“Fill me in on the septic tank case,” Mateo said.
“What about Jimmy Breslin down there?”
“He can wait.”
I told him what I’d learned at police headquarters, leaving out only Chantale Specter’s last name.
“Andre Specter, the Canadian ambassador. Heavy.”
“You know?”
“Detective Galiano told me. It’s why I let him ambush you the day we returned from Chupan Ya.”
I couldn’t be annoyed. In truth, I was relieved Mateo understood the implications of what I would be doing in the days to come.
I withdrew the vial from my pack and set it on the desk. He read the label, squinted at the contents, then looked at me.
“Fetal?”
I nodded. “I spotted cranial fragments in some of the photos.”
“Age?”
“I have to check Fazekas and Kosa.”
I referred to a volume titled
“There’s one in the collection.”
“Done with the scope?”
“Almost.” He stood. “I should finish about the time you wrap up with Nordstern.”
My eyes rolled so far back I feared they might strike my frontal lobe.
“Missed you yesterday.”
“Uh huh.”
“Senor Reyes said you’d be tied up until Saturday.”
“We have thirty minutes, sir. What can I help you with?”
I’d swapped sides of Mateo’s desk, and Nordstern now sat where I had been.
“Right.” He pulled a tiny recorder from a pocket and waggled it.
“Do you mind?”
I looked at my watch while he played with buttons.
“O.K.,” he said, leaning back. “Tell me what went on down here.”
The question surprised me.
“Didn’t you cover that with Elena?”
“I like to get different points of view.”
“It’s historic record.”
He raised shoulders, palms, and eyebrows.
“How far back do you want to go?”
He gave the same annoying shrug. O.K., asshole. Human Rights Abuses 101.
“From the sixties to the nineties, many Latin American countries were gripped by periods of violence and repression. Human rights were trampled, with most atrocities being committed by the reigning military governments.
“The early eighties saw a shift toward democracy. With that came a need to investigate human rights violations of the recent past. In some countries those investigations led to convictions. In others various amnesty proclamations allowed the guilty to skate prosecution. It became clear that outside investigators were essential if real facts were to be unearthed.”
Nordstern sat there like a student not interested in what the teacher is saying. I shifted to something more concrete.
“Argentina is a good example. When Argentina returned to democracy in eighty-three, the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons, CONADEP, determined that close to nine thousand people had been ‘disappeared’ during the previous military regime, the large majority kidnapped by security forces, taken to illegal detention centers, tortured, and killed. Bodies were either dumped from airplanes into the Argentine Sea or buried in unmarked graves.
“Judges began ordering exhumations, but the doctors placed in charge had little experience with skeletal remains and no training in archaeology. Bulldozers were used, bones were broken, lost, mixed up, and left behind. Needless to say, the identification process did not go well.”
I was providing the ultra-condensed version.
“In addition, many of these doctors had themselves been complicit in the slaughter, either by omission or commission.”
An image of Diaz flashed into my mind. Then Diaz and Dr. Lucas at the Paraiso.
