There’s a slip of paper clipped to each one. I pick up the first. A name—Adriana Pizarro—a date, a home address, a little map. The map shows the position of the body, where it fell: furniture, doors and window, bloodstains, weapon. I exchange it with Bibi for the other photo of a suicide with wide-open eyes, which bears a different name—Juan Tiflis—date, home address, and map.

Piel Blanca gives us a moment to look them over. Then she speaks.

Adriana Pizarro was a forty-six-year-old spinster, a school-teacher, with a savings account and small investments. At forty-two, she took a trip to Europe. When she returned, she said she’d have to go back. She hinted at a relationship. But never—according to her family—did she receive a letter, not from Spain, France, or Italy, as if she hadn’t met anyone. Only tourist brochures and leaflets with updated rates for hotels. Some of her relatives claimed she experienced hallucinations. “She saw things,” one testified, “and may have killed herself during a crisis.”

Piel Blanca points to the gun in the photo and notes that it’s unusual for her to have chosen that method; women generally prefer gas, cyanide, or sleeping pills, while a few of them hang themselves. “She used a small one, .22 caliber, as if she didn’t want to do too much damage to herself. And she succeeded—she aimed right where she needed to.”

Juan Tiflis was a man of some wealth, altruistically inclined and spiritual; he was a dealer in documents, a financer of automobile raffles, an art collector and seller of works that grew in value, a patron of the philharmonic and the orphans’ home. He was a person of elegant manners and, in his own way, an idealist, according to the friends and acquaintances called on to provide testimony. He left behind a single written line, very much in keeping with his image: “I move forward into the calm darkness.”

This guidance is helpful; now I know where to go, what to focus on. Yet not one of Blanca’s references casts any light on the reason for the terrified stare and the somber grimace of pleasure. “No doctor or psychiatrist noticed those details? The file doesn’t contain any mention of them, cast any light?” No, it does not. “People from Forensics were involved. Wasn’t that facial expression out of the ordinary, quite different from what they normally see?” Yes, it stood out. “Did they remember it?” No, they didn’t notice it at first; they only started thinking about it after they studied the photos.