On October 10, near the Pemex soccer fields, between the Cananea highway and the railroad, the body of Leticia Borrego García, eighteen, was found, half buried and in an advanced state of decomposition. The body was wrapped in an industrial plastic bag, and, according to the forensic report, the cause of death was strangulation with a fracture of the hyoid bone. The body was identified by the girl’s mother, who had reported her disappearance a month before. Why did the killer bother dig a little hole and try to bury her? Lalo Cura asked himself as he poked around the site. Why not just dump her by the side of the Cananea highway or in the rubble of the old railroad warehouses? Didn’t the killer notice he was leaving his victim’s body next to the soccer fields? For a while, until he was asked to leave, Lalo Cura stood there staring at the spot where the body had been found. A child’s or a dog’s body might have just fit in the hole, but never a woman’s. Was the killer in a hurry to get rid of his victim? Was it nighttime, and was he in an unfamiliar place?

On October 10, the same day Leticia Borrego García’s body was found near the Pemex soccer fields, the body of Lucía Domínguez Roa was found in Colonia Hidalgo, on the sidewalk along Calle Perséfone. The first police report stated that Lucía worked as prostitute and was a drug addict and that the cause of death had probably been an overdose. The next morning, however, a distinctly different statement was issued. It said that Lucía Domínguez Roa had worked as a waitress at a bar in Colonia México and that the cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen. The bullet was a .44, probably from a revolver. There were no witnesses to the killing and the possibility that the killer might have shot from inside a moving vehicle hadn’t been ruled out. Nor had the possibility that the bullet was intended for someone else. Lucía Domínguez Roa was thirty-three and separated, and she lived alone in a room in Colonia México. No one knew what she was doing in Colonia Hidalgo, although it was most likely, according to the police, that she’d been taking a walk and had come upon death purely by chance.

Roberto Bolaño, 2666