La Riviera is a nightclub in central Santa Teresa, situated between Calle Lorenzo Sepulveda and Calle Alvaro Obregon. Its role in the narrative shifts from a place of nightlife to the scene of Leticia Contreras Zamudio’s murder and, in the aftermath, a site where police violence against women becomes visible. The account does not resolve who killed Leticia; instead, it traces the costs of an uncertain investigation, including the wrongful imprisonment of two coworkers and the abuse of club employees in police custody.

Setting and the murder

Police went to La Riviera after an anonymous call and found Leticia dead in one of its private rooms. She was twenty-three and had worked as a prostitute for more than four years, without previous trouble with the police. The account records her work history alongside the uncertainty surrounding her final hours, but does not suggest that her occupation explains or excuses the crime.

Leticia had multiple wounds to her abdomen, chest, and forearms. The injuries to her arms led investigators to conclude that she had fought to survive. Her death is narrated through both these physical findings and the gaps in what witnesses could establish: the women working at the club could not say who had been with her in the room.

Conflicting accounts and police custody

The other workers offered conflicting possibilities about Leticia’s movements. Some thought she had been in the bathroom; others placed her in the basement, where four pool tables stood, because she liked playing pool and was a capable player. One woman suggested she might have been alone in the private room, a possibility the account immediately treats as questionable. These accounts leave the circumstances of the killing unresolved rather than identifying a reliable witness or suspect.

At four in the morning, the entire La Riviera staff was taken to Precinct #1. Lalo Cura, then working a night beat as a traffic officer, arrived after hearing screams from the cells. He found Epifanio nearby and saw that the staff members were being sexually assaulted by police officers. When Lalo asked what the women had done, Epifanio replied that they seemed to have killed another girl. The accusation was presented as a casual explanation for the officers’ conduct, not as established evidence against the women. The scene links the investigation of Leticia’s death to institutional abuse of the people police were supposed to question.

Accusations and aftermath

Two of Leticia’s coworkers, Nati Gordillo and Rubi Campos, were formally accused of her murder despite the absence of proof beyond their presence at La Riviera. Nati, thirty, had known Leticia since she began working at the club. Rubi, twenty-one, had been there for less than five months. At the time of the killing, Nati was in the bathroom, and Rubi was waiting for her in the adjoining stall.

The investigation also emphasized a recent conflict: Rubi had been verbally attacked by Leticia two days earlier, and another woman heard Rubi say that Leticia would pay. Rubi did not deny saying it, but said she had meant to beat Leticia, not kill her. The account supplies this incriminating detail without treating it as proof of murder. The two women were transferred to Hermosillo and held at Paquita Avendano, the women’s prison; after their case went before another judge, they were declared innocent.

They nevertheless spent two years in prison. After their release, they said they would try their luck in Mexico City, though they may instead have gone to the United States. Their later destination remains uncertain; what the narrative makes definite is that neither was seen again in Sonora. The unresolved killing thus produces a clear consequence for two women while leaving responsibility for Leticia’s death unsettled.

Significance in the novel

La Riviera’s importance lies in the contrast between the effort to turn a killing into a case and the violence committed in the name of investigating it. The club’s staff are taken to a police station, where suspicion gives way to abuse; two coworkers are then prosecuted without proof strong enough to establish guilt and lose two years of their lives before acquittal. The sequence does not provide a solution to Leticia’s murder. Instead, it shows how institutional procedures can compound the harm of an unresolved crime, while the women connected to the victim bear consequences that the narrative records more firmly than the identity of the killer.