Patrícia told Carlos that she needed to see the crime scene with her own eyes, to make sure that Ema was dead. Using the idea of hiding the body in the trunk, she decided to get to the chalet the same way. As they approached the inn, Carlos parked the car in a quiet spot and she hid in her suitcase.

     "You went out alone, you have to come back the same way."

     Once in the chalet's single garage, which was very private and communicated with the interior, he came out of hiding and Carlos, trembling, slipped the key into the lock. He turned it around and slowly opened the door. Ema was in the same place, slumped by the bed, dressed in a thin sweatshirt.

     Patrícia examined her. The slap mark was very obvious and a swelling had formed where she had hit her head. She found another purple mark around her lips strange, but imagined that it was due to the cold: Ema's body was already freezing, the sweatshirt she was wearing was thinly knitted and the room had minimal heating. It didn't even cross her mind why that other stain was there. She tried to check her pulse, with no success:

     "No apparent sign of a pulse!"

     "She's dead, I told you. She didn't even move. Just the way I left her."

     Patrícia has definitely incorporated a character from her writings:

     "In view of the two shots of whiskey, I don't know to what extent my judgment won't be impaired. But let's do what needs to be done. Help me put her to bed."

     There was a cell phone practically under the bed, next to Ema's hand. Patrícia picked it up, intending to check outgoing calls. Carlos asked:

     "Why are you checking at the cell phone?"

     "To find out if she made any calls after you left here."

     He didn't believe in the possibility, emphasizing:

     "But she died! How could she have called?"

     Patrícia clarified:

     "She might not have died yet and managed to call, who knows? But... It's discharged. And we won't have time to look at it now, another time", she concluded, putting her cell phone away in Ema's purse.

     Carlos worried about his cell phone:

     "And how did this cell phone get there?"

     "It must have been on the bedside table and fell to the floor when she hit her head. It was just a coincidence that I was near her hand."

     Patrícia thought they needed to put some warmer clothes on her. The next idea would be that she was killed far away, after a robbery, in some street. They put a heavier coat on her, but luckily for Carlos, Patrícia didn't remove her sweatpants, which would have revealed even more of the marks of sexual violence. Since it was a fine knit, he decided to just put another pair of pants over it, without removing the one Ema was already wearing.

     "Ema wouldn't go out in that thin sweatshirt, would she? It's ready!"

     'Ema, this is too sad. Forgive me', thought Patricia.

     There was an immanent awkwardness between the two of them. Blindly, however, they followed that criminal route together.

     'Ema, what have I done', though Carlos.

     He regretted raping her. However, he thought it prudent to hide it from his lover. Despite the fact that she had agreed to take part in the whole thing — which was already a lot, imagining her accepting all the sordid details of the crime was too much.

     Their entire love life, up until then, had never been within the norms stipulated by society, however, the problem now began to be the law, the criminal law, no longer the civil law. The certainty that they were getting more and more complicated before the law did not stop them from continuing, because a kind of complicity had united them in a silent and cruel pact, so much so that concern for human laws and the inherent moral issues were being peremptorily ignored, especially by Carlos Eduardo.

     They put the biologist in the trunk of the vehicle. It was only then that he became aware of yet another difficulty:

     "Hey, Patrícia, how are you going to get out without being seen if Ema is in the trunk? Better saying! Ema has to leave the hotel. She's the one who stayed, not you. Ema has to get out, and she has to get out alive!"

     "It's true. But I've thought about it!"

     Patrícia quickly searched through the dead woman's things for a hat. She also looked for a pair of sunglasses. They were obligatory items in a city where ultraviolet rays were so lethal because of the problems at the planet's poles (due to ozone layer failures).

     "I found it", she said.

     She tied up her hair, put on a scarf to hide her vast black mane and adjusted the hat. She adjusted her sunglasses:

     "Another cliché: a woman from a distance, wearing a scarf, sunglasses and a hat, is just a woman, they're all the same. I'm not getting out of the car. You go down and fix everything. The dark film on the glass will help hide me. Be quick!"

     They packed the suitcases — Ema's and Carlos', and put them in the back seat, since the trunk was criminally busy. They checked everything, everything was in order, no clues. The left. At the gate, Carlos stopped, got down and settled the bill. He returned quickly and they left.

     "They ask if you enjoyed your stay. I said yes, but that we'd decided to spend the night in Magallanes until we left early tomorrow morning."

     "Great! See how attentive everyone is? We can't afford to be foolish."

     On the way, a slight traffic jam made them apprehensive. Worse, a police blitz, outside the limits of the urban area.

     "Patrícia... What if they decide to stop us and check the trunk?"

     "Look, I shouldn't say this, given all the barbarities we're doing, but start praying. I suspect, however, that God won't want to listen to us."

     Carlos shuddered even more when he saw one of the policemen using a breathalyzer on one of the drivers. Both he and Patrícia were drunk.

     One by one, the cars passed, in single file. Some were stopped and inspected, others were instructed to move on. Others were given breathalyzer tests.

     "Carlos, the window film! Open the windows, quickly! Let's show our faces, otherwise they'll want to stop us to see who's inside."

     Almost on top of the magazine, he managed to do what she asked, as he had fumbled to find the electric window buttons. As they passed the policeman, he made an attempt to stop them.

     "Now everything is fucked!"

     However, with the windows down, the police officer was able to get a better look at the passengers and, not suspecting anything, ordered them to follow. Patrícia felt a sense of relief:

     "Geez! That was close!" she said, then pointed the way with her index finger. "That way, Carlos, on the right. Go!"

     They had already agreed where to dump the body. A few days earlier, Patrícia had been in a deserted place. They put the car there.

     A few minutes later, they reached a winding dirt road on the way up a mountain.

     "Stop there!"

     He obeyed. Patrícia guided him:

     "I'm going to get out of the car, I'm going to stand on the bend down there to see if anyone comes. Keep an eye on the other end of the road and... then..."

     She didn't even have the courage to say it, but she did, only implicitly:

     "Do what needs to be done!"

    He drove down the road quickly and, from where he was standing, he could see her a long way off. The days, due to their proximity to the South Pole, were very long at that time of year, lasting more than seventeen hours. Anyway, it was still five in the afternoon and there was excellent visibility. No sign of a living soul. That road had no exit, it only came to the top of a hill and there were no houses. Some parts of the road, further up, were even impassable. She gave a thumbs-up to Carlos, who, looking in the other direction, also had a good field of vision and could act with confidence. He took Ema out of the luggage compartment.

     "Come on, Carlos, hurry up!" Patrícia shouted, waving her hands.

     He placed Ema on the edge of the ravine:

     "Goodbye!"

     With his right foot he pushed her down the slope. The body rolled down the slope and ended up in the bushes, hiding itself naturally and providentially.

     Patrícia was soon next to him, assessing the result:

     "It worked! It's over! Let's go, I can't take it anymore!"

     Then they heard a noise. Frightened, they looked around and saw nothing, but deduced that it was an animal in the woods.On the way back, she commented:

     "Carlos, I wanted to get her body out of there to save time. She supposedly left that inn alive, in your company. For all intents and purposes, she's still alive and with you, but I need to find you an alibi, make them think I'm her and make them see us together. We have to think. And hope that no one saw us dumping a body."

     "Dumping is such a rude word."

     She laughed, albeit a nervous smile:

     "Is there a better word?"