was a thriving industry in the Philippines; having someone killed cost as little as 5,000 pesos, or around $100.

“I cannot provide the real names of the witnesses, or their ad- dresses and photos, in order to protect them,” Rivera said when we arrived. Otherwise, “I can probably answer any question that you want me to answer.” He gestured to a pair of plastic lawn chairs in a cubicle, facing a desk completely devoid of papers or equipment.

We started at the beginning, talking above the sounds of an NBA game—basketball being a Philippine national obsession— from a television somewhere just out of sight. Over the course of an hour, Rivera laid out everything he knew about Lee’s murder. He spoke in the world-weary manner of a cop who had seen his share of vicious crimes. But at times, he sounded as mystified as I was about how all the pieces of Lee’s killing fit together.

Rivera had reconstructed Lee’s movements from interviews with everyone she had encountered the day she disappeared, as well as clues found on her laptop and phone. The day before her body was discovered, Lee had been out showing properties to two foreign- ers, Canadians named Bill Maxwell and Tony. For some of the showings she had invited along several friends and fellow real es- tate agents. They’d last seen her climb into a silver Toyota Innova minivan with the Canadians, mid-afternoon, to go look at another property. From the friends and a security guard at one gated com- munity, Rivera gleaned enough detail to generate sketches: two white men, one goateed and the other clean shaven, both wearing baseball caps. But when it came to their identities, he hit a wall. “It was very hard to check with the immigration bureau in the Philip- pines,” Rivera said, “because Bill Maxwell and Tony—the names were fictitious.”

As for physical evidence, there was little to go on. The body had been out in the rain long enough that Philippine police technicians were unable to check for trace elements of DNA. The Toyota van lacked license plates, although the security guard had written down the number from a temporary registration sticker. When Rivera tried