The Disappeared Girl

by Martin J. Smith

  “There must be someone there who speaks English,” he said, setting the almanac down beside his computer. “Someone obviously translated this web page from the Spanish version.”

  Christensen pulled his chair closer and set his fingers to the keys. In the subject line, he typed: “An inquiry.” In the message box, he typed: “Hello. My name is Jim Christensen and I live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the United States of America.”

  “Dad—stop,” Melissa said. “You sound like a guy in shorts and dark socks talking louder so the foreigners will understand.”

  “I do?”

  “Move.”

  Preparing to type, she pushed the sleeves of her sweatshirt up on her forearms, exposing the scar on her wrist. Her posture was slightly off normal, and he sensed in her a persistent and unspecified pain. The dark circles beneath her eyes told him she was either depressed or exhausted—probably just exhausted after such a long and emotional day. She didn’t seem depressed, but since that night in the bathtub, he’d been on high alert.

  “You sure you’re OK?”

  “It’s just—I’m fine.” Melissa touched her belly again. “There’s this, like, flutter. She’s moving around.”

  “You think it’s normal?”

  She looked at him. “What’s normal, Dad? I’ve never been pregnant before.”

  “Me either,” he said.

  “I’m sure it’s normal.”

  “OK.”

  Melissa turned back to the keyboard. “Good morning,” she typed. “I have reason to believe that I was born in Buenos Aires in 1978 to a woman named Julia Limon. I was adopted by an American couple in 1983 and moved to the United States, where I now live. My long search for my birth mother has led me to you. Do you have any information that might help me? Thank you.”

  She typed her full name and hit the Send button.

  “That’s it?”

  “What else would they need? That gives them a name and time frame, so let’s see where it goes from there.”

  “But you assumed the information we have is correct. You should have explained how we got it.”

  Melissa looked exasperated. “Dad, look, the name ‘Julia Limon’ will either ring a bell, or it won’t. So let’s just cut to the chase.”

  She was right. Still, he found her directness startling, the question blurted rather than asked. It was now streaking through cyberspace across telephone lines, fiber-optic networks, international borders. The answer to her question might change her life forever, and it was composed and asked of a stranger in a matter of seconds. It just seemed odd.

  “I guess we’ll see,” he said.

  “I need sleep, Dad.”

  “Me too, baby. Let’s crash. We’ll go back at this later today after we’ve had some rest.”

  “Dad?”

  Something in her voice drew his full attention. “Yeah, baby?”

  “I believe you.”

  Her words sound like absolution, but he needed context. “I’m not sure what—”

  “That you didn’t know any of this. That you had no idea what went on before the adoption. I believe you.”

  Christensen pulled his daughter into a long and grateful hug. She smelled like strawberries. When he spoke, he whispered in her ear. “I—I should have asked more questions. We just, your mom and me, we were so happy. There was a hole in our lives, and you filled it. You were a gift, and we, you know, when your Uncle Michael said everything was OK, we just—”

  “Accepted the gift,” she said. “I understand, Dad. I believe you.”

  “That means a lot. It means everything.”

  She kissed his cheek. “I’m outta here. Wake me around noon if you’re up by then.”

  He’d promised the younger ones he’d take them to carbo-load at Denny’s before driving them to junior lifeguards. At best, he’d get a couple hours’ sleep before noon. “Will do,” he said.

  He was moving the cursor across his computer’s screen to close his mail program when the speakers spit a cheery “Ting!” into the room. They looked at each other.

  Christensen opened his e-mail inbox and read the subject line: “RE: An inquiry.”

  “Holy shit—Dad, open it.”

  Still standing, they read the words of someone working impossibly early at a computer in Buenos Aires, Argentina: “Melissa Christensen, what is your telephone number?”

  Chapter 44

  She was faceup in a bed of pachysandra, a pale smear in the dawn light against a blanket of leafy green. Even from a distance, Hasch could tell from the blood spatters across her face that she’d been alive when she hit. As he got closer, he realized her back was broken. The scene had a disorienting what’s-wrong-with-this-picture feel.

  The patrol cop told him she’d lived on 9, so Hasch lifted his eyes up, up, up, counting floors as he went. He found her balcony—one of the uniforms on the scene was leaning out and looking down—and followed the path of her fall back down until, just above her body, his eyes found the edge of the building’s portico roof. He felt his own body react as he imagined the impact.

  “Doh!” he said.

  “Beg pardon?”

  The deputy coroner turned to the young patrol cop, who for the past hour had been securing the death scene. “I’m guessing she hit the edge of the roof there, then dropped into these plants. It had to be that kind of impact to break her back like that.”

  The cop had jug ears and a trace of acne, and Hasch followed his innocent eyes from the portico roof to the woman’s body. He stared, but still didn’t quite get it.

  “You already know her back’s broke?” he asked.

  Hasch bent down and lifted the woman’s thin cotton gown, which by chance had allowed her some modesty, and suddenly the two men were staring at her deflated ass cheeks. The cop did a double take, realizing for the first time that the body he’d been guarding was twisted like a bidirectional Barbie, her face and chest up, knees and toes down. Hasch moved in closer as Jughead dropped to his knees and retched into the pachysandra.

