Villa Elisa is a small place where it’s hard to get lost. The streets are numbered: from north to south they go from 31 to 1, and from east to west, 32 to 60. Curiously, the larger avenues and streets are numbered from 403 to 426, but this apparent complication is very clear on the map. Moreover, the municipality is efficient and the streets are numbered on every corner. Luis Peterson’s house was at 6 and 43, near the train station. I drove there and quickly oriented myself in the right direction.

And here begins the part I don’t understand and that, in the end, made me abandon the investigation. The part that made me renounce this case and my journalistic instinct, and made me suspect I was at the beginning of a story I didn’t want to know. Because what happened that day, and the next, is impossible.

I couldn’t find the house. I don’t mean that I got lost. I reached the intersection of 6 and 43, turned on 6 and looked for the house number, 147. The address was 147 6th Street. There was no question. I talked to some neighbors. They all knew Luis Peterson. An architect, they informed me. They knew Gaspar, too, and described him as a lovely young man. They all gave me the same directions, easy. But when I drove down 6th Street, the numbers didn’t coincide. I saw 451, 453, 455 . . . and then, when I turned around, I realized I had turned on to a different street. On to 7th, most of the time. Also on to 8th, 43rd, 44th. I tried with a taxi driver, but as soon as he turned the corner, he got sick and vomited all over the steering wheel. I thought he was drunk and I argued with him, but the man told me he never drank while working and that he’d felt a sudden headache that had frightened him, “like a stroke.”

I abandoned my attempts that day. There was something strange in the air or in my head: the swampy feeling of those nightmares where you can’t scream or walk, the dreams where you’re sure something else is lurking inside the house you can’t get out of.

I went back the next day, facing my fears.