On the grey coast where the sea licks the cliffs like a hungry tongue, people spoke softly of Xina.
They never saw her arrive. They never saw her leave.
Only the bodies of young people remained, lying face down on the sand or among the rocks, with two red holes where ears had once been.
Xina didn't kill out of hatred, nor out of morbid pleasure. She killed out of pure and simple greed.
For her, ears were coins. Small, delicate, perfect. The younger the owner, the more valuable.
In the basement of her crooked house, made of wood stolen from shipwrecks, there was an old freezer that hummed day and night. Inside it, rows and rows of transparent plastic bags, labeled with dates and names. A small frozen museum of greed.
Chief Inspector Margarida Hildenbrand knew the sound of that freezer well.
Years before, when she was just a recruit, she had entered Xina's house during a raid. Xina wasn't there. The freezer was.
She opened the door. Cold steam rose like smoke.
She saw the ears.
She closed the door too quickly. She vomited on the stairs.
She never told anyone. She was ashamed. Ashamed of having been afraid. Ashamed of not having done anything at the time.
Years passed.
Hildenbrand's career rose and fell like the tide.
Her family—a retired military father, a teacher mother, a younger brother who became a fisherman—slowly drifted away.
"You chose this horrible job," her father would say.
"You chose to be alone," her mother would say.
Her brother simply stopped answering her calls.
Until a body appeared on the beach at Canto das Gaivotas.
A seventeen-year-old boy. Ears surgically removed. And next to the body, a note written in smeared black lipstick:
"One more for the freezer, Hilden. Where are you?"
That was enough.
Margarida Hildenbrand requested a transfer to the Central Coast that same day.
She didn't ask for help. She didn't want a team.
She only wanted one thing: to get to Xina before someone else lost their ears.
Months passed of waiting, of tracking footprints that didn't exist, of hearing rumors that died in the mouths of those who told them.
Until one windy dawn, an old, drunken lighthouse keeper called the police station.
He said he saw a tall woman carrying a black garbage bag towards the crooked house at the end of the cliff trail.
He said the woman was singing a children's song as she walked.
Hildenbrand went alone.
She arrived when the door was still ajar.
The freezer was already singing its familiar purr.
Xina was facing away, arranging the new bags.
She turned slowly, smiling like someone caught doing something only slightly wrong.
"It took you long enough, Hilden."
"I know."
There was no long conversation.
There was no pleading.
Xina tried to grab the knife she used for "harvesting." Hildenbrand was faster.
The gunshot echoed inside the wooden house like thunder inside a barrel.
Xina fell to her knees, surprised more than anything else.
Then she fell to her side, like a poorly balanced doll.
Hildenbrand didn't look at the freezer. She didn't need to anymore.
She opened all the bags.
One by one.
She photographed them.
She cataloged them.
She called the forensics team only after she finished.
When the sun rose, there was already a line of police cars on the trail.
Someone notified the press.
Someone notified the family.
The father arrived first. He was older, more stooped.
He looked at his daughter in her uniform, soiled with sand and dried blood, and for the first time in many years said nothing about the horrible work.
He simply placed his heavy hand on her shoulder.
The mother came next.
She cried a lot, but it wasn't a cry of mourning. It was a cry of relief.
The brother arrived last, still smelling of fish and diesel.
He hugged Margarida tightly, without saying a word.
On that cold coastal morning, with the sea crashing against the rocks below, no one spoke of heroism.
No one spoke of justice.
They just stood there, together, watching the freezer being switched off and taken away.
And for the first time in many years,
Margarida Hildenbrand felt that the silence within her was a peaceful silence.
Not of emptiness.
Of home.