Lost: Casa Perdida [Completed]

The Adversary Within

The Narrator

Next-Day Afternoon

Bernardo Valenciano sat at Felipe's desk after Felipe had called him. For the first few minutes, after he entered the room, Felipe was wrapping up some business. He was conveying some information concerning the missing Sri Lankan kids, over the phone, to a lieutenant of a distant station.

While Felipe occupied himself with that, Bernardo looked at the photograph that Claire took of the man she had pursued the previous day. Hmmm, he was smart enough to know that someone was taking pictures of him. He has managed to cover half of his face with his sleeves.

"Thank you very much, Tristan," Felipe said as he ended the call. Tristan was the person Felipe deputized for the task of dealing with finding the remaining two of the five missing Sri Lankan children: Shifaly Udawatte and Avanthi Bandaranaike.

Changing his mind on his earlier plans, after everyone returned to Roboré to help with the rescue effort, Felipe had decided that it was better if the best of his staff - Luismar, Pablo, Bernardo, and Luismar - work together with him instead of being branched out on various cases. In this way, he thought, the most pressing matters - that Felipe took on - would be handled efficiently. At the same time, the other problems won't have overqualified police officers dealing with them. The most pressing matter for him then was one thing: finding who murdered Kantuta Wilka, Amor, and who was responsible for the disappearance of the two policemen. To lead the case for the missing Sri Lankan children, Felipe appointed Tristan, a promising rookie.

And to deal with the other situations, including confirming what happened to those children from Wolfgang Academy, Felipe assigned other officers. He wasn't sure if the Wolfgangers would have survived the flood, but he thought it would be better if he confirmed for good. Claire Dakota had been insisting incessantly before she had disappeared, that the police put more effort into finding the children, whom she believed to be out there in the jungle. Headmistress Longhorn - who had been staying for days in Santa Cruz, because there was no officer available to liaison with her - pleaded the same. She couldn't believe that the children were dead, even if police divers had found no remnants of the supposed 'camp' in the bank (former campground) of the flood's channel. Both Claire and Longhorn thought that the kids were out there in the jungle.

On top of that, Felipe knew that the United States is very tenacious to protect its citizens. So even if he ignored Claire and Longhorn, eventually US diplomats would request Bolivian authorities to search for the children, and through that way, Felipe would still have to search for the children. So, Felipe thought it was better to assign another rising officer to look for the children. And for that case, just like the rest of the other cases, he had appointed a trustworthy lower-ranking officer.

"Good news, Bernardo! We've found a breakthrough in the Sri Lankan children's case."

"What do you mean, sir?"

A clicking sound began, startling Felipe.

"The Fax machine," Bernardo pointed out.

A sheet came out of the machine. Bernardo grabbed the paper and handed it over to Felipe.

"Precisely what I was looking for. Just hold on while I find something else to help me explain the good news I want to tell you." Felipe went to one of the shelves in the wall and pulled out some files through which he browsed for something. He pulled out files of different sizes and colors and looked through them until he found the one he was looking for: a black, medium-sized one. He opened it and finally found a photograph, which Bernardo, from where he was seated, couldn't see.