“May I help you?” the woman asked in English.

I felt strangely insulted that I was so clearly American. “I’d like to speak to someone about a missing person,” I said.

She looked at me suspiciously, picked up a pen. “Who is the missing person? And where did you lose her?”

“I didn’t lose anybody,” I said.

She questioned me without speaking.

“I think I found someone.” I looked beyond her at a wide flight of stairs. The uniformed men walking by paid me no attention at all, conspicuously so. “Who should I talk to about that, about having found someone? I’m not certain that she’s missing, but I think she is. Could I just talk to someone?” I was talking too much, and I could tell that my English was becoming difficult for her to track.

“Have a seat over there, please,” she said in a rehearsed way. She pointed at several wooden chairs lined against a wall. No one else was seated. “I will see if I can find you someone.”

In short order I was joined in the line of chairs by two men, who seemed to be together, and a woman with a young child, a boy or a girl, I couldn’t tell. After a good thirty, perhaps forty minutes, I was about to revisit the woman at the desk when a tall, angular man made eye contact with me as he descended the stairs. He wore a dark blue shirt with a large six-pointed star sewn over his heart. I noticed that his black boots were extremely shiny at the bottom of his dark blue trousers. I stood as he approached.

“I am Lieutenant Deocampo.”

“Zach Wells.” I shook his hand.

“What can I help you with?”

“I’m not sure,” I said.

“I was told you believe you have found someone. May I ask what you mean by that?” He looked at his watch.

“Is there someplace we can sit down?”

He didn’t sigh, but he might as well have. “Come with me.”

I followed him up the stairs and along a busy corridor to a small rectangular room that was not his office. It might have been an interrogation room, but it seemed somehow too friendly, and there was a window.

“Please sit down, Mr. Wells.”

I did, looked through the window at the clear sky.

Deocampo sat beside me. “Yes, Mr. Wells?”

“I understand that a lot of women have disappeared here.”

“This is true. It is a sad reality.”

“I met a woman the other day. She said her name was Rosalita Gonzalez. I suppose that is a very common name.”

“Very common.”

“I have this notion that she might be missing.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked.

“I met this woman in a store in New Mexico. She told me her name and mentioned Ciudad Juárez.”

“That is hardly a reason to think she is missing.”