A waitress had vanished during a night shift in Chihuahua, and it had remained an unsettling mystery for nearly a year. One evening, the pieces began to resurface in the most unexpected way. Miguel Torres Sandoval was finishing up his routine cleaning of the grills at El Fogón del Norte, a modest but busy restaurant in the heart of the city, when something unusual caught his eye—a floor tile near the kitchen counter that didn’t sit quite right.
It was March 2012, and Miguel had been working there only two months. Every night, he maneuvered the cleaning cart around the kitchen, and the tile shifted slightly under its wheels. “Another repair,” he muttered to himself, crouching to inspect it closer. When he lifted it completely, he discovered a rectangular cavity cut into the concrete. Inside lay a small, tightly wrapped metal box, concealed from plain sight.