The Lemon Orchard (30 page)

“I trust Jack Leary—the agent,” Julia said.

“Uh-huh,” his father said, too polite to speak against her. But Roberto and his father and Esperanza knew the border, and knew that trust had a different meaning down there.

“What would you do, Papá?” Roberto asked.

His father squinted, the expression making his face look angry. But Roberto knew he was trying to hide his feelings. He was shorter, thicker than Roberto, and paced around the room. Finally he sat down heavily.

At last he spoke. “I would do what you are doing,” he said. “If you were lost, and I had the chance to find you, I would go.”

Roberto nodded. He felt better, knowing that his father understood. “Gracias, Papá,” Roberto said.

His father just stared. Bonnie had finished drinking water and now lay stretched out on the rug, relaxing. His father reached down to pet her, and she licked his hand.

“She is old?” he asked.

“Twelve,” Julia said.

“The desert heat will not be good for her,” he said. “Even in the car.”

“She likes car rides,” Julia said.

“Leave her with us,” his father said. Roberto listened carefully, heard his father’s voice crack.

Julia felt torn. She wanted Bonnie to be with her, but she also wanted her to be safe. “That’s very nice of you,” Julia said after a moment. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” his father said. “But I have a question.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Why are you taking this trip, Julia?” his father asked simply.

“Because I love your son,” she said. “And I lost my daughter, too,” she added softly.

It was time to go. Esperanza had been busy preparing a bag of food for the road. Julia programmed the family’s number into her mobile phone, and Roberto glanced into the bag: cans of Dr Pepper, two burritos wrapped in waxed paper, and a box of small round cookies, covered in powdered sugar—Mexican wedding cookies. Roberto glanced up at Esperanza, and she winked.

They walked outside, and everyone hugged. Roberto felt joy and surprise at his father’s reaction to meeting Julia. It nearly overwhelmed the sorrow he felt simmering just beneath the surface, to think that this could be the last time he saw his father for a while. Looking at Julia, standing beside his father, he felt strong—she was his luck, his angel, and he believed what she’d said—that they would all come home safely.

Esperanza asked Roberto and Julia to stand with Bonnie in front of the car, and she took their picture. Then Julia handed Esperanza her iPhone and asked her to take one for her, too.

When Julia started up the car, she rolled down the windows. Making a U-turn in the wide street, she drove very slowly so they could all wave. Both she and Esperanza waved their arms wildly, but Roberto and his father were given to smaller gestures. They each raised one hand. But then Roberto saw his father put his hand over his heart. He closed his eyes, to keep that image in his mind forever.

Once the house and his family were out of sight, Julia sped up, and they were on the freeway, on their way.

chapter twenty

Jack

Tucson on a Saturday was marginally better than Tucson on a weekday. Most offices were closed, so the streets weren’t so busy. Jack had never been made for the city, and his already thin tolerance for crowds and traffic had only diminished as he’d gotten older.

He parked in San Jacinto Hospital’s garage, and took the elevator to the lobby level. The hospital felt old, but—if such a thing was possible—kind of cozy. It wasn’t all gleaming white like the other medical centers: the floor was terracotta tile, the walls were somewhere between tan and brown, there were statues of Saint Jacinto and the Virgin Mary everywhere, and crucifixes on each corridor.

There were nuns walking the halls—though only a few wore habits. “Good morning, Sister,” Jack said, approaching a nun pushing a library cart. “Can you tell me where Medical Records is located?”

“In the basement,” she said, “but they’re closed today. You’ll have to come back Monday.”

“Okay, thanks. Now, where can I find the pediatrics floor?”

“Take the elevator and push four.”

“Thank you,” he said, glad she didn’t ask whom he was visiting. She probably pegged him as a Catholic schoolboy from way back. Nuns, in their own way, were good at profiling.

He rode up to the fourth floor, and stepped into familiar territory. Medical floors, no matter the hospital, were set up the same way, with the nurses’ desk in the center and patient rooms on hallways radiating out. He passed a young male doctor speaking to worried-looking parents and went straight to the desk. An older nun was on the computer.

“Excuse me, Sister,” he said.

