Theft of the Train to the Clouds (by Gabriel Zas)

"You're going to go with that bitch, are not you?" Julia Mastroniani told her husband, Ruben Gual, in a long tone of reproach and fury denoted.
"Yes," he replied, shouting, as he carried suitcases to the front door of the house they shared in Salta Capital.
_ If you cross that door, you will not enter here any more.
_ Can you do me a favor. Carolina is not checking things like you.
_ Motherfucker! Did you think I was not going to notice? When did he send you that little letter, eh?
The aggressive tone of the discussion increased more with each word emitted.
"When I slept with her," he replied with a mocking sketch staring at her. "I have better sex with her than with you. Lately, you put me any cheap excuse not to sleep with me, and you with twelve years of marriage, you will not deny me anything.
"Twelve years of crap!" Julia scolded him with impotence. Then, in a more calm voice, he added:
How long have you been with that little girl, eh?
_ More respect. Minita sos vos, you do not even know how to boil water, Julia.
_ Fuck the whore that gave you!
But Ruben repressed the insult by laughing with lust. He took the suitcase and before setting foot in the street, said:
_ I've been with her since before I met you.
And he laughed in his face with contempt. He slammed the door and climbed into a remis, which had been waiting for him for a few minutes.
Julia was a sea of ​​tears. At last, when she could recover, she went upstairs to the room they had shared together, opened the first drawer of the dresser, extracted an elegant case covered with blue velvet, opened it and was completely empty. After the discovery, he uttered a deep cry of rage. She began to roll all the furniture, vases, clothes and belongings everywhere, invaded by a feeling of uncontrollable fury. What he had stored in the inside of the case was a fine necklace of 24-carat gold, which Ruben gave her the day they were married, the only gift he gave her in twelve years of marriage. Undoubtedly, he was going to give it to his lover and took it away without telling her anything.
Julia Mastroniani had already been suspicious of the infidelity by several antiquated attitudes of her, now, ex-husband. That morning, before the discussion, in an oversight of Ruben, she checked her drawer and found a note from the lover, that Carolina, who invited him to move with her. He lived in a small town in Salta, away from the city and 20 minutes from the La Polvorilla viaduct. You would get there with the Train to the Clouds, where it would descend at the last station (it was the Polvorilla viaduct, precisely) and she would wait there at 5 o'clock, according to the letter received.
Rubén embarked in the Train to the Clouds in the station San Antonio de los Cobres. He placed the bundle in the trunk, above the seat; Sat down and leaned back comfortably on the armchair. The trip to the viaduct La Polvorilla, which consisted of a beautiful architecture of the last century, lasted an hour. The training started strictly at 15:30. At 16, Ruben took from his things a painkiller that he had to take for a pain in his neck, swallowed it and lay down again placidly, falling asleep almost instantly. It woke up at 16:30, just after crossing the viaduct and arriving at the terminal station. He got up and, as he was about to take the bag, he noticed that it was slightly open. He was thoughtful because he remembered clearly that when he opened it to take the medicine, he closed it again. But perhaps he assumed that he was mistakenly convinced of a false idea and dismissed the matter. When he checked his belongings ... He discovered that he lacked the gold necklace. He gave a quick intervention to the police, who acted immediately and did not let anyone go up or down the train.
"Then, according to his statement," Captain Riestra said to Mr. Gual_, he fell asleep at about 16, after taking a painkiller for his pain and woke up just a few minutes ago when the train arrived on the platform.
"Is that what I said, no?" Replied Ruben Gual reluctantly, as he walked incessantly from one side of the car to the other.
_ Then, the robbery took place within that half an hour ... Did you close the suitcase?
_ I kept the remedy and closed it again, yes.
"And you're sure the necklace was there?" Do you remember seeing it?
He gave her a reproachful glance that Captain Riestra understood immediately. And the captain made a great effort to repress a blow that he wanted to punch in his face because of the bad treatment he received from him.
"Why did you bring the necklace?" Riestra asked, a little more appeased.
"It was to be given to somebody," said Mr. Gual, not attenuating his behavior or manners.
_ A lover, right?
_ And you, what car ... What does it matter?
He held an expletive in time to be pronounced.
_ I will take that as a yes.
