So in had come the swaggering policia ministerial, thuggish and intimidating, to take charge, issuing commands, making threats and accusations, frightening old men and women, interrogating respectable people with terrible sexual questions, things people in Teotitlan never even thought of before. The worst of it was that for a whole month the policia ministerial worked on it, terrorizing the whole village, and in the end they never did solve it. And so the poor child’s bones now lay in a box in some grisly police storeroom somewhere in Oaxaca, instead of in a Christian grave in the Teotitlan cemetery, where Sandoval and the elders wanted to inter it.

And so the mere thought of the possibility of having to deal once more with those arrogant, overbearing bullies in their sinister black uniforms straight out of some old Gestapo movie (and very fitting that was) had his stomach churning now.

But, happily, it appeared that this was not to be. The reply from the police chief of Santiago Matatlan was waiting for him when he came in the next morning:

This man, Manuel Garcia, is not a resident of Santiago Matatlan. He appeared here two days ago, unable to give a satisfactory reason for his arrival. He has committed no crime of which I am aware, but his appearance and manner are not wholesome. I sent him on his way, and I suggest you do the same.

Nothing could have suited Sandoval more. At 8:10 A.M. he stood with Garcia in the parking area between the church and the covered market, having first fed him a jail breakfast of buttered tortillas, re-fried beans, and cocoa. At 8:15 the Oaxaca-bound bus rattled in its predictable fifteen minutes late. Sandoval handed Garcia a fifty-peso note he’d signed out from the treasury-the fare was ten pesos-and told him to keep the change.