Not Without The Truth

“Then I’ll tell him that, too,” she said. “But you have to ask around first. I don’t want to lie to him either way.”

Armando sighed. He didn’t want to get involved, but guilt was a powerful motivator—and a heavy weight. Of all the cases in his past, why had this one come back? He’d lost more sleep over the little girl with the haunting eyes than he had over any of his other assignments.

“How would I know her?” he asked reluctantly.

“I’ll fax you a photo. She won’t be hard to miss. Believe me, if she’s anywhere around there, you’ll know. She’s gorgeous. Blond, blue eyes, thin. She looks like a supermodel.” Meredith hesitated, then corrected herself. “No, wait. Actually, that’s not quite true. She looks like her mother. Exactly like her. Do you remember her?”

“Yes.”

Oblivious to what his one-syllable answer signified, Meredith continued. “Maybe you’ll fall in love with her,” she teased. “And move back to the States like Cruz and Stratton. You could have three children and buy a big ranch in Texas. You’d make lots of money, you know.”

“I need no more money,” he said, staring out into the night. “And I don’t want a wife and three children. Or a ranch in Texas.”

Finally sensing his mood, she spoke with a serious tone. “Then what do you want, Armando? Cruz has found his place in the world and Stratton has gotten himself straightened out. They seem happy. When are you going to give up being the broody Latin and do the same?”

“I’m thrilled for them,” he said. “But I’m not sure that condition will ever find me.”

“It doesn’t just fall into your lap,” she said sharply. “You have to search for it.”

“You’re correct as usual,” he said. “But I carry too many images of death. They visit me without invitation and linger in the corners. I don’t need to look for anything more, much less happiness. “

“We’ve done a lot of good, Armando.”

“I know that. I’m still a believer, don’t worry.”

“Then concentrate on that. Otherwise, you’ll drive yourself insane.”

“Your advice is wise, Meredith, but it comes too late.” His voice went quiet and low with regret. “I’ve done things I shouldn’t have and left too many other things undone.”

They hung up without saying goodbye. A moment later, the fax on his desk rang shrilly. Armando walked to the machine and watched the picture of Lauren Stanley emerge, line by line. When the photo was complete, he continued to stare. Meredith had been correct. The little girl he’d seen had turned into a stunning woman. If she was anywhere near Rojo or even Aquas Caliente, the larger village upriver, he would have heard by now.

Picking up the fax, he crumpled it out of habit then put a match to the wad of paper. White ash fell like snow into the metal wastebasket at his feet.

He went back to bed but sleep didn’t join him.

SHE DIDN’T KNOW where she was.

Pain was her only constant. For days, she hadn’t been able to move without wanting to scream. When the aches had started to ease, the fever had begun. She’d lost track of time, the edge between darkness and day blurring until she no longer knew—or cared—if the sun or the moon shone.

The hut where she lay was thatched and a mosquito net covered the space above her. There was nothing in the room but her bed and a small table beside it. In contrast, a window opening to the right framed a scene that looked more like a Gauguin painting than any actual place she’d ever been.

A woman came in several times a day and checked on her. Sometimes in the middle of the night—or maybe the middle of the day, she wasn’t sure which—a man came, too. He was lean and gaunt with sunken eyes that frightened her. He never spoke. He did nothing but look at her.

She didn’t know where she was.

She didn’t know who she was.

THE DAY AFTER MEREDITH CALLED, Armando went into Rojo, but no one in the village had seen a gringa. He returned home and put the woman out of his mind. When Meredith called a week later, he told her he knew nothing.

“Dammit, I hate having to call Freeman Stanley and tell him that. Are you sure no one’s seen her?”

He let his silence answer the question.

“What should I do?” she asked in a worried voice.

He shook his head at her ploy. “Don’t try to pull one of your tricks on me, Meredith. You asked me to see if Lauren Stanley had been here and that is what I did. If this was a real assignment, I would stop and do anything you asked, you know that, but otherwise my days here are very full already. I have the clinic and the villages and the children. I did not join the Operatives to find missing daughters for worried daddies.”