_ "Drug fucking," whispered in a low voice Mr. Gual_ "I'm sure drowsiness is a side effect and made me sleep like a convict. What a crap. "
But Captain Riestra was able to hear everything he said. An officer interrupted him at that moment.
_ We ordered all the train and all the passengers, as ordered.
_ And?
_ Negative. There is no trace of the necklace.
Mr. Gual rushed forward on both men, completely enraged and out of hand, but managed to reduce it without difficulty and was apprehended for attempting to assault two federal agents.
Lacking ideas, Captain Riestra asked to call Buenos Aires and asked to contact Inspector Sean Dortmund. When the communication was established, Dortmund was remarkably surprised by the origin of the call.
"I did not expect such an honor, Captain Riestra," said the inspector.
Captain Riestra gave a brief summary of the recent events in the Train to the Clouds.
_ Do you investigate a robbery? _ Asked sneering and pleasantly surprised, Dortmund.
_ Yes, confirmed Riestra._ The head of the Federal Robots and Thefts Division is on leave and I was ordered to replace him until his reinstatement. Returning to this strange matter: it is as if the collar had swallowed the earth. And the attitude of Mr. Gual does not help at all.
_ A lover ... _ repeated thoughtfully Sean Dortmund.
"Yes," Riestra replied. "Any ideas?
_ Ask Mr. Gual where he bought the necklace that was the object of the robbery.
_ Wait, do not cut.
And Captain Riestra obeyed. He returned in a few minutes.
"He said it was from the wife," he said, "with whom he curiously argued this morning before leaving.
"And a scorned woman is capable of anything," Dortmund answered intelligently.
_ What do you mean, exactly?
_ Everything is clear to me. They will never find the necklace aboard the Train to the Clouds or in the possession of any of the passengers because it was never there, Captain Riestra. It was a skillfully planned and executed plan. Mr. Gual's wife suspected that her husband had an affair with another lady, but he can not confirm it with specific evidence. His suspicions fall on a certain woman, and he must have some very solid arguments to support them, and then he writes a small missive pretending to be Mr. Gual's mistress. And this leads to another irrefutable point: the existence of a royal letter by the royal mistress. His wife must have discovered it before he read it and decided to make the change. She doubts what she will wear, but she knows her husband thoroughly and plans a meeting between him and her lover, where she asks Mr. Gual, if he really loved her as he swore to her, what a proof of that unconditional love that she woke up In it, he will give him that necklace of which he spoke to him so much. He surrenders to his wishes and grabs the necklace behind his wife's back, but she observes him and it is a fact that Mr. Gual completely ignores. In an oversight of her, she retrieves it and puts it in one of the pockets of her outfit and that's when she immediately pretends to find the letter she wrote and replaced with the original. Then the discussion broke out between them.
But apart from his wife retrieving the necklace from inside his suitcase after Mr. Gual had kept it (important point), he ignores two other events: the first, that his wife knows someone who works on the Train at Clouds and makes sure that he sells a ticket for the time of 15:30, and also that he open the suitcase while he sleeps. As he certainly did not check his luggage again before leaving for the station, he convinced himself that the necklace was in his possession. When he woke up and saw the suitcase open, he would be convinced of a robbery that never really happened.
And second, because the wife knew that at sixteen, Mr. Gual was rigorously taking a pain reliever for her cervical pains, she replaced it with a low-risk but effective sleeping pill to fulfill her purpose, which was only to confirm her suspicions and Ridiculing her poor husband in passing. I intuit that he achieved both goals with undisputed success.
Captain Riestra was speechless, impressed by the surprising account of Inspector Dortmund. He cut off the communication without any word and checked the bottle where Mr. Gual kept the painkiller and found that it was sleeping tablets, of a form and size almost identical to the remedy in question. After the find, he went immediately to the house of Mr. Gual to see Mrs. Mastroniani. He explained Dortmund's detailed explanation of the facts, and she drew the collar tautly from the pocket of her dress. Captain Riestra was perplexed to see him.
Sean Dortmund was right to solve the case without being present at the scene. From two precise data, he was able to fray the background frame and reconstruct the events chronologically as they happened.
It was absolutely It is true that a woman who is despised is capable of anything, but it is also true that a man is also capable of anything.