Some said that three hundred young women had been killed or disappeared in some twenty years. Others said it was closer to seven hundred gone. People are like that about numbers. They will say it is not seven hundred but only three, two hundred, as if one hundred would not be truly horrible, fifty, twenty-five. No one knew who killed and kidnapped these people. Maybe drug cartels, some said. Maybe roving gangs of sexual predators. Devil worshippers. Perhaps invaders from space. Men. It was men. It was always men. Always men.

The numbers were so very large, obscene, fescennine. Olga Perez. Hundreds of women have no name. Edith Longoria. Hundreds of women have no face. Guadalupe de la Rosa. Names. Name. Maria Najera. It was so uncomplicated, safe, simple to talk about numbers in El Paso, a world away. Nobody misses five hundred people. Nobody misses one hundred people. In Juárez, it was one. One daughter. One friend. One face. One name. Somebody misses one person. Maybe Rosalita Gonzalez.

Deocampo’s car was royal blue, late eighties, a Buick sedan, as clean as the day it rolled off the assembly line. Even the floor mats were pristine. I hated putting my big boots on them. He could see my stiffness.

“Do not worry,” he said. “I will clean the mats. I clean them every week.”

“I can see that.”

“My wife likes a clean car. And a clean house. And a clean husband.”

The ride took us back along the river the way I had come. The afternoon had become hot and uncomfortable, but the lieutenant appeared unfazed in his buttoned-up shirt and tie. He turned left and we gained some elevation as we rolled into an industrial area that had seen busier times. He stopped the car and we got out. I followed him past a loading dock of some long-defunct business into a yard of discarded metal and mounds of baked hard earth. We stood above a subdivision of modest homes, mostly one-story affairs with postage-stamp lawns. Across the river were the high-rise buildings of El Paso.

“This is where we found the bodies of eight women,” Deocampo said. He kicked at the dirt with his shiny shoes. “This is the reality we deal with every day. I don’t know if my phone is going to ring and I’ll have to go out and find a body. Families come in every week with stories and photos. I don’t have time to check out the leads I get here, much less think about things across the border. There was a head right where your foot is.”

I looked down and stepped aside.

He looked over at the reasonably safe city of El Paso. It looked like Oz.

“What could you do if I brought Rosalita Gonzalez here to you?”

“Mr. Wells, go home to California. Make a report to the police in New Mexico, then go home to your daughter.”