The Lemon Orchard (20 page)

“How far did you follow them?”

“A ways. They seem to have gotten lost before reaching the main road. They veered off into the foothills.”

“But they made it?”

“Some may have,” Latham said. “We found four bodies.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling her stomach knot.

“The terrain became rocky, more difficult to follow. Eventually the path intersected a road where some may have been picked up by their contacts.”

“And Rosa?”

“We didn’t find her body,” Latham said. “But we found these.”

He had carried a file with him, and opened it, and pushed two separate photos across the table to Julia. Each showed a single small dust-covered lime-green sneaker.

“They were half a mile apart. Neither was on the trail where we tracked the group. They were in rough mountain terrain. That’s not a hopeful sign.”

“She might have lost them,” Julia said. “They could have come off while the man was carrying her. Or if she walked, she could have gotten them stuck in the rocks. That happened to Jenny, my daughter, when we were crabbing at low tide, all those rocks, and they just caught one of her sneakers in the wrong way and it came right off . . .”

“See that?” Latham asked, pointing to a brown patch covering the side of her right sneaker. “That’s blood.”

“It could be mud.”

“We tested.”

“Maybe she had a blister that got rubbed raw—or she fell down and scraped her ankle.”

“It’s more likely her body was dragged from the scene by animals,” Latham said.

“When did you determine that?” Jack asked, sounding angry, offended that he hadn’t been told.

“Look, you’re retired—I looked up the file as a favor to you. And this case is five years old, Jack. I followed the trail, but the rest was done in the lab.”

Jack spread the photos across the table, starting at them.

“It’s a theory, Jack, that’s all. But it’s our best working theory. If we could spend one hundred percent of our time on Rosa Rodriguez, we’d know for sure. But you know how it is. How backed up we are. Those hills are full of coyotes and mountain lions. We think one of them dragged Rosa off, that her bones are scattered over the rocks.”

“But you don’t know for sure,” Jack said. “Why don’t you get your fellow Wolves and go find her remains?”

“‘Remains’? You don’t know that’s what you’d be looking for. She might have made it,” Julia said. “There’s no proof of her death!”

“Julia, proof of death is rare in the desert. We do our best, but do you how many people we identify? A small percentage,” Latham said.

“Needle in a haystack, Julia. Don’t get your hopes up,” Jack said.

“But without a body . . . even bones . . . If any had been collected, they would be in a morgue, and Juan would have found the data,” she said.

“We consider the sneakers to be a strong indication that she is dead,” Latham said.

“Did you find her doll? Maria?”

“No. But we matched the blood with her father’s. We DNA-tested him when he was arrested.”

“Then why didn’t you tell him?”

“Where would we find him?” Jack asked. “He’s undocumented. The last thing he wants is for his address to be known by ICE. Forget about this, Julia. It’s very sad; I know it’s not what you hoped for. Try to let it go.”

“That is wise advice,” Latham said. “As hard as it is to accept, she’s just another border casualty.”

“She’s also someone’s daughter,” Julia said.

Roberto

Julia had left him that phone message, and he’d saved it and listened to it many times. The sound of her voice, speaking just to him, so soft and beautiful, saying his name. He wanted to save it forever.

She didn’t come home until two nights later. He heard her car come up the cobblestoned driveway. The car door slammed, and she let herself into the house. He lay on his narrow bed, hypervigilant for any sound. He stared out the open door toward the barn because he knew when she turned off the house lights, he’d see their reflection on the weathered red boards disappear.

But the house lights stayed on. Soon the door opened again. He thought she must be walking Bonnie, and he considered joining her. But would it be an intrusion? She had left that phone message. Did that mean anything? He felt that she respected him, but he’d also heard something else in her voice, a closeness different from anything he had in his life.

Before he had the chance to walk out and meet her and Bonnie, her footsteps came down the hill toward his cabin. By the time she knocked on his door, his heart was racing.

“Roberto,” she said. “I’m sorry it’s so late.”

“That’s okay, Julia. Are you all right?”

She didn’t reply. He stood there in his work jeans and T-shirt. There was a square table and two chairs in the corner. He held one out for her, and she sat down. He turned on a lamp and sat across from her. Maybe he should offer her coffee or tea, but he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

She was right here, in his cabin. Her blue eyes were on fire, she seemed agitated, so he reached across the table to hold her hand.

