“Was?” Father Joe asked. His breathing sounded like hard labor, and he was beginning to speak in clipped phrases.
“The story was that he died during a trip to Guatemala,” she continued. “I’m not sure about the details. But I remember someone telling me that they never found his body. It happened a few years ago, before I came to the hospital.”
“Are you sure it’s him?” Father Joe reached for his breast pocket, probably a reflexive grasp for the inhaler that wasn’t there.
“It’s him.” She stared at the geneticist’s oversized cranium—it was shaped like an inverted eggplant—and the peculiar cowlick at the front of his hairline. “There’s a portrait of Kaczynski in our hospital’s lobby.”
“Get to work, Doc,” their guard said in English. “My boss is gonna be back any minute, and I don’t wanna have to tell him that you’re ignoring your patient.”
Megan and the priest turned to the beefy man. He was sitting backward on a wooden chair, straddling the spine with his legs, his arms draped over the top. His right thumb was wrapped in gauze.
Megan thought back to the thumb she had bitten while escaping from her assailants at Ticar Norte. “I hope it hurts like hell.”
“Hey, bitch, I’d start paying attention to Dr. Kaczynski. He’s the only reason you’re still alive, in case you hadn’t figured that out.”
Megan felt light-headed. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had anything to eat or drink. “Are you going to tell us what this place is?”
“No. Any more questions?”
She had a hundred questions, but he wasn’t going to answer any of them, so she turned her attention back to her patient. The muscular Latino man—she had overheard someone call him Calderon—had allowed her to speak briefly with the white-coated lab tech who had previously cared for Kaczynski. Apparently, the woman was their closest facsimile of a medic.
The woman had explained that the geneticist’s illness started a week ago with high fevers, chills, profuse sweating, headaches, and back pain. At the time, Kaczynski had diagnosed himself as having malaria and instructed the nursing staff to treat him with IV fluids and the anti-malaria drug, chloroquine. On the fourth day of his illness, it looked as if he was improving.
But two days ago—day five of his illness—the fevers had returned with a fury and the geneticist developed several additional symptoms: a cough accompanied by blood-tinged sputum, delirium, jaundice, and a rash.
Megan realized that his turn for the worse had saved her life, if only for a time.
“Get Calderon in here,” she told the guard.
“I don’t take orders from you. And where’d you hear that name?”
She ignored the guard’s question. “If you want Dr. Kaczynski to live, get your boss in here.”
The man lifted himself from the chair and called out to somebody in the hallway.
While Megan waited for Calderon, she reexamined her patient. He looked to be in his mid-sixties, but his sallow skin added several years to his appearance. He was breathing rapidly, more rapidly than fever alone could explain. His yellowed eyes were suffused with swollen blood vessels. When she palpated the upper right quadrant of his abdomen, he groaned. His liver was inflamed.
His torso and extremities were speckled with red pinpoint lesions—petechiae. His capillaries, the smallest blood vessels, were beginning to rupture.
There were any number of tropical illnesses that could explain many of his symptoms and physical findings—malaria, dengue fever, yellow fever, typhoid fever—but the man’s eyes pushed her toward another possibility. Leptospirosis.
Leptospirosis was an infection that occurred when humans come into contact with the body fluids of infected animals. She had seen only one patient with the disease during her residency, and it was a mild case. One of the few things that had stuck with her from that case was Elmer McKenna’s colorful description of Napoleon’s siege of Cairo in 1812, when an outbreak of leptospirosis crippled his forces. That and the fact it could be treated with penicillin.
The lab tech had not kept up with Kaczynski’s fluid losses, and Megan decided to increase the flow rate of his IVs. It was a calculated risk. If he had the severe form of leptospirosis, his kidneys would shut down and she could literally drown him in IV fluids. On the other hand, not keeping up with his fluid losses put him at risk of death from dehydration and vascular collapse.
Calderon walked into the room, followed by the Asian man.
Before Calderon could speak, she handed him a list. “Here’s a list of medicines and supplies that I need.”
Calderon smirked while scanning the list. “What makes you think I’m gonna get all of this for you?”
“If Kaczynski doesn’t survive, then you’ll probably kill me. If he does survive, you don’t need me anymore. Either way, it looks like I’m going to die, so do whatever you want.”
Calderon laughed. “Touché. Just for that, you get your supplies.”
• • •
A slender woman walked into the room just as Frankie was finishing with Luke’s shoes. Her deliberate gait and short gray hair reminded him of his third grade teacher. Everything else—her layered white blouse, her full-length skirt, the sash made of wooden beads with a cross hanging from it—made clear that he was looking at a nun.
She and Frankie exchanged a few words in Spanish, then the boy left the room.
The woman turned to Luke. “I’m Sister Marta Ann.” She had what sounded like a British or South African accent. “Frankie tells me you’re visiting from the United States.”
“Yes.” He held out his hand. “Ed Schweers.”
She stared at his left shoulder.
He looked down and saw the bloom of red coming through the clean shirt he had donned in the cab while searching for the boy.
“Caught myself on something sharp.” He wondered how many people begin their conversations with nuns by lying repeatedly.
