The Lemon Orchard (19 page)

And just like that, Leary had his answer. The way she closed her eyes, her hesitation, the way she gave him the age her daughter had been eleven years ago. He knew why she was pursuing the case of Rosa Rodriguez.

“What was her name?” he asked.

“Jenny.”

“What happened?”

“Car crash.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“How did you know?” she asked.

He smiled sadly. There were so many ways—how she’d answered him, the sorrow in her blue eyes. And this mission she was on—he had to admit it was unusual. The people who came to him were generally journalists after a story or naturalized Mexicans looking for their loved ones. Julia was searching her heart out for Rosa Rodriguez to try to staunch the pain of her own loss. So Leary decided to tell her.

“Shadow Wolves,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Earlier you asked me who we brought out on Rosa’s case. Shadow Wolves. They’re an elite squad, expert trackers, Native Americans. We generally use them to catch drug smugglers, mules carrying cocaine and methamphetamine. But I requested that they look for Rosa.”

“Why?” she asked.

He was quiet for a few minutes. He got up and refilled their coffee mugs, finally remembered to put the muffins he’d bought at the store that morning on the table. Louella would have wanted him to. He sat down again, looked Julia deeply in the eyes.

“The reason I wanted the Shadow Wolves on it is that there were parts of the story that didn’t fit,” he said.

“Roberto’s story?”

He saw the blood drain from her face. “No,” he said quickly. “We believed him. But shortly after we caught his group, some others came along the same route. We captured six, but the others, including the coyotes, got away.”

“Could one of them have rescued Rosa?” Julia asked.

“We wanted to think so. That’s why we called in the Wolves—to track that second group.”

“What did they discover?”

“Nothing definitive enough to tell you. I could ask Latham Nez if he’d be willing to talk to you. He holds everything very close. But as a favor to me, he might do it. He’s the head of the team that handled Rosa’s case.”

“Would you ask him?”

Leary glanced at the picture of him and Louella standing outside their teardrop camper, on a trip to Yellowstone four summers ago. He could feel her with him now, wanting him to help Jenny’s mother.

They weren’t going to find Rosa, but he had learned over the years that no search was ever futile. Finding the quarry wasn’t always the point. In fact it rarely was.

He nodded, and made the call with Julia Hughes looking on.

“Latham Nez, it’s been a long time. This is Jack Leary.”

chapter seven

Julia

Latham Nez couldn’t see her till the next day, so she checked into the Sonoran, a motel a few miles from Jack’s house. Jack invited her for dinner, but she was exhausted and said she’d meet him in the morning.

The motel had a southwestern theme, cactus plants in the lobby and all the walls painted soothing adobe colors of brick, sunflower, and dusky blue. She turned up the air conditioner in her room and lay flat on the bed.

She stared at Roberto’s number programmed into her phone. She wanted to call, but there was a lot to explain. There could be news about Rosa—should she tell him now or wait till she’d met with Latham Nez?

Her mind was flooded with thoughts and ideas about Rosa, but her heart was remembering the trip to Mexico she and Jenny had taken. They had stayed in motels just like this one. Jenny had loved the colors, the warm décor. In spite of her objections to leaving Black Hall that summer, she had taken this style back home, painted her room to resemble a pueblo, sunset colors, the stately elm framed in the big window in the middle of the ochre-colored wall.

Jenny called her father nearly every night. Julia would say hello at the end, but mainly the conversation was Jenny telling him about what she had seen, new foods she had eaten, how much she missed the beach. Julia’s stomach would tighten when she took the receiver. Peter sounded indulgent, as if he were letting her spend time away from home, on an adventure vacation. It made her blood boil.

Jenny, always vigilant, picked up on it. She would watch Julia on the phone with Peter as if trying to figure out her parents’ marriage.

“Alice’s parents are getting divorced,” Jenny said one night, in a motel room strikingly similar to this one. There were two double beds, and although they’d turned in for the night, neither of them could sleep.

“I know,” Julia said.

“It’s sad when parents get divorced,” Jenny said, her voice thin.

“Very sad, I know,” Julia said, understanding exactly what Jenny was getting at.

