UNTIL and unless the Philippine National Police is able to summon the resolve to put a period, not a coma, on the celebrated murder of San Carlos City Mayor Julian Resuello, expect more conspiracy theories, however, ludicrous and unsubstantiated, to fill the air and exacerbate the tension in that central Pangasinan city.

Last week’s publication by a scandal sheet of the alleged involvement of ranking political clans to the mayor’s killing, notable only in its yawning absence of corroborative evidence and freely dripping with nothing but pure malice, should awaken the PNP leadership especially Police Regional Director Leopoldo Bataoil and provincial Director Isagani Nerez to the urgency of already “declassifying” whatever hard information they have and let the chips fall where these may in the Resuello case. Name names and drop names, like now. At least, coming from the PNP, that would be official

The continued absence of any concrete news on the murder from the police authorities, nearly a month after the tragic incident, and this even with the arrest of one of the triggermen, only strengthens growing suspicion a powerful force is preventing the hand of Bataoil’s boys to make a clean breast of their investigation.

The big question is why?

The PNP is normally only too eager to provide tidbits and soft meaty pieces of info on big cases like this. It is not lacking in eager and willing mouthpieces in the media to do just that even under the cloak of anonymity but nothing of the sort is happening now, quite surprisingly. And the scandal sheet’s item about alleged “masterminds” alas, is hardly the credible information a discerning public would likely digest.

All the avowals of the PNP top officers shortly upon visiting the then serious but still alive mayor at his hospital bed, to not rest until the mastermind is identified and arrested, it now appears, are like grains of sand in a broken hourglass, slowly but steadily slipping out and away. What’s amazing is that nothing is being done to close or paste over the break.

All these gives many people the uneasy feeling the cops are too afraid to dig deeper and find the truth.

Let’s hope the police proves Pangasinenses, San Carlenians and the bereaved Resuello family wrong about thinking so and proceed to unmask what – or who – needs to be unmasked soonest. That, hopefully, should bring closure to a most sensitive case that has put the PNP — perhaps more than the perpetrators — under trial.