Acosta dropped the Pearl Cays case and left Bluefields. Almost immediately, though, she had a suspect: the man she rented a $100-a-month apartment to on the first floor of her house. His name was Ivan Argüello Rivera, and he was from a barrio on the outskirts of the capital. He had moved in just a few days before García’s killing; now he was gone, and the apartment was empty. But why, Acosta wondered, would someone come all the way from Managua to kill her husband?

Fear over the killing spread and Pearl Lagoon’s fight for the cays fizzled. “When I heard, I said, ‘Oh my god, look at what we have done,’” recalls Ingrid Cuthbert, the former council member. Though at first there was no evidence of a connection, the motive seemed obvious, and word quickly spread that Martinez and Tsokos must have been involved.

Acosta believed this too, and when she was summoned to the large criminal courthouse in downtown Bluefields a week later, she decided to say what many were thinking. Argüello Rivera, she told the judge, was the one who pulled the trigger. The two Peters were behind the killing.

So began Acosta’s protracted, convoluted journey through a judicial system that often makes little sense. According to a recent World Economic Forum survey that examined influence on judiciaries, Nicaragua’s is believed to be among the world’s most corrupt: Of 142 countries, it ranked 136th. Sergio León, a veteran Bluefields journalist, describes the court system this way: “There is no law and order,” he says.

A couple of days after Acosta identified Tsokos and Martinez, the judge who was charged with investigating her claims, Julio Acuña Cambronero, visited her house to survey the crime scene. She told him about a strange phone call from a man who claimed to know where her husband’s killer was. “I know Ivan Argüello; he killed my brother,” Acosta recalls the man saying. “I couldn’t do anything about it. But you will, and I’ll help you.”

Acosta hadn’t been sure what to make of it. Whoever the caller was, he seemed to be following Argüello Rivera. He knew, for instance, that Argüello Rivera was back in the capital, that he had an injured hand, and that he was bragging about killing her husband. The man on the phone seemed like a vigilante, perhaps, and telling the authorities seemed like a prudent thing to do. But when she did, she was asked what seemed like an odd question: Had she attempted to “detain” Argüello Rivera?

Why, she thought, would she — a victim and a private citizen — try to take her husband’s killer into custody? Then again, it was an odd visit. Acosta had accused Martinez of being involved in the murder, but he, too, had arrived with Acuña Cambronero. (“I have a legal right to participate in all parts of the investigation,” Martinez explains.) With the men looking on, Acosta provided a flippant answer that would have lasting consequences. “I said, ‘It’s not my business,’” she recalls. “'It’s the [job] of the police.'”

A few weeks later, Acuña Cambronero gave an interview to La Prensa, the national daily. Tsokos and Martinez had appeared before him and denied involvement in the murder, but he hadn’t yet issued his official decision. Still, the judge revealed a bombshell: Acosta herself was now a target of his investigation. “I do not understand how she as an injured party is not interested in the whereabouts of the alleged perpetrator of the crime,” he said. In Acuña Cambronero’s estimation, she seemed to be covering something up, and he was left no choice but to charge Acosta as an accomplice in her husband’s murder. “No one is exempt,” he said.