Grave Secrets

“Eduardo left friends at the Café San Felipe on the night of October twenty-ninth, never made it home.”

Yellow pin.

“She worked at the Hospital Centro Médico.”

A blue pin went in at Avenida 6 and Calle 9, just a few blocks from the Ixchel Museum.

“Same story, clean liver, boyfriend a candidate for canonization. Spent most of her free time with her horses. Was quite an equestrian.”

Galiano pointed to a spot equidistant between the Lucy Gerardi and Patricia Eduardo residences.

“Missing person number four, Chantale Specter, lived here.”

Red pin.

“Chantale went to a private girls’ school—”

Blue pin.

“—but she’d just returned from an extended stay in Canada.”

“What was she doing?”

He hesitated a moment. “Some sort of special course. Chantale was last seen at home.”

“By?”

“The mother.”

“Both parents check out?”

He took a long breath through his nostrils, let it out slowly.

“Hard to investigate a foreign diplomat.”

“Any reason for suspicion?”

“None that we’ve found. So. We know where each young woman lived.”

Galiano tapped the red pins.

“We know where each worked or went to school.”

Blue pins.

“We know where each was last seen.”

Yellow pins.

I stared at the pattern, realizing the answer to at least one question. I knew Guatemala City well enough to know that Claudia de la Alda, Lucy Gerardi, Patricia Eduardo, and Chantale Specter came from the affluent side of the tracks. Theirs was a world of quiet streets and mowed lawns, not one of drugs and peddled flesh. Unlike the poor and homeless, unlike the victims at Chupan Ya or the addict orphans in Parque Concordia, these women were not without power. They were missed by families that had a voice, and everything possible was being done to find them.

But why such interest in remains uncovered at a slum hotel?

“Why the Paraíso?” I asked.

Again, that hitch of hesitation. Then, “No stone unturned.”

I turned from the map to Galiano. His face was expressionless. I waited. He offered nothing.

“Are you going to level with me, or do we have to go through some elaborate pas de deux?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suit yourself, Bat.” I turned to go.

Galiano looked at me sharply but said nothing. Then his hand closed around my upper arm.

“All right. But nothing leaves this room.”

“Normally I like to float my cases in a chat room, get a consensus of who’s thinking what.”

He released his grip and ran a hand backward through his hair. Then the Guernsey eyes locked onto mine.

“Eighteen months ago Chantale Specter was arrested for cocaine possession.”

“Was she using?”

“That was unclear. She dropped a dime and was released without testing. But her buddies came up positive.”

“Selling?”

“Probably not. Last summer she was busted again. Same story. Police raided a candy party in a low-rent hotel. Chantale turned up in the net. Shortly after, Papa shipped her off to rehab—that spell in Canada. She reappeared at Christmas, started school in January, vanished a week into the term. The ambassador tried searching on his own, finally gave up and reported her missing.”

His finger moved to the maze of streets making up the old city.

“Both of Chantale’s arrests took place in Zone One.”

“Some kids go through a rebellious phase,” I said. “She probably got back home, went at it with Daddy, and took off.”

“For four months?”

“It’s probably coincidence. Chantale doesn’t fit the pattern.”

“Lucy Gerardi disappeared January fifth. Ten days later, it was Chantale Specter.”

Galiano turned to me.

“According to some, Lucy and Chantale were close friends.”

6

CRIME SCENE PICTURES PROVIDE A CHEAP PEEK INTO THE SECRETS of strangers. Unlike photographic art in which lighting and subjects are chosen or positioned to enhance moments of beauty, scene photos are shot to capture stark, unadorned reality in vivid detail. Viewing them is a jarring and dispiriting task.

A shattered window. A blood-spattered kitchen. A woman spread-eagled in bed, torn panties covering her face. The bloated body of a child in a trunk. Horror revisited, moments, hours, or days later.

Or even months.

At nine-forty Xicay delivered the Paraíso prints. With no bones to examine, these shots offered my only hope of constructing an accurate victim profile, of perhaps linking the septic tank skeleton to one of the missing girls.

I opened the first envelope, afraid, but anxious to know how much anatomical detail had been saved.

Or lost.

The alley.

The Paraíso.

The dilapidated little oasis out back.

I studied multiple views of the septic tank before and after uncapping, before, during, and after draining. In the last, shadows crossed the empty chambers like long, bony fingers.

I replaced the first set and switched to another envelope.

The top print featured my ass pointed skyward at the edge of the tank. The second showed a lower arm bone lying on a sheet in a body bag. Even with my magnifier, I could make out no detail. I laid down the lens and continued.