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one, either, and so I took the liberty of becoming indignant about how little care he seemed to be taking to preserve the evidence at the scene of the crime. Had I been a little better acquainted with him, I’d have understood that what looked like indolence in Báez was, in fact, resigned fortitude at finding himself, once again, surrounded by a bunch of dimwits on a one-way trip to nowhere. Báez paged through his notebook and informed me of what he’d been able to determine so far.
    “Her name’s Liliana Colotto. Twenty-three years old. Schoolteacher. Married since the beginning of last yearto Ricardo Agustín Morales, teller at the Provincial Bank of Buenos Aires. The neighbor in the next apartment told us she heard screams at a quarter to eight this morning and looked through the peephole in her door. Since her apartment’s the last one, her front door’s not on the side, it’s on the end, and so she can see down the whole length of the hall. She saw a young man come out of this apartment. A little guy. Black hair, she thinks, or maybe dark brown. At this point, she had to blather for a while about the distinction between black hair and dark brown hair. I guess the old bird doesn’t have much opportunity for conversation. Anyway, she said the husband left for work, as usual, very early in the morning, 7:10 or 7:15, and so it caught her attention when she heard sounds coming from next door sometime after that. When the man came out of this apartment, he didn’t shut the door behind him. So the old lady waited a few seconds until the street door closed and then stepped out into the hall. She called to the girl, but there was no answer.” Báez flipped over the last page. “That’s it. Well, except that she peeked through the door and saw the girl lying there, as you see—very still, the neighbor said—and then she called us.”
    “The guy who went out—could it have been her husband?”
    “According to the old woman, no. She said the husband is fair-haired and tall, while this guy was short,and his skin was very dark. By the way, the whole time she was positively itching to badmouth the girl for letting a visitor in twenty minutes after her husband left. Ah, right, he hasn’t been notified—I have to give him the bad news. If you want, we can go together. He works in the … I’ve got it right here … in the Capital branch.”
    We heard steps entering the apartment and a few murmured greetings.
    “Well, there you are,” Báez said to an obese man carrying a briefcase. “Start whenever you like, we don’t have a thing to do.”
    It didn’t look as though the other was going to answer, because he took his sweet time about it. He stared at the body for a good while. He squatted down. He stood up again. Then he laid his briefcase on the bed and took out a few instruments and a pair of rubber gloves. At last, speaking without emphasis, he said, “Why don’t you go fuck yourself, Báez?”
    “Because I’m hanging around here like an asshole waiting for you, Falcone.”
    The medical examiner seemed not to think further conversation necessary. He began his work with a close examination of the corpse. He spread the young woman’s legs delicately, as if she could still feel his touch and suffer from it. He felt around on the bed, located his briefcase, pulled it closer, and extracted a kind of cannula and a test tube. To avoid shock, I turned my eyesaway. On the chest of drawers were a vase of artificial flowers and a framed photograph of an older couple. His parents or hers? A crucifix hung on the wall above the bed. On each night table stood a small, heart-shaped picture frame containing a photograph of a young bride and groom, both looking nervous but self-possessed.
    I imagined them in the photographer’s studio on their wedding day. They clearly didn’t have much money, but she’d probably insisted on performing such rituals. I felt like a creep for nosing about her home and her past like that;