"We were just hopping," said Thomas. "Going from bar to bar."

Affable and easy-going, Artis nonetheless had a reputation for getting rowdy if he drank too much, Thomas knew. Artis had spent a weekend in the Tijuana jail before, that time because of a confrontation in a club. So Thomas cautioned his brother. "Don't get drunk to the point where you get wild," he said.

The strip on Avenida Revolucion is packed with bars and strip clubs, some of which the young men visited the night Artis died.

But Artis was well on his way by the time they hit the next bar, where waiters poured shots of tequila directly into the young men's mouths. When they made for the door, a waiter surprised them with a tab for the drinks. Artis had words with him. "We didn't know we had to pay for it. They were running up to us with the drinks," said Thomas. Justin convinced Artis to acquiesce. "We ended up paying for the drinks and leaving," said Thomas.

The tone had been set, however. Artis had his first brush with the law at 11:30, when a pair of patrol officers found him in mid-relief, using a corner as a makeshift urinal. They handcuffed him and gave him the choice of paying them a $40 fine or heading to jail to pay his fine in court.

The confrontation was interrupted by the crackle of a police radio as the officers were called away, and Artis was released.

The brothers decided to separate from Justin, who wanted to stop at a cash machine and hit another bar. "I was thinking, 'Let's just hurry up and find the car,'" says Thomas. He squired his brother through the crowd, hoping to avoid further trouble. But just before 1 a.m., Artis bumped into a female police officer patrolling the strip. She bristled, and with her partner detained him in handcuffs.

Artis was incensed. "F--- the policia!" he yelled. "They have been picking on us all night!" Thomas tried unsuccessfully to calm his brother. The male officer demanded Artis' gold watch and $30, but Artis refused. Thomas emptied his pockets for the officers, yielding about $40, and they continued on.

Shortly thereafter, Artis was lost in the labyrinth of late-night Tijuana.

Calle Baja California meets Avenida Revolucion at the outlet of the alley where Artis was found.

"I was panicking," Thomas says. "I was 16 and from Virginia, and to be in Mexico at that time alone was frightening."

Thomas searched for his brother for the next two hours, retracing their path through the crowd and ducking into side streets to scan the doorways for the slumped-over figure of his brother, resting. Eventually, he returned to the car to wait.

Justin showed up at the car at about 3 a.m. with bad news: He saw Artis fly by in a police car with four officers shortly after 1 a.m. "I was petrified," said Thomas. "He kept on saying he was sure he had seen my brother in the back of that car."

The two searched until 5 a.m., and then returned home to Van Nuys. Thomas had phoned home, or was safe in jail, they reasoned. The next day, they returned to Tijuana, visiting the police station, where there was no record of Artis' arrest, and the consulate, which had no information. It wasn't until Tuesday that the consulate called to tell Thomas that Artis had been found dead in the area known as "La Zona Norte."

La Zona Norte

"The North Zone" is a dusty sliver of Tijuana sandwiched between a concrete, trash-strewn drainage canal to the north and the bustling commercial district to the south. It's known as the seedy part of town. "Why you want to go there? You want smack, you want crystal? You can get anything you like," says a grizzled man outside a bar on Avenida Revolucion, offering directions to a reporter. "But I can get some of that for you here, if you're looking for it."