Page 83 of Girl in the Water
He scanned the ground as he walked, doing his best to ignore the heat and humidity. An idea was slowly forming in his head. Maybe the reason why nobody had seen anyone taking the baby out of the parents’ bedroom was that baby Lila hadn’t been taken out.
She could easily have been lowered from the window, in one of the large sisal baskets the girls wove right on the premises. Maybe whoever had stolen the baby had passed her over to his or her baby-selling connection right here.
Of course, a month later, finding any tracks was hopeless.
The back of the property stood knee-high in weeds. A row of small wooden houses waited straight ahead, their tiny backyards fenced except for a few.
Daniela was talking with the girls in the far corner of the yard. They were playing some kind of a game with rocks and empty food cans. She had her back to Ian. She had the girls’ full attention, every face turned to her, every expression admiring. The girls seemed very impressed that someone so much like them could become an important American investigator.
The girls had been outside at the time of the kidnapping, but they would not have seen the area where Ian was standing, not from the basketball court.But…maybe not every eye had been on the basketball game.And, Ian thought now,maybe one had snuck off back here for a smoke or a beer, or to meet a boy. Teenagers were teenagers the world around.
He left Daniela to the girls and went to talk to the people who lived in the wooden houses. The police had done a door to door, according to their report, but Ian wanted a firsthand feel for the people who lived in the homes. They would see the aid workers coming and going. They would have seen the baby. Maybe one of them had come up with the kidnapping to make a little money.
Ian strode across the lot, crossed through a small backyard that wasn’t fenced in.
Having a little distance between Daniela and him for a couple of hours wouldn’t hurt either. That kiss back at the sugar factory…
He couldn’t think about that kiss. Every time he did, he felt so guilty, he wanted to hand his own ass to himself, dammit. He’d spent the rest of the morning carefully maintaining professional distance. And maybe he’d keep investigating for the rest of their time here, without stopping, because he couldn’t cope with the idea of sleeping in the same bedroom with her.
He strode toward the nearest house, the path to the steps overgrown with weeds. He gave it a try anyway, knocked on the door. Nobody responded.
At the second house, a harried mother with three little kids clinging to her legs opened up for him. He asked his questions: Where had she been a month ago? If she’d seen or heard anything?
He was glad that while he’d been teaching Daniela English he’d agreed to her teaching him Portuguese. They used to trade word for word after she’d moved to DC.
Daniela’s English was way better than Ian’s Portuguese, but he knew enough for basic questioning. And he must have gotten his questions right, because the woman in the cracked-open door responded.
“Sorry, senhor. I didn’t see anything. I didn’t know what happened until the police came.”
He tried four more homes and received nearly identical answers.
“How about the empty house?” he asked on an impulse at the last place he visited.
“Essie?” The old, nearly toothless woman in the doorway wrinkled her forehead, which was so wrinkled already, Ian could just barely tell that she was frowning. “She moved to São Paulo.”
“Do you know why?”
“New job.”
“Do you know when?”
The old woman hesitated, sucking her only tooth as she tried to remember, so he asked, “Was it before or after the baby disappeared?”
The woman thought hard, scratching the mole on her chin. “Before, but not much, maybe a day or two. I only remember because Clara, the neighbor, said the police wanted her to let them into the house to make sure the kidnappers weren’t there. Clara has Essie’s key.”
He thanked the old woman and went back, asked Clara for the key. The neighbor didn’t hesitate handing it over—probably because Ian had flashed his CPRU ID card when he’d first questioned her. Likely she had no idea what the card meant, but she’d decided he was some kind of a foreign official. She gave him the key with the warning that the local police had already seen everything.
Ian went for a look anyway. The power had been shut off, but he didn’t really need the overhead lights. Enough light still came through the windows.
Essie had left behind her furniture. Not unusual in itself. The furniture was cheap bamboo stuff. Moving it would probably cost more than buying something used in São Paulo.
Two bedrooms. One with an adult-size bed, the other one a kid’s room, pictures of animals on the walls, a plastic ball in the corner. The sisal carpet still had dents in it where a crib had been.
Ian strode back to the neighbor. “Did Essie have a child?”
“Two years old,” the woman said. “A little boy.”
Ian thanked her, then walked back to See-Love-Aid. The police report didn’t include an interview with Essie. Made sense, she’d moved before the incident. She couldn’t possibly have seen anything. Yet something floated at the edges of Ian’s mind, wisps of half thoughts he couldn’t put together into a whole.