“Just a minute,” she said.

He waited. A white-haired doctor, a real Dr. Spock type—carried a file behind the desk and placed it in a tray. The nun didn’t even look up.

“Sister,” the doctor said, “I need the number for—”

“Just a minute,” she said sharply.

“I need it now.”

“There’s the phone book.”

Jack hid a smile—she was just like the nuns he’d grown up with. They were focused and strict, and they didn’t let anyone give them guff, even the monsignor. The doctor walked away. Jack killed time by wandering over to an alcove where a bronze statue of a nun in an old-school floor-length habit stood. He read the sign:

Catherine McAuley
opened the first House of Mercy
on Lower Baggot Street in Dublin, Ireland,
on September 24, 1827,
as a place to shelter, feed, and educate women and girls.
On December 12, 1831,
Catherine and two companions took their vows
and became the first Sisters of Mercy.

“Now,” the old nun said, “how may I help you?”

“You’re Sisters of Mercy?”

“That’s right. Are you here to visit a patient?”

“Not a current patient,” he said.

“Well, isn’t that a smart answer?” she said. She had pale blue eyes and a glare that could put the fear of God in anyone. She reminded him of Sister Michael Joanne, his high school principal.

“Have you been on this floor long?” he asked.

“What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?”

He laughed, feeling more at home by the minute. “You’re from Boston, aren’t you?”

“Yes, and don’t think I don’t hear Dorchester in your own voice.”

“The nuns at my school were Sisters of Notre Dame.”

“A fine order.”

“The reason I’m asking if you’ve been here long—”

“Your charms might work on the good Sisters of Notre Dame,” she said. “But Sisters of Mercy are a little tougher. I’ve been here thirty-five years, long enough to know that whatever you’re selling we’re not buying.”

“I’m not selling anything. I’m retired U.S. Border Patrol, and I’m following up on an old case. Trying to find a missing girl. She was transferred to this hospital from the Pais Grande clinic in May 2007.”

“And you think I’m just going to look her up in the computer for you? Are you her father? No. Are you a family member? No. You do your job down at the border, and let us do ours here on the fourth floor.”

“Here’s her picture,” Jack said, placing the photo of Rosa and her family on the desk.

The nun leaned over to look, but didn’t pick it up. Her lips thinned.

“And here’s the case number. She came in as a Jane Doe,” he said.

The old nun slid both the picture and the slip of paper back to Jack. “You could be anyone,” she said. “I should call security right now. You have no business on the pediatrics floor.”

“Sister, her family needs to know what happened to her.”

“Then have them contact Medical Records. Unless they have proof she is their daughter, and that can be tough with a Jane Doe, they will need a court order and a DNA test.”

“The father is undocumented. He and Rosa crossed from Mexico, and she got sick and lost in the desert. He can’t get a court order.”

At that the nun paused. She reached for the photo again, and Jack saw her studying Rosa.

“I just read about Catherine McAuley,” Jack said, pointing at the statue. “Your order was founded to help the poor. I see the map of Ireland on your face—just like you see it on mine. Our people knew poverty, just like the Mexicans know it now. Catherine McAuley tried to do something about it.”

“Don’t go telling me about my own order,” she said. “And what’s a retired border agent doing trying to help undocumented Mexicans? You don’t hear that every day. Am I supposed to trust you just because you’ve got some Irish blood and went to Catholic school?”

“No,” he said. “You’re supposed to trust me because you know the truth when you hear it.”

She drew the case number closer and her fingers began clicking on the keypad. “No matter what I find, I can’t give out any information about the child without written permission from whoever is caring for her now.”

“Understood,” he said.

The sister frowned. She checked the number on the paper, and then reentered the sequence into her computer again.

“What’s the problem?” Jack asked.

“She doesn’t exist,” the nun said. “As far as our records go, we never had a Jane Doe with that case number sent to us by the medical center in Pais Grande.”

“Your files go back to 2007?

“They go back much further than that,” she said.

Jack checked his watch: 3:15 p.m. It would take him an hour and a half to get back to Pais Grande, and no matter how late the clinic stayed open, he was pretty sure the shift would change at five. He thanked the nun and headed for the elevator and his car.

