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Paola Rodríguez’s cell phone, find out who she called the day before she died, and if Ortega doesn’t get a move on you’ll have to get Canizales’s back from him, maybe it still has a record of the outgoing and incoming calls; find Frank Aldana, and we also have to interview Samantha Valdés, Mariana Kelly, and Marcelo Valdés. They fell silent, voices drifted in from the hallway. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? Mendieta nodded, and you have to interrogate them. Me, why me? That’s an order and orders are not to be discussed, Agent Toledo, get them for tomorrow because no doubt they’re celebrating now, they’re always celebrating. You’re leaving the worst to me, will you go to Canizales’s funeral? They ordered me not to.
    Then he called Dr. Parra. Is there something new? No, I just wanted to thank you. It’s nice to hear that. I got buried in work and last night I slept pretty well. Just don’t get too drunk because it’ll go crosswise with your pills. So why do you drink so much? I’m the doctor here and don’t you forget it. All right, if I fall off the rails I’ll look for you. For the time being continue using the tranquillizer I prescribed and stand firm, you are a prisoner of yourself and it should be the other way around. They hung up. He fought back a sudden memory, and once it was dark he decided to return to the scene of the crime. Two officers on guard in a patrol car greeted him.
    They killed him at night, I want to see what it looks like in the dark. In he went. He saw the light switch glowing but did notturn it on. He stood still in the living room, allowing his senses to take the measure of the place. Darkness. He walked slowly down the hall, sniffing, imagining, listening. He pushed the door of the study with his foot and turned on the light: everything in order. Thick-spined books on a set of shelves. A desk with its high-backed chair. Books on the surface. A new computer boxed up in a corner. Pistachio-green carpet. Laura was right about that: He was a serious fellow if the tidiness was anything to go by. He stood still for a moment and then retraced his steps. The guest room smelled stuffy. Nothing there to stimulate him. The door to Canizales’s bedroom was open. He turned on the light. The fragrance. That fragrance, which in the morning had licked at his brain, again ravaged his senses, though now it was fainter. The sheets on the easy chair. He sniffed them without touching, nodded. Behind the door he found a wastebasket with a Kleenex, he picked it up with the end of his pistol. It smelled the same as the sheets but stronger. He pulled a plastic bag out of his jacket pocket and dropped the Kleenex inside. As I always say: Every place is one big word and a lot of small ones, he sniffed the barrel of his weapon, the key is in the small ones. He imagined the man seated across from his victim, Canizales surprised by that redolent presence in the easy chair or on the bed. Maybe he was watching television. Did he like Channel 22? He saw him on his feet begging not to be killed, then the murderer laying him down. Why did he mess up the sheets? Could it be he was sleeping? And suppose they were more than one?
    He turned out the light.
    He experienced the peace of the defeated and left.
    At home he watched television until midnight, took the tranquillizer, and slept fitfully. He awoke with the image of Bardominos the priest hounding his eyes. Fucking life.

Ten
    That morning the kid with the bike attended the funeral of Bruno Canizales. He drove the twenty-two miles from Culiacán to Navolato in a green pickup his brother-in-law lent him. His two-wheeler stayed in the parking lot of the company where the brother-in-law was the manager. And there he was, standing beside Dania Estrada and Laura Frías, listening to the wails and eyeing the signs of grief. No one knows what he’s got till it’s gone, he thought just to think it. The kid was thin, strong, he wore Levi’s and a black