  She was older, early 60s maybe. Her long white hair was spread across the plants as if she’d laid her head back on a pillow, and her eyes were closed. Hasch started to tug her gown back down to give her a few more moments of dignity, but that’s when he noticed the sharp nub of a broken needle poking through the skin of her hip. He made a mental note to check the body bag carefully once he got her back to the morgue, just in case it fell out on the trip back. Never know what might be significant.

  “Who found her?” Hasch said when the cop wavered back to his feet.

  “Security guy,” Jughead said, and retched again. Nothing came up. “Jesus, sorry.”

  “What time was that?”

  The cop fished a small notebook from the back pocket of his pants and riffled the pages. “It was around 4:30, by his watch. He was walking the parking lot and found her here, just like this. She wasn’t moving and didn’t respond. He called emergency. That was at 4:34.”

  Hasch leaned in closer and clicked on his Maglite. There was a nasty gash on her forehead, and bits of gravel were embedded in the flesh around it. The structure covering the portico was flat, probably with a gravel roof. Her face was speckled with blood.

  “Her heart was still beating when she landed,” he said. “And the security guy had no idea how long she’d been here?”

  The cop shook his head.

  “His last pass was thirty minutes before, and he didn’t notice anything then. So we’re guessing it happened between about 4:00 and 4:30.”

  That seemed consistent with what Hasch was seeing. She’d been dead no more than a couple of hours. He traced the Maglite beam from her head down to her feet, then back up and down each arm. He let it linger on her right hand until he was certain what he saw clutched there: rosary beads. “Any idea what they found upstairs?”

  The cop lifted a radio from his belt and contacted the uniform on the balcony above. “Coroner wants to know what you’re seeing up there.”
r />   The reply crackled immediately: “Squat.”

  Hasch grabbed the radio. “Could you be a little more specific, officer?”

  “Who’s this?”

  Hasch identified himself. “It might help me more if you could tell me, in general terms, what it’s like. Like, was the door locked when you got there?”

  “Affirmative. The security guy recognized her and knew which apartment was hers. We tried calling and knocking but got no answer. She lived alone, he said, so he let me in.”

  “You were careful to preserve the scene, right?”

  “We’re actually having a big ol’ party up here, sport. You’re missing all the fun.” “Sorry, just checking,” Hasch said. “Anything else?”

  “The slider onto the balcony was open.”

  “Any signs of a struggle?”

  “Not that I can see.”

  Hasch would do fingernail scrapings anyway, just in case. “But the door onto the balcony was open, you say?”

  “Affirmative. And there’s a chair, one of the dinner-table chairs, pulled up to the railing on the balcony, like maybe she used it as a step to get up and over. Oh, and there’s some footprints. We took some snaps.”

  Hasch said, “OK, thanks,” and handed the radio back to the patrol cop.

  The sun was almost up, but it was rising on the other side of the building, so the scene remained in shadow. He had a lot to do, and things were only going to get tougher as the building’s residents started their day. For now, he had the scene to himself. Within an hour, he’d have an audience. He turned to Jughead, who now seemed unable to look away from the body.

  “I’ll get started then,” he said. “You’ll watch things here while I get my camera and kit from the van?”

  The cop nodded and said, “You ever get used to this?”

  The two of them looked down at the broken woman lying dead in the flower bed as Hasch considered the question. There were two possible answers: the appropriate one and the truthful one. He decided to tell the truth.

  “Yep.”

  Chapter 45

  When the phone rang, neither of them reached for the handset on the desk between them even though they knew a second or third ring would wake Brenna and the younger two. Christensen and his daughter were anxious to begin the conversation with whoever was calling from the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, but they stared at one another like two people at the edge of a cliff. He understood Melissa’s hesitation, and ached for her.

  “It’s your journey now,” he said.

  Melissa nodded, but still didn’t move after the second ring. “I know.”

  He nudged the phone across the desk. “You’ve come this far. You have to finish it.”

  When she finally picked it up, he saw her wrist scar again, reminding him how this journey had begun—in confusion, depression, and hopelessness.

  A tinny, accented voice from the telephone’s earpiece echoed against the hollowness of an international connection. “Buenos días? Hello?”

  “We’ll handle it, Melissa,” Christensen said. “Whatever it is, we’ll handle it. We always have. But this next step is yours to take. I can’t do it for you.”

  His daughter lifted the handset to her ear, her eyes fixed on his. Then she set it down on the desk—and hit the phone’s speaker button. “This is Melissa Christensen.”

  “Good morning? Hello?”

  “Hello. Yes, I’m sorry. You’re calling from Buenos Aires?”

  Christensen adjusted the speaker volume, grateful to be included in what may be the most difficult conversation of his daughter’s life.

  “My name is Hector Silva, yes? With the Abeulas group? We received an e-mail?”

  “I sent it.”

  “Inquiring about a woman, one of the mothers, Julia Limon?”

  “You have information about her, then?”

  “We are familiar with that name, yes. Can you tell us first your story to get us started?”