“Are you here for work or pleasure?” she asked.
“Neither. I’m trying to find a friend who’s missing.”
“Oh?”
“A young woman, a doctor. She disappeared a few days ago. She was with a priest.”
“Padre Joseph.” It wasn’t a question.
“You know him?”
“No, but he’s in my prayers. And so is your friend.”
“You work for the same…?” Luke couldn’t come up with the right term.
“Padre Joseph and I both belong to Catholic orders, but no, we’ve never met. He’s a Maryknoll missionary. I’m with the Sisters of Charity.”
“What do you know about their kidnapping?”
“Almost nothing. I was talking by phone yesterday with our Mother Superior in Guatemala City. She once worked with Padre Joseph in Pactumal. She mentioned the news report about their abduction.” The nun shrugged. “I’m afraid that’s all I know.”
“Pactumal—is that a town?
“More like a small pueblo. When Padre Joseph’s not traveling among the Mayan villages, he lives there with another priest, Padre Thomas. That’s their parroquia, their parish.”
“Where is it?” Luke could feel his sketchy plan shifting from Santa Lucina to Pactumal.
“Southeast of here, but I’ve never been there. Your friend disappeared in an area that’s on the edge of civilization, you might say. It’s mostly unmapped territory.” The nun showed him a doubtful expression. “Are you here on your own?”
“Yes.”
“Pactumal is near the Belize border. It’s a good distance off the main highway, but if you’re willing to pay, we can probably find a bus driver who will take you there. You can leave in the morning.”
“I have to leave tonight.”
“It might be difficult finding a bus at this hour. And it’s really not safe to travel at night. The bandits prey on buses, especially those with tourists. In this area, there have been six killings in the last month alone.” She kissed her crucifix.
“I’m leavin
g now.”
She glanced at a clock on the wall. “Very well, then. I’ll send Frankie to the station with you. He can help you find a bus. He’s pretty resourceful.”
“I’ve noticed.” Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out Ari’s passport and wallet. “These belong to a friend. Would you mind returning them to him?” He gave her the name of the hotel as he handed the items to her.
She raked the corner of her lip with her teeth, studying Luke as if searching for a stray fact.
He changed the subject. “Frankie’s mother—she doesn’t have much longer to live, does she?”
The nun glanced back at the bed. “No, she doesn’t.”
“You have anything to give her, any medications?”
“We have very little. We rely on donations—surplus medicines from drug companies, that sort of thing. But we almost never have enough.”
Luke turned and looked again at the boy’s mother. “How old is Frankie?”
“He’s nine, going on twenty.”
Luke nodded. “What’ll happen to him when she dies?”
“I suppose he’ll stay here, if he wants to.” She sounded mildly surprised by the question. “Besides Frankie, there are only three of us here. He does a good deal of the chores. He’s a rascal, but he’s devoted to his mother. I’m afraid more than she ever was to him.”
A voice behind them said, “Perdóneme, Hermana.”
Luke turned.
Three uniformed police officers were standing in the doorway, staring at him.
40
Luke purchased a map at a newsstand while watching Frankie work a group of bus drivers who were milling at the station’s arched entrance. The boy used the same in-your-face bluster that had seemed to befuddle the cops.
The police, it turned out, had come to the hospice looking for Frankie. They were making the rounds, conducting what appeared to be a perfunctory murder investigation by talking with known associates of the dead thieves.
Suddenly, Frankie caught Luke’s eye. The boy lifted his arm and pointed at one of the bus drivers.
Twenty minutes later Luke was sitting in the back of a bus rumbling south on the Guatemala Highway. His mind replayed images of the boy standing alongside the bus until just before its departure, waving like a trained seal every time Luke had glanced out the window.
A large yellow moon bathed the grasslands on either side of the highway, and he struggled to stay awake. It was almost nine o’clock, which meant that it was coming up on seven o’clock in Los Angeles. He reached into his bag and turned on the satellite phone.
Just as he was wondering whether a satellite signal would find him inside a metal can traveling at fifty miles an hour, the phone chirped. He thumbed the green button marked ENCRYPT, then pressed SEND.
“Where are you?” Sammy asked without preamble.
“North of Guatemala City.” His response would have been judged unresponsive in a court of law, but this wasn’t a court of law and he was still a fugitive. He wasn’t going to tell anyone more than they needed to know. “What do you got?”
“That company Zenavax—they have an office in Río Dulce. You know where that is?”
“No, but I’ll find it.”
Sammy gave him a street address and phone number for the company’s Río Dulce office, then said, “I got nothing on your woman friend yet. How ‘bout you?”
Luke described his conversation with the nun and explained that he was en route to the missing priest’s parish. He didn’t give Sammy the name of the town, and the man didn’t ask.
“Seven o’clock tomorrow,” Sammy said. “I may have something to tell you.”
The line went dead before Luke could ask what that last statement meant.
• • •
Luke startled when the bus driver shook him awake.
“Estamos aquí. Pactumal.”
He looked at his watch. It was 10:17 P.M. He jumped from the seat and hefted his rucksack over his left shoulder. A searing pain from the knife wound shot down his arm as he walked down the aisle and disembarked.
