Dark Passions by Jeff Gelb

Almanza.”
    Jim froze, blinking furiously. “What?” He stared at the black briefcase. “You found her?” He squeaked out a quick, hysterical giggle. “No. No, Benny, I can’t. Dr. Posner ...”
    â€œHey, I don’t know where she is, I’m glad to say.” He flicked open the clasps. “But I’ve got over five hundred pages of notes on her.” He explained the blogs, bulletin boards, newsgroups, the professional information gained from his police database.
    Jim touched the case tentatively. He spoke in a monotone. “So I am not her first ... the only one she had an effect on. It’s the same with every guy she fucks. And not just her. Her sisters too.”
    Jim motioned for Ben to open the case. He took the bulk of the notes and set them down on the table. “I don’t know if I want to read it, but I want to have it. I’m dumbfounded. I never thought you’d do anything.”
    Ben grabbed Jim’s wrist. “There’s more, buddy. Can you take some more crazy shit about these sisters?”
    â€œThis isn’t crazy enough?” Jim seemed to test a hidden gauge inside a moment, then nodded. “Go on.”
    â€œOkay. Let me know when you want me to shut up. It gets pretty weird.” Ben took a deep breath and sighed. “I kept coming up with huge discrepancies in time. For instance, I found Internet stuff on her employment going back to 1993, when she was a staff researcher at the Frick in Boston. If she’s twenty-six, maybe twenty-seven now, that would have made her thirteen years old at the time. Not likely, eh?”
    Jim shook his head. “It’s getting weird.”
    â€œYeah. So I decided a month ago I needed a vacation in Guatemala. I went to Antigua, which is a well-preserved colonial city with libraries filled with historical stuff. I met a journalist in a bar who would make a rag like the Enquirer proud. With a few bottles of whiskey and an interesting story to investigate, Jorge Domingo was ready to steal whatever information he couldn’t get legally.
    â€œIn less than a day, he got us into an archive where they house newspapers back over two hundred years! They have computers and shit, but I wanted to go back. Way back. Possibly before they had microfiche. Jorge brought in some of his gofers, and we went through every newspaper that might have the story you told me Carmen told. About her sisters and mother.
    â€œIt took five days and a lot of whiskey, but in a little local paper we found articles about the murders.”
    â€œMurders. I thought the sisters were kidnapped and only the mother was killed.”
    â€œLook, I had to consider that if the timelines were off, Carmen might have lied to you about more than when this story happened. Turns out it’s Twilight Zone stuff.”
    Ben moved the stack of information in its binder in front of him and flipped it open to the back. He found copies of the articles and their translations separated by a red acetate sheet. He poked at them with his beefy finger. “You said she was afraid to sleep in the dark ... something about the guy who killed her mother still out there, maybe looking for her and her sisters. Well, if the perp is still alive, he’s too old to hurt anyone.”
    Jim glanced over to the first translation, then moved the binder so he could read it.

    Seguila is a quiet town where the United Fruit Company has improved the rustic living conditions of the poor. Hardworking people with families, like the Almanzas, wouldn’t expect trouble, especially from the company that had helped better their conditions. But yesterday, it was learned that their peaceful lives had been shattered by a week-long brutal rampage by itinerant UFC laborers who broke into homes in their somewhat remote area.
    The four men, who had been rumored to have dropped in on innocent families for meals and to torment them, found the Almanzas particularly