“Stanley has called me too many times to count. He offered us a lot of money.”

“And I told you last time we spoke that I have no need of that.”

“Maybe you don’t,” she said, “but what about your clinic? When I saw you at Cruz’s wedding, you said the place continuously required new equipment and stronger drugs and more staff and better beds—”

He interrupted her as she had him. “The funds this man could give us wouldn’t make a dent in what we lack. And the time it would take to do the job, to find this woman, I do not have it, Meredith.”

“Your time I can’t replace,” she said. “But you’re wrong about the money.” She named a figure that shocked him. “You could buy a lot of aspirin with that, Armando. A donation that size could keep the clinic running for years. You could even hire another doctor.” She paused then added in a mocking voice, “A real doctor.”

Armando was a psychiatrist and Meredith liked to tease him about it. He ignored her taunt this time, however, and thought of the infant he’d seen yesterday. One listen through his stethoscope and he’d known that the child had a serious heart defect, probably congenital. Other symptoms had confirmed his suspicions—the pale skin, the wheezing breath, the lethargy. Any medium-size hospital in the States could have corrected the problem, but here the baby had no chance.

“I’ll call you in two days.” He made the promise abruptly then hung up.

Later that morning, his housekeeper, who also served as a nurse at the clinic, came to his study. Zue was Quechuan and eighty. She worked hard but her grandson, Beli, who also helped around the compound, did just the opposite. Knowing Armando would pay him regardless, he put out as little effort as possible.

“There are people here,” she sniffed. “From Qunico. I told them the clinic was closed but they won’t go away. They’re farmers.”

Armando had learned a long time ago not to point out what he thought were the discrepancies in Zue’s complicated class hierarchy. “Send them in,” he said.

Under Zue’s watchful eyes, the two men shuffled inside. Wrapped in woven blankets, they were exhausted and filthy. Qunico was fifty miles east of Rojo and even if they had had a vehicle, there was nothing but a rough path between the two. They’d either walked or ridden mules. Armando studied them but they both seemed healthy.

The taller of two spoke haltingly. “Señor Doctor, we have a woman in our village. She is hurt and very sick. She needs your help. You are the only one who can save her.”

Armando stilled. Something inside told him he knew the answer to his question, but he asked it anyway. “The woman is a gringa, no? With blond hair and ojos azules?”

The men exchanged a startled look and Armando realized he’d just added to the rumors that swirled about him. They came to him for help, but most of the villagers were frightened of him—they thought he could read their minds, disappear at will and heal with a touch. He didn’t like the mystery they’d built up around him, but sometimes it proved useful, he had to admit.

“What’s wrong with her?” Armando asked.

Their explanation came out in a jumble of Spanish and Quechuan but even if one language had prevailed, it wouldn’t have mattered. They were too overwhelmed to get the tale told in any kind of order. Armando held his hand up after a few moments and halted the flow.

“Por favor, amigos, one thing at a time. Start at the beginning.”

The taller man, clearly the leader, paused and tried to organize his thoughts. Finally he shook his head in a gesture of defeat. “We don’t know the beginning, señor.”

Armando frowned. “What do you mean?”

“We don’t know where she came from or how she escaped, but Xuachoto had her in his arms for a very long time. We think maybe he wanted to claim her for a new bride, but Mariaita wouldn’t let him. He had to give her up.”

The locals followed a convoluted mixture of Catholicism and Inca myths that had evolved through the centuries, their leader, Manco, serving as both priest and mayor. Armando hadn’t bothered to study the intricacies of the system but some of his ignorance was not his own fault. When the clinic had opened and the locals had seen what Armando’s medicines could do, they’d begun to bypass the old man’s rites and gone directly to Armando’s clinic for healing. In return, Manco deliberately made things more difficult because he resented what he perceived to be Armando’s healing powers and was jealous of his abilities.