazines and dream about Audis and Alfa Romeos, but that’s because I’m a regular guy.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“I’m a simple woman,” Lalaine said. “I just want a quick sale. I’m sure your dear father can help — but if you don’t want the car, Dencio probably knows people who—”