1992, a car driven by thirty-one-year-old Raimundo Alberto Lazo had fallen into a canal on 8th Street at 177th Avenue, near Krome Avenue, and its occupant had died. The file included photographs of the car removal and of the cadaver. She also found a death certificate and a coroner’s report that determined the death to be an accident. The plastic bags contained the clothing and shoes worn by the deceased as well as a few personal effects that for some reason hadn’t been returned or claimed by the family. For the moment, nothing seemed out of the ordinary except that there was very little information and that the case had been closed hastily. Then she reread the date and understood why.
The accident had taken place only a few weeks after Hurricane Andrew. The police were having a hard time coping. Many officers had lost their homes, but even then the majority were working sixteen and eighteen hour shifts in an effort to help the victims, prevent looting and vandalism, direct traffic, and impose a seven o’clock curfew. There were areas without electricity for more than a month. Similar accidents with people trapped in their cars submerged in canals were frequent in Miami, so it didn’t surprise her that they hadn’t pursued the investigation further in a such a moment.
She was about to close the file when something caught her eye. Although the old Polaroid was blurry, you could clearly see a child’s car seat in the back. She kept on reading until she found what she was looking for. a five-week-old baby had also been in the car, but they had never found the body.
She went out to get a bottle of water before deciding to open the second box of files. All of sudden she got that feeling in the pit of her stomach that comes from a new case, when you realize you’re tackling a puzzle; a reality that had been dashed in an instant, and now it was up to her to find the cause and how it had happened.
She was just about to head back to the conference room when her cell phone rang.
It was her father.
“So whatcha doing, mija?”
“Just here playing on the seesaw, Papi.”
Her father chuckled as he always did when she used some old Cuban saying.
“So, you’re taking it easy… No new case?”
“No…”
“If you’re just goofing off, you could go to lunch with your old man.”
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say I’m goofing off. I’m looking over some unsolved cases they want to reopen. Besides, I’m on a diet and I’d prefer to get a yogurt.”
“Anything interesting?”
“Yeah, I’m thinking strawberry.”
“No, come on, I mean, is the case interesting?”
“I don’t know, Papi, I just started looking over the documents. Let’s talk later. Behave yourself.”
“What choice do I have?”
She headed back into the conference room and opened the second box. She found a bag with the car seat, the birth certificate, a couple of photos of the newborn, and documentation about the search for the body, the false alarm when they had found other remains, the order to close the case, and the various attempts by the mother to reopen it, which until now had been unsuccessful. She wondered what must have happened for them to finally reopen it now that twenty-three years had passed. She went over to the computer and searched through the file where she found a short note:
“Mother asserts having seen missing daughter at Heat game.”
She also did a Google search on the girl. She found out about the many efforts carried out by Gladys Elena Lazo to find her daughter because she was convinced that she hadn’t died in the accident. She had hired private detectives and sought assistance from associations dedicated to searching for missing children. Over the years, they had made three or four sketches of what the child would have looked like at a given time. The last one, made two years ago, showed a young brunette with large eyes and a fixed gaze. Suddenly, that small, missing child took on life. Was it possible that she hadn’t died? And if she had survived, where had she been all these years? And how to even go about looking for her?
She grabbed the phone and dialed the most recent number in the file.
“Hello, is Gladys Elena Lazo there?”
“Speaking.”
“This is Officer Maria Duquesne. Is there a convenient time when I could come by and see you at your house?”
Day 1—Monday, November 2, 2015
Even though she hadn’t planned to go out for lunch, she immediately agreed to do so given the urgent tone in the voice that was speaking to her:
“We have to see you right away!”
A rolling stone gathers no moss, she told herself as she put her cell phone into her purse, got her keys out, and headed out into the midday sun.
What could possibly be up with these crazy old women who need to see me so urgently and with all this mystery? The crazy old women in fact were Lourdes and Yolanda, her mother’s schoolmates from a childhood long ago in Havana.
They were waiting for her at the most obscure table in the restaurant. Rather than one of the places where they typically met, they chose a small, half-empty restaurant in a seedy strip mall in the Sweetwater area. The surprise must have registered on her face because Yolanda quickly blurted out:
“The fact is that Lourdes has to ask you something very privately.”
As the waiter got closer, they lowered their voices. They asked for three glasses of Chardonnay. It was as if they were speaking Chinese. They wound up accepting three Presidente beers.
In response to her inquisitive look, Lourdes began to speak slowly, as if pronouncing each syllable required an immense effort.
“I wasn’t sure if I should bring it up… I don’t think it’s anything… I don’t know… Probably… It’s just that it seems like…and maybe you…”
Maria was about to lose her patience and to tell her to get to the point, but she noticed a hint of pain in the woman’s eyes that made her hesitate and try to comprehend what she was saying beyond the actual words, the meaning behind her gestures and the modulation of her voice that was becoming fainter.
“And?” she succinctly asked while raising an eyebrow.
“Lourdes thinks that Ramon is cheating on her,” Yolanda blurted out.
Maria had to make an effort to stifle her laughter. She couldn’t bring herself to believe that the seventy-year-old man was up for an affair, even though it wasn’t out of the question at his age with Viagra. These days, even Vargas Llosa, who was pushing eighty, was making a fool of himself as a dirty old man in all those photos in Hola magazine. When the waiter came back with their food, the women hushed their conversation for a moment. Lourdes’s breaded cutlet draped over the plate, along with black beans and plantains. Yolanda had asked for vaca frita, that typical Cuban flank steak, with the same side dishes except that the plantains were sweet. As for Maria, she had limited herself to a tuna salad.
When