“Hola, Julia,” he said.

“Hola.” Finally, a smile. But it was fleeting, here and gone.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I wanted to wait until tomorrow,” she said. “Let you have a good night’s sleep . . .”

“I don’t need sleep.” And holding her hand, he felt he didn’t need anything—food, air, water, sleep, if he could just stay here like this.

“I took a trip to learn about Rosa,” she said. “I should have told you before I left, but we had that talk, and I know you were very upset.”

“I’m sorry for how I acted,” he said. “My feelings—they weren’t because of you. They had to do with Rosa. I never talk about her the way I do with you.”

“I know that.”

He couldn’t breathe or speak. Now it was Julia squeezing his hand, holding his gaze with hers, her blue eyes so bright and sad, he felt a lump in his chest, as if his heart had seized.

“What did you do?” he asked.

“I followed some of the leads I told you about,” she said. “I went to La Jolla, to an organization called the Reunion Project.”

“Bring people together?”

“Yes, sort of. Juan and his team focus on border crossers. They have a database full of everyone who’s been detained and arrested, and every body that was ever found.”

“Rosa’s?” he asked, his bones and blood burning.

“No,” she said quickly. “He has no record of anyone like Rosa. But I tracked down Jack Leary—remember him?”

“Claro,” Roberto said.

“I went to see him.”

“He remembered us?”

“Absolutely. He’s retired now, in Yuma. He told me some cases stand out for him, and Rosa’s is one of them. We met with Latham Nez, a Shadow Wolf.”

Shadow Wolf—what is that? he wondered but didn’t ask. He felt frozen.

“They’re expert trackers. They work mostly on Tohono O’odham land, but they’re called out on special assignments. Jack Leary brought them in to look for Rosa.”

“We crossed just west of the reservation.”

Julia nodded.

Roberto sat still as a stone, waiting.

“They traced her beyond the boulder where you last saw her. Latham thinks another group of migrants came along and took her with them.”

“Saved her?” Roberto asked, jumping up from the table.

Julia stayed seated. Her expression remained the same, composed. Then she looked down, and when she glanced up he saw tears glitter in her eyes.

“They don’t think so,” she said. “Apparently the group got lost, off track. They headed into foothills, rocky ground. Latham said four bodies were found—but not Rosa’s. It seems some of them made it to the road and their pickup spot. But, Roberto, they found her sneakers.”

“En serio?”

“Yes.”

“They are sure they belonged to Rosa?”

Julia nodded.

“Then we have to go back and look! Get them to tell us where they found the shoes . . .”

Julia held his hand very tightly. “They don’t think she survived.”

“Mande?” he asked, his English deserting him.

“Roberto, they think she died. Her sneakers were found far apart from each other, and there was blood on one of them.”

“They weren’t Rosa’s,” he said. “They belonged to someone else!”

“They were hers. They tested the blood, and they were able to match it to her because of your DNA. When they picked you up . . .”

Roberto remembered. They had taken his fingerprints, then swabbed the inside of his mouth. He watched TV, cop shows, he knew they used DNA to catch criminals. But to determine that his daughter was dead? And the proof coming from him? It couldn’t be.

“No,” he said.

“That’s what I told them,” she said. “I didn’t want to believe it.”

Deep down, all these years, he had assumed that Rosa was dead. He didn’t feel it in his cells, in his skin, but what choice did he have? If she was anywhere in this world, they would find the way to each other. She was his
hija
flesh and blood, and he closed his eyes and felt her presence with him, as if she were standing in the room.

“What did they tell you that made you believe it?” he asked.

“They searched for her very hard,” Julia said. “They wanted to find her. Latham Nez picked up the trail of a group, and he was sure one of the men had lifted Rosa up, to try to carry her to safety. But they got lost, Roberto.”

He stared at Julia, but he was seeing the desert at night. How dark it was without the moon, how no trails were marked, and how the coyotes tried to keep everyone hidden, safe from La Migra. Maybe this Good Samaritan had walked through the night. Moonlight had led them through the desert, and darkness had sent them veering into the hills.

