Читать книгу Crocodile Tears онлайн

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This life is not the one she imagined, and she seeks comfort in her work, the language of the reports makes her feel in her element, protected, calm. Words like suspect, accused, crime, victim, corpse, firearm, sharp implement and exit wound shelter her with their familiarity, make her feel useful, needed, make her think she’s doing what needs to be done.

She likes wading through this paperwork, sprinkled with technical terms and acronyms; in this familiar bureaucracy she feels like the tarnished but honest heroine of a moral fable, the mediocre woman who has to hack her way through the maze to reach the tower of the evil wizard and bring him to justice. Leonilda Lima may feel disillusioned, may have witnessed plenty of acts and attitudes that make her feel disappointed with life and even with her profession (and she will surely witness more), but she believes in Justice. With a capital J.

On her third coffee, she finally manages to concentrate. She goes back to the beginning and reads the first reports, simple sentences full of terms she recognizes, hints she decodes, questions that challenge her to find an answer. You might imagine the specific details of each case would disturb her routine because they require her to think about everything each time, but although she feels pleasure at recognizing those words and she loves her routines, Captain Leonilda Lima prefers to avoid procedures which, through repetition, become mechanical and 47devoid of intelligence. Yes, she loves the routine of her work, but she focuses all her faculties on what she does and exercises a degree of independent judgement, a fact that will be of no little importance for the reader’s future comprehension of this story.