  Melissa began with what she knew—her adoption in 1983, the scant paperwork, the baptismal certificate, a military transport flight that began at a US air base outside Buenos Aires. “I was five,” she said, “and I believe I spent some time in an orphanage.” She offered flickering memories of things she didn’t understand—the rows of institutional beds, images of angry adults and men in uniform. “And I’ve met someone here, in Pennsylvania, who once worked as a maternity nurse at a, like, there was a hospital at a Navy school there or something? A mechanical school?”

  “Yes, yes.” The voice was suddenly animated.

  “She gave me a name,” Melissa said. “Julia Limon.”

  They waited through a long pause. After about fifteen seconds, a stunned question floated into the room: “A nurse?”

  “A maternity nurse, yes.”

  “And this nurse worked at the hospital miltar? At the mechanical school?”

  “That’s what she told me, yes,” Melissa said. “She—”

  They heard a furious burst of typing. Hector Silva was at a computer. “Her name, this nurse—can you tell me her name?”

  “Vargas,” Melissa said. “She signed my baptismal certificate, and that’s how—”

  Another dance of fingers across a keyboard. “Vargas? First name Beatriz?”

  Christensen felt a surge of adrenaline. He closed his eyes. Jesus—was this really happening?

  “Beatriz Vargas, yes. Her signature was on—”

  “She is alive then? This Beatriz Vargas—she is alive? You have seen her?”

  The conversation seemed to have crested a hill and was picking up speed. Melissa felt it, too. She gripped the edge of his desk. “Yes.”

  “And you say you were born at the School of Mechanics?”

  “No, I—I don’t know where I was born. But this Vargas woman, this nurse, says a baby boy was born at this school, to a woman named Julia Limon. She says that she was my mother, and this baby was my brother, and that we were adopted by an American couple, or at least were both supposed to have been adopted, but—it’s a long story, but after the baby was born, this Vargas woman agreed to accompany—”

  “This was what year, you say?”

  “In 1983,” Melissa said.

  Another pause. Hector Silva apparently was searching a database. “January 1983?”

  Christensen nodded. The plane had gone down on January 17, 1983, just two days after the baby’s birth.

  “Correct,” Melissa said. “So all this makes sense to you? It fits with information you have there?”

  “What you are telling me, yes, it matches the little information the Abuelas have here in the computer. But what you are saying about the nurse, Beatriz Vargas, being alive. This is something we did not know. Her name—it is listed among the desaparecidos. But she is alive? You know this?”

  “I saw her yesterday. She kept a list of names, of the mothers she worked with.”

  “And she’s there in the United States? Alive?”

  “Please, Señor Silva. I’m really just looking for information about Julia Limon. She may have been my birth mother and—”

  “Of course! Sorry. So sorry. That is your interest, of course. But this information you have about Beatriz Vargas, it is new and quite remarkable to us here.”

  “Obviously.”

  “But here—let me tell you what we know about the other, this Julia Limon. That information is on another list, and our computer here, it’s old and slow like a tortoise. Un momento, por favor.”

  Melissa suddenly flinched, and her hand went straight to her abdomen, more reflex than movement. Christensen saw it. She saw him notice.

  “You sure you’re OK, ’Lis?”

  She nodded, but clearly she was in pain.

  “There is someone with you?” Hector Silva asked.

  Melissa swallowed hard. “My father.”

  Another long pause. This silence was different, though. In it Christensen heard a note of suspicion.

  “Your adopted father?”

  “
Yes,” Melissa said. “He’s helping me. Why?”

  They waited. Finally: “Perhaps, Melissa Christensen, we should talk privately?”

  She looked confused. “It’s fine. I’m not sure I—”

  Christensen leaned close to the phone’s speaker. “My name is Jim Christensen, Mr. Silva. I’m not sure what you meant by that, but I don’t think I like the implication.”

  Silva’s voice came back evenly, but there was no mistaking his point. “Not all of the adopting parents in this situation are so eager to help, you see—”

  “This one is.”

  “—because of the criminal liability issues here.”

  If Silva had reached across the continents and punched Christensen in the face, he couldn’t have recoiled any more violently. He sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, sucking for air. Suspicion he expected; he hadn’t imagined so direct an accusation.

  “I wasn’t part of this,” he said. “Please believe me. We knew nothing until now, and only know what we know because of the information we’ve uncovered. Believe me, I’m as stunned by all this as Melissa is.”

  Silva took his time responding. “You must understand—it is very unusual, you see, Mr. Christensen. From our perspective, you must understand, the adopting families are not often cooperative. They know the truth, the history, and are anxious that it remain buried. You are obviously familiar with the Abuelas group and its mission?”

  “What we know, we know from your website,” Christensen said. “The kidnappings. The grandmothers searching for their daughters who disappeared, and their missing grandchildren.”

  Silva again spoke after apparently careful deliberation. “This hospital at the mechanical school, Campo de Mayo, it was an operation, Mr. Christensen, a very calculated operation. It was run by the military—the oppressors who had taken over our country—for the benefit of military families who were unable to have children on their own. Babies. Surely you understand the difficulties with adoption.”