He downloaded onto his computer the photo that Pepe had taken of Garcia as a matter of routine. This he attached to an e-mail query to the policia municipal of Santiago Matatlan, asking what they could tell him about the man. He did it with a little smile of satisfaction. Garcia would no doubt have been surprised to learn that even here, in this out-of-the-way little village, the police had certain high-tech methods at their disposal. Santiago Matatlan, about twenty kilometers to the south, was a mezcal-producing village even smaller than Teotitlan; perhaps six hundred souls. The police would know everything that went on there. And they had a computer too.

He sighed and raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Just let it not require that I have any dealings with the state police,” he prayed silently. Nothing good ever came of dealing with the policia ministerial, as he had learned through hard experience.

When he’d first become chief, there were only a few village ancients who had any recollection of the last time someone had been murdered in Teotitlan, and they didn’t remember it themselves, recalling only their parents talking about it when they’d been children: a woman had bashed her straying husband’s head in with a stone mano. That had happened more than fifty years ago, before Teotitlan even had a police chief. None of Sandoval’s predecessors had ever been confronted with a homicide.

And what had happened? With only two measly weeks on the job under his belt, he had been confronted with one. It had been a terrible experience, the worst experience he’d ever had. No doubt it had taken years off his life, and it was a marvel that he hadn’t developed ulcers.

A group of Canadians who had been staying in a bed-and-breakfast in Teotitlan had been hiking in the dry hills near the village. One of them, in falling down the shaft of a long-abandoned silver mine, had discovered the body-the skeleton, really-of a young girl. He had reported it to Sandoval, who had brought in old Dr. Bustamente, the district’s medico legista (or medico forense, as he had taken to calling himself since CSI had started appearing on Mexican television), who had declared that she’d been murdered: a savage series of blows to the head, a finding that was soon confirmed by the state medico legista in Oaxaca.