“No one from that group survived?”

“Some did,” she said. “But they have no way of knowing who. Your group was the only one picked up by the Border Patrol in that area that night.”

If those other crossers had gone first, maybe Roberto and Rosa would have made it safely together. He thought back to Altar, tried to picture all the faces he saw in that town, hundreds of people waiting for their coyote to call them into the trucks and vans.

He had dreamed of this, other travelers rescuing Rosa, wanting to bring her to his door. But those dreams ended in ways even worse than what the agents had told Julia. Rosa lost in the desert, walking with her saviors, being attacked by enormous black birds, Mexican jaguars, the most evil men on earth. Roberto would run or fly or jump to get to Rosa and rescue her before she was harmed, but she always disappeared before he arrived.

“Maria,” he said out loud.

“Her doll?” Julia said, and he was touched she remembered.

“Did they find Maria?”

“No,” she said. “Only her sneakers.”

Silence fell between them. The window was open and he heard the sound of leaves rustling in the orchard.

“Gracias, Julia,” he said after a minute.

He wanted to hug her. But he was trembling, ashamed that she would feel that and judge him for his weakness. A really strong man would never have lost his daughter, or sent this woman off to make sense of his terrible crossing.

She didn’t give him the chance to protest. She stepped forward, held him in her arms. He was shaking, or maybe that was her. His mind raced with crazy thoughts. He felt her breath on his neck, and he wanted to tilt her head back and kiss her. The bed was right there. He wanted to lie with her, bodies pressed together, and hold each other all night, till the sun came up, and even after it rose.

“Julia,” he whispered, “I would do anything for you.”

Had she heard him? She stood so still, pressed against his body as if she wanted to become a part of it.

“You’re my friend, aren’t you?” she whispered. “My true friend?”

“Sí,” he said. “Forever.”

She kissed his neck, and his collarbone, and his shoulder. Then she stood on tiptoes and kissed him lightly on the lips. Now he wanted to lift her up, carry her to bed, feel life on a night of death, but she lowered herself down, put one hand on his chest, and backed away.

He watched her cross the property, through the trees and around the pool, and he saw her run up the front steps and into the big house. His nerves were screaming. Julia had given him more of Rosa’s story than he’d known before, but it still led to the same place: her death in the desert.

chapter nine

Lion

He picked Julia up in the late morning and took her for a ride along the coast. The top was down, and they wore sunglasses against the brilliant sun. Her hair tossed in the wind, reminding him of rides with Graciela.

The day sparkled; the Pacific broke on Zuma Beach with waves full of diamonds. He zigzagged off the PCH to drive through Point Dume. The houses here were spectacular and private, hidden behind gates and hedges. Many were owned by movie stars, and Lion pointed out each one and recounted the parties he’d enjoyed there.

Julia turned away from the mansions and focused on what he called “the Hobbit cottage”—a house mostly hidden by archways and bowers of lush red and dark pink bougainvillea cascading over everything.

“I want to live there,” she said.

“Oh, really?” he asked. “What about the Casa?”

“I mean after John and Graciela get back.”

Lion glanced over. “You mean move to Malibu?”

“I don’t know,” she said, still staring at the flower-covered house. “Maybe.”

They drove to the Point Dume overlook, where surfers generally snagged all six of the legal parking spots, and as usual there was no place to park. Lion contented himself with letting Julia enjoy the view across the fields of tall grass and wildflowers, to the ocean beyond.

“This is the best place to see migrating gray whales,” she said. “I remember from when I was young, and John would take me here. We’d see mothers and babies hugging the coast, heading up to the Bering Sea. Wrong time of year now, though . . .”

“Speaking of John, we have so much to discuss over lunch,” Lion said. “His letter, your mysterious trip . . . Did he mention Graciela?”

“Just to say she sent her love.”

“Ah,” he said.

They left Point Dume and headed down to Cross Creek and the Malibu Country Mart. The parking lot was full of Porsches and Bentleys, but Lion’s vintage Jag always got a second look. He remembered when this shopping center had been comfortably downtrodden and local, and it was a point of contention that the stores on both sides of the street were now occupied by expensive boutiques—Ralph Lauren, Oliver Peoples, John Varvatos, Lanvin.