José María Miculax Bux, confessed rapist and strangler of twelve “white children” between the ages of ten and sixteen. Originally from San Andrés, Patzicía, he committed his crimes around Antigua and the New City of Guatemala. He was a survivor of the Patzicía massacre, which was shortly after the Kaqchikel uprising that was due to land problems; the government, in order to repress the uprising, sent in 1944 a punitive expedition that ended the lives of about a thousand indigenous peoples—among them, apparently, the parents and siblings of the young Miculax. Executed by firing squad in 1946 at the age of twenty-one. His skull is still preserved as a subject of (Lombrosian?) study at the School of Criminology at San Carlos University.

Saturday. Lake Atitlán. Evening.

In the morning, before going to pick up Pía at her mother’s, I asked B+ to call the number that I found in the phone book under the name of Benedicto Tun, a possible descendant of the Bureau’s director. I now call her from the hotel, to see if she has any news. The Benedicto Tun of the phone book is the son of the former, who was head of the Identification Bureau. B+ had a fairly long conversation with him, she tells me. On my instructions, she told him that she was working on a university thesis on the history of the National Police.

In principle, Tun is willing to talk about his father. B+ tells me that he is a bit annoyed at the state for the way they treated his father at the time of his retirement. When he requested his retirement, in 1964, he was given a pension of one hundred and twenty quetzals a month, which even then was a small amount. But he did not cash in on that pension because he continued to work. In 1970 he suffered brain trauma, which resulted in him giving up his job. They increased his pension a little, based on a decree-law by the military government of Peralta Azurdia. Then, the Bureau underwent some modifications; the divisions for criminology, ballistics, and graphology were separated, and in a few years the name of Benedicto Tun fell into oblivion. The son also told B+ that he keeps some official documents, rescued from the various raids and searches that the police conducted in his home after the death of his father.

After a few months of working at the Archive, every time I talk on the phone (especially on the cell phone), I think I may be listened to. Something the chief said the other day about it not being advisable to discuss my suspension over the phone reinforces my suspicion. So, I tell B+ that we better talk about this when I return to the capital.

Pía, who has been playing with her paints while I was talking, asks me:

“Who was it?”

I tell her: