An Inconsequential Murder by Rodolfo Peña

was dislocated.
     
    As he had stated, the organs were turned over to the funeral director when the family claimed the body but he had been able to have a close look at some of them. He said he had been especially intrigued by the type of water the lungs contained.
     
    To Dr. Figueroa i t was interesting because the liquid was very dirty. It had mud, tree leaf particles, and that black substance—probably charcoal ashes. Water such as this spoke volumes about where the victim had died. Of course it was on the shore of a river, lake, pond, or reservoir—the leaves were a clear testimony of that since they were obviously from trees that grew near water’s edge. The muddy, fine sediment was evidence that the water was shallow and still so it was more likely to be a pond or reservoir. And finally, the black particles, when viewed under the microscope had proved to be wood charcoal, the kind people use to grill.
     
    “ Look for a place near a pond or reservoir where people go for picnics or weekend fishermen go for beer parties,” he had said and Lombardo had dutifully noted it down.
     
    Lombardo was even more convinced now that the Zetas , or any of the killers hired by the cartels, had nothing to do with this death. They were pretty consistent about the way they did things: abduct the victims, bind their hands, have them kneel by the side of some dirt road or clearing in the desert, then a bullet in the back of the head. Outside the city, in the vastness of the desert, one could hear the gunshots, which carried a long way in the still, dark night. The Zetas didn’t care about being quiet; they knew no one was going to rush to investigate what was going on. And, when they wanted to make a statement, they did something particularly gruesome, like lop off heads or members.
     
    These killers, on the other hand, had been quiet. No guns were used on the victim. The plastic bag might have been applied only after the fact but before it too. Near suffocation with a bag was a tactic to terrorize a victim, but it was also a way to muffle screams or groans.
     
    Then there was the business of the paper. Lombardo took out the small plastic bag that Dr. Figueroa had given him. The wad of paper had been chewed but not to the point where it had been destroyed. It had been carefully unfolded so Lombardo could see the long series of numbers and letters that had been hand written on it with permanent ink.
     
    Since Dr. Figueroa had suggested looking for some pond or reservoir shore as the scene of the crime, that meant that Victor had been taken out of town by his killers. Most likely toward the south where all the city’s reservoirs were.
     
    Lombardo had also made notes about the shoulder separation, which suggested that there had been at least three of them: two to hold him, one by each arm, and a third to deliver the blows. They beat him for a while, perhaps trying to get something out of him; according to Dr, Figueroa’s examination, most of the blows had been delivered where they would be painful but not cause serious injury. If the blow to the back of the head had not been deliberate, it could have been caused when they let go of him for a moment and he had passed out, fallen to the floor, and possibly hit his head against something. He believed that Dr. Figueroa was right when he suggested that they might have tried to revive him by putting his head in the cold, muddy, water and that Victor had aspirated water and the paper when he revived.
     
    Lombardo wrote another note: “Perhaps when they saw he was dead, they put the bag on his head and dumped him by the railroad tracks. They might have been trying to lay him on the tracks so when the train came by at four in the morning it would crush the boy so much the traces of torture would be erased.”
     
    Someone, a passer-by, or a police cruiser, might have scared them away and they didn’t have time to place the body in such a way it would be completely mangled. Either by