To summarize, all three kids said that the house had light inside, that it was enormous, that it had shelves with human remains arranged like decorations: teeth, bones, and fingernails. Adela went into a room, closed the door behind her, and they couldn’t get it open again. Victoria was convinced, the official record said, that someone in the house had locked that door. It was over five hours before the police went into the house, already the next morning. And starting then, it’s one misstep after another. In the following days, Judge Carmen Molina ordered a series of raids on the neighboring houses, including Adela ?lvarez’s. It’s conspicuous that she did not order an inspection of Gaspar Peterson’s house. To this day, there are no suspects or clues about who took Adela ?lvarez, if in fact someone did take her. Between the time the incident was reported and the arrival of the police on the scene, the kidnapper or kidnappers had time to erase all signs. The children’s statements are incredible and they’re included, cited directly, in my colleague’s investigation for Panorama: I recommend my readers look at his work. Unfortunately, Guillermo Triuso left Argentina in early 1988 because of the economic situation, and currently works as a journalist in Mexico. I called to consult him about certain details and he was polite, but the matter is closed for him. What he did mention, when we spoke on the phone, was how perplexed he’d been at the kids’ statements regarding the size of the house. That house at 525 Villarreal is about forty square meters, forty-four to be exact, plus ten extra meters distributed between the small front yard and a backyard that includes a small shed, according to the original blueprints, which are accessible in the city hall archives. Its layout, moreover, is very simple: a multipurpose room at the entrance, a kitchen with space for an everyday dining area, a single bedroom, and a bathroom. But the kids described very spacious rooms, hallways, and several bedrooms. There is no doubt that they entered this house and no other. That is: they testified that the house was much larger inside than out, a physical impossibility. Plus, when the police went in, they found that the wall separating the dining area and the bedroom had been knocked down, as well as the walls of the bathroom, which was open to view. There was still rubble piled inside, and only some of it had been moved to the small backyard. It had no electricity, though the kids were sure there was light, and it didn’t have any doors: the bathroom and bedroom doors had been removed. The house was for sale, though it didn’t have a sign in front: it belonged to a family named Ordó?ez, and a realtor was offering it privately. It was being sold as land: the house was in ruins. The owners’ son also gave a statement, but what he said is irrelevant: he hadn’t even been to Buenos Aires in years. He and his sister had moved to Córdoba for business. They’d put the house up for sale after their mother died. There was no reason to suspect them; their alibi was airtight.
The judge confronted the kids with this information, according to Triuso’s article in Panorama, and although they were surprised, they didn’t change their statements.
The Marked Boy
A cold case, say the criminal lawyers, and too old a subject for journalists. I wasn’t able to look for Beatriz Bradford again for a while. Work and personal matters kept me in Buenos Aires. I managed to speak with Eduardo ?lvarez’s mother, who asked for my discretion. She had donated a DNA sample to help identify her son, but she wasn’t active in any human rights organizations. She was angry with her daughter-in-law and with her son, and she thought the disappearance of her granddaughter, whom she had seen only on occasion （“Beatriz’s fault—she’s a bad person”） could be linked to her son’s activism. I couldn’t get anything else out of her except the promise of an interview that never came to pass.
I couldn’t get access to Beatriz’s family. After a call to their offices, I immediately received a reply from a lawyer: if I continued, I would be accused of harassment. The lawyer’s tone was menacing. Was it possible Beatriz lived with her mother? Some of my sources who’d heard rumors about the Bradford family assured me it was her mother who took care of her. I persisted through other routes, but reaching the Bradfords turned out to be extremely difficult: at every attempt, I received a reply from their lawyers. The phones were always answered by icy secretaries. The properties were guarded. That family is a country within the country.
Meanwhile, I wanted to talk to one of the kids who had gone into the house with Adela. They weren’t kids anymore, though. It wasn’t so easy. Victoria Peirano’s parents wouldn’t see me, and over the phone the mother told me her daughter had worked too hard to recover from what had happened only for me to come around years later and remind her of it just for the sake of my own vanity. I wanted to argue that my vanity had nothing to do with it, but she hung up on me. I got a similar reply from the Fonzi family, although, shockingly, they gave me an address for Gaspar Peterson, the third kid, who lived with his uncle. They gave it to me with what seemed like indifference, as if it were a trivial thing. They didn’t give me a phone number, nor could I find one in the phone book. I decided to visit him. He lived in Villa Elisa, a middle-class suburb near La Plata.
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.
On this second attempt, I tried asking a neighbor for help. I told him the truth, that I couldn’t find the house. The man offered to help and we went together. We got lost. Twice. The man got a little mad, frustrated: he felt, I think, that same dreamlike unreality. “Find it yourself, ma’am, I don’t have all day.” I tried a few more times, but I remembered what Beatriz Bradford had said. You won’t be able to find him. Juan marked him. You won’t be able to. I realized with the lucidity of the irrational that I was being kept from reaching the house at 6th and 43rd. I don’t know why. I spent a few hours on the corner: I thought that if I stayed long enough, I would see one of them. I never did, plus, I didn’t know what they looked like: the people I asked told me to just go to the house on 6th and 43rd. One of them gave me the phone number. I called from a public phone by the road. It was busy at first. Then I got an answering machine. When I went back to the corner, I felt afraid and impotent and I decided to go home. Next time, I told myself, I’d come back with a photographer to document that strange defeat, or to find, at last, the elusive house.