A Postmortem

Corazon Zaldivar is dead.  After her cold-bloodied murder, conjectures on motives, perpetrators, and the standard conspiracy theories came in heaps.  Sometimes, though, the most obvious isn’t always what it is.  Too many convolutions attend life and murder.

The assailants had the essentials of hired killers.  They had an alibi for Cora to open her door.  The time was around 7 pm, plausible for an errand and dark enough for them to fade into the night in a city that’s still awake.  Their speed disabled Cora’s neighbors to recover from shock and think of the best moves before the assailants could cut their escape clean.

They may have been professional killers whose modus veered on sadism, someone opined.  The multiple thrusts of the knife seemed meant to inflict unremitting pain before Cora breathed her last.  Who hired these killers?

Cora is dead at 39 years old.  The assailants used her maiden name, Estrella, when they asked where she lived.  Hardly anyone knew her nee, so the neighbors must have taken the cue from her first name and regrettably pointed the killers to her place.

Cora used Zaldivar, her married name from her annulled marriage.  She was said to behave and move about as much as her educated and good family background allowed.  And she respected her family’s word that she’d be on her own once she left for Bohol to join her man.

Like the rest of humanity, the mystery that was Cora may have had her character flaws.  Her major decisions appeared riveted to a need for emotional moorings.

Her first husband was a drug addict.  Her second, common-law one was at best a cad, however lopsided this portrayal may be.  He dropped Cora after she fulfilled, at his behest, her side of their agreement; abandon everything? her job, things, parents? and live with him to start life anew.

Cora may have become his past mistake that refused to go away.  But he had a responsibility for that mistake? two children to support.  His repeated refusal to fulfill this had him face a losing legal battle.

Known to mind her own business, the tall and thin Cora harmed no one, not even with a rude word.  Anecdotes about her sacrifices as a mother are as poignant as they come.  She saved the snacks offered at her workplace for her children who drop by from school.  She packed everybody else’s lunch leftovers for her family’s dinner and her children’s next-day school lunch.

Cora herself ate lunches of rice and soy sauce, so the others took to doubling their home-packed food and found excuses to share these with her, taking care not to tread on her quiet dignity.

Her sacrifices must have impressed her children because they, too, have the habit of saving and packing half of their burger treats from their father.  “Para makakain ng masarap si Mama.”

Cora’s 17-year-old son by her first husband spoke proud and stood by his mother.  He came to clear out her personal belongings and accompany her remains for home to Manila, to her parents.

The hapless Cora may have borne the burdens of her past, bravely carried on, sought redemption, and had it all wrong? wrong place, wrong time, unprotected even by her wrong man, when tragedy fell.  She may be a lesson for those who defy their parents and who love none too wisely.  Must she also be one more shadow in the travesty of justice?

The current political campaigns could bury her case.  Alive, she may have been too politically and socially insignificant.  Dead, she may not merit a candidate’s attention or cause street protests.

The International Day of Women (March 8), meant to drum up support for helpless and dispossessed women, came and went, as inconsequential to the power race as Cora was.  Which begs the question if demand for justice would be all-embracing were emboldened killers hired to put down a political figure, or a member of his family, or a businessman of means.

But maybe, just maybe, a sincere, dogged, quiet, and skilled crime detective may care enough not give up on Cora’s case.  That wouldn’t run counter to our country’s internationally acknowledged efficient intelligence network.

Or someone with resources, or some groups out there with strength in number, may just pick up Cora’s case and open the floodgates to the crime’s solution.

The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small.  Justice serves its finest when it serves all.  Otherwise, something about us is very, very wrong.

(18 March 2007)