He added a second blue pin.
“Gerardi also had no prior arrests, also lived with her family. Good student. Aside from a lousy social life, she appears to have been a normal college kid.”
“Why no friends?”
“Father kept a tight rein.”
His finger moved to a small street halfway between the Ixchel and the American embassy.
“Lucy lived here.”
He added a second red pin.
“She was last seen in the Botanical Gardens—”
He inserted a yellow pin in a green-shaded space at the intersection of Ruta 6 and Avenida la Reforma.
“—on January fifth.”
Galiano’s finger hopped to Calle 10 at Avenida la Reforma 3.
“Familiar with the Zona Viva?”
A stab of pain. Molly and I had eaten at a cafe in the Zona Viva the day before I left for Chupan Ya.
Focus, Brennan.
“It’s a small enclave of upmarket hotels, restaurants, and night clubs.”
“Right. Number three. Patricia Eduardo, age nineteen, lived just a few blocks away.”
Red pin number three.
“Eduardo left friends at the Cafe San Felipe on the night of October twenty-ninth, never made it home.”
Yellow pin.
“She worked at the Hospital Centro Medico.”
A blue pin went in at Avenida 6 and Calle 9, just a few blocks from the Ixchel Museum.
“Same story, clean liver, boyfriend a candidate for canonization. Spent most of her free time with her horses. Was quite an equestrian.”
Galiano pointed to a spot equidistant between the Lucy Gerardi and Patricia Eduardo residences.
“Missing person number four, Chantale Specter, lived here.”
Red pin.
“Chantale went to a private girls’ school—”
Blue pin.
“—but she’d just returned from an extended stay in Canada.”
“What was she doing?”
He hesitated a moment. “Some sort of special course. Chantale was last seen at home.”
“By?”
“The mother.”
“Both parents check out?”
He took a long breath through his nostrils, let it out slowly.
“Hard to investigate a foreign diplomat.”
“Any reason for suspicion?”
“None that we’ve found. So. We know where each young woman lived.”
Galiano tapped the red pins.
“We know where each worked or went to school.”
Blue pins.
“We know where each was last seen.”
Yellow pins.
I stared at the pattern, realizing the answer to at least one question. I knew Guatemala City well enough to know that Claudia de la Alda, Lucy Gerardi, Patricia Eduardo, and Chantale Specter came from the affluent side of the tracks. Theirs was a world of quiet streets and mowed lawns, not one of drugs and peddled flesh. Unlike the poor and homeless, unlike the victims at Chupan Ya or the addict orphans in Parque Concordia, these women were not without power. They were missed by families that had a voice, and everything possible was being done to find them.
But why such interest in remains uncovered at a slum hotel?
“Why the Paraiso?” I asked.
Again, that hitch of hesitation. Then, “No stone unturned.”