Luckily, traffic was light. With temperatures above one hundred, people didn’t seem in a rush to head for the desert. He floored it to Route 8, took a left off the interstate at Gila Bend and headed south.

Passing through the Barry M. Goldwater Air Force Range, he hoped they weren’t doing bombing exercises today. He crossed the line from Maricopa into Pima County. The Mexican border was less than twenty miles south. He couldn’t help scanning, knowing that migrants were walking nearby, and if he stopped to cut sign he’d probably find a group within minutes.

He had seen Dodge Chargers on Route 8, known that the unmarked cars belonged to the Border Patrol. Now he passed a white and green SUV, same make and model as his, and raised a hand in greeting—the driver was Ralph Landers, a guy Jack had trained. It felt jarring but familiar to be back in his old territory, now on a completely different mission.

The desert around him glowed in late-day light. The sand seemed to be a thousand different colors instead of the relentless brown it always appeared under the noon sun. The saguaros were casting long shadows again, just as they had at daybreak this morning, only now the sun was in the west.

Narrowing, the road split and Jack took the fork heading for Pais Grande. He checked his watch—4:35. He gunned the engine and thought about going off road. He would save five minutes, but he heard a Predator B—an MQ-9 Reaper drone—overhead, and he didn’t need to show up on camera in his old command station. So he stayed the course.

Barely ten minutes later he pulled into the parking lot beside the Pais Grande Medical Center. There were fewer cars than before, but an ambulance had backed into the emergency room bay. He hurried inside, found the waiting room full but no one at the desk. He’d missed Ronnie for the day; her nameplate had been replaced with one that said
Delfina Guerra, RN
.

He stood still, then walked back outside, his heart racing. Ronnie had said everyone pitched in; whatever the emergency, Delfina must have been helping. He paced the entryway, waiting to ask Delfina about the mix-up. All he could figure was that the clinic had sent the records to another Tucson hospital.

Glancing toward the parking lot, he saw a group of clinic staff heading toward their cars. Ronnie was among them. She spotted him right away but just kept walking—he couldn’t blame her. It was Saturday night, and she was probably in a hurry to get home.

“Hey, Ronnie,” he said, approaching her just as she reached her Toyota Camry. The white car was old, covered with dust, typical of any vehicle that drove through the desert every day.

“Oh, hi,” she said.

“I have a couple of questions for you.”

“I’m in a bit of a hurry,” she said, unlocking her car, throwing her purse inside. She climbed behind the wheel, clearly not in the mood to talk.

“It won’t take long. My trip to Tucson didn’t go so well,” he said.

“No?” she asked, starting the engine.

“No, not at all.”

“Delfina can help you,” she said. “A car crash victim just came in, and she’s busy with that, but . . .”

“Hey, you live in Mexico,” Jack said, noticing the SENTRI sticker on her windshield. It meant she had undergone a detailed background check and been preapproved as a low-risk traveler who could cross the border easily without inspection. The passes were given to workers who made daily, or at least frequent, trips from their homes in Mexico to work in the United States.

“Yes,” she said. “Nurses are scarce everywhere, especially at a clinic like this. No one wants to work here.”

“So you cross the border every day,” he said. “Well, you’re doing the work of the angels, that’s for sure.”

“Gracias,” she said, giving a slight smile.

“You cross at Nogales?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. I used to work that sector—I know a lot of the guys.”

“I’d better go, my husband is waiting for his dinner.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “Just one thing—that Jane Doe case file didn’t match up with the records at San Jacinto. Any chance you got the hospital wrong?”

“We don’t make those kinds of mistakes,” she said. “Have Delfina check for you.”

“Or maybe transposed the digits on the case number?”

She tried to laugh. He picked up fear coming off her.

“I’m not blaming you,” he said quickly. “It happens. I just—”

He heard tires on gravel and saw Ralph’s SUV pulling into the lot. Ralph grinned, pointed, and rolled down his window.

“You old dog,” he called. “I couldn’t let you sneak by without tracking you down to say hello. How the hell you doing, Jack?”