When the bus pulled away, standing on the other side of the road, smoking a cigarette, was Frankie. Dressed in a bright yellow jacket, he looked like a smoldering Easter egg.
“Hey, boss. We here.”
Luke rubbed the sleep from his face while wondering at the urchin’s ability to board the bus unnoticed. Commingled with that thought was the recognition that fatigue was chipping away at his vigilance.
Frankie released two perfectly formed smoke rings. “I help you. You see.”
Luke launched into a blistering lecture about deception and trickery, then extracted Frankie’s promise to return to Santa Elena after they paid a visit to the missing priest’s parroquia.
“And put out that cigarette,” he said.
Frankie used an ear-splitting whistle to gain the attention of a few local residents who guided Luke and his diminutive companion toward a simple clapboard structure that was indistinguishable from nearby houses except for its larger size. A cross hung on the front door.
A group of tired-looking men sat along a bench on the wood-plank porch that fronted the parroquia. The men seemed to regard Luke with an equal mix of curiosity and unease. A tiny woman wrapped in an orange apron was passing out glasses of juice to the men. Frankie marched up to the group as if he were their longtime companion, took a glass from the woman’s tray, and started chatting with the men.
Eventually the boy turned back to Luke and said, “Padre Joseph supposed to come home three days ago. But no one see him.”
“How do you know about Padre Joseph?”
“I listen to you and Hermana Marta Ann.”
Luke wondered whether the boy had overheard their discussion about his mother. “Ask them where the priest was traveling to. Where was he going?”
Frankie repeated Luke’s question in Spanish.
An elderly man replied, waving his arm in a wide arc and taking in a broad sweep of the horizon as he talked. He went on for some time.
When he finished, Frankie said, “Padre Joseph not here most times.” He pointed in the distance. “He go to small villages. They not know where.”
Luke could feel the frustration bleeding away his energy. He rubbed a bead of sweat off his forehead and turned his neck to loosen a muscle.
“They lying,” Frankie added.
“What?”
“They lying, boss. They scared.”
“How do you know?”
Frankie shrugged. “I just know.”
The screen door swung open and a portly man emerged. He was light-skinned, and sweating profusely.
The men sitting on the porch nodded deferentially and Luke heard the word “padre” in their mumbled greetings.
After a short exchange with the group, the heavyset man looked at Luke and said, “I’m Father Tom. I understand you’re asking about our pastor, Father Joe.”
“Yes. I’m looking for the woman who was with him when they were kidnapped.”
“You better come in.”
Once inside, the priest said, “Tell me about this woman.”
“Her name is Megan Callahan. She’s a doctor.”
“That much I know. What I want to know is, what did she do to get herself in trouble?”
“I’m not following.”
“Joe—Father Joe—found her on a riverbank. She was hiding.”
“From whom?”
Father Tom lifted an eyebrow. “My guess would be, the same people that abducted her.”
“What do you know about their abduction?”
The priest studied Luke for several seconds. “Perhaps we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. I’d like to know a little more about you. How do you know this woman?”
“We work together.” Luke tried to hide his annoyance at the priest’s interrogative attitude.
“That shouldn’t be too hard to verify.”
Luke pulled his passport from a pants pocket and handed it to the p
riest. “Here. Call University Children’s Hospital. It’s in Los Angeles. I’ll give you the number. Tell ’em you’re standing here talking to Ed Schweers. See what they have to say.”
If he couldn’t bluff his way past someone who was probably inclined to trust people, neither he nor Megan had any chance.
The priest handed back the passport. “No need. I’m…this whole thing has me on edge. Sorry. “
“We’re on the same side here,” Luke said. “I was asking about their kidnapping?”
“A friend of mine saw it happen.”
“Who?”
The hesitation showed on the priest’s face.
“Look. I don’t have time to dance around—”
The priest’s hand came up. “Let me explain. Father Joe travels to the outlying villages with an Indian who’s been with him for years. The man’s devoted to Joe, and right now I suspect he’s in as much pain as any of us. He’s also scared out of his wits. He saw Joe and your friend taken away by five men dressed in camouflage uniforms—”
“Military?”
“He thinks so, but I’m not so sure.”
“Why?”
“He said two of them were gringos. That’s why I came on a little strong with you.” Father Tom rubbed his balding pate. “I don’t know how much you know, but it wasn’t all that long ago that the Guatemalan army slaughtered villagers for the simple reason that they were Mayan. By most counts, at least two hundred thousand of them. Hundreds of villages were just wiped off the map. The killing went on for over thirty years—that’s how long the civil war lasted. The memories stay with you, if you know what I mean.”
Luke nodded.
“When Paco—that’s Father Joe’s assistant—when he saw those men taking Joe and your friend away, I suspect the first thing he thought was, ‘It’s starting again.’ He’s frightened.”
“I need to talk to him.”
“He won’t talk to you. In fact, he made me promise—I can’t even tell the authorities about him.”
“You haven’t told the police about this?”
“Oh, I told them. I just didn’t give them Paco’s name. But you have to understand—the local police aren’t likely to be much help in this situation.”
Stigma Page 26