Our questions are, by definition, suspect

“Our questions are, by definition, suspect” is Raul Ramirez Cerezo’s formulation of a central dilemma in the investigation of the killings around Santa Teresa: questions are indispensable, yet neither the questioner nor the evidence can be assumed innocent of distortion. Spoken to Harry Magana during a search for Chucho, the phrase does not counsel silence. It insists that investigators must ask, while scrutinizing why they ask and where their questions lead.

The Conversation in Tijuana

Ramirez makes the remark during dinner with Harry, who has come to Tijuana looking for a man connected to his search. Ramirez speaks at length about his own difficult life and about the way people can become blind through habit to the suffering of someone close to them. He describes a woman who cared for others but not herself, and whose decline went unnoticed until it was too late. Harry wonders whether Ramirez somehow knows his own story, but the exchange does not establish that he has told it.

The conversation moves from personal blindness to the reliability of appearances. Ramirez argues that circumstances are not as simple as they seem and that questions can carry their own hazards: a single misstep may take an investigator somewhere unwanted. Harry agrees that questions matter; Ramirez adds that it is equally important to ask oneself why one is asking them. His maxim condenses that exchange rather than resolving it. Inquiry remains necessary, but it must include scrutiny of the inquirer.

From Reflection to Police Work

The setting gives the expression a practical edge. Harry and Ramirez are trying to locate Chucho, a pimp who may know Miguel Montes. At a club, Ramirez questions Chucho, who says that Montes remains in Santa Teresa and lives with a young woman who once worked at a club. Harry suggests the name Elsa Fuentes, and Chucho nods, though he is uncertain. The exchange produces a lead, not confirmation: the information is secondhand, and the scene leaves its reliability open.

That distinction matters across the Santa Teresa murder investigations. In one case, a man confesses to killing Luisa Celina, but refuses to implicate himself in the earlier murder of Esperanza Gomez Saldana; the police’s expectation that the first confession would quickly connect him to the second case proves unfounded. Elsewhere, a woman’s identity remains unknown despite examination and publication of her photograph, while police efforts to identify another young victim through a ring and an English academy produce no recognition. Each instance separates what is observed or reported from what investigators infer.

Evidence, Inference, and Failure

The cases repeatedly expose gaps in the chain from evidence to conclusion. In the investigation of Beatriz Concepcion Roldan’s murder, Efrain Bustelo seeks worker lists that might help trace a suspect, but is told they have been lost or mislaid. An executive hands him an envelope of cash, and Bustelo abandons the inquiry into the missing records. The case remains unsolved. Here the problem is not merely that evidence is incomplete: an institutional transaction interrupts the effort to obtain it.

A different failure appears at a crime scene visited by Epifanio and Lalo Cura. The dead girl’s body bears extensive signs of violence, yet Lalo observes that the scene has been wiped clean. Epifanio disputes that it was deliberate, but concedes that the scene has been wiped clean all the same. The disagreement leaves intention unresolved while preserving the investigative consequence: the scene cannot straightforwardly supply the evidence it should have held. The expression’s suspicion therefore applies not only to questions but also to confident explanations of what evidence means—or why it is absent.

Meaning and Narrative Function

Ramirez’s maxim holds two obligations together. Asking questions is essential because appearances can conceal neglect, mistaken identity, and violence; questioning the reasons behind those questions is essential because habit, premature certainty, and compromised institutions can redirect an investigation. The phrase does not identify a culprit or offer a method that guarantees truth. Instead, it makes uncertainty part of responsible inquiry.

Its placement amid the search for Chucho gives the thought an immediate investigative context, while its resonance across the cases widens it into a principle of the novel’s fragmented account of violence. Reports, confessions, physical traces, and official judgments do not automatically converge on a settled explanation. The questions must be asked, Ramirez says, but they cannot be treated as neutral simply because they are questions.