“I wish we were all together this summer.”

“We will be soon.”

“When are we going home?”

“In three more weeks,” Julia said. “There’ll be lots of summer left.”

“We can all go to the beach together and do what we always do,” Jenny said.

“Yes.”

“This is not my favorite summer,” Jenny said quietly.

“I know, Jen,” Julia said.

In return she got an exasperated sigh, and the sound of Jenny tossing in her bed. That week Jenny began deciding what her own life would be like when she fell in love. On a piece of beige motel stationery, Julia found a list Jenny had made. The fact she’d left it on her bedside table instead of tucking it into her journal made Julia realize the list was intended for her benefit as well.

1. Love is everything.
   
2. No secrets from each other
   
3. If you say I love you, it can never be taken back.
   
4. Never spend the summer apart.
   
5. Never spend a night apart, unless one of you has to be in the hospital or something equally urgent.
   
6. Talk on the phone every day.
   
7. NOTHING is more important than taking your husband’s (or wife’s) phone call.
   
8. Eternal closeness
   
9. Meals together EVERY NIGHT
   

Now, eleven years later, Julia closed her eyes and thought of how thoroughly Jenny had followed her own plan. She had loved Timmy with everything she had, and for at least a year, he had loved her the same way. Maybe her passion and intensity had scared him off—just as Julia’s had created its own distance between Peter and her.

Holding her phone, heart beating fast, she stared at Roberto’s name. She pressed Dial, and after a few rings the call went to voicemail. She felt both relieved and disappointed.

“Hi, Roberto, it’s Julia. I just wanted to thank you for taking care of Bonnie. Lion told me.” She paused, overflowing with things to say, knowing she would say none of them. “Please pet Bonnie for me and tell her I’ll be home soon, in a day or so. I miss her . . . and I miss you. Good night, Roberto.”

Roberto

Roberto, staying at the Casa, didn’t get Julia’s call, because he was taking Bonnie for her evening walk. Cell reception was unreliable at best, and the farther he went from the Casa, the worse it was. When he returned to the house and gave Bonnie a fresh bowl of water, he listened to the message. Her voice was beautiful and gentle, and he listened to the message again, especially the part where she said she missed him.

He wanted to call her back, but she hadn’t asked him to, and she clearly said “Good night.” So perhaps, wherever she was, she had gone to bed. He didn’t want to disturb her, but it moved him that she’d called.

He sat in the kitchen chair and petted the old dog between her ears for a long time. She rested her chin on his knee, looking up at him with her big two-colored eyes. He remembered seeing her that first day, thinking his grandmother would have called her a
bruja
. But after getting to know Bonnie, he knew there was nothing witchlike about her.

He walked through the house, leaving a few lights on for the dog and to make it look occupied. He didn’t think anyone would dare break into the Casa with his staying on the property, but robberies in the hills and canyons of Malibu were not unknown.

When he got to the room Julia was staying in, he paused in the doorway, then entered. Her suitcases stood in the corner, but she’d unpacked the bag of books and arranged them on the desk. There was a framed photo beside them, and feeling like an intruder, he walked over to look at it.

There was Julia, her arms around a girl who had to be Jenny. They stood on the porch of a house, beaming at the camera. Roberto saw the mother-daughter similarity in their eyes, the shape of their faces, their smiles. He touched their faces. Then he couldn’t help himself—he pulled out his wallet and removed a photo of Rosa. He couldn’t have explained why he did this, but he tucked Rosa’s photo into the corner of the picture frame—he wanted them to be close, Julia and their two daughters. He would remove it before Julia returned to the Casa, but for now he left it there.

Leaving the room, he paused by the bed. He gazed down at it and pressed his hand into the pillow. Although he wasn’t religious, he wanted to bless Julia, and her travels, and her dreams, and he couldn’t think of any other way to do it.

Then he walked away.

Jack

As Jack Leary drove Julia Hughes to meet Latham Nez, he gave her a little background on the elite group of trackers.

“Shadow Wolves are expert at cutting sign,” he said. “They have to have at least one-quarter Native American blood, and they patrol the eighty-mile stretch of Tohono O’odham reservation along the border.”

“Why are they so good?”

“Skills passed down through the generations. Some smugglers are almost equally good at disguising their routes. But a Shadow Wolf will notice one pebble out of place, no exaggeration, and ten miles later he’ll capture his quarry.”

“They work for the reservation?”

“No. They’re ICE, U.S. Border Patrol agents—hey, there’s Latham’s Jeep up ahead.”

Julia seemed wide-eyed, driving through the desert. Hearing about this place was one thing, but seeing it and feeling the heat on the truck windows, no matter how much air-conditioning was blasting inside, was a humbling experience. Jack pulled over behind Latham’s vehicle, and called his radio to let him know they were there.

While they waited in the cool truck, Julia turned to him.

“Jack Leary,” she said, and then, seemingly out of the blue, “Are you Irish?”

“Hell yes. Could there be any doubt with a name like Leary?”

“Before I was married, I was Julia Riley.”

“Ha, I knew I liked you. What part of Ireland are your people from?”

“Connemara,” she said. “My uncle’s over there now, researching an ancestor. Have you ever heard of John Riley?”

Leary beamed, and went through his center console, came up with a CD and pushed it in. Tim O’Brien sang about John Riley coming from Galway to fight in the U.S. Army.

“That’s him.”

“Every Irishman who finds his way to the border learns about John Riley pretty fast.”

Latham walked over to the truck. Stepping out into 103-degree heat, Leary made the introductions.

Latham wore traditional camo clothes and a wide-brimmed hat. His dark skin was sunburned, and his features were strong and proud. He was mainly Tohono O’odham, but Leary remembered hearing he was part Navajo, too. Shadow Wolves came from several tribes, including Sioux, Blackfoot, Lakota, and Yaqui.

“What can I do for you, miss?” he asked.

“I’m looking for information about a girl who was lost five years ago. Jack told me you might know something about her,” Julia said.

“I told you,” Leary prodded him. Latham was closemouthed, especially about agency matters, and he would be careful about what he gave up. “The six-year-old from Puebla, we took her father into custody, she was left by the boulder in Sector 34, May 12, 2007.”

“Uh-huh,” Latham said.

Leary glared at him. If he was going to be a dick and treat him like an outsider, Leary was going to be pissed.

“Rosa Rodriguez,” Leary said. “We talked about this.”

“What do you want to know, miss?” Latham asked.

“What happened to her?”

“We don’t have that information.”

“For chrissakes, Latham—tell her what you told me.”

“It’s hot out here,” Latham said. “Especially if you’re not used to desert heat.”

“There’s an Applebee’s up the road. My treat,” Leary said.

“We can talk there,” Latham said.

chapter eight

Julia

They sat in a booth and ordered lunch and iced tea, and when her salad came she couldn’t eat a bite. She listened intently to every word Latham spoke.

“That rock where Rosa’s father left her,” Latham began. “That was the source. Right away my colleagues and I determined she’d been taken, shortly after her father was picked up, by a different group.”

“Group?” she asked.

“Border crossers,” Latham said. “They most often travel in groups.”

“But who would take Rosa and not report it? Maybe not right away, but once they got safely to where they were going?”

“People have different reasons for being in the desert,” Latham said matter-of-factly. “The coyotes are smugglers. Yes, they help innocent people cross. But there are ugly stories, too.”

“That’s true,” Jack said. “But there could be many reasons they didn’t report Rosa. They might have tried, and not known who to contact. They are vulnerable themselves, here illegally, and they might not have wanted to get themselves—or Rosa’s family—in trouble.”

“Anyway,” Latham continued. “We tracked this one group before the boulder, and again after. Footprints tell us everything: height, weight, sometimes nationality depending on the footgear, whether they’re weighted down with backpacks or whatever they might be carrying.”

“One of the walkers picked Rosa up?” Julia asked, unable to contain her excitement.

“Yes. From the footprints, we saw that a man traveling with a group of twelve others began carrying an additional forty-eight-pound weight. That’s small for a six-year-old, but assuming she came from poverty in Roberto’s town of Santa Cruz Tlaxcala